Governance as A Pull Factor in Youths' Migration: Re Interrogating Nigeria's Leadership Question and Japa Syndrome

This paper examined the role of governance on trans-border migration by Nigerian youths, otherwise known, in local parlance, as Japa syndrome, and the implications of the attendant human capital flight on Nigeria's national development. It deployed a combination of theoretical modes and relied on trend data in explaining the causes and consequences of human capital flight on the country's development. It argued that notwithstanding the internationalization of train-border migration, the Third World nations, particularly Africa, remain the end losers as the world’s migration trend represents a zero-sum matrix wherein the ‘brain’ lost by the latter represents a proportionate ‘brain’ gained by the receiving developed countries. It emphasized that if remittances are the major benefits of migration, from the point of view of the source countries, the loss of human resources – particularly highly skilled youths – is the most serious cost. It concludes that the net effect of youths' migration poses greater danger to Nigeria’s developmental project; and that the efforts by the governments to check brain drain as well as lure Nigerians in Diaspora back home through advocacy programmes and policy propositions have come to naught, especially in view of the obvious exacerbation of the prevailing socio-political and economic scenarios which necessitated their exit.