Nelson Ikan, a Nigerian who once trained as a materials engineer and dreamed of joining the oil and gas elite now works in tech. Ikan is a senior project manager focused on digitising healthcare systems in the UK.
Recently, conversations have reignited online over the career pivots Nigerian migrants make in an attempt to attain success in their new countries of residence.
From students juggling multiple jobs to professionals who’ve swapped offices in their home country for factory jobs, the costs are often emotional, physical, and financial.
“I had to survive.”
Nelson Ikan arrived in the UK in November 2021, setting his sights on building his career in a new country.
“I didn’t work immediately when I came in. I was okay for a couple of months, trying to get settled,” he recalled. “But soon, I needed to raise money to stay afloat.”
He began applying for jobs that he qualified and sometimes was overqualified for. Offers came in, including one from an energy company. Ikan turned the offers down.
“I didn’t take those jobs because I didn’t want to get stuck doing something that didn’t align with what I had planned,” he said. “It wasn’t just about getting a job; for me, it was about getting the right kind of job.”
In the early months that followed, Ikan took up other roles he could find in the UK as he tried to adjust in his new environment. Soon after, he was exploring ways to integrate himself in the UK’s tech scene.
Back in Nigeria, Ikan had studied materials engineering, interned at energy company, had a brief stint in banking, before spending seven years in construction. This, he shared, gave him his first real experience managing big projects.
In the UK, when it was time to transition into project management, he leaned into his construction experience. “I had plans of making a life for myself here,” he said. “But I knew I needed something to validate my experience.”
That clarity pushed him to go back to the books. He enrolled in the Project Management Professional (PMP) exam and passed. The certification is globally recognised and often serves as a minimum requirement for serious project roles in the UK.
“The PMP gave me more visibility in the corporate world,” he said. “It was what made employers take a second look.”
His breakthrough came shortly after, when he landed a project management role in healthcare. There, he was assigned to a major digital migration project that was modernising how healthcare organisations tracked and shared incident data.
He then moved to another healthcare organisation, where he managed another digital transformation project.
Each project has built on the last, and the common thread has been Ikan’s determination to reinvent himself without losing the technical depth he developed back home.
“It wasn’t easy, but I had to learn how to sell myself properly,” he said. “That PMP wasn’t just a certificate. It gave me a foot in the door.”
Hard truths of migration and moving forward anyway
Beneath every success story of a migrant who makes it in the UK, there are usually a dozen untold stories of the mental wear, disillusionment, and invisible labor it took to stay afloat. Even when things begin to work on the outside, with work permits, job titles, and better pay, the emotional residue of starting over is hard to shake.
The hardest part of migration for Ikan was not just the the job rejections or the daily fear of running out of time. It was how unpredictable everything felt. In Nigeria, the systems may be broken, but they are familiar. In the UK, the systems function, but they are cold, rigid, and indifferent to anyone without a plan or a strong network.
What helped him push through in the UK was mentorship, grit, and knowing his strengths so he could prepare for the right opportunities.
Yet, Ikan knows how fragile those breakthroughs can be. Without timely advice or a supportive connection, many skilled migrants never transition out of survival mode. The system may not actively stop people from trying, but it certainly does not make success easy.
Now that he has gained a foothold, he is thinking about how to make the path easier for others.
“I want to build something. Something that helps others push through, just like I did,” he said.
Ikan says he is working on an AI-powered solution to help project managers like himself advance in their careers with more clarity. If he can help others avoid the challenges he faced, that would be a success far beyond his own.
* Editor’s note: A previous version of this article included Ikan’s salary during his early years working in the UK. That detail has been removed. Details about the subject’s workplace have also been removed to maintain anonymity.
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