Rising brain drain and our collective inertia

The increasing spate of mass exodus of professionals across specialised and critical fields from Nigeria to Europe and America in search of greener pastures is taking a worrisome dimension, especially with the recent numerous exit of medical and academic professionals. Brain drain, commonly understood, is the migration of educated or talented people, usually with unique abilities, from less economically advanced areas to more economically advanced areas, particularly to large cities or richer countries. No qualms with such a movement of labour in search of competitive bargaining and placement, and of better working conditions, since Nigeria aligns with other comity of nations that subscribe to free trade, and flexible trans border vertical and horizontal mobility of labour. The worry, however, is that consistent brain drain out of Nigeria over time, if unchecked, will definitely starve the country of the much needed skilled and experienced professionals that should contribute to advancements in key sectors for national development.

Just last week, the Nigerian Medical

Association (NMA) revealed that the country is now battling with its worst situation of brain drain in history, as no fewer than 10, 296 Nigerian-trained doctors are currently practising in the United Kingdom alone. Dr Uche Ojinmah, the National President of the association, raised the concern last Monday at a press briefing to mark the 2022 Physicians’ Week in Ibadan. Ojinmah, represented by Dr Wale Lasisi, the NMA Chairman in Oyo State was quoted to have said inter alia:

“Currently, Nigeria has the third highest

number of foreign doctors working in the UK after India and Pakistan.

“While we are losing our human resources to health in geometric progression, Lassa

Viral Hemorrhagic fever, Malaria, COVID, Ebola, Marburg, and so on, are still very much available in the face of worsening incidences of Systemic Hypertension

with or without complications, Diabetes mellitus with or without complications, osteoarthritis and so on.

“We call on our governments, at all levels, to quickly declare emergency action in Nigeria’s health sector for the sake of its citizens,” he said.

Ojinmah also expressed dissatisfaction over the welfare of members amidst lack of facilities and infrastructure.

Separately, an earlier report in April 2022 said that over 9,000 medical doctors of Nigerian origin left the shores of the country in search of greener pastures in the United Kingdom, United States of America and Canada, according to the NMA.

The emigration of the medical experts which the NMA said happened between 2016 and 2018, negatively impacted on the nation’s health care system, and that only 4.7% of specialists were left to take care of Nigerians’ health issues, in a population currently put at over 200 million people.

NMA President at the time, Professor Innocent Ujah, speaking in Abuja, had lamented the high emigration rate of doctors of Nigerian extraction to foreign nations.

Ujah who spoke at the NMA’s maiden annual lecture with a theme: “Brain Drain and Medical Tourism: The Twin Evil in Nigeria’s Health System”, also said over $1 billion was being spent yearly by Nigerians on medical tourism.

Regretting that the development was negatively impacting on the nation’s health system, Prof. Ujah, who is also the Vice-Chancellor of Federal University of Medical Science, Otukpo, said Africa, including Nigeria, was encountering a health workforce crisis.

Ujah noted that human resources for health, which according to him, represented “one of the six pillars of a strong and efficient health system”, was critical to the improvement of the health system. The professor of Obstetrics and Gynaecology, said the huge amount Nigerians were injecting into medical tourism was weakening Nigeria’s economy.

Hitherto in 2020, the Canadian Medical Association, CMA, had revealed that no fewer than 632 Nigeria-trained doctors were practising in Canada.

Reports also said in September 2021, hundreds of Nigeria-trained doctors took part in an interview in Abuja meant to fill existing vacancies in the health sector in Saudi Arabia.

It was also in the news that no fewer than 4,500 Nigeria-trained medical doctors moved to the United Kingdom over a period of six years.

While this intellectual flight was taking place, a report on Wednesday, May 11 2022 quoted the federal government as saying that Nigerians spend between $1.2 and $1.6 billion (N664bn at 415/$) on medical tourism annually.

The Minister of Information and Culture, Alhaji Lai Mohammed, who disclosed this during a guided tour of Duchess International Hospital in Lagos, said this had been a drain on the country’s foreign reserves.

He, however, said the federal government was determined to stop the trend through several health interventions and provision of the enabling environment for private-sector driven enterprises like Duchess to thrive.

He disclosed that the federal government, FG, through the Nigerian Sovereign Investment Authority (NSIA), invested $5.5 million each in two diagnostic centres in Kano and Umuahia, and another $11.5 million in the NSIA-LUTH Cancer Centre in Lagos. Although these investments by the FG will at least help in providing more opportunities for the practice of the medical profession and could reduce brain flight, they are not sufficient to reverse the magnitude of brain drain we currently experience. The recipient countries of our doctors will fight hard to retain them because their return to Nigeria could create a void for them that may find hard to fill. Hence, the FG and healthcare stakeholders must be assertive in reversing the ugly trend.

The rising brain drain challenge is also much present in the academia. In November 2015, the Director, Centre for Open, Distance and e-Learning, Federal University of Technology, Minna, Musa Aibinu was reported to have said that about 23,000 lecturers emigrate annually from Africa to other countries yearly.

Mr. Aibinu, a professor made the disclosure in Abuja in a lecture entitled “Creating and Sustaining a Qualitative Pool of Education Sector Professionals-Solution Options”, delivered at the 2015 Obafemi Awolowo University Muslim Graduates Association.

He described intellectual flight as “one of the greatest challenges” of Nigerian education sector and Africa in general.

He said of the exiting lecturers:.“Some go for further studies and end up not coming back; some go for greener pastures; others run away from the unfavourable condition we have here.

“Lecturing has three components – lecturing, research and community service; the funding of research here is very low though TETFund is trying but we are still far below.”

Professor Aibinu also cited decay in infrastructure as a major contributor to the exit of lecturers out of the country.

The National President of the Academic Staff Union of Universities, ASUU, Professor Emmanuel Osodeke, in the heat of the just suspended strike action by the union, had lamented the alleged high handedness of the government in using coercion rather than dialogue in resolving disputes with the union. He feared that the danger was that more lecturers would leave Nigeria to teach in neighbouring countries in Africa and overseas. This will certainly be a bad omen for our educational standard.

It is paradoxical that while our doctors and lecturers are exiting the country for better conditions of service abroad, our elite and power brokers are at the same taking huge resources to the same overseas for medical tourism and education of their children. Incidentally, the same Nigerian doctors and lecturers will most likely be on ground overseas to treat and educate their wealthy compatriots and their children respectively. What an irony, a systemic shame indeed!

This provokes a thought as to whether Europe and America are in short supply of qualified medical doctors. Or is it that their medical schools are not turning out medical graduates enough to serve the needs of their local population, to the extent that they have to draw medical personnel from Africa? Or that their youth are becoming indifferent to the medical profession? As a matter of necessity, Africa, Nigeria inclusive, should begin a deliberate policy at local, national and sub-regional levels to provide infrastructure, raise the morale of our professionals to remain and practise at home. This is realisable if our leaders and policy makers adopt a more visionary approach and provide critical investments to spur growth and development.

The United Arab Emirates, UAE, for example, has today become the cynosure of all eyes in professional practices thanks to the vision of its leaders who laid solid foundation in infrastructure to aid investments in health, education commerce and other critical areas. As of today, medical, educational and commercial tourism in UAE, aside real estate, attract huge foreign exchange that boosts their economy. UAE has therefore grown from an arid land to a nation that boasts of some of the best medical and academic institutions, attracting professionals from all over the world. Since the early 1960s the UAE has emerged from relative obscurity in global affairs to become one of the wealthiest and most dynamic of the smaller countries of the world. The rapid infrastructure development in virtually every corner of the country provides visible evidence of immense change. Nigeria too can replicate the UAE example if we all change our mindset and reverse our collective inertia. The leadership at all levels should take the lead with visionary and patriotic national planning, while the citizens should exercise disciplined followership towards a common understanding of our national goals and priorities.