Nigeria’s departing future

Ace Actor, my multi-talented friend, Yemi Sodimu, started a riot with this post some days ago:

“E wa o, dis omo meji meji that we are ‘borning’, se kii se wahala lojo iwaju for us in the south bayi?”

I will explain it in simple terms.

“ Every Yoruba family now favours two children per couple. Are we ready for the trouble ahead in the South?”

Well, if you ask me, I think the consequences have arrived already. At least the first batch has. When last did you find a Yoruba okada rider in Lagos? Some weeks ago, in Mowe, which is Ogun State, a confused Google Map forced me to look for an okada to lead me to my destination. Alas, my Northern Bro didn’t know the address and didn’t speak a word of English. The frustration was a killjoy. By the time I arrived the party venue, I was no longer in party mood. A lot is going to change in the South very soon, very quickly.

If Yemi’s post had been just about family planning and smaller families, it would have been compact enough to be wrapped with a few leaves. But the trouble ahead is not a regional one. It is a national malady. For we have all sinned. Like Chief Adeyemi.

Chief Ramos Adeyemi sits in a house that used to breathe, a house that was once a home filled with laughter, warmth and activities.

These days, it only echoes, emptily.

The man did everything right—at least, everything Nigeria told him was right. He worked hard, made money, built houses, invested strategically. He married one wife and stayed with her until she passed on a year ago. They had only two children, out of choice, not because they ran out of healthy eggs or fertile sperm. They just wanted the number of children they could give the best. Then, he did the ultimate: he exported his children to “better life.”

Tunde is now in London. Sade is in Canada. And God has been kind to them. Between divine favour and level-headed choices, they have conquered accents, mortgages, and winter.

Their widowed father is not doing so well. He now depends on an absent-minded nurse to check his blood pressure, blood sugar and make his meals. These days, he would sit in his large living room, phone in hand, staring at pictures of Tunde in a suit somewhere in London, Sade smiling beside a winter tree in Canada. They looked happy. Successful. Exactly what he had prayed for.

And yet, the house remained stubbornly silent.

Sometimes, when the evening stretched too long, he would step outside and sit under the fading sun. The neighbour’s children would run past, laughing loudly, their noise spilling into his compound like a reminder of something he once had and willingly let go. He had given his children the world but in doing so, he had quietly removed himself from it.

You are shaking your head in pity already. Look around you and take a headcount of people you know who have done this. Maybe you are like Chief Adeyemi, even. Well, he is not alone.

In fact, Adeyemi is Nigeria—rich in assets, poor in presence; full of potential, empty of people. And here is where the story stops being sentimental and starts becoming statistical.

Seriously this is not just about one Yoruba Chief having just two children, shipping them abroad and living lonely later. This is about a country slowly packing its future into suitcases. Let’s put emotions aside for a moment and face the arithmetic of our sad national choices.

In the United States today, there are between 700,000 and 1 million Nigerians—counting both immigrants and their children. In the United Kingdom, over 270,000 Nigerian-born people live and work, with the broader Nigerian community rising to about 300,000 to 350,000 when you include second-generation citizens.

Canada, the new bride of Nigerian migration, has witnessed a surge so dramatic it reads like a population transfer. From modest numbers just a decade ago, it now hosts over 100,000 Nigerians, driven by nearly 100,000 new arrivals between 2020 and 2025 alone.

Across Europe—Italy, Germany, Spain, Ireland—another 300,000 to 500,000 Nigerians have quietly settled.

Put together, the Nigerian diaspora is estimated at two to four million people worldwide. Just four million Nigerians when we have over 200 million people. Why is Funke making it sound like 40 million left Nigeria?

Because this is not just about numbers. It is about who is leaving. It is not about a crowd leaving. It is about the class of those leaving. This is about the exit of capacity, a whole generation of capacity. And then another generation. Do you see why we all should declare national days of mourning for these great losses?

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Doctors are leaving hospitals that already look like waiting rooms for death. Lecturers are leaving universities that now echo with strikes instead of ideas. Tech talents are building billion-dollar solutions—in Toronto, not Yaba. Even artisans—welders, plumbers, nurses—are now boarding flights with the same quiet determination: anywhere but here.

So while the percentage of Nigerians abroad may still be small, the percentage of Nigeria’s functional future that has left is anything but small.

Chief Adeyemi didn’t send all his children away. He sent two very brilliant, exceptionally focused young Nigerians. They most likely won’t return to live or help this ailing, diseased nation. They will give their youth, their best years to another nation.

When children leave and never return, something subtle breaks quietly.

Not immediately. Not loudly. But permanently. The grandchildren of today’s migrants will grow up in Boston, Birmingham, and British Columbia. Nigeria in the minds of our departing children and their children will become a story, a vacation spot.

You cannot build a nation with people who no longer feel it belongs to them.

Yes, we are raising global citizens but we may also be raising stateless patriots, emotionally detached from the soil that raised their parents, a land that needs them.

Then there is the national death of our cultural care system and values.

Chief Adeyemi’s reality is spreading. Elderly parents now live on remittances but starved of presence. Across Nigeria, fathers and mothers are being “maintained” from abroad, bank alerts are replacing hugs and story times.

Now extend that to the national level.

If those trained to heal, build, teach, and lead are abroad, who attends to Nigeria’s daily emergencies? A country cannot be fixed via social media posts and vents.

At some point, somebody must be physically present to fix the leaking roof.

Over the years, we have got used to the phrase ‘brain drain’ and lost sight of the fact that a nation that exports its problem-solvers on a daily basis cannot expect its problems to reduce.

Let’s admit it for what it is: systematic depletion where Nigeria trains and the world gains.

The country that does not have enough to invest in education then watches as that investment is taken abroad not in an exchange program, but for free to strengthen foreign economies. The hospitals in the UK and Canada are staffed, in part, by Nigerian-trained professionals. Silicon Valley startups boast Nigerian engineers.

Meanwhile, back home, every sector is staggering under the weight of absence of or inadequate professionals.

Your grandson raised in Toronto by his Nigerian parents may eat jollof rice, yes—but will think Canadian. He will choose Canada first and have Canadian dream. All Nigerian languages are fading. All our cultures are weakening. Even the Igbo boy does not understand why the Yoruba boy prostrates to greet. Now that both of them are in America, they are both feeding their culture and mother tongues into the shredder. With each generation, Nigeria becomes less of a homeland and more of a heritage footnote. We may be in denial but our nation is dying quietly, disappearing without drama.

Where are your children? Are they all abroad? Do they come back at least once a year? Are you 60 or in your 70s and 80s and all your grandchildren are British, Canadians or even Australians? If our brilliant children are not in APC,PDP or ADC, think deeply, what that means. Your daughter that graduated with a First Class at 20 is abroad. The neighbourhood vulcanizer is the party youth leader. Both the APC and PDP just finished their conventions in Abuja, how many youths were there? I mean real young Nigerians who can actually buy their return tickets to Abuja and pay for Airbnb? Young Nigerians who do not and will not see politics as a job, the ones who have second and third addresses and are willing to make a difference.

Our best brains are abroad, the next set of best brains are in the social media army, angry, depressed and impotently venting. I am sad. We all should be sad. Why? Because we think politics is beneath us but we want good governance. You must first break the egg before you fry the egg.

Of all the looming crises hidden in that Yemi Sodimu’s Facebook post, a future leadership trouble has the most dangerous implication. Tomorrow’s Nigeria will need leaders—people who understand its chaos, its contradictions, its possibilities.

But where are these future leaders today?

In Manchester, writing exams.

In Newcastle as carers in Old People’s Homes.

In Houston, juggling three jobs to pay bills.

In New York, building careers.

In Alberta, raising children who may never return.

Leadership is not just about brilliance from a distance, it is about presence.

As things stand, we risk a future where Nigeria will be governed by those who stayed—not necessarily those best prepared or qualified.

Migration is normal. People will always seek better lives. It is human nature.

But when everything goes so awry at home that an entire generation decides that “better life” cannot be found at home, then home is in trouble.

If every Chief Adeyemi exports his best, who inherits Nigeria?

If every Tunde and Sade builds abroad, who builds here? If two to four million Nigerians abroad represent some of the most skilled and driven, then their absence is not just physical—it is structurally tragic.

Nigeria is under siege of multi-dimensional terrorism on the home front. Ancient towns are emptying out in fear. Gunmen on the rail tracks and highway used to be our major fears. Now they have started attending vigils and Sunday services for bulk harvest of victims for ransom. Job opportunities have shrunk to the size of a sinful third leg caught in a married woman’s lap by the licensed owner.

Our systems are collapsing and we all seem to be agreeing, agreeing that Nigeria’s brightest minds are better used in other countries. It is as if we have given up on both our today and tomorrow.

Like Chief Adeyemi, we may one day sit in a vast, resource-rich nation—full of houses, roads, and possibilities—but strangely empty of people willing to take responsibility for it. Maybe our excuse then will be: “We wanted the best for our children.”

How can a people want the best for their children without wanting the best for themselves, for the whole family, the entire nation?

The tragedy of Nigeria is not that its children are leaving. It is that the nation seems increasingly comfortable letting them go.