Ask any young Nigerian what their five-year plan is and there’s a good chance one word comes up before “job” or “marriage”, JAPA. Japa is a Yoruba word for “to flee”, but these days, it’s less slang and more of a national mood. From WAEC halls to NYSC camps, across Nigeria, the conversation has shifted from “what will I become in Nigeria” to “how do I get out of Nigeria”. Relocate to a greener pasture country.
To the elders reading this, it’s worth saying plainly; this is not laziness and it is not ingratitude. It’s a generation doing the math on a country that keeps asking them to hustle harder, whereas the goalposts keep moving off their targeted-shot.
In considering the numbers behind the vibes of wanting to relocate, you would understand that this exodusic urge, is not just some social media noise. In a 2023 African Polling Institute report, you will find that 69% of young Nigerians would relocate abroad if given the chance; and there had been some citation a 40% rise in youth emigration currently, compared to 2019 figures. The scale shows up sector by sector too.
Study visas granted to Nigerians in the UK, rose to 682% in just four years; and the former finance minister Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala noted that over 15,000 Nigerians emigrated to Canada in 2021 alone, with tens of thousands more following in the years after. Healthcare has felt it hardest, as thousands of Nigerian-trained nurses left for the UK register within a five-year window, relating to the existing exodus of doctors, who have long been leaving for the West world. Behind every statistics, is a person who once had dreams for Nigeria, not just dreams of leaving it.
Now, why everybody wan japa. If you talk to anyone on the street like a final year student, nurse, graphic designer hustling for clients on Twitter, etc., why they want to “japa”, the given reasons will almost be verbally identical: a crumbling economy and rising insecurity, with nearly half of young people unemployed in a country where two-thirds of the population is under 30. As one young Lagos woman puts it in an NPR interview, “we have a lot problems in Nigeria; she’d leave if she could afford the ticket”.
A tech founder in Abuja described watching her own circle disappear one by one. Of her five close friends, four had left the Nigeria. Summing up the real driving causal-factor in one line – people leave because they don’t see hope. That’s the part some elders need to sit with as concerning the immigration urge of the young ones in Nigeria. It’s not that the youth don’t love home. It’s that “home” currently means epileptic power, a naira that shrinks every quarter and a job market where first-class degree does not guarantee a first job.
To the older generation reading this; you built this country brick by brick through military rule, structural adjustment programmes and recessions that the youth of today only read about in textbooks or some newspapers, or magazine; and or may be on television news/interviews. Your resilience is real and it deserves respect. But the Nigeria you spent your aging and hard-work to reliably lead thus far, is not fully the Nigeria your children and grandchildren are navigating through now. When a first class graduate is applying for the fortieth job with no reply, “just keep trying” starts to sound like static. This isn’t a generational insult, it is a generational handover problem that needs both sides at the table.
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