There’s one thing bittersweet about watching President Bola Tinubu beam with pleasure over the achievements of Nigerians overseas. It’s like a father or mother bragging about youngsters who needed to go away residence to flourish. Don’t get me fallacious – it’s nice that Nigerians are excelling in Canada, making waves in science, sports activities, and enterprise. However shouldn’t we be asking why they needed to cross oceans to attain these feats?The Canadian Excessive Commissioner’s glowing report about Nigerians in Canada reads like an commercial for mind drain. “Nigerians exhibit excessive accountability, civility, and purposefulness,” he says.
Nicely, shock! Give Nigerians fundamental infrastructure and functioning methods, and watch them soar. Who would have thought?
What’s notably attention-grabbing is Canada’s eagerness to “increase its curiosity” in our oil and gasoline, ICT, and agriculture sectors. Let’s decode that diplomatic converse: they need our sources and expertise pool.In the meantime, these identical sectors are struggling at residence, not from lack of human capital, however from the suffocating embrace of poor insurance policies and infrastructure decay.
The Sierra Leonean Excessive Commissioner’s revelation that “extra Nigerians are doing enterprise in Sierra Leone than Sierra Leoneans” is each a testomony to Nigerian entrepreneurial spirit and an indictment of our enterprise atmosphere. When our businesspeople discover it simpler to thrive in Freetown than in Lagos or Kano, shouldn’t that ring alarm bells?
Then there’s the Ethiopian Ambassador speaking about specializing in “tradition” and Ethiopian Airways. At the very least that’s refreshingly trustworthy – no pretense about deep financial cooperation or technological change. Simply tradition and aviation, whereas our personal nationwide service stays a PowerPoint presentation.
The Vatican’s consultant acquired maybe essentially the most attention-grabbing response from the President. “Schooling reduces ignorance and poverty,” Tinubu stated. True, however what reduces mind drain? What retains our educated youth from becoming a member of the following “japa” wave? These are the questions begging for solutions.
Let’s be clear – it’s fantastic that Nigerians are succeeding globally.Their achievements deserve celebration. However every success story overseas can be a reminder of what may have been at residence. When the Canadian Excessive Commissioner praises Nigerian professionals in Canada, he’s basically thanking us for our steady export of skilled expertise.
The irony is palpable. We’re proud that Nigerians are educating in Sierra Leone, excelling in Canada, and doing enterprise throughout Africa. But we appear unable to create the situations that will make them take into account staying residence or returning. We’re successfully operating a high-quality human useful resource export programme whereas our home industries starve for expertise.
President Tinubu’s pleasure in diaspora achievements is comprehensible. These success tales do encourage the youthful technology, as he notes. However additionally they encourage them to depart. Each viral story a few Nigerian changing into a high surgeon in America or a tech govt in Canada provides gas to the “japa” syndrome.What’s lacking from these diplomatic niceties is any severe dialogue about reversing the mind drain. The place are the concrete plans to create situations that will make Nigeria as engaging as Canada for our professionals? When will we transfer past celebrating diaspora remittances to constructing an economic system that retains its expertise?
The reality is, these diplomatic encounters reveal extra about what we’ve misplaced than what we’ve gained. Sure, Nigerians are proving their value globally, however at what value to our home improvement? We’re exporting our greatest minds whereas importing fundamental items. One thing’s basically fallacious with this image.
Maybe it’s time to maneuver past the feel-good tales of diaspora success. As an alternative of simply lauding their accomplishments, let’s concentrate on creating the situations that will make staying in Nigeria as engaging as leaving. Till then, these diplomatic celebrations of Nigerian excellence overseas will proceed to style like bittersweet drugs – nice on the floor however with a painful aftertaste of what may have been.
However then once more, possibly I’m being too harsh. In any case, each Nigerian success story, whether or not at residence or overseas, provides to our nationwide pleasure. I simply want we didn’t need to look so removed from residence to search out so lots of them.
