Brain Drain And Infrastructure Financing

Imagine the addition to Nige­ria’s Gross Domestic Product, if Ademola Lookman, a play­er with Italy’s Atalanta Ber­gamasca Serie A Football Club, and Africa’s Best Footballer of the Year 2024, and his predecessors, Nwankwo Kanu, who won the tro­phy in 1996 and 1999, and Victor Osimhen, who won it in 2023, were playing in the Nigerian Football League.

The way to make that assess­ment is to add up the remunera­tion and advertisement endorse­ments of these gentlemen and other Nigerians who tap soccer for many countries in Western, Central and Eastern Europe and the Gulf countries.

In 2017, Lookman signed a four-and-a-half year contract with En­glish Football Club, Everton, for a fee, rumoured to be between 7.5 and 11 million pounds! His four-year contract with Atalanta is reported to be about 15 million euros.

If you add the remunerations of former World Heavyweight Box­ing champion, Anthony Joshua; pop singers, Seal and Sade Adu; actors, David Oyelowo and Chiwe­tel Ejiofor; and Chiwetel’s sister, CNN’s news anchor, Zain Asher, you can only imagine the loss that the Nigerian economy suffers by losing these high-earning Nigeri­ans to other countries.

The migration of these highly creative persons raises the GDP of countries other than their own. Now, add that to how much else is lost to the nation by the migration of sundry young Nigerian men and women through the “japa” syndrome to other countries.

Medical doctors, nurses, lab scientists and other medical per­sonnel, trained at huge costs in the medical schools of Nigerian universities now trade their pro­fessional services for higher remu­nerations in other countries.

Nigeria’s banking industry is experiencing daily operational glitches because they are losing many of the young, impatient, techies to economic migration to North America and Europe where they make bigger wins, higher in­tellectual stimulation and have ringside view at the cusp of tech­nological breakthroughs.

In addition to denying Nige­ria the benefit of their services, that were bought at great cost to Nigeria, these professionals are contributing to the growth of the GDPs of their host countries. That is a big loss to Nigeria.

What is making Nigeria lose its best to the diaspora in a steady exodus stream? It is the cumula­tive failures of practically all the governments that have ruled Nige­ria. Their best has not been good enough for Nigeria and its citizens.

In addition to diverting Nige­ria’s commonwealth to their per­sonal use, those in government do something even worse: They intro­duce political, economic and social policies and programmes that add little value to the Nigerian realm.

The term, human capital flight, or brain drain, is the mass reloca­tion of highly skilled individuals with advanced training from one country, industry or profession to another, usually to take advantage of better remuneration and an en­vironment conducive to work.

The terminology was intro­duced after the Second World War, to describe the migration of some of the best scientists and technolo­gists from the Old World (Europe) to the New World (North America), where they expected to best use their skills and talents for better reward and safety from Europe’s defeated fascist regimes.

Nigeria is losing its talents, not only to more developed countries of the world, but also to poorer and less endowed nations, because of poor governance, escalating economic hardships and unpre­dictable socio-economic condi­tions.

Interestingly, the “japa” syn­drome is not new. The first set of “economic migrants) were (proba­bly) the slaves who left the shores of Africa in galleys to work in the plantations of North and South America, between the 15th Cen­tury to the 19th Century, before Britain led the way to abolishing slavery by passing the Abolition Act of 1807.

Many Nigerian lawyers that were drafted to help to set up the legal profession and judicial sys­tem of some East and Central Af­rican countries in the 1960s never returned to Nigeria. Also, between the 1980s and 1990s, many medical professionals went to work in the Gulf countries, although they re­turned periodically to their fami­lies and eventually returned to Nigeria after their tours of duty.

Of course, we must acknowl­edge the $4.22 billion remittance from the diaspora between Janu­ary and October of 2024. But we regret that this huge remittance made by Nigerians living abroad does not necessarily translate into investment; most of it goes to fund the lifestyles and existential issues of dependents in the country.

Abike Dabiri-Erewa, Chair­man of Nigeria Diaspora Com­mission, should pitch infrastruc­ture financing to the diaspora, to enable Nigeria to create an environment conducive to invest­ments in manufacturing, farm­ing and mining.

That is how to take advantage of the foreign remittances into the economy. Dabiri-Erewa must also get the buy-in of her colleagues in the Office of the Ease of Doing Business in Nigeria, who are try­ing, but aren’t trying enough to encourage investments.