By Lekan Sote
These days, many Nigerian youths (and oldies) are emigrating to North America, Western Europe, Eastern Europe and the Pacific (that include Australia, New Zealand, Japan and other counties in droves).
It’s called “Japa” these days. Those who practically invade the consular offices of foreign embassies are the tame ones. Many others go on extremely dangerous expeditions, through the Sahel, unto stateless Libya and across the Mediterranean in dinghies.
Many go away from Nigeria because of they think Nigeria practically has no promises for them. The sundry governments that have ruled Nigeria have not been able to inspire the confidence of the people.
Their very reasonable argument is that they have only one life to live and so cannot afford to waste it while the bumbling lot who are generally running a more or less mediocre government are still in charge.
Japa, if you like to know, appropriates the experience of “escape” from the excruciating burden of living in Nigeria, while also enduring the frustrations and disillusionment of a state that has failed, practically.
Observers attribute the frequent failure of money transfers, reversals of wrong transactions and POS jams to the mass exodus of the young men and women who manage the backend technologies of Nigeria’s banking institutions.
The combination of inflation, high-interest rate, depreciating currency, near-famine, high cost of living, insecurity and near-absence of macroeconomic policies is causing the average Nigerians to conclude that there’s nothing here to support their economic wherewithal.
Nigerians are so desperate that they’d rather go to a war zone than remain in Nigeria. When the Ukrainian-Russian War broke out early in 2022, not a few Nigerian youths approached the Ukrainian Embassy in Abuja to sign up for the war.
The youths were discouraged only when the Ukrainian Embassy began to ask them to pay $1,000 in order to obtain the Ukrainian visa that will allow them to go fight in another man’s war, where they could perish.
It is ironic that this could have happened because the other reason that many Nigerians give for fleeing is the insecurity visited on Nigerians by insurgents, terrorists, kidnappers—sometimes called bandits—and herders who kill farmers who protest when cattle eat up their farm crops.
Yes, insecurity is all over the world, with almost no part of the globe free from violence. Japan, hitherto thought to be a safe place to live in, recorded the killing of former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe in July 2022 at a political event outside Yamato-Saidaiji Station in Nara City, Nara Prefecture, in Japan.
Shooting to death is almost becoming a daily event also in the prosperous United States of America that is usually the first emigration choice of latter-day “Andrews” of Nigeria. To put it the way of fatalists, “There is no safe haven anywhere.”
Traditionally, those who travelled out of Nigeria were youths who went for higher education—which Nigeria’s first (ceremonial) President, Dr Nnamdi Azikiwe, described as the golden fleece. There were also professionals who went for further training (on the job) and tourists.
In the 1980s, towards the closing days of President Shehu Shagari’s administration, many professionals, especially doctors, nurses and paramedics, migrated mainly to Saudi Arabia and the rest of the Arab world.
It continued under military Head of State, Major General Muhammadu Buhari, and that of military President, General Ibrahim Babangida. Apart from those who went into exile after the annulment of the presidential election won by Bashorun MKO Abiola, the emigration slowed under the regimes of Generals Sani Abacha and Abdulsalami Abubakar.
But it soon revived when America came up with the American Visa Lottery scheme, to recruit professionals of all cadres to work and live in America. When the demand reduced, Nigerians continued the surge to endemic proportions.
