Japa and Japada: the twin words now woven into Nigeria’s migration story — one that charts the exodus of skilled young people and the tentative returns that follow. For those who have left and come back, the decision to return is not simply personal; it is an economic and social experiment played out in kitchens, boardrooms and startups across Lagos and beyond.
“I was probably the only black person in school at the time,” says Adenike Adekunle, recalling her childhood in Tipperary after she emigrated from Nigeria at age 7. Her family spent time in Ireland’s direct provision system before she went on to study at what was then NUI Galway and later in the U.K.
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Now 31, Adekunle returned to Lagos after a successful stint running a restaurant in London and has founded a food start-up, Forti Foods, that has secured funding and is poised to scale. She credits her education abroad with giving her skills and confidence she says are proving valuable at home.
“In terms of how you articulate yourself, your opinion of the world, having an opinion of the world, having some sort of confidence in your own academic [ability]… has been something that’s super useful,” she said.
Adekunle’s path — moving abroad for education and experience, then returning to build a business — is becoming more visible as Nigeria’s economy shows glimmers of growth while persistent hardship continues to push millions to seek opportunity overseas. The World Bank predicts Nigeria’s economy will expand this year and next, but entrenched poverty and instability mean emigration remains a dominant trend.
That trend has its own vocabulary. “Japa,” a Yoruba slang term, refers to leaving; “Japada” has emerged to describe those who return. Economists and business leaders frame the phenomenon as both a challenge and an opportunity.
“Because we have a young population, they’re actively seeking new opportunities, so we have a generation that wants to try new things,” said Dr. Chinyere Almona, CEO of the Lagos Chamber of Commerce. “If you have skilled professionals leaving, you need to replace them,” she added, acknowledging the short-term workforce gaps that fuel concerns about brain drain.
Yet Almona and others emphasize the potential gains from a globally dispersed Nigerian diaspora. Remittances totalled roughly $19 billion last year, a substantial inflow that supports households and businesses across the country. More than financial transfers, returnees bring networks, skills and market access that can accelerate growth if properly harnessed.
“The Japa phenomenon also gives us access to the world. So now we have Nigerians everywhere, and if you’re able to harness that benefit, it’s huge,” Almona said, while urging government reforms to address the root causes driving emigration.
Not all returns are sudden conversions. For some, like Jim Ovia, founder of Zenith Bank, returning after study abroad was a strategic response to opportunity. Ovia, who studied in Louisiana and at Harvard Business School, said the early years back home felt full of possibility.
“Definitely when I finished my education, it was Japada,” he told RTÉ News. “The first year, second year I got back to Nigeria, I thought, ‘my God, there’s so many opportunities here.’ I thought ‘I’m going to contact my friends and say it’s good for them to start coming [back] to Nigeria because we’re experiencing so much opportunity here.’”
Ovia now encourages young Nigerians abroad to consider returning, arguing that talent and capital can have outsized impact at home. That sentiment is echoed by returnees who say the barriers to influence are often lower in Nigeria than in crowded foreign job markets.
“There’s not so much people can do that can have substantial impact abroad,” Adekunle said. “But here, little things can have such significant impact so a lot of people do want to come back… because they also see that the glass ceiling is lower [abroad].”
Returnees face practical trade-offs. They must navigate unreliable infrastructure, regulatory uncertainty and uneven access to capital. Still, their foreign experience can confer credibility with investors and customers, especially in sectors such as tech, food services and finance where international standards and networks matter.
Policy and private-sector initiatives are emerging to channel these benefits. Business leaders and chambers of commerce are urging programs to link diaspora professionals with domestic firms, easing licensing and investment, and creating incentives for temporary or permanent return. For Almona, the priority is both to stop people feeling forced to leave and to make return more attractive.
“I would not like people to be prevented from emigrating, but I would rather the government improve the conditions that cause people to leave Nigeria in the first place,” she said. “In the long term, we continue with the grind.”
For entrepreneurs such as Adekunle, the gamble is personal and pragmatic: invest the skills and savings accumulated abroad in a market where margins, if managed well, can translate into visible local change. “Don’t just leave forever. Come back, bring value back, and I think that’s how the country will really start to develop,” she said.
Analysts warn that returns alone will not cure structural deficits. Nigeria’s ability to benefit from Japada will depend on consistent policy reforms, improvements in governance and targeted support that turns diaspora know-how into scalable enterprises. Yet the rising chorus of returnees and diaspora-engagement advocates suggests a new chapter in which migration is less a one-way drain and more a circulation of people, capital and ideas.
As the economy grows unevenly and young Nigerians continue to test borders, the country’s future may be written as much by those who leave as by those who come back — and by the institutions that decide how to welcome them home.
By Abdiwahab Ahmed
Axadle Times international–Monitoring.
