Mercy Abang, chairman of the Technical Advisory Council of the Emerging Political Leaders Fellowship (EPLF), has stated that Nigeria recorded one of the highest levels of brain drain in decades in 2022.

Abang said this while addressing members of the Emerging Political Leaders Fellowship at a meeting in Abuja on Thursday.

She further said that Nigeria needs leaders to step into the apparent vacuum in the nation to mitigate the effect of the brain drain.

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Quoting Uche Rowland, the President of the Nigerian Medical Association, Abang said that in the previous eight years, 5,600 Nigerian doctors had migrated to the United Kingdom alone.

“In April of 2019, while reporting for Aljazeera, I wrote a story about our medical brain drain; since then, I have not only joined, but the overall number has quadrupled,” she said.

“A nation requires a mix of 23 doctors, nurses, and midwives per 10,000 population to deliver essential health services, according to the World Health Organisation (WHO). With the number of migrants, we are in trouble as a nation.”

“All these people, including myself, who are out of our country, are the assets we need to build a greater nation.

“She admonished the participants who had just completed a six-month programme to collectively fight for the future of Nigeria using the knowledge they had acquired.

“You have to believe in our nation for this work to be done. Let no one tell you otherwise. Our country is excellent, and our people are the most diligent and hard performing,” she charged the audience. 

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“Hope is not a strategy, but this is one I am willing to bet on and hold on to because we can get the nation of our dreams, and the work starts now.” 

The EPLF is the flagship fellowship programme of the Bridge Leadership Foundation.

It is a fully-funded, non-partisan political leadership development project that nurtures and prepares young Nigerians for leadership at the local, regional and national levels with a view to improving the quality of Nigeria’s leadership pool and the impact of its developmental interventions.