BRILLIANT ABROAD, ABANDONED AT HOME: TINUBU SWITCHED OFF THE LIGHT
Aare Amerijoye DOT.B
In Part 2, we saw a rich nation brought to its knees. Today, we follow its most precious export, the one that never appears in the oil figures, and we show you the one man who has put money on the table to keep it at home.
Picture the departure hall at Murtala Muhammed Airport on any weekday night. A young woman named Ngozi holds her mother’s hand until the last possible moment. Her nursing certificate is in her bag, beside a one-way ticket. Her mother smiles for the photograph and cries behind it. Nigeria trained that nurse. Another country will employ her.
THE PROOF FROM ABROAD
Look at what the Nigerian becomes when given a fair chance.
In the United States, the Migration Policy Institute found that 61 per cent of Nigerian immigrants hold at least a bachelor’s degree. For Americans born in America, the figure is 32 per cent. The Nigerian who leaves our shores is about twice as likely to hold a university degree as the citizen of the richest nation on earth.
In Britain, the Home Office granted 30,204 study visas to Nigerians in 2025, up 59 per cent in a single year. Only India, China and Pakistan sent more.
Walk into a hospital in Manchester or Houston and listen for the accent. Nigerian doctors, nurses and pharmacists keep those wards running. Nigerian engineers design bridges in Canada. Nigerian professors teach from Texas to Toronto.
Wherever the Nigerian finds light, the Nigerian shines.
THE DARKNESS AT HOME
So why must our children cross the desert and the sea before they are allowed to shine?
About 1.7 million graduates walk out of our universities and polytechnics every year into a labour market with no room for them. The State of the Nigerian Youth report, presented in Abuja in 2025, put the number of young Nigerians without jobs at close to 80 million. In August 2026, the Netherlands Ambassador disclosed a youth survey showing that unemployment, not insecurity, was the bigger push factor for young Nigerians seeking to migrate. They are not running from Nigeria. They are running from the absence of a future in it.
Meet one who stayed. His name is Abdullahi. He graduated from a federal university in Zaria with a second class upper in accounting. He has written aptitude tests in rented halls alongside a thousand others for twenty places. Today he sells phone accessories under an umbrella at a motor park, and every evening he tells his mother he is still looking. She sold her gold to pay his fees. She believed the certificate was a ladder. Under this government it has become a souvenir.
His friend from youth service, Tunde, finished with a first class in engineering. Today he sells recharge cards in Ibadan and repairs phones at night. And in Enugu, their friend Chinedu, a pharmacist, has stopped applying for jobs at home. He is studying for the British licensing examination instead.
And while these young men count their last transport fare, this government counts its luxuries: a new presidential jet, 1,411 delegates to a climate conference in Dubai, vehicles for lawmakers reported at about 160 million naira each, and tokens sent to senators’ accounts for their holidays.
They lose a doctor and call it remittance. They lose a generation and call it diaspora.
WHAT JAPA REALLY COSTS
Every nurse who leaves took years of Nigerian training with her. When she goes, the rural clinic shuts, the general hospital rations its surgeons, and the poor man who cannot fly to London for treatment is left with whoever remains. The remittances this government celebrates are the wages of exile, the receipt for a failure.
THE MAN WHO WILL TURN THE LIGHT BACK ON
Now hear what Atiku Abubakar has committed to do about it, because this is where the series turns from grief to hope.
First, capital for the young. His 12-point plan commits to a 10 billion dollar startup and entrepreneurship financing programme. The young Nigerian who wants to build does not need a visa. He needs capital, and Atiku has put a figure on it.
Second, relief for the student. He has committed to reviewing the operations of the student loan scheme, NELFUND, including possible debt forgiveness for its beneficiaries, so that a young Nigerian does not begin his working life chained to a debt for an education that found him no job.
Third, a foundation for every child. Atiku has promised free and compulsory education at the primary and secondary levels, so that the millions of children now out of school walk into classrooms instead of into the arms of bandits and traffickers.
Fourth, the health workers we are losing. His plan commits to reforming the health institutions, widening access to affordable basic care, and confronting the shortage of medical staff by tackling their pay and welfare. You keep a doctor at home by making home worth staying in.
Fifth, a seat at the table. His plan commits to more young people and more women in appointments, so that the generation paying for this crisis has a voice in ending it.
And behind all of it stands the man who, before he held any office, spent 20 years in the Customs Service and rose to Deputy Director, and who built the American University of Nigeria in Yola with his own money, a university that stayed open through the insurgency when others fled. Atiku does not talk about the young. He has been building for them for decades.
Tinubu switched off the light. Atiku has a plan to switch it back on.
THE VOTE THAT BRINGS THEM HOME
The young Nigerian abroad cannot vote from Houston. But his father in Kaduna can. His mother in Owerri can. His younger brother in Akure, already filling in visa forms, can.
On 16 January 2027, let every family that has lost a child to japa vote to bring the next one home.
YOUNG NIGERIAN, HERE IS YOUR ASSIGNMENT
You are the largest group of voters in this country. If you vote together, nobody can stop you. So do not wait for the campaign to come to you.
This week, collect your voter’s card if you have not. Then go back for your brother, your sister and your friends from school. Start a group of ten on your phone and keep them informed until election day. Share this series with every graduate who has ever written an aptitude test and heard nothing. Ask the aunty abroad to call home and tell the family how to vote.
On election day, go early, vote, and stay until the result is posted at your polling unit. The future you are being forced to look for abroad can be found at home, but only if you turn up for it.
Coming next, Part 4 of 10: 166.79 TRILLION NAIRA. Every baby born in Nigeria today already owes more than 700,000 naira. Part 4 shows you who borrowed it, who enjoyed it, and the only man on the ballot who has ever brought Nigeria’s debt down.
#Awalokan #Atiku2027 #TheNarrativeForce
Aare Amerijoye DOT.B
Director General,
The Narrative Force
thenarrativeforce.org
12 October 2026
