Consider Nigerians voting with their feet

The rapidly approaching 2023 elections have generated a modicum of excitement despite the fact that voting has never changed much in our political evolution. The Independent National Electoral Commission, which apparently has upped its game, has projected that 95 million Nigerians will vote come next year. To be sure, insecurity still poses a big hurdle as the Chairman of INEC, Prof. Mahmood Yakubu, recently intimated. Nonetheless, there is optimism that at least a preponderant majority of registered voters will show up to vote and that the elections will be credible, transparent and fair.  One interesting feature of the emerging demographics of the voting population is the addition of nearly 10 million youths defined as those between the ages of 18 and 35 to the electoral register in the twilight of the Permanent Voter’s Card registration exercise. It is too early to say whether this will amount to a radical shift concerning the choice of voters. Certainly, however, it constitutes an aspect of the elections to watch out for.

One hitherto ignored dimension of the projected voting arrangement concerns those young and not-so-young Nigerians who are voting with their feet by leaving the country under the Yorùbá #japa which translates roughly to “leave the country in a hurry.” Of course, there is nothing new about the immigration of skilled professionals to other lands. In our country, it has occurred in waves and one recalls vividly those who left the universities in the midst of gripping decay between the mid-1980s and early 1990s. Many of those immigrants, mainly from the Ivory Tower, went over to pursue their careers in Western countries, especially the United States and the United Kingdom. Interestingly, many of them have returned home after retirement while a few have stubbornly refused to come back, even if this meant that they would die and be buried in a foreign land. In the same breath, globalisation has stimulated soaring immigration, especially of professionals who see the world rather than particular nations as their oysters. This happens among both developing and developed countries and has become part of the international diplomacy of the global technocracy.