At an airport departure gate, a Nigerian parent can hold two prayers in the same heart: that a child succeeds abroad, and that the distance does not become permanent.
The suitcases are ready. Documents have been checked repeatedly. Advice has been given, including advice the departing child has heard since secondary school. Everyone tries to smile. Then comes the final embrace, and the parent who has been strong throughout suddenly struggles to let go.
“Go and do well.”
Behind those words lies a painful question. Why must doing well require going so far?
As Nigeria marks sixty-six years of independence, we need to bring that question into our national conversation. We will celebrate our sovereignty, remember the struggles of those who came before us and speak about the promise of our country. But what does that promise mean to a young Nigerian who can no longer imagine a secure future here?
We call it Japa. We joke about it, discuss it in family groups and measure one another’s progress by visa approvals. Yet beneath the humour are decisions that divide families, reshape careers and leave communities wondering who will be next.
For some, migration is an adventure. For others, it is a carefully considered career decision. For many, it is an attempt to escape the exhausting uncertainty of everyday life.
We should stop treating all these people as though they are standing trial for insufficient patriotism.
Migration is often rational. Nigeria must compete for talent by offering conditions that make staying worthwhile. Guilt will not retain a nurse, equip a laboratory or give a frightened parent confidence in their child’s future.
“Who will build Nigeria if everybody leaves?” is a question we hear repeatedly.
It deserves an answer. But those asking it must also be prepared to answer the doctor who says, “I have been trying to build Nigeria. How long can I continue working without the equipment I need?” They must listen to the lecturer whose research ambitions have been reduced to finding somewhere with reliable electricity, and the business owner whose working day is consumed by problems that should have been solved before the business opened.
These Nigerians are already contributing. They pay taxes, teach students, care for patients, employ workers and support extended families. Many are considering departure because they are tired of having to overcome the same avoidable obstacles year after year.
There is a limit to how much national development can rest on individual endurance.
We praise resilience so often that we sometimes forget to ask why people must keep being resilient. The professional who supplies materials from a personal income, the parent who funds every basic service privately and the entrepreneur who generates electricity for a business are coping with failures that should conc
Their resourcefulness deserves respect. The conditions demanding it deserve correction.
At sixty-six, Nigeria should be able to offer its citizens more than encouragement to endure.
The pressures pushing people out are familiar: insecurity, inadequate income, poor working conditions, interrupted education, limited opportunities and the belief that connections matter more than competence. But perhaps the most corrosive pressure is the loss of confidence that tomorrow will be meaningfully better.
People can bear considerable difficulty when they can see a way forward. It is harder to keep sacrificing when improvement remains a promise without a timetable.
A young person has only one youth. A parent has a limited period in which to provide a stable beginning for a child. A professional cannot recover every year lost to an institution that refuses to develop.
We should be careful about asking people to place their lives indefinitely on hold.
The attraction abroad is often quite ordinary. A salary paid when due. A career path that can be understood. A school that opens as expected. A neighbourhood where the journey home is less frightening. The opportunity to practise a profession without spending half the working day compensating for institutional failure.
Many people are looking for the chance to live and work with some predictability.
Of course, going abroad carries its own difficulties. We owe our young people honesty about that too.
There are qualifications to reassess, examinations to pass and careers to rebuild. There is expensive housing, loneliness, discrimination and the pressure of immigration status. Couples may discover how heavily they depended on the family support they left behind. A professional who was respected at home may struggle to secure work appropriate to their experience.
And there is the emotional cost. A parent becomes ill, and the child cannot immediately travel. A family gathers for a funeral while someone watches through a telephone. Children grow up knowing their grandparents largely through a screen.
As a psychiatrist, I am concerned about what these separations mean for belonging, identity and emotional wellbeing. A person can be grateful for opportunities abroad and still grieve the life left behind. Success does not remove homesickness. Sending money does not always relieve the guilt of being absent.
We should make room for these experiences without turning them into another argument for shaming migrants.
People need accurate information before they leave: the costs, legal requirements, employment prospects and realistic routes into their profession. Families also need honest conversations about expectations. Migration should not be sold as an automatic cure for every difficulty.
Even with that knowledge, leaving may remain the most reasonable decision available.
Nigeria, meanwhile, cannot afford to dismiss the consequences.
When a nurse leaves, somebody must cover the shifts. When a specialist departs, patients may wait longer or travel further. When a lecturer resigns, a student may lose the person who understood the research project and believed it could succeed.
Institutions lose more than names on a payroll. They lose judgement, experience, mentorship and relationships built over years.
The burden then falls on those who remain. Their workloads increase, frustration grows, and departure becomes more attractive to them as well. We need to interrupt that cycle.
But anger at departing professionals will achieve very little. People are not national property. Public investment in education gives us a legitimate interest in public service, but that interest must be pursued fairly. Scholarship obligations should be clear from the beginning, reasonable and supported by decent conditions. Obstructing departure without addressing the reasons for it merely deepens mistrust.
The serious response is to make Nigeria a better place to work.
Pay people properly and on time. Give them the equipment required for their duties. Protect them from violence and harassment. Make recruitment and promotion fair. Provide opportunities to learn. Listen when staff raise concerns.
These are basic responsibilities. They should not require an anniversary speech to become priorities.
In healthcare, retention must include safe staffing, functioning facilities, specialist training and supportive supervision. Rural postings need secure accommodation, transport and practical support for family life. We cannot send professionals into difficult environments, leave them largely unsupported and then accuse them of disloyalty when they seek alternatives.
Universities need stable academic calendars, working laboratories, accessible research funding and appointments based on merit. A young academic should have a reasonable chance to develop a career through scholarship and teaching.
For engineers, technology workers and business owners, reliable infrastructure, predictable regulation, access to finance and enforceable contracts matter enormously. People need confidence that productive effort will be allowed to produce results.
Retention incentives should respond to the realities of each sector. A salary increase may help, but it will have limited value if the workplace remains unsafe or deeply unfair. Housing support may matter in one location; access to specialist training may matter more in another.
Government and employers must ask people what is driving their decisions, act on the answers and measure whether the response works. How many posts remain vacant? Why are staff leaving? Which interventions are helping? Another policy document will mean little unless people experience a difference.
We must also examine our own conduct.
The senior professional who humiliates juniors should consider what happens when those juniors finally find an exit. The manager who treats every suggestion as insubordination cannot reasonably complain about a lack of initiative. The employer who withholds salaries while demanding commitment is weakening the loyalty they claim to value.
We often speak of “the system” as though it exists entirely outside us. Yet we help shape it whenever we exercise authority, make an appointment, approve a payment or decide how to treat someone with less power.
Government has major responsibilities. So do the rest of us.
Those who stay deserve particular respect. Remaining in Nigeria is not evidence of failed ambition. Some choose to stay. Others cannot leave because of finances, family responsibilities or circumstances beyond their control.
The teacher holding a classroom together, the nurse serving a rural community and the entrepreneur employing five people are helping to sustain this country. They deserve conditions that support their contribution, rather than constant suggestions that success exists only elsewhere.
We also need a better relationship with Nigerians abroad.
Departure should not end the possibility of contribution. A specialist can teach, mentor or undertake a visiting appointment. A researcher can co-supervise students and develop a sustained collaboration. An engineer can work with a local team on a defined problem. A business owner can connect Nigerian enterprises with expertise, customers and investment.
That is how brain circulation can take shape. It requires organised relationships through which knowledge and opportunities continue to move.
Nigeria should make those relationships easier through clear visiting appointments, predictable registration processes, joint academic positions, return fellowships and properly supported remote teaching. Each partnership should respond to needs identified by colleagues in Nigeria.
The important question is what the collaboration leaves behind. Are local teams stronger? Can the equipment be maintained? Has a service improved? Are younger colleagues better able to carry the work forward?
Those returning from abroad must bring humility alongside expertise. Living elsewhere does not confer complete knowledge of Nigerian problems. Colleagues at home understand their institutions and communities in ways that deserve respect. Equally, useful ideas should be judged fairly rather than rejected because the person proposing them has lived outside the country.
Investment requires trust too. We cannot invite diaspora Nigerians to commit their savings on the strength of patriotic appeals alone. They need credible accounts, transparent governance, clear risks and enforceable agreements.
We should also remember that the person sending money home may be making substantial sacrifices. A salary abroad has obligations attached to it. Rent, mortgages, childcare and taxes do not disappear because relatives imagine that foreign currency solves everything.
Nigerians abroad should remain connected to home. Families at home should recognise that connection as something richer than a standing request for another transfer.
At sixty-six, we need to move beyond the argument over who loves Nigeria more. The person who leaves may love the country deeply. So may the person who stays. Both may be disappointed, and both may have something valuable to contribute.
The question is what we are doing with that contribution.
A successful Nigeria will still have citizens living abroad. People will continue to travel for education, work, relationships and adventure. Our goal should be a country in which departure is one worthwhile choice among several, rather than the only future a person can believe in.
We will know we are making progress when an offer from abroad is weighed against a credible opportunity at home. When a professional can serve without being punished by the conditions of service. When returning becomes a practical decision rather than an act of faith.
At the next airport farewell, a parent should be able to say, “Go and do well,” knowing that home also holds possibilities.
Sixty-six years after independence, Nigerians have earned the right to expect more from their country. Their lives cannot remain suspended between promises and survival.
If we want our people to stay, we must give them reasons. If they leave, we must create ways to remain connected. If they wish to return, we must make room for what they can offer.
Patriotism asks something of the citizen. It should also ask something of the country.