The World Bank has called on Nigeria to adopt measures that will enhance the economic benefits of the increasing wave of people migrating out of the country, popularly referred to as the ‘Japa’ Syndrome. Making this recommendation in a report titled “World Development Report 2023: Migrants, Refugees, and Societies”, the World Bank said Nigeria and other ‘Origin Countries’ should make labour migration an explicit part of their development strategy.
Speaking on measures that will help Nigeria and ‘Origin Countries’ enhance economic benefits of migration, the World Bank said: “They should lower remittance costs, facilitate knowledge transfers from their diaspora, build skills in high demand globally, mitigate the adverse effects of “brain drain,” protect their nationals while abroad, and support them upon return”.
The World Bank continues that “Destination countries should encourage migration where what the skills migrants bring, are in high demand. This will facilitate their inclusion, and address social impacts that raise concerns among their citizens. They should also let refugees move, get jobs, and access national services wherever they are available”.
Among other things, the World Bank report underscores the urgency of managing migration better. “The goal of policymakers should be to strengthen the match of migrants’ skills with the demand in destination societies, while protecting refugees and reducing the need for distressed movements”.
The report provides a framework for policymakers on how to do this. World Bank Senior Managing Director, Axel van Trotsenburg, said: “Migration can be a powerful force for prosperity and development. “When it is managed properly, it provides benefits for all people — in origin and destination societies.”
As competition for skilled workers continues to rise globally, while populations in rich and middle-income countries age, the World Bank report also states that populations across the globe are ageing at an unprecedented pace, making many countries increasingly reliant on migration to realise their long-term growth potentials.
According to them, “Wealthy countries as well as a growing number of middle-income countries, traditionally among the main sources of migrants, face diminishing populations, intensifying the global competition for workers and talents. Meanwhile, most low-income countries are expected to see rapid population growth, putting them under pressure to create more jobs for young people.” The question then remains: Why are most low-income countries projected to see population growth when it is on the reverse with high income countries?
Some of the factors identified include lack of birth control laws put in place by the Governments in question. In Nigeria for instance, Federal, State and Local Governments have not done well in controlling child births. Nigeria is a country where married and unmarried couples give birth to children the ways they want.
Over the next three decades, the West African nation’s population is also expected to soar even more. From the current projected 220 million people to 375 million, the United Nations says, will make Nigeria the fourth most populous country in the world, only after India, China and the United States.
Nigeria is among the eight countries that the UN says will account for more than half the world’s population growth between now and 2050 – along with Congo, Ethiopia, Tanzania and others. Other countries rounding off the list of those contributing most to global population increase are India, Pakistan, and the Philippines.
The report added that in the coming decades, the share of working-age adults would drop sharply in many countries. It said Spain, with a population of 47 million, is projected to shrink by more than one-third by 2100, with those above age 65 increasing from 20 per cent to 39 per cent of the population. Countries like Mexico, Thailand, Tunisia, and Türkiye may soon need more foreign workers because their population is no longer growing.”
Beyond this demographic shift, the forces driving migration were also changing, making cross-border movements more diverse and complex. “Today, destination and origin countries span all income levels, with many countries such as Mexico, Nigeria, and the U.K. both sending and receiving migrants.”
The report says the number of refugees nearly tripled over the last decade. “About 2.5 per cent of the world’s population (184 million people), including 37 million refugees now live outside their country of nationality. The largest share (43 per cent), live in developing countries. The report underscores the urgency of managing migration better.
The statement quoted Indermit Gill, Chief Economist, World Bank Group as saying, “This report proposes a simple but powerful framework to aid the making of migration and refugee policy. It tells when such policies can be made unilaterally by destination countries, when they are better together, and when they must be considered a multilateral responsibility.”
In Nigeria, since the Federal and State Governments are desirous to eliminate poverty, hunger, illiteracy, diseases and to provide food, healthcare and education to the future generations, then, the Governments should take drastic steps to implement the proposed measures to control future population explosion in the country.
It is not good enough that the Federal Government through the National Population Commission (NPC) does not even know the exact figures of population of Nigerians and non-Nigerians living in the country. If the various telecommunication companies and commercial banks know the exact figures of their customers on a daily basis, then, the Federal Government on the issue of exact population figures of Nigerians and non-Nigerians, should not be left out.
It is a fact that the economic and social reforms cannot be undertaken without knowing the exact statistics of population of the people. As emphasised in the World Bank report that said international cooperation was essential to make migration a strong force for development, bilateral cooperation can strengthen the match of migrants’ skills with the needs of destination societies. It added that multilateral efforts were needed to share the costs of refugee-hosting and to address distressed migration.
Despite these facts, Nigeria has a lot more to do to ensure a more organised migration pattern that will make the ‘Japa’ syndrome more successful than it is expected to be. This also suggests that more attention should be given to birth control, especially with teenage child births and unwanted children across the length and breadth of the country. More regulations should go into the birth pattern of couples and single mothers across the nation.
While this is going on, the constant monitoring of population statistics should not be done once in almost a decade, but should be more regular with needed statistics given to child births as they occur across the country on a regular basis. This is not leaving out an up-to-date death record using different means of obtaining records.
This is why the migration debate must be heard: which includes developing countries, the private sector, major stakeholders, migrants and refugees themselves. While this is going on, adequate attention should also be given to data preservation, population capturing and population control; which are sure ways of making migration more organised and better managed.
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