The way people are relocating out of Nigeria at the moment is quite scary. I have never seen anything like it. I remember some years ago when I was activating my own japa plan, that I had to write the compulsory International English Language Testing System (IELTS), I was amazed by the number of crowds that we wrote the test together; even people that I know that I thought were doing well in there career, were also there in the test hall. Some of them succeeded in abandoning their booming career and left whilst some of us changed our minds.
Unfortunately, the United Kingdom and Canada in particular are really taking advantage of the hardship in Nigeria as they have opened their floodgate for extracting every Nigerian that is willing to migrate to their country and can afford to do that. They have been packing people out of Nigeria in batches. In fact, the UK just opened another visa application centre in Port Harcourt adding to their other series of visa application centres they already have in Nigeria so as to reduce the traffic in the other centres.
I saw a video yesterday of a sea of people at the UK visa application centre all trying to process their papers and relocate to the United Kingdom and I asked myself if these numbers of people are leaving who then are remaining in the country. It was a mammoth crowd and I think now is the time the government of Nigeria writes to the UK and Canadian government and diplomatically plead with them to stop packing people out of the country in droves.
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The surprising thing is that relocation is not cheap, it costs at least ten million naira for a single person to successfully relocate out of Nigeria; be it through school or employment or permanent residency.
I can Imagine how much the UK and Canada have been making from Nigerians through visa application and processing fees. They are not just making a great deal of money off Nigerians, they are also importing cheap labourers into their countries; they are also picking up the best brains out of Nigeria into their country so no matter how many people want to relocate to the UK, they are all welcomed in as much as they can show that they have the money to establish themselves or get themselves going in the country, it will always be a win for the UK government.
In all these, it is Nigeria that is losing out. Losing their best talents through brain drain to other countries, losing money, losing companies or job creations because some of those relocating had companies here in Nigeria; they folded up the companies, retrenched the workers and left.
I still strongly recommend that Nigeria should plead with the Canadian and the Uk government to reduce the number of people they pack to their country every year because if it continues like this, the ruling class may wake up one day to have nobody to rule over; they may actually prefer this because it means that they will have uninterrupted access to their loot.
Some of us should also consider staying because if we all leave who will now stay to join hands in fixing Nigeria and some of us always fall sick when we spend a long time outside Nigeria. This is why we can only plead with those in power to please fix Nigeria for the sake of us that are stranded and cannot afford to relocate. Most of the people leaving are not leaving because of the fun of it, they are leaving because that’s their last choice. It is not easy for someone who has a good job, who has an excellent career, who is doing averagely well in Nigeria to resign from his or her great job and relocate to another country to start life afresh.