Think of the Nigerians who vote with their feet

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The rapidly approaching 2023 election has generated a modicum of excitement despite the fact that voting has never changed much in our political evolution. The Independent National Electoral Commission, which has apparently upped its game, has predicted that 95 million Nigerians will vote next year. Admittedly, insecurity is still a major obstacle, as INEC President Prof. Mahmood Yakubu recently hinted. Nonetheless, there is optimism that at least an overwhelming majority of registered voters will turn out to vote and that the elections will be credible, transparent and fair. An interesting feature of the emerging demographics of the voter population is the addition of almost 10 million young people defined as those aged 18-35 to the voter register at the twilight of the Permanent Voter Card registration exercise. . It is too early to tell if this will be a radical change in voter choice. Certainly, however, it is an aspect of the elections to watch.

A hitherto ignored dimension of the projected electoral arrangement concerns young and old Nigerians who vote with their feet when leaving the country under Yorùbá #japa which roughly translates to "leaving the country press." Of course, there is nothing new in the immigration of skilled professionals to other countries. In our country, this happened in waves, and those who left the decadent universities in the mid-1980s to early 1990s are vividly remembered. Many of these immigrants, mainly from the Tower d'Ivoire, went to pursue their careers in Western countries, particularly in the United States and the United Kingdom. Interestingly, many of them returned home after retirement while a few stubbornly refused to return, even if it meant they would die and be buried in a foreign land. In the same breath, globalization has spurred increasing immigration, especially of professionals who regard the world rather than particular nations as their oysters. This happens in both developing and developed countries and has become part of the international diplomacy of global technocracy.

Linked to this syndrome is the fact that skilled labor immigration occurs most when particular countries face recession, prolonged adversity, devaluation of their currency and other misfortunes that make foreign lands attractive. This is the backdrop to the latest wave of young Nigerians leaving our shores to study, work or live permanently in countries like Britain, the United States and Canada, to name a few- one. In this sense, the recent statement by Abike Dabiri-Erewa, Chairman of the Nigerians in Diaspora Commission, to the effect that "we talk about 'Japa' as a one-way phenomenon but we also have Nigerians who constantly return home. There are examples of Nigerians returning home, occasionally or permanently, to do interesting things,” but she misses the point. It should be noted that there are no statistics to back up his claims. Furthermore, the most important and tragic problem is that Nigerian professionals are not only abandoning a country that has orphaned them through irresponsible governance, but very few other countries, which are not Nigerians, migrate to our country due to lack of amenities and constant fear of being beheaded by wandering bandits.

People of my generation remember that when we were growing up, almost every one of our universities had a fair share of expatriate professors teaching as well as students from other countries studying with Nigerians. During my undergraduate years at Ife, at least three of my lecturers traveled from the UK to teach at Ife, including the late Emeritus Professor of Sociology, Professor J. D. Y. Peel, whose last stop was the University of Cambridge. Everyone knows that expats are no longer looking for teaching assignments or sabbaticals at our universities. It may surprise the reader that some of them still go to Ghana, Kenya and Rwanda among other African countries where there are more lenient and conducive environments for learning and business for those who want it. This means that it was possible for Nigerians to get a world-class education at that time without necessarily going abroad.

Speaking of the continuing wave of exodus of Nigerian professionals abroad, The PUNCH reportedly recently reported that as many as 7,256 Nigerian-trained nurses have moved to the Kingdom between March 2021 and March 2022. In a similar vein, The PUNCH also reported that at least 6,068 Nigerian-trained doctors moved to the UK in the past two years. Please note that these numbers are for the United States only...