Brain drain as modern slavery

The idiom “even rats leave a sinking ship” captures the core of the crises of confidence and choice confronting   most Nigerians at the moment especially those who because they are at their prime should also be at their most productive in Nigeria.

Young people are desperate to leave the country even though the streets of their preferred destinations are home to backbreaking living conditions and are not exactly paved with gold. Parents share these anxieties too, desperate that their lives be made better from elsewhere as Nigeria has become a place of stagnation.

Nigeria appears to be a sinking ship and when rats leave a sinking ship in droves, they display the ancient instinct of self-preservation, an instinct as old as life itself.

Things were already going south even before Boko Haram cunningly re-invented the tactics of terror. As endemic corruption burrowed into psyches, institutions, and then the entire fabric of the Nigerian society, public infrastructure failed fast; values shrank; vices sprouted and the economy ground to a halt. Indeed, it has been a long time since Nigeria lurched into this standstill.

Then came Boko Haram. That flood which now threatens us   as in the days of Noah started as a mere trickle of discontent and disaffection. But because those tasked with our security decided to go after the fly with a sledgehammer, the fly escaped and has somehow defied the laws of evolution to metamorphose into a ravenous vulture, one that kills as well as feeds off carrions which in Nigeria are plenteous.

Parents are desperate that their children leave before they become the next corpse or the next Boko Haram abductee; or the next graduate driven to suicide by stagnation. Our young men and women have become walking corpses prowling the Libyan deserts, sold for next to nothing. Our country has become an international joke.

In fact, slavery has made a comeback. The difference this time around is that it has come with a subtlety and stealthy unmatched by anything we have ever seen. Centuries after slavery as we knew it crumbled into the dust of infamy, the chains, most of which have thrived mentally, have continued to bind us.

There is a part of us that continues to assiduously cling to the belief that salvation and paradise lie only in the land of people whose ancestors bound our own ancestors in chains. This belief has been self-fulfilling. We are struggling to keep basic services alive; we are struggling to keep basic infrastructure running, and systematically, we are designed not just  to make no meaningful progress, but  to live under the illusion that we are progressing.

Because things are not working here, we are losing our best resources to countries that treat national development and its sustenance with the intensity and consistency it deserves. We aspire to a seat of honour in the pantheon of developed countries yet we keep missing out on what is supposed to be a crucial contributor to the realisation of that aspiration.

How can we compete with other countries that are getting it right when  like a pot of honey attracting a swarm of flies, they are drawing away our best minds and giving them incredible opportunities to reach their full potentials?

The unvarnished truth is that the business of relentless national development can only proceed forcefully and fruitfully   when we plug the holes through which our best minds fall to other countries which through economic chains continue to enslave us.

Kene Obiezu,

Abuja

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