I still remember the evening I first heard the term “Japa.” It came in the form of a meme—“If you’re seeing this, pack your bags”—plastered over an image of a dusty road disappearing into a golden horizon. The joke wasn’t just funny—it was painfully accurate. “Japa,” a Yoruba word meaning “to flee,” has evolved into a cultural and economic phenomenon, serving as a shorthand for the restless exodus of Nigerians, particularly the young and educated, in search of a better life. What was once a quiet movement of the desperate and the privileged has now morphed into a defining feature of Nigeria’s national psyche. It reflects not only a failure of the state but also the boundless courage of individuals who continue to chase dignity, safety, and opportunity across oceans.
“There’s the guilt of leaving aging parents in precarious health, the pain of missing births and funerals, and the slow erosion of intimacy with friends and siblings.”
Beneath the headline-grabbing migration figures lie deeply human stories, complicated by trade-offs that span continents and generations. When Aisha, a surgical nurse from Kaduna, arrived in London in 2022, she secured an NHS position that paid her over three times her salary in Nigeria. Her new life was a dream on paper—financial stability, functional healthcare, and reliable electricity. But the price was steep: her mother, widowed and diabetic, was left behind with no one to accompany her to clinic visits. Her younger siblings, used to Aisha’s help with tuition and groceries, now relied on irregular remittance flows and prayer. Her calls home, filled with reassurance and cheer, barely masked the weight of her absence. Aisha’s story is not exceptional; it is replicated across tens of thousands of households in Lagos, Yenegoa, Owerri, Ilorin, and beyond.
In 2023, Nigeria received an estimated $20.13 billion in remittances, the highest in sub-Saharan Africa and one of the few bright spots in the country’s bleak economic landscape. Remittances now account for nearly 4 percent of Nigeria’s GDP—greater than direct foreign investment — and serve as a vital buffer for families struggling with inflation, food insecurity, and crippling unemployment. These inflows fund school fees, hospital bills, building projects, and sometimes entire family businesses. For many, having a child or sibling abroad is the difference between collapse and survival. But money doesn’t hug you. It doesn’t walk your grandmother to the mosque or church. It doesn’t explain puberty to your 13-year-old son now growing up without a father figure.
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What’s less visible but just as real is the emotional price of migration. There’s the guilt of leaving aging parents in precarious health, the pain of missing births and funerals, and the slow erosion of intimacy with friends and siblings. Couples stretch their marriages across time zones, relying on WhatsApp calls that feel both immediate and artificial. Children born abroad grow up with hybrid identities, sometimes unable to speak their parents’ language or understand the values they left behind.
The psychological price of migration is huge. Take Emmanuel, a computer science graduate from Enugu who arrived in Toronto in late 2023. At first, he thrived—new friends, a buzzing tech hub, crisp winter mornings. Within weeks, though, he began waking at 3 a.m., heart pounding, unable to shake the fear that he was alone in a strange land.
Nigeria, as a state, teeters between the benefits and burdens of this migration wave. On the one hand, remittances boost foreign reserves, provide fiscal stability, and enhance the purchasing power of recipient households. Diaspora investments are also reshaping the tech ecosystem. Diaspora entrepreneurs in London and Toronto have launched some of Europe’s fastest-growing fintech startups. Additionally, Nigeria ranks second only to India in terms of long-term migrants to the UK, with approximately 120,000 Nigerians relocating there as of June 2024.
But the cost of this “success” is staggering. The health sector has been particularly hard hit: the Nigerian Medical Association estimates that more than 50 percent of registered doctors are practising abroad, widening the patient-doctor gap at home and prompting emergency staffing drives that still fall short. In 2023 alone, over 3,600 nurses were licensed to practice in the United Kingdom. The result is a talent vacuum that weakens national institutions just when they are most needed.
And while the Nigerian government tries to cope, Western host countries also wrestle with their own dilemmas. Nigerian migrants now comprise a significant portion of new arrivals in countries such as Canada and the United Kingdom. In Canada’s 2024 immigration data, Nigerians ranked among the top five sources of skilled workers. Western host nations find themselves in a precarious balancing act. Nigerian nurses and engineers fill critical shortages, bolstering public coffers through taxes and consumer spending. In the UK, they are heavily represented in the National Health Service and private care homes. These workers are praised for their diligence, education, and resilience.
Yet the question remains: what happens to the country they left behind? Who teaches in the schools from which they once graduated? Who rebuilds the hospitals where they were trained? Who ensures that power stays on long enough to power a mother’s air conditioner? Who stays to fix the power grid, redesign the curriculum, enforce the laws, and tell the next generation that hope is still possible at home?
Perhaps, over time, Japa will evolve from a flight to a return, as seen in India. Possibly, one day, Aisha will bring her NHS experience back to Kaduna to build a clinic of her own, and Emmanuel will reopen his old bedroom as a co-working space for local tech startups. Perhaps Nigeria will invest in a future that gives people a reason to stay, not just a means to leave. Until then, the suitcase remains half-packed, the visa application opens on the browser, and the heart is torn in two—between what is and what should have been.
