AFCON, And ‘Japa’ Issues

“If people have an opportunity for a decent job, a decent education, a decent health care system, and security, I know that forceful migration will be reduced to zero.” – Nayib Bukele

“Japa” is a trending Nigerian English word derived from a Yoruba translation of “run away/escape.” In the Nigerian sense, Japa is tilted specifically to mean running away from a bad situation to a better place. In today’s Nigeria, it simply means escaping from hardship (which this country has become) in search of a better life. Many other countries, particularly outside Africa, are better places to reside and make a living than Nigeria.

“East or west, home is the best,” you would say. Not anymore.

Recently in this country, the situation became so ugly that seven out of every 10 Nigerians under 40 years of age want to “Japa” if the opportunity comes. Who wants to stay and suffer? But viewed from the more rational reasoning, who do you expect to fix your tattered house for you if everyone is in the Japa craze? Some critics see the Japa indulgers as people who want an easy life but are unwilling to work for it. They see them as those who are already hopeless about redeeming this country. The situation has become so widespread that everybody including the aged wants to go and die in another man’s land. Sad!

Perhaps the only Nigerians not caught up in the Japa syndrome today are the politicians. We know the reason. Politics is the only venture that is guaranteed to be more lucrative here than in other parts of the globe…indisputably, the only viable practice in Nigeria today, and under any circumstance is politics. Politicians hardly think of Japa because it’s not attractive over there. After all, yonder, public service involves service and sacrifice to the people, not a chopping job as it is here. In our clime, it’s the other way round, chopping and stealing, not serving.

If our politicians were chopping and serving only a few would complain, but here they chop and steal at the same time. They are like killing rape victims after raping them. The only Japa business Nigerian politicians do is to domicile their loot abroad while they stay behind to loot more. Corrupt politicians are the only ones enjoying this country and they are largely in the public sector of the economy. All others are merely agonizing and eking out a living. Any Nigerian in any profession today that is not agonizing is in one way or the other linked to the corruption industry somewhere, shipping the loot abroad for their families to enjoy.

For instance, if you hear that the families of Mahmoud Yakubu of INEC fame are all abroad, that families of former and serving justices, governors, and former ministers are all outside the country, you should know the reason. They are there to manage the loot deposited for them.

If you visit High Commissions and embassies as well as various consular offices in this country today and see the number of Nigerians desiring to leave, you will think Nigeria is in a state of war.

Before now the Japa phenomenon was limited to medical professionals who were leaving in droves. The National Hospital, Abuja, is supposed to be the elite nation’s apex hospital but its medical director Dr Mahmoud Raji told journalists recently that over 500 medical staff comprising doctors, nurses, and other related practitioners had gone abroad…to greener pastures.

“[How] they leave is very hurtful for the hospital administration,” Dr Raji laments. If the National Hospital can experience this, imagine other lesser hospitals like the moribund general hospitals in our rural areas.

Shamelessly, rather than address the root cause of the Japa syndrome in various sectors, which is traceable to the inept political leadership and corruption in the system, Nigerian leaders are trying to turn it around to look like encouraging diaspora investment.

It has been empirically proven that for any sector that suffers from the Japa syndrome in Nigeria, its development back home will get worse. It’s not supposed to be so but so it is in Nigeria because of an incoherent system occasioned by successive poor leadership.

The first sector to suffer from Japa syndrome is sports, particularly the football department. Before Nigerian footballers started their Japa craze, weekends were a delight in this country in various states. With the healthy rivalries created among the youths with clubs like Rangers International of Enugu, Shooting Stars of Ibadan, Abiola Babes of Abeokuta, BCC Lions of Gboko, Stationery Stores of Lagos, Mighty Jets of Jos, and Bendel Insurance of Benin, among others. Nigeria was a happier and better place then than today.

Nigerian football started suffering at home immediately. Japa fever caught up with our players. Rather than think of how to develop our sports facilities back home, we instead got hooked on DSTV to watch other nations.

Nigeria just finished prosecuting the African Football Cup of Nations, AFCON, with 24 out of the 25-man squad coming from the Japa footballers. The sole homeboy goalkeeper from Enyimba FC of Aba used his idle moment in the camp lobbying his Japa colleagues to connect him outside to be like them. Ademola Lookman, Nigeria’s highest scorer in the tournament, was not born and brought up here. The boy who emerged as the most valuable player of the tournament and who captained the Super Eagles, William Tross-Ekong was not born and brought up here. The majority of the other players, born and brought up in Nigeria, showed their talents here early in their younger ages and won the World Cup at a younger level but could not develop further because of our decadent system. Goalie Bobo  NwabalI, the mystery child of the night, the miracle goal poacher, was in Enyimba of Aba wasting his youth until he found his way to South Africa where he developed and became the Nigerian hero of AFCON 2024.

The South African team that we could not beat at the semifinal stage after 120 minutes except through penalty kicks had virtually all their players playing in the South African league. Nine of the eleven players who played with Nigeria are in one club called Sundown FC. Elephants of Côte d’Ivoire, today’s African team had more home boys in their team.

So while we have a lot to celebrate following the heroic feat of these boys, we have far more to be ashamed of who we have become in developing our sports for far more youthful talents at home and who cannot find space in the crowded football room in Europe and elsewhere.

In the same way, our doctors, engineers, and other professionals are making waves, and we keep praising them but shamelessly see nothing wrong in our inability to have an enabling environment that can help them here. This attitude calls into question our understanding of the situation.

If we are happy that we are making a lot from the diaspora investment like the Jews, do we look at Israel where the research headquarters of all Jewish firms that are top in the World are domiciled?

Also to make us sad about the situation is the fact that these Nigerians are not happy that they are pouring their brains and talents in another land and oftentimes going through discrimination and psychological torture therein in another land. A famous African migrant player from Algeria, who captained the French National team, Zinedine Zidane,  captured the migrant’s situation in an interview: “It was my father who taught us that an immigrant must work twice as hard as anybody else, that he must never give up.”

Many other players like the 22-year-old Bukayo Saka of Arsenal, the youngest player ever to score 50 goals and 49 assists for the club, and Tammy Abraham of Roma, among other Nigerians playing for England, are not enjoying it, especially with their colour, and the racism they often contend with.

However, rather than blame these players and other professionals who are making it abroad and refusing to come home, we should introspectively examine ourselves that after 64 years of nationhood, no profession, including driving, will find an enabling environment to blossom locally.

While it is not in dispute that migration is a human right, it should not create a situation where a solution to a problem remains unsolved as a result. It should be in the words of Egyptian business mogul Mohammad El-Erian, “The global realignment should be accelerating the migration of growth and wealth dynamics from the industrial world to the larger emerging economies.”

In that line, our celebration of the AFCON success with no Nigeria-based players can only be meaningful in real terms if these players, our sports managers, and indeed political leaders use it as a benchmark and a paradigm to accelerate the positive migration growth of football and its wealth dynamics from Europe to Africa, nay Nigeria.

In making such requests, it’s not lost on us that such can only materialize if we reset our perspective of governance and model a new Nigeria where corruption, religion, and ethnicity will not be offered a comfortable chair to sit and relax but where character, competence, and capacity will be the main determining factors in our leadership recruitment process. God helps us to realize the seemingly impossible dream.

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