On the japa syndrome

THERE is a commitment by the citizenry as much as there is for the leadership: the trading of blames about the recent exodus of some of the strongholds of our dear nation is troubling. The concern is not that people are moving in droves but that they go with so much experience acquired in this country to service foreign economies. The neglect of this menace is quite disheartening. The migration index of some of Nigeria’s technology-savvy individuals has reduced the key performance index of most organisations to almost zero. You find most companies struggling with the few hands they have and even finding it so hard to recruit professionals as replacements. The trend is soaring to its highest peak with the way borders are opened to some of these specialists from various microchip companies and other strong fields of the economy. Various fields like medicine, agriculture, financial institutions, and other fast-paced enterprises are plagued. When this occurs, do we have to worry? A bereaved country may not necessarily experience war or pandemics that can cause mortality before it is devastated; the mass emigration of its professionals is a problem.

This movement is quite different from exchange programmes where nations interchange expatriates for some special assignments for a given period, after which they return to their home countries. A foreign passport is the goal of most of these sojourners. They want to permanently leave their home country for greener pastures that may last their lifetime and that of their children. When situations like these happen to a country, the depletion of human resources is colossal. The rate of dependence on foreign survival kits become extremely unimaginable. Corruption of various shades become visible to all.

Is this second colonial intervention? The experiences or feedback from the immigrants have testified to the fact that money is not picked on the streets of countries in Europe or on the walkways of states in America. Some claim that the benefits are just the working conditions, that the system has simplified working for your money. The shock of getting to work and making money based on wages according to your hours of labour are explainable to the most determined to travel. Discipline will make you pay bills and still make your savings fat. The level of our conformity to rules over there brings confusion.

There is illusion that things are not working in Nigeria. A typical example is our pattern of driving: you would find Nigerians drive responsibly in another man’s land and break rules in their home country. If this culture of common goals to make things work runs in our mind, perhaps the level of transiting from one country to a foreign land will drastically reduce. Another aspect that brings confusion is the rate at which some of our leaders travel to these developed nations for one assistance or the other. You would wonder how much dependence we have placed on their health facilities because our system is not borrowing a leaf from this working condition. The support system for some of these basic services will not be as expensive as how much we lose to these foreign economies. Our maintenance culture begs for reform as most facilities have become archaic due to a lack of sustainable use of these resources. If these expatriates come to visit, we revere them to the detriment of our indigenous professionals. It is one thing to have sophisticated machines, it is another to have relatively-experienced operators.

The few ones are those contemplating whether to move abroad or stay. If these immigrants decide to remain far from the shores of the country, the unresolved issues will create more problems. It will be more difficult to prioritise nation-building above self-survival mechanisms and it will enable excuses for people to assume living rather than dying in penury and uncertainty.