Journalist, David Hundeyin, has questioned the ‘japa’ syndrome amongst so many Nigerians.
In a post shared on his X handle, David recounted how a friend of his has been moving he and his family from one country to the other seeking the proverbial greener pasture.
He wondered if what Nigerians are good for now is just to “roam around the world like nomadic cattle herders, ‘hawking their certificates and skills to everybody who will give them residency or citizenship.”
Hundeyin pointed out that no matter where a Nigerian goes, the system is the same and it is designed to exploit, “humiliate, and dehumanise an immigrant no matter what degree he or she has or how professionally accomplished they are.”
‘’The day I realised that my life was already “over” was the day I realised that from the 2nd half of this year, I will officially be closer to 50 than 20. I am not a “youth” anymore. Whatever I wanted to accomplish in life when I was a child is either never going to happen because I’m already too old, or it needs to be happening now because I will soon be too old.
And knowing that my life is basically over, I decided that I might as well die doing something worthwhile, because whether I like it or not, I’m getting older and I’m going to die one day.
There’s someone I know who left Nigeria in 2000 to study medicine in Ghana. After qualifying and working for some years, he left Ghana in 2017 with his wife and kids and “japa” to the Yookay. After 7 years in the NHS, I opened LinkedIn last week and saw that this oga has once again “japa” with his family from the Yookay to Australia in January 2025. This guy started the extended process of “japa” from Nigeria 25 years ago when I was still in Primary 6, and now that he is nearly 45 with a wife and 2 children, he is still in the middle of another batch of “japa” plans. “Japa” has turned into some kind of lifelong Israelite journey without a defined conclusion or end point.
Which type of life is this? Is this what you people honestly believe that Nigerian human beings came to this world to do? Our role on earth is to roam around everywhere like nomadic cattle herders, hawking our certificates and skills to everybody who will give us residency or citizenship – until they get tired of us and then we carry our families and start submitting passports and documents to move halfway around the world all over again? Do we seriously not think that there is more to life than just forever refusing to face our Nigerian problem, while hopping from UK to US to Canada to Australia to Saudi Arabia, each time hoping that not too many of our people will follow us so that our latest destination won’t “cast”?
When does it stop for god’s sake?
Because the same disease afflicting the UK is also afflicting Australia, New Zealand, Canada, and the rest of the other “japa” destinations. In fact I’m currently working on a story about Nigerian doctors in Canada who wrote and passed the RCPSC exam since 2020, only for the college to retroactively change the cutoff mark AFTER the fact, just so they could be excluded from practising in Canada (which did not happen to the white immigrant doctors who wrote the same exam and got the same marks). They do not want us there except it is to be entertainers, sportspeople, or members of the underclass who can be economically exploited in multiple ways including cheap/slave labour in their private, for-profit prisons which have shareholders and tradeable stocks.
If you like, japa through the whole of Europe plus the 5 eyes – oyibo is oyibo. The system is the same. It is designed to exploit, humiliate, and dehumanise you – no matter what degree you have, or how professionally accomplished you are. As long as you look like you do, the ONLY place in the world where you have a shot at full personhood is in Africa. So why not do something “crazy” and deploy whatever assets or knowledge or skills you have to free your country from the foreign-imposed stranglehold that made you “japa” in the first place?
Or you want to be 55 and still submitting your passport to oyibo people half your age, praying to God for visa approval to maybe Estonia or Latvia this time? Na life be that????”
