The moment someone gets a visa, we begin to calculate what Nigeria has lost.

A doctor is no longer just a doctor. He is now part of a statistic.

An engineer becomes brain drain.

A young graduate who gets a job abroad becomes another person who has “left us to suffer.”

We rarely begin with the person.

We begin with the country.

I find that interesting.

Because before Nigeria became a country that could lose him, he was a young man trying to figure out how to live.

That distinction matters.

Imagine spending years in school, watching your parents make sacrifices to keep you there, graduating with the expectation that your education should open a door somewhere. 

Then you discover that the door exists, but there is a queue in front of it, and nobody can tell you when your turn will come.

Eventually, another door opens somewhere else.

What exactly are we asking that person to prove by refusing to walk through it?

That is the part of the Japa conversation that makes me uncomfortable.

We speak about patriotism as though it should override every other responsibility a person has to himself and to the people who depend on him.

But a country is not a parent who has sacrificed everything for you and can therefore demand your obedience.

It is a political community.

And the relationship between a citizen and that community should involve obligations on both sides.

Nigeria asks something of its citizens.

Citizens should also be allowed to ask something of Nigeria.

Can I get an education that gives me a reasonable chance?

Can I work and expect my income to have some relationship with the life I am trying to build?

Can I start something without spending half my energy figuring out how to survive the environment around it?

These are not extravagant demands.

Yet the infrastructure required to make ordinary economic life possible remains enormous. 

Nigeria's revised National Integrated Infrastructure Master Plan estimates about $2.3 trillion in investment requirements through 2043.

That number is so large that it is easy to forget what it represents.

It represents the roads somebody is waiting for.

The electricity somebody needs to keep a business running.

The transport system that determines whether a worker spends two hours or five getting home.

The water system.

The digital infrastructure.

The housing.

The things we don't notice when they work, but which become the centre of our lives when they don't.

Then we tell a young Nigerian to stay and build all of this.

Build with what?

This is an argument against confusing responsibility with sacrifice without limit.

Nigeria suffers when skilled people leave.

That part should not be softened because we want to defend Japa.

In 2025, the Coordinating Minister of Health and Social Welfare said more than 16,000 Nigerian doctors had left the country within five to seven years.

A country cannot lose that many professionals and pretend there is no consequence.

There is another question hiding underneath the statistic.

What would you have done if you were one of them?

You.

After years of studying medicine. 

After watching colleagues leave. 

After considering your income, your family, your professional development, your working conditions and the kind of future you want your children to have.

Would you really stay because someone told you that leaving makes you a bad Nigerian?

I don't think patriotism can survive if it requires dishonesty about reality.

The Nigerian who leaves does not necessarily disappear from Nigeria.

In 2024, Nigerians abroad sent about $20.93 billion in personal remittances through official channels, according to the Central Bank of Nigeria. 

The bank notes that these transfers support household consumption and investment, including spending on education and healthcare.

So the person who crossed the border may still be paying the university bill of someone who never did.

The salary earned in another country can become rent in Ibadan.

It can become school fees in Osun.

It can become capital for a brother's business.

None of that makes brain drain harmless.

It means the story is bigger than the word “drain.”

Money can cross borders.

Ideas can cross borders.

Skills can cross borders.

Even responsibility can.

Maybe ,what we have been measuring is not patriotism but proximity.

We assume that the Nigerian standing physically inside Nigeria cares more about Nigeria than the Nigerian living thousands of kilometres away.

I am not convinced.

Another reason I don't judge those who leave.

Millions of Nigerians do not have the option.

They are choosing between one difficult job and another.

Between staying unemployed and accepting work that barely covers transportation. 

Between continuing school and finding a way to pay the next bill.

For them, Japa is something other people can afford to debate.

And that should make us careful about turning migration into a moral contest.

Still, I don't believe leaving should end the conversation either.

If I ever leave Nigeria, I would not want the fact that I left to become an excuse for forgetting where I came from.

There is a difference between seeking opportunity elsewhere and deciding that the place that raised you is no longer your concern.

The first can be survival.

The second is indifference.

I don't think Nigeria needs more indifferent people, whether they live in Lagos or London.

Maybe this is where our idea of patriotism needs to grow up.

I don't think patriotism should be measured by how much inconvenience you can endure.

I think it should be measured by whether, when you have something useful to offer, you remember that other people are still trying to find their own way.

The person who leaves can create something.

The person who stays can create something.

The person who returns can create something.

There is no single geography of service.

Nigeria needs citizens who are still willing to care about what happens here.

That is a much harder standard.

Because you can fulfil a patriotic ritual without caring very much.

You can wave a flag.

You can post an Independence Day message.

You can also live abroad for twenty years and still be deeply invested in what happens to people here.

So when someone tells me that a Nigerian who leaves has abandoned Nigeria, I want to ask what they mean by “abandoned.”

Did they stop caring?

Did they stop contributing?

Did they stop returning knowledge, money, opportunities or relationships?

Those are not the same thing.

Nigeria should want its children to stay.

But it should want them to stay because they see a future here, not because they have been made ashamed of wanting one elsewhere.

That is the real test of independence.

Not whether our children remain within the borders we inherited.

But whether we eventually build a country in which a young Nigerian can look at the world and still have a genuine reason to say:

I could go.

But I would like to stay.