Nigeria Draws Regional Migrants But Loses High Skilled Labour, Migration Profile Finds

A migration profile of Nigeria released by IOM finds that the country remains attractive to migrants from the sub-region although increasing numbers of skilled Nigerians emigrate in search of employment abroad.

Estimates made by the Development Research Centre on Migration, Globalisation and Poverty (DRC), based on the 2000 Census Round, indicate that 1,041,284 Nigerian nationals live abroad, mostly in Sudan (24 per cent), followed by the United States (14 per cent) and the United Kingdom (9 per cent). Many Nigerian emigrants also settle in neighbouring Cameroon (8 per cent) and in Ghana (5 per cent).

According to the report, an average of 64 per cent of the Nigerian emigrant population have tertiary education; 14 per cent of all physicians trained in Nigeria work abroad, with 90 per cent of these working in the United States and the United Kingdom.

Regarding the flow of remittances to Nigeria, the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) notes a dramatic increase from USD 2.3 billion in 2004 to 17.9 billion in 2007, representing 6.7 per cent of GDP.

The United States accounts for the largest portion of official remittances, followed by the United Kingdom, Italy, Canada, Spain and France. On the African continent, Egypt, Equatorial Guinea, Chad, the Libyan Arab Jamahiriya and South Africa are important source countries of remittance flows to Nigeria, while China is the biggest remittance-sending country in Asia.

The report also notes a marked increase in the number of Nigerians emigrating for educational purposes. From 2000 to 2006, the number of Nigerian students abroad more than doubled from 10,000 to 22,000, the majority of these (some 6,000) studying at universities in the United States.

IAMTN: For those of us who know something about Nigeria there is nothing new in these figures but I think what they do give us is a useful summary of some of the data that is available. Of course it is a little dated but it is useful to have this sort of summary.