Senator Ibikunle Amosun, a former governor of Ogun State and senior member of the ruling All Progressives Congress, finds it demoralizing that so many people are leaving Nigeria.
This information was revealed by Amosun in a BBC Yoruba interview.
In 2020, the most recent year for which data are available, there were 1.7 million international migrants from Nigeria, an increase from 990,000 a decade earlier, according to the UN’s Department of Economic and Social Affairs.
According to British statistics, over 14,000 UK study and work visas were granted to Nigerian nationals in 2019 – the year before Covid hit. In 2021, that number—which includes dependents—nearly doubled.
Out of the over 22,000 visas awarded since January 2021, skilled employees in the healthcare industry accounted for the majority of recipients, receiving more than 16,000 of them.
Compared to the 4,400 Nigerians who received permanent residency permits in Canada five years earlier, more than 15,000 received them in 2021.
When asked to speak on the growing “Japa” trend or phenomenon, Amosun said, “I have heard about it and the reports are scary. All our youths and young talents are travelling out of Nigeria, seeking greener pastures, and the prospective countries are deliberately giving them visas to leave the country, without putting the origin country into consideration.
“What scares me most in all this is the proliferation of emigration. Foreigners will not fix our nation for us if all our citizens should leave the country. I am seeing the countries granting visas to our youths as wicked because they are not considering the origin nation, from which their prospective labour force is coming from.
“If you ask our people leaving the nation for greener pastures, they will tell you that they are not planning to return to Nigeria. If you look closely at the situation, you would see that all our lawyers, accountants and most especially medical practitioners make up the largest chunk of the people leaving the country. We cannot blame them however; insecurity is one of the major problems pushing our people of the country.
