In a thought-provoking inaugural lecture, the academic argues that digital platforms have fundamentally reshaped migration, identity and memory, allowing people to carry their communities, obligations and histories wherever they go.
There was a time when leaving home meant exactly that.
Young people boarded buses from their villages to cities or planes to foreign countries, often losing daily contact with family, friends and community. Distance created absence, and absence gradually reshaped identity.
But according to Prof Abiodun Adeniyi, the new Vice Chancellor of Baze University, that era is over.
In a thought-provoking inaugural lecture, the Professor of Communication & Media Epistemology argued that the smartphone has fundamentally rewritten the meaning of migration and belonging, creating what he describes as a “portable village” that allows people to carry their communities with them wherever they go.
His central thesis is both simple and profound: you may leave your village, but your village no longer leaves you.
Thanks to WhatsApp groups, Facebook pages, TikTok videos, Zoom meetings and constant mobile connectivity, migrants today remain immersed in the social, cultural and emotional life of home even while living thousands of kilometres away.
The professor contends that technology has collapsed the traditional barriers of distance, transforming villages from physical locations into living digital networks that exist on the screens people carry in their pockets.
The implications stretch far beyond convenience.
Family meetings that once required everyone to gather beneath a tree or in a community hall now happen over video calls. Fundraising for local projects is coordinated through messaging apps. Birthdays, weddings and funerals are streamed live across continents, allowing relatives abroad to participate almost as if they were physically present.
For millions in Nigeria’s vast diaspora, migration no longer means disconnection. It means maintaining two lives at once—one rooted where they live and another sustained daily through digital interaction with home.
The lecture suggests that social media has become the modern equivalent of the village square.
Instead of neighbours exchanging news face to face, discussions unfold in WhatsApp groups. Community announcements circulate on Facebook. Cultural traditions are shared on YouTube and TikTok, while hometown associations organise development initiatives through online platforms that never close.
In that sense, the village has not disappeared. It has simply become portable.
The professor also argues that this transformation has changed how people understand identity itself. A migrant living in London, Toronto or Johannesburg may still participate in family decisions, contribute to community projects and remain subject to the expectations of relatives and hometown networks back in Nigeria.
Physical relocation no longer guarantees emotional or social separation.
Yet the lecture is not an unqualified celebration of technology.
It warns that the same digital tools that preserve memory and strengthen relationships can also create new forms of surveillance and pressure. Every post, photograph or message contributes to a lasting digital footprint, making it increasingly difficult for individuals to escape scrutiny or reinvent themselves.
In many cases, social expectations that once existed only within the confines of a physical community now follow people across borders through their phones.
The result is a paradox: technology has made the world feel smaller while simultaneously expanding the reach of the communities people thought they had left behind.
The professor further observes that online platforms increasingly function like traditional social institutions, complete with gatekeepers, unwritten rules and systems of approval or exclusion. Algorithms determine visibility, group administrators enforce norms and online audiences reward or punish behaviour in ways that mirror community life offline.
For younger generations, especially those raised in the age of smartphones, the distinction between physical and digital communities is becoming increasingly blurred.
The lecture therefore challenges long-held assumptions about migration, suggesting that departure is no longer a clean break but a continuous negotiation between multiple places and identities.
In practical terms, it means a Nigerian studying in Canada can wake up to family messages from Enugu, attend a village association meeting on Zoom during lunch, contribute to a fundraising campaign via mobile banking in the evening and watch local cultural events on TikTok before going to bed—all without setting foot in Nigeria.
The village, in effect, has travelled with them.
As societies become ever more interconnected, the professor believes policymakers, researchers and technology companies must recognise that digital platforms are no longer mere communication tools. They have become powerful social spaces that shape memory, belonging, obligation and identity.
His message ultimately reframes one of humanity’s oldest experiences. Migration once meant leaving home in search of opportunity. In the digital age, home may simply be another app on the screen.
And that may be the most profound technological transformation of all.
