NIGERIA AND THE AVOIDABLE BRAIN DRAIN

Nigeria is a country of over 150 million people, a country of great minds, potential and future, Nigeria like many other world developed countries is undergoing progressive metamorphosis, we couldn’t deny that we’ve had our many challenges up until now  but so did the developed countries we look up to. Out of the many challenges we have and their many etiologies, I would like to talk to you about just one today which is

NIGERIA AND THE AVOIDABLE BRAIN DRAIN

It is a non-negotiable truth that nation building is not the job of one person, in fact when it is a nation, the singularity of that nation is based on the plurality of the citizens in number but their singularity of purpose. And the one purpose that is of concern today is development.

Nigeria is a country blessed with brains, evident to this fact is the number of Nigerian students that make waves every year, just in Ukraine, in your very own universities, you can testify to the mental prowess of Nigerian students. Across board every year Nigerians are recorded to blaze trails in every academic field, just last year a Nigerian Doctor Samuel Achilefu won the prestigious St. Louis Award for creating cancer-visualizing glasses.

But the question now becomes where are all these people in the picture of our nation building? The truth be told, this is one of our biggest challenge impeding the speed of our national development. In my research I’ve found out that there are two basic reasons for a national brain drain.

1.       Absence of opportunities

2.       Deficiency of Nationalism

The absence of opportunities truly is a backbone of the national brain drain as brain drain is not 

limited to people leaving their country but also include people switching trade just to survive, the banking sector today is filled with people who were trained microbiologist, geologist, and other non-bank related courses but upon receiving a crash training of 6 months they are recruited into the industry, these people hardly go back into their original field for which they were trained and contribute a large percentage to the number of the avoidable brain drain.

Also of importance is the orientation parent give their young ones, an orientation that if you are not one of either a Doctor, Engineer, lawyer or banker, you’ll hardly  find opportunities and hence be of little significance to the society when indeed the only reason we have few opportunities is because we have fewer people trying to create them, With the mentality that except you belong to these aforementioned fields there are not much opportunities in itself is an obstacle to self-discovery which is the mother of skills development. It is worthy of note that it is the plethora of skills and skilled persons that drives the train of nation building.

To avoid this particular cause of brain drain we must have some mind renewal, we have to grow from what we might have been told into the current realities of life. We must understand that creation of opportunities is not only the job of government but also that of citizens who have been enlightened and have discovered their paths.

The deficiency of nationalism is a worm that have eaten into the depth of our national development, aided by the seeming loss of opportunities, some amongst us have forgotten that the great nations they want to run to were built by two set of people the nationals of that country and other nationals who could have easily built theirs, the only place people could be easily regarded as heroes for their immense contribution is their home.

Countries are regarded as great based on the discovery, inventions and patents made in them, it is good that Nigeria have brains doing well outside but the better variant is that we have our people discovering, inventing and filling for patents in Nigeria,  you can be encouraged as the government of Nigeria is now ready to support and create conducive environment for you to create opportunities, I want to encourage you to return home after your studies, there will never be a place where you’d be a first class citizen outside Nigeria. I’d leave you with this

“National development does not exist without nationalism” no one but us can build our nation, it is time for our generation. Thank you