Nigeria accounts for approximately half of West Africa’s population with approximately 206 million people (2020) and has a very youthful population of about age 30 and below forming about 70 percent of its population.
According to projections by the United Nations (2020) approximately 43% of the Nigerian population comprises of children 0-14 years, 19% age 15-24 years and about 62% are below age 25 years (it has one of the largest populations of youth in the world).
It has several abundant natural resources such as petroleum, natural gas, tin, iron ore, coal, limestone, niobium, lead, zinc, and arable land. It is Africa’s largest economy and oil exporter as well as having the largest number of natural gas reserves in the continent.
However, with the availability of these natural resources as advantage to the nation, increase in economic and security challenges are alarming. Also, Nigeria is currently experiencing high unemployment rate and poverty situation. No wonder: some experts project that in 2021, the unemployment rate in Nigeria will rise to 32.5% – with further increase in 2022. Also, the national poverty rate is projected to jump from 40.1% in 2019 to 45.2% in 2022.
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This implies that almost 100million Nigerians will be living in poverty by 2022, if urgent steps are not taken to stop it.
In addition to the above, the Economic Intelligence Unit (EIU) recently ranked Lagos (Nigeria’s commercial nerve centre) as the second most stressful city to live in globally. This was measured using factors including security, safety, socio-political stability, population density, air, light, and noise pollution levels, the amount of traffic congestion, unemployment rates, governance, and mental health. Mumbai in India was ranked as the most stressful city in the World.
Some of the challenges facing Nigeria range from mismanagement to poor leadership issues, lack of well- tailored policy to manage some current challenges such as high corruption rate, fall in crude oil price, overreliance on crude oil, lack of diversification of the economy, the alarming rate of insecurity, kidnapping, nepotism, marginalization are among the major challenges facing the nation.
It is important that government at all levels remodel their strategies to cushion the effects of these challenges on the lives of the people as well as close these gaps affecting the economy.
While education and training of the nation’s workforce plays a major role in determining how well its economy will perform, reports have shown that there has been consistent increase in the number of Nigerian skilled workforce migrating or planning to migrate out of Nigeria due to the current economic situation.
With this one begins to understand the plights of these skilled Nigerians who are mostly young and seeking greener pastures because of poor leadership in managing socio-economic and security challenges.
Which has resulted to exodus of a larger proportion of these young skilled Nigerians migrating to Canada, Australia, UK, USA: this rise in migration has been on the rise in the last five years.
Also, the Nigerian political, economic, social and security challenges have been declining for some years now.
In 2015, Canada implemented a new system for taking in skilled immigrants, using a points-based calculation in which applicants are scored based on their age, work experience, education level and language skills.
This was aimed at prioritizing those who are most skilled and ease their entry into the country, while encouraging applicants to settle in less populated parts of Canada. Australia and New Zealand also use similar systems. Most of Nigeria skilled workforce have been attracted to seek better life abroad.
No wonder Canada has been the major destination as it welcomed 341,000 immigrants in total with 10,000 more than its targeted number in 2019.
In March alone2018 Nigeria was top with (11,629) the most pending asylum claims followed by India (6,424) and Haiti, respectively.
Additionally, it is interesting to note that for the fifth year in a row, more Nigerians have migrated to Canada than every previous year according to data published by the Canadian government. This also showed that the number of Nigerians issued permanent residency visas tripled since 2015 and skilled immigrants from Nigeria are now higher than that of nations such as India, China and Philippines that leads in skilled workers migration in the past.
Also worthy to mention is the April 2021survey carried out by Deutsche welle (DW). It reported that 88% of doctors in Nigeria are considering migrating and that Nigeria currently experiences massive migration of its medical professionals to developed nations.
In May 2021, it was also reported that general Inflation in Nigeria was running at 18%, while for food it was 23%, the highest in two decades and that currently more than half of Nigerians are underemployed or unemployed.
Also, before covid-19 approximately 80 million Nigerians lived on less than the equivalent of $1.90 a day while World Bank projected that this figure might increase to almost 100million by 2023, if urgent steps are not taken to manage it.
While poor leadership has always been a challenge in Nigeria, one cannot deny the fact that the current situation has gone above board as corruption, kidnapping, electoral fraud, terrorist attacks, herder-farmer conflict, armed banditry, police brutality, nepotism, marginalization have all taken a new dimension.
The current level of poverty and hardship is alarming and thereforeit is important that government at all levels work together to nip it in the bud and provide urgent solutions that would help alleviate the suffering of Nigerians. It is important to also mention that Nigerians have not experienced it like this before post-civil war of 1967 and would like to suggest that government restructure the current system and constitution to reflect true federalism that would help reduce marginalization, promote diversity and inclusion of all Nigerians.
Measures such as introduction of state police, creation of more jobs opportunities, decentralisation of the system of governance to help improve service delivery particularly at the grassroots will also help reduce poverty and add more value to the lives of Nigerians.
