Migrationism” is a phenomenon enshrined in the relocation of huge numbers of some of the best professionals and the generality of the people of one country to foreign polities, as a result of better conditions of service including political stability. Contrary to a general public perception, this subject is ontologically global although with varying degrees of severity.
Nigerians, especially the youth, are victims of this socio-economic and demographic monster traceable to governmental irresponsibility, unbridled self-focus, predatory mindset, and recklessness on a monumental scale.
Other African countries such as Kenya and Ethiopia also have this challenge to grapple with. Thus, for example, The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) claims that Ethiopia lost 75 percent of its professionals and to a limited extent, the unskilled ones, to the ravaging tempest of modern globalisation between 1980 and 1991.
China, despite its rapid technological advancement among other socio- economic, and scientific accomplishments, is not immune to the menace of brain drain. In actuality, about 70 percent of Chinese living in foreign countries do not want to return home.
However, the Nigerian situation is much more worrying given the alarming rate of emigration from the country especially in recent times. This ugliness is almost on a par with the flow of refugees from a war-ravaged zone. Sometimes, both skilled and unskilled Nigerian youths, out of desperation, leave even for African countries like Togo, Benin, Ghana, South Africa, and the Gambia.
But in most cases, Nigerians prefer to relocate to such places as the US, Britain, Germany, Canada, and Australia. This is because today’s Nigeria is a mini-hell, too hostile to be liveable. The country has several problems bordering on economic disequilibrium and limited opportunities including a gross lack of employment windows.
Epileptic electric power supply, starvation tied to the apron strings of unprecedented insecurity, high rate of unemployment, incessant ASUU strikes, and hopelessness constitute a push factor with a wide range of debilitating consequences.
Sometimes, these young Nigerians are mowed down by trigger-happy, brutish immigration officers and police men especially in North Africa and Spain, while trying to escape to their regions. Indeed, our humanity has been seriously degraded by the challenges of modern life and living deeply rooted in the principle of “survival of the fittest.”
Poor political leadership remains a devil to be wrestled to the ground. No symmetries of information as well as institutional and/or top-down accountability and probity. No respect for constitutional mechanisms for checks and balances. Indeed, Nigeria is a politico- geographical signature of endemic corruption cum hedonism/self-indulgence.
Youth population is increasing rapidly in the absence of enforceable family planning rules and regulations. Consequently, many Nigerians are still rearing children like rabbits. This attitude is reminiscent of the stone age ways of life. According to the UN Department of Economics and Social Affairs, by 2050 or thereabouts, Nigeria would be the third most populous geo-polity in the world. Socio-political, economic, and demographic crises would double by 2050, except there is a positive leadership change.
Nigeria has crafted four national development plans since its independence, and yet we are moving out of the frying pan into the fire. The most recent plan was approved by the Federal Executive Council (FEC) in 2020. This replaced the Economic Recovery and Growth Plan (ERGP). The central goal of national planning is the promotion of economic growth and development, through the lens of prudent harnessing and/or utilisation of available natural and human capital resources.
However, political opportunism across the leadership spectrum is our undoing. Currently, Nigeria has an imbalance between socio-economic opportunities, including infrastructural facilities, and a huge human population.
The atavistic instinct of the political elite remains a serious problem to address. Thus, for example, education, healthcare, security, and roads, among others, are in a coma. Consequently, economic production channels are blocked. This engenders a greater degree of GDP contraction, uncontrollable social unrest, and unprecedented immigrations/brain drain.
Our uncritical dependence on the developed nations for almost everything will certainly go on, so long as many local graduates have no skills to produce. This is a continual source of worry to all the progressives in the country. University and polytechnic certification is gradually becoming a cosmetic process. The gap between theory and practice widens daily. Nigeria is still unable to add some appreciable amount of value to its agricultural produce.
Robust healthcare facilities and welfare packages will discourage huge immigration to foreign countries. Tertiary institutions need to develop new curricula capable of interfacing with labour market information (LMI) in order to boost local industrialisation and, by extension, national economy.
Too many professionals, especially medical doctors, nurses, physiotherapists, and radiologists are leaving for Europe, America, Australia, and Saudi Arabia among other places on a daily basis. The number of youths migrating to foreign countries has increased from 450,000 in 1990 to 1.4 million in 2019. At least, 727 Nigerian medical doctors were practising in the US as of September, 2021. Meanwhile, most parts of rural Nigeria have no access to modern healthcare systems. This leads to appalling public health – an encumbrance to national economic growth and development on a sustainable scale.
The Council for the Regulation of Engineering in Nigeria (COREN) is now a member of the Federation of Engineering Institutions of Asia and the Pacific (FEIAP). As a result of this development, some of the best Nigerian engineers may soon be migrating to such countries as Malaysia, Pakistan, Australia, and China.
Things would continue to go from bad to worse so long as poor political leaders are not shown the way out. Nigeria needs workable philosophies geared towards an expansion of the definitional and operational box of leadership. That is, a political arrangement with a big space for a robust present and an enlarged future. This mode of political leadership must be ready to de-couple from the current ugliness by pulling Nigerians, at all levels, into an exciting and rewarding journey of reflection, pragmatism and, of course, sustainability. This is critical to some successful navigation of the ocean of modern global education and development which is ontologically embedded in stiff competitiveness.
This is how Nigeria can reduce to the barest minimum, the current unprecedented immigration including brain drain. Nigeria remains a laughing stock even as our political rulers continue to run around the globe like some headless chickens. This is our disfigured contemporary Nigeria where innocent, frustrated university students can be kept at home for months. A strange geo-polity that has no respect for academics, otherwise known as the best minds and hearts of Homo sapiens, probably marking the end of cosmogenesis.
Indeed, Nigeria is light years away from modern civilisation and by the same token, local industrialisation and/or economic sustainability. This situation turns many of our youths into economic refugees. As a matter of fact, Nigeria, given its current leadership culture of self- indulgence or self-interest runs the risk of being swallowed up by the ravaging tempest of modern slavery popularly called globalisation.
But this is not irredeemable. Nigeria needs a team of visionaries to start managing its affairs from 2023.
- Prof. Ogundele writes from the University of Ibadan, Oyo State