PATRIOTISM SHOULD NOT BE A PUNISHMENT FOR STAYING

I have never met a Nigerian who left because they fully hated Nigeria. Every single person I know who Japa'd loves this country. They love our food, our jokes, our music, our family and we still see them promoting it proudly via TT, IG reels or Snap. They left because love doesn't keep the lights on. That's the lie we tell every October 1st. We put up flags and talk about resilience like resilience is a national achievement lol. Resilience is not an achievement. Resilience is what you do when the system has FAILED you and you have no other choice. Ask yourself: What exactly are we asking young people to be resilient against in 2026???To be resilient against 8 hours of light in 24 hours? (Scratch that 4 hours at best when they’re not feeling too jolly)To be resilient against spending 40% of your salary on fuel for your generator and your car???To be resilient against a hospital that has no blood bank?To be resilient against applying for 200 jobs with a 2/1 and getting told the salary is 80k?To be resilient against police harassment on the same road you pay tax to fix? That is not patriotism. That is endurance sport And this is the brutal truth about the “Should you stay and build Nigeria” question, We have confused citizenship with martyrdom. Does a Nigerian have a responsibility to stay and help build the country? Yes, but only to the extent that the country has created a platform to build on. You cannot build on quicksand. The government has not held up its end of the social contract, so why are we placing the entire burden of national development on a 24 year old graduate in Edo or Kubwa? We say "we are losing the people who can fix Nigeria." Are we? The doctors leaving are not the reason our healthcare system collapsed they left BECAUSE it collapsed. The tech guys in the UK are not the reason our internet is expensive they left because they were tired of pitching to investors with a power bank in their bag. The most unpatriotic thing happening in Nigeria is not young people leaving. It's that we have built a country where leaving is the most rational, responsible decision a young person can make for themselves or their family. For me, patriotism at 66 cannot mean "stay and suffer." It has to mean something else. Patriotism should mean: If you stay, you have a right to demand systems that work. If you leave, you have a right to come back without being called a deserter. Patriotism should mean we stop asking ordinary citizens to do the job of government. Nigeria doesn't owe me potential. It owes me electricity, security, a fair wage, and a passport that doesn't humiliate me at every border. Until it can provide and prove that, Japa is not betrayal It’s better understood as self preservation We like to use this cute word "Japa" — like we all just woke up one day and decided to run away for fun. Let's be honest. When you graduate and your certificate can't give you a job that can pay rent in the same city your school is in, you didn't leave. You were pushed. Nigeria at 66 has mastered one thing: making it expensive to stay Nigerian. It is expensive to be sick here. It is expensive to be honest here. It is expensive to try to do things the right way. The only thing cheap here is life. I am not a nation builder. I am 24. I am trying to build a life. I cannot build a nation on top of a life that has no foundation. Give me a road without a bribe. Give me a hospital that will not ask my family to go and buy gloves.It is not abandonment, it is adaptation Look around. Who is going to fix this country? The politicians who are 70+ and have never used a USSD code? No ofc not It's supposed to be us. Brain drain is not just about numbers. It's about hope drain. When the smartest person in your class leaves, the message to everyone else is: "There is nothing here for you. Even the best of us couldn't make it." Suffering is still happening whether you stay or not, just in different currencies. Abroad you suffer loneliness, racism, cold, second-class citizenship. Here you suffer system failure. The Japa debate on its own can be stupid because it asks the wrong question.We keep asking "Should you stay or should you go?" like patriotism is a GPS coordinate. It's not. A Nigerian doctor in Manchester who sends money home, trains young doctors on Zoom, and invests in a clinic in Enugu is more patriotic than a Senator in Abuja who has never left but steals the health budget every year. Patriotism is not about your location. It's about your allocation. Where do you put your resources, your voice, your skills? Nigeria at 66 doesn't need all of us physically here. It needs us connected here. That's not a loss, that's an army if we stop shaming them. The burden of building Nigeria should not be on whether you can endure darkness. It should be on what you contribute wherever you are. Build here, fund from there. Protest from there, vote from here. The real question is not "Will you Japa?" The real question is "After you Japa or after you stay, will Nigeria still matter to you?" Because Nigeria doesn't owe us just infrastructure. We owe each other a promise that whether we are in Abuja or Manchester, we are still building the same house. Don’t make me suffer to prove I love my country. <blockquote>“You can leave a country without leaving it behind.”</blockquote> Amira^_^.

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