Brain Drain and National Development in Nigeria

The thrust of this work is the evaluation of the expropriation of Nigeria’s vital human resources through the brain drain and its implications for its overall development. Nigeria has been adjudged a top emigration country on account of the continuous efflux of its human resources to all parts of the world. Despite the lack of agreement about the exact migrant stock of Nigerians in the diaspora, Nigeria is listed among the top remittance receiving countries in the world. The implication of brain drain to Nigeria is that it serves as a feederzone for the human resource needs of other countries, especially developed countries. Undoubtedly, the erosion of Nigeria’s human resources has had far-reaching negative effectson its development trajectory as the vital highly-skilled personnel needed for national development are lost. This study delineates certain specific development sectors of the Nigerian economy, such as the health, domestic investment, and technology acquisition and transfer, as the fulcrum of its investigation. It sets as its objectives the task of interrogating the effect of the brain drain on the efficiency Nigeria’s healthcare delivery system; how the domestic investment incentives have boosted diaspora-led investment in the Nigerian economy, and whether the tighter regulation of the global regime of intellectual property rights are amenable to brain gain that can facilitate technology transfer. Using a combination of public choice and modern world system theories synthesised from the political economy theoretical framework, we generated relevant data through secondary sources and analysed them in the tradition of qualitative descriptive methodology using one-group time series research design. The study finds that the depletion of the stock of Nigeria’s health professionals through the brain drain leads to inefficient healthcare delivery. This depletion is sustained by lack of political will by successive Nigerian governments to eliminate the conditions that conduce to the emigration of its highly-skilled health manpower and the relaxation of immigration policies by Western countries. Nigeria’s domestic investment profile has been boosted through diaspora-led investments in the Nigerian economy. The tighter regulation of the global regime of intellectual property rights is inhibitive of diasporaled industrial investments towards technology transfer. The challenge of diaspora integration in Nigerian development is locatable in the absence of coordinated domestic efforts in thatdirection.