Why I Ran Away From Nigeria - Niyola Finally Speaks Out

Nigerian singer and songwriter Eniola Akinbo popularly known to many as Niyola is widely known for being the crooner of such hits as Toh Bad, Love to Love You, Go On, and more.

For some time, Niyola seemed to disappear from the music scene but then in December of last year, she made her return to music with Olúmorántí, and now stars in the new Netflix movie, Swallow.

But where was Niyola all this time you ask? Well apparently, the talented singer moved away from Nigeria to Los Angeles, America.

Why you ask? Well, Niyola has a lot to say about why she had to leave. Here's everything she revealed about her decision to leave the country in an exclusive interview she had with Chude.

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Speaking about Nigeria and why she left to go to Los Angeles, Niyola said:

Living in a place like Nigeria, there are certain factors that would suppress you. Naturally you would be in a place and you would want to impress rather than express. So what you wanna say, you watch what you say because you don’t want to come off as a person who has a different opinion all the time, and there’s nothing wrong with that. But we live in a country where everybody thinks that everybody has to do the same things and these were things that affected me over time without me even realizing it. I think moving out of Nigeria did a great deal for me. I had always kind of lived between here and there, I was never really sat here but moving out of Nigeria helped me to see life from a very different lens. It helped me to see life from a different lens, a different way, and unlearn a lot of things that I learnt.

So I moved to L.A. I moved to L.A. primarily because I was sick, I’m not gonna lie, I was sick of being here. I felt like there was a ceiling over my head. I can’t get past this space. Like how do you grow in a place where you haven’t even discovered a quarter of yourself but it’s too much. How do I find the best version of myself if I cannot even be the best of me yet? I felt that I needed to get out and be in an open space and fly free. And that’s why I left. Coupled with the fact that obviously when my mum passed, I just needed to get away from everything.

So there was something that really really took my interest and I said I always wanted to do. I wanted to go back to school to study film scores. I love film scores. I could listen to film scores like the entire day, it doesn’t need to have words. Like watching a movie and being able to determine a certain mood or feel by creating sound that would determine what the mood of a particular scene of a movie is, it would intrigue me and I love watching animations a lot. When I would watch all these movies, I’ll be like ‘why can’t we do this?’ and I said I was going to go study that. But I didn’t want to go to Berkeley because Berkeley was in a cold area and I don’t like cold so I decided to move to L.A. So I moved to L.A. (Los Angeles) and it’s been great.

Wow, all these people japa-ing to America. Well, it's good to see that Niyola finally found the freedom and peace she had been looking for and it's also very good to see her back in the industry glowing and looking better than ever. If you haven't seen Swallow, I suggest you check it out on Netflix. It's quite the watch and I would love to hear what you think about it.

That's All.

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