The Brain Drain And The Young Nigerian Graduate: Immediate Challenges And Long-Term Implications

Being the Text of a Keynote Address Presented by Professor Kenneth Kalu, Secretary to Abia State Government, on Thursday August 15, 2024 at the Induction/Oath-Taking Ceremony of Fresh Graduates of the Faculty of Pharmaceutical Sciences, Nnamdi Azikiwe University, Awka

Protocols 

1. Let me begin by expressing my deepest gratitude to the Dean, Prof. Chibueze Ihekwereme, and the entire Faculty for this honour to address the 2024 class on what definitely will be one of the most memorable days of their lives. I do not consider this privilege lightly and I am highly indebted to everyone who has deemed me worthy to stand before this hallowed audience to talk to the next generation of leaders. Thank you! 
2. In the same breath, I would also like to thank the faculty and staff of Nnamdi Azikiwe University for rigorously preparing these young men and women for the responsibilities of leadership in today’s interconnected world where peers compete, not just at the national level, but also on the global stage and platform. I am very certain that we have before us, a new set of champions who have been prepared to take on the world and conquer, bringing joy and honour to their families, communities and to humanity at large.  
3. Words of gratitude are also rightly due to the parents and sponsors of these worthy graduates. Thank you for investing in the life and future of these young men and women who will now carry the torch of your generosity and affection to the next generation. Even in the best of times, sponsoring one through tertiary education has always been a very demanding responsibility with extensive sacrifices. The reality of today’s economy and the challenges of daily existence make what previously was a difficult task, even more herculean. You have not just invested money to see these fresh graduates through school; what you have done is a timeless demonstration of love which ultimately will make our communities and the world better. Thank you to our parents and guardians!
4. To the graduates, I must particularly congratulate you for being found sufficiently worthy in character and learning to be conferred with your various degrees. It is gratifying to realise that there are still many disciplined young men and women who have resisted the pressure and distractions that often cause the ruin of many in their formative years. Like your parents and teachers, I must say publicly that I am very proud of you all. Congratulations, again!
5. Thank you for being worthy role models and for demonstrating that hard work does really pay. Today’s glorious moment could certainly not have come without the long nights of self-denial when you pushed yourself to keep going — even when it seemed like everything would come crashing. We have gathered today to celebrate you for not giving up, for fighting with every fibre of your being and most importantly, for being resilient. Great job!
6.  Today’s event is significant for a number of very important reasons. First, we have come to celebrate with our brothers and sisters as they complete an important leg of their journey in the pharmaceutical profession by taking the Pharmacist’s Oath. But, more fundamentally, we have gathered to formally wish these graduates well as they launch out on their own, in pursuit of their destinies, in search of their dream realities. After today, there may never be another event where everyone here will be physically present owing to differences in commitments, locations and interests. So, I will encourage you to take a lot of pictures and make the memory of today eternal. 
7. This induction ceremony is the culmination of about 5+ years of learning, exposure and the acquisition of new experiences that will ultimately contribute to defining who you become outside the walls of the University. You have learnt a lot but you must never assume that you are now omniscient. The knowledge gained over these past five or more years have brought you to this hall but the attention you pay to your environment going forward and the relationships you build and nurture will determine how successful you become in whatever path you choose to tread. 
8. The message I must immediately leave with you is this: you should never stop paying attention to what is happening in your world. Soak in the lessons and always put yourself at a vantage position to make the most of new opportunities. The world as you already know, has dramatically changed and only those who understand the dynamics of these changes will thrive. Nothing is the same. Therefore, in order to remain relevant, you must keep evolving; you must keep learning; and you must keep adapting. 
9. For balance, I am also obligated to inform you that while a whole lot has changed and will continue to change as new ideas replace old ones, there are things that will never lose their value. One, you have to appreciate the fact that your discipline is tied to the survival of humankind. So, you have to always see yourself differently, perhaps that is why you have to take an oath and be formally inducted into the noble pharmaceutical profession before you can practise. Your profession is one of those professions where you are never allowed to function on yesterday’s knowledge.  
10. So, while the world may keep changing, the values of diligence, curiosity and teamwork will remain eternal. You will need all of these and more to stand out in the industry, or wherever you choose to go, because ultimately, today’s oath makes you a pharmacist for life. And you now have a sacred duty to abide by the letters and spirit of the oath. Your call going forward is to serve humankind, to help in battling new strains of diseases through the discovery of effective drug combinations, and active support for other professionals in the healthcare industry.  
11. Again, I return to the subject of research. It is true that we have come to rely extensively on conventional drugs and pharmaceutical products to fight various strains of diseases, but we must begin to look inwards and start identifying what local responses we can develop for many of the diseases that have become seemingly intractable, including various forms of cancer. I believe that there is nothing impossible for the human spirit once we put our hearts, mind and money to it. So, we must begin to conduct research and invest in home-grown solutions to age-old health challenges. 
12. Getting more knowledge about the many local resources that can help us combat emerging health threats may require that we do something that has seemingly become unfashionable today —it may require that we resist the pull of opportunities in the developed nations. Many believe that Brain drain, or the japa crisis, has become a major epidemic threatening the very foundations of our civilisation in Nigeria, pulling our best brains and hands away from the country and denying us the opportunity to harness our very rich human resources for the development of our land.  
13. I must state at the onset that an optimum level of migration of skills from one country to another is not necessarily bad. Afterall, the economics of demand and supply for labour dictates that labour or any other factor of production, for that matter, will move to wherever it receives the best value. To be clear, if a nation or a community intentionally trains some professionals for export, as is the case in India and in some other countries in Asia, this is fine. However, brain drain becomes a troubling phenomenon when it begins to threaten the effectiveness and efficiency of critical institutions of any nation. 
14. For example, a 2023 survey conducted by Phillips Consulting found that 52% of Nigeria’s highly skilled employees have plans to quit their jobs and move overseas over a 12-month period. A similar survey by NOI Polls put the figure at 63% of the general youth population. The African Polling Institute estimates that 70% of Nigerians between the ages of 18 and 35 would be willing to leave the country if the opportunity presents itself. 
15. Things get more frightening when we consider that majority of the fleeing population are some of the most outstanding and brilliant professionals in the healthcare and medical services industry, education, information and communication technology (ICT), and most recently, skilled technicians and artisans. 
16. According to the UK Immigration Services, 13,609 Nigerian-trained healthcare professionals were granted work visas in the country in 2021. Between December 2021 and May 2022, 727 medical doctors trained in Nigeria transferred their services to the UK, just as the number of Nigerian-trained nurses practising in the UK doubled between March 2021 and March 2023. Data from the General and Medical Council (GMC) in the UK shows that as at December 2023, 12,198 medical doctors practising in the country had originally been trained in Nigeria. This figure does not include doctors of Nigerian origin trained in other countries. 
17. Beyond the UK, tens of thousands of doctors, nurses, pharmacists and other healthcare professionals trained in Nigeria are currently in active practice in other developed countries, especially the United States of America, Canada, the EU and across countries in the Gulf region including Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and the United Arab Emirates. 
18. Pharmacists are also not left out of this mass exodus as according to the Pharmaceutical Society of Nigeria (PSN), an estimated 7,000 pharmacists left the country between 2021 and 2023 in search of greener pastures overseas. My estimation is that between 2023 and now, hundreds, if not thousands, of pharmacists trained in the country, many also from this esteemed Faculty, must have transferred their skills and vision to several other foreign locations.  
19. I do not think that we need any long lecture on why thousands of medical professionals trained in the country are in a hurry to leave. We already know the answers. These young and middle-aged professionals are leaving to places where they are better rewarded, where the economy is better, where the currency has stable value, where the polity is stable, where they do not have to live in perpetual fear of attacks by all manner of criminals, and where they can grow in their chosen career. To cut a long story short, these mostly young professionals are leaving to places that offer them the very things they desire from their country — but cannot find. 
20. To be clear, or rather to emphasise my earlier point, the medical profession is just one of the many critical sectors hit by this frightening wave of mass migration. Thousands in the academia, ICT, accounting and financial services industry are also leaving in their thousands every year. Most unfortunately for our economy, majority of those leaving are some of the best hands in their trade, the ones that actually have the capacity to mentor the next generation of professionals, and to contribute effectively to nation building. 
21. I am sure that almost everyone here knows at least a few sound professionals who have just recently left the country for greener pastures overseas. Even as we are talking, tens of thousands of others are either discussing with former colleagues now working and living abroad to understand the immigration processes, or are actually packing their bags and saying their goodbyes on their way to the airports with no immediate plans of returning. 
22. So where does this leave us, ladies and gentlemen? Again, there is no point repeating the obvious. The immediate impact of this unprecedented mass migration is felt in the shortage of personnel in our public and private healthcare facilities with very telling effects on service delivery, dearth of quality hands in critical institutions such as banks and in the telecom establishments, decline in mentor-protégée culture in the academia, and work overload for the existing professionals who are still holding forth — in the hope that things improve. It is a sad reality that many, even those in influential positions, are yet to come to terms with the magnitude of the problems posed by the brain drain. 
23. Brain drain can also have significant negative long-term implications. Besides its economic impacts, the erosion of social cohesion is a critical concern, as families and communities are often separated by migration. This separation can weaken family structures and community bonds, and lead to social fragmentation, with terrible consequences on our culture and sociology. Consider this troubling situation where aged parents are left alone back at home, while all their children live overseas in search of greener pastures. Such arrangement could precipitate a major break in the transmission of cultural values.
24. While it is true that the professionals who migrate overseas are playing very important roles in our economy through remittances which have become the pillar of economic support in many families across the country in the face of rising unemployment, and inflation and high cost of living; the truth must also be said that our country is being wrecked by the uncontrolled exit of some of our best professionals to other countries that have managed to put their acts together. 
25. Again, remittances are good, but should that come at the expense of lives being lost in our hospitals because there is no one to attend to those in need of emergency medical attention? How much remittances can compensate for one life lost because the doctor serving in a rural healthcare facility just packed their bag and left for the UK? How much money can cancel the anguish of a mother who lost her child in labour because the midwife to attend to her now works in Qatar? 
26. How much financial inflow can fill the supervisory and knowledge transfer gaps emerging in the academia because our professors can no longer function effectively here? How can our children compete with their peers from other parts of the world if they are just left on their own, with no one to guide or direct them? Are we not setting ourselves up for a world of perpetual mediocrity by keeping quiet in the face of this imminent disaster? 
27. So yes, our professionals abroad do not just send money home every now and again, but as we have seen in many places, the professionals living abroad also bring development to their communities by initiating and completing some infrastructure projects including boreholes, town halls, community housing schemes, market stalls and even schools. These are laudable initiatives, but what are the hidden costs? Lost lives at the poorly staffed health facilities, broken relationships, severed family ties and loss of organic social relationships? 
28. To be clear again, migration cannot be dismissed as all dismal for our society because ultimately, labour in today’s world has become very mobile and as humans, we are always on the lookout for new incentives. So, when the grass appears greener on the other side, we are wont to go closer and see things for ourselves.  
29. I had already identified steady remittances from our brothers and sisters overseas as one of the major benefits of migration. Investments from the Diaspora community have also become more prominent in the last few years and this has led to job creation and wealth redistribution in many communities. Even then, it should worry us as a country that we are unable to provide the right incentives to motivate our young professionals to stay back and offer their services directly to our people. 
30. It would be unfair for me or anyone to blame the young men and women for making a rational economic choice to migrate to places where their skills and talents get better material rewards and for some, where the path to growth is less sullied with primordial sentiments and biases. 
31. We have to acknowledge that all of us have failed to provide a safe environment where those who have invested so much in time and resources to learn and develop themselves can thrive and grow. This surge of exodus to foreign land is happening in part to escape the harsh realities at home, especially insecurity and a loss of faith in major national institutions including those tasked with critical processes like the conduct of elections and the administration of justice. 
32. Man’s first instinct (and that includes woman) as we know it is survival. So, when humans feel threatened in one place, the natural thing is to look elsewhere for safety. On the strength of this knowledge, one can say convincingly that what is happening is a normal human response to a harsh environment.  My prognosis may not be very pleasant to the ears of many but if we seek a remedy to what has become an alarming situation, we have to first of all admit that as leaders in various spheres of life, we have not actually offered the young ones the very basic things they would have expected of us. Yes, the leaders have not done very well!
33. Again, where do we go from here? The young people have responded to our failure by voting with their feet. The challenge now is to come up with the right responses so that these bright minds are not forced to forget about Nigeria entirely. Today, I will share a few ideas and I hope we can expand the conversation subsequently. 
34. One, there is the urgent need to re-evaluate the reward system for our professionals.  Again, we have to be honest to ourselves by admitting that in terms of wages, real and nominal, we cannot truly compete with the developed economies, but how about looking at what we are currently offering and raising the bar higher? Professionals in many African countries earn better than what we pay our people here. So, how about we benchmark our standard against the best in Africa, for example? 
35. Above all, we must begin to work on our economy. As I had argued at several fora before now, nominal wages are meaningless if they cannot buy anything tangible. A situation where one may have to save reasonable sums for several months to be able to afford a 50kg bag of rice leaves much to be desired. To curb the rising wave of brain drain in the country, there must be deliberate attempt to curb inflation, stop the downward spiral of the naira against major world currencies and ultimately, create an economic system that supports the working man and woman. 
36. Improving the nation’s security architecture has now become an irreducible minimum if we are to convince our young people to stay back in the country and serve their fatherland.  What we have at present has failed to meet the dynamic realities of today’s security threats. So, it is high time we began to look at things from a different angle. 
37. Community policing appears to be the way to go and I am of the view that the system should be decentralised to enable timely responses to existing and potential threats. To make our country attractive to our young professionals fleeing the country, there must be a robust mechanism for dealing with all the security challenges that have made our society unsafe. Citizens must be protected from the terror of criminality and agents who profit from social chaos. 
38. To effectively curb the challenge of brain drain in the country, there must also be concerted efforts by all stakeholders to restore trust in public and private institutions. What I mean here is simple: institutions and establishments must do their jobs. We betray our citizens when critical institutions of state fail to live up to the expectations of the public. Many have been forced to leave the country owing to grave injustices done to them personally or to causes they were deeply invested in, and almost everybody here can cite an example or two from the recent past. 
39. In all, there is a whole lot we can do to tackle the challenge of brain drain in the country, but we must start with the most obvious which revolves around economics, institutional governance and security. I remain an unshaken believer in the great destiny of Nigeria, but I am also a realist. Brain drain can become a major setback to our national aspirations because in my view, every real development is centred on building and equipping the human person. To achieve this, education and health must play central roles. Sadly, these are some of sectors that have been mostly hit by brain drain.
40. I would like to restate that an optimum level of migration is not bad. Labour has to migrate to wherever it receives the best value. As a nation, we can intentionally invest in producing and exporting human capital without necessarily weakening our health sector, financial institutions, educational institutions or other sectors. What is troubling is when we expose our institutions to poachers who take away our best brains with the promise of better working conditions. That is the problem!
41. Let me return briefly to our young graduates as I conclude. Again, I say a big congratulation to you all for this magnificent milestone. You have been built for great things, so I have no doubt that the future is clearly bright for every one of you — as long as you choose the right path of service and duty. You owe so much to yourselves, families, communities and our country Nigeria. You must continue with the culture of diligence and determination which you learnt from this great institution. 
42. Wherever your journey leads you, do not forget your roots. Remember that we all have a duty to rebuild Nigeria and save it from the ruins and quagmire it is currently enmeshed in. This is our home!
43. My dear graduates, you must become the generation that raised the bar in whatever endeavour you choose. Set new standards, challenge the status quo and never permit anyone to tell you that your dreams are unrealistic. 
44. Several transformational leaders in politics, business, and across diverse fields of human endeavours have proven throughout the ages that impossibility is nothing for the man or woman who believes. As you begin a new phase of your journey, tell yourself as you go out each morning that you will win. Yes, you will. Reaffirm it every day and keep believing, and ultimately, there shall be no force on earth powerful enough to stop you. This is your time. Take it and use it for the good society!
45. Thank you for listening and may God bless you all. 

Prof Kenneth Kalu, FCA.

15/08/2024 

The Brain Drain And The Young Nigerian Graduate: Immediate Challenges And Long-Term Implications is first published on The Whistler Newspaper

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