Nigeria has a critical brain drain problem with highly needed professionals in various fields electing to leave the country for a chance to live a quality life, earn a living wage, and contribute their skills in an environment where their lives are not threatened by insecurity and their ideas are allowed to thrive.
The pursuit of these aspirations is one of the major reasons there are only 35,000 doctors practicing in Nigeria out of 80,000 doctors registered with the Medical and Dental Council of Nigeria as of June 2021. The rest are practicing overseas – with about 4,000 in the United States and 5,000 others in the UK. A few have also moved to other professions.
Last week, BusinessDay reported that at least 353 Nigerian-trained doctors were registered with Britain’s General Medical Council as medical practitioners in the UK within a space of 100 days – June 10, 2021, and September 20, 2021. The Secretary-General and Registrar of the Nursing and Midwifery Council of Nigeria, Faruk Abubakar also said that over 7000 nurses have relocated from the country in search of greener pastures.
Read Also: Reverse brain drain: Lessons for Nigeria from Taiwan
Beyond the healthcare sector, other industries are experiencing a mass exodus of professionals. But brain drain is not peculiar to Nigeria. In fact, the country is ranked 60th on the list of countries experiencing the biggest brain drain by the Global Economy Index. Nigeria has 6.50 index points higher than the global average of 5.25 index points.
Nation-states like Taiwan share some similarities with what Nigeria is currently undergoing. Global Talent report from Oxford ranked Taiwan the highest in ‘brain drain’ globally in 2021. In Taiwan’s case, citizens – mostly students, are leaving due to the quality of education which they consider very low. Also, new college graduates face extremely low wages which have not risen since 1999. Taiwan’s inability to retain its professional workforce is due to the fact that Taiwan’s economy is heavily focused on the export of technology and agriculture but growth is currently almost stagnant at 2 percent a year.
But unlike Nigeria, Taiwan does not have professionals always forced to use strike action as a weapon for their government to listen to them or a government that makes promises that it does not have any plans of honouring. Instead, the Taiwanese government is constantly iterating its strategies by paying attention to feedback from citizens.
Medical workers that are relocating can be lured back with incentives to build new hospitals in Nigeria and contribute to a thriving healthcare ecosystem
One time in 1979, at the peak of the brain drain syndrome, the government saw only 8 percent of the Taiwanese college graduates who studied abroad returned home after completing their studies. In response, the government created the Hinschu Science-based Industrial Park in 1980 after research found that most of its local talents were relocating to Silicon Valley and other technological innovation hotspots in the United States. The government’s solution led to over 50,000 Taiwanese returning from abroad between 1985 and 1990.
Taiwan is still witnessing the relocation of local talents but like many other countries, there is a new focus on benefiting from emigrating talents. For instance, experts have found that emerging countries whose citizens relocate to other countries often acquire education and experience, and return home to add to the stock of human capital and promote entrepreneurialism in their home countries. The argument is – and we agree – when people move to another country, they are exposed to different cultures, social norms, and political ideologies. The returning migrants can transmit to their home country ideas about the quality of political institutions, raising awareness and demand for political accountability and increasing direct participation in the political system.
However, the home country would need to intentionally create an environment that is capable of attracting the talents back into the country. For example, the medical workers that are relocating can be lured back with incentives to build new hospitals in Nigeria and contribute to a thriving healthcare ecosystem.
In essence, it might be pointless to attempt to stop these workers from leaving so long as they do not see any incentives for staying. Even when the conditions seem perfect, emigration will always happen. Israel for example still grapples with keeping some of its brightest citizens. However, the country gains as much talent as it loses in a calendar year. That only happens because the government has not depleted the trust the people have in them.
Thus for the Nigerian government, the efforts should be channeled towards addressing the problems that made them leave in the first place. One of them is to commit to honouring agreements with workers’ unions and ensuring that strikes would no longer be an option for resolving industrial disputes.
