“Japa” is Yoruba slang for “to leave” — a word that has become shorthand across Nigeria for a mass movement of people seeking lives abroad. The exodus is not only a migration trend; it is a cultural phenomenon, a catchall for frustration and hope in a nation where a booming headline economy sits uneasily beside entrenched poverty and insecurity.
Nigeria is young and vast: more than 230 million people, a median age of about 18, and roughly two‑thirds under 30. Economists predict growth this year and next, yet everyday reality for many is different. Reporters Juliette Gash and cameraman Mark Ronaghan, with support from the Simon Cumbers Media Fund, found migration patterns that are increasingly risky, irregular and driven by a mix of fear, aspiration and desperation.
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“Definitely, the emigration rate in Nigeria is increasing,” said Dr. Tunde Alabi of the University of Lagos, who completed a Ph.D. on the Japa phenomenon. He warned that reliable statistics are scarce because much migration is irregular, funneling people across the Sahara and through North Africa on routes that are hard to measure. Still, he says the most acute losses are in the health sector and academia — professions whose departure intensifies domestic strain.
For many, Japa is both a gamble and a necessity. Sylvia’s story is a stark example. She left Lagos in 2007 after the death of her parents. A friend had told her about Norway; using someone else’s passport, she made it to Madrid and then to Oslo, where life in a refugee camp ended when she absconded and later married a Norwegian man. When bureaucracy stalled and doubts about the marriage arose, she returned to the migratory circuit in search of papers and safety.
Sylvia paid traffickers to take her north. Her journey covered thousands of kilometers, from Lagos to Agadez in Niger, then across the Sahara toward Sabha, Libya — a common staging area for migrants headed to the Mediterranean. The group spent days under a merciless sun. “We lost a lot of people,” she said, recalling convoys of Hilux pickups and clusters of migrants spread across five or six trucks. When the drivers left them behind to scout roads, the walkers were exposed to heat, thirst and thieves.
Traffickers feared police and kidnap gangs known locally as Asma Boys, who demand ransoms from captive migrants. At one point the group’s water supply ran out. People fainted; some died. Survivors resorted to drinking their own urine to survive. When the convoy finally reached Sabha, those who remained then waited months before being moved toward the Mediterranean. Violence near Sabratah forced aid intervention. United Nations teams and the International Organization for Migration eventually repatriated Sylvia to Nigeria.
Back in Lagos she speaks with gratitude for life but not for circumstance. “It’s only God that spared my life,” she said. “I can never go on that journey again.” But her contentment is limited: she is alive, yet finds life in Nigeria difficult. “I thank God I’m still alive, because some of my friends, we lost them,” she added. “But I’m not really happy.”
Sylvia’s experience is mirrored by many who attempt to reach Europe after years of circuitous travel, extortion and exposure to violence. For others, the migration story takes a different shape. Chiutu flew to Germany on a tourist visa in 2014, applied for asylum and spent five years building a life. He learned German and trained as a carer during a period when Berlin eased entry for refugees with the “Wir schaffen Das” policy.
Chiutu qualified and found work, but he said a workplace dispute cost him his job just weeks before he qualified for residency. A shift swap over a soiled bedsheet in a nursing home spiraled into dismissal, and he was forced into irregular casual labor. Exhausted and depressed after years away from his children, he opted for voluntary repatriation and returned to Nigeria, torn between relief at reunion and regret at abandoning potential stability abroad.
At the University of Lagos, Dr. Alabi’s students offered a range of motivations for Japa: insecurity, search for education and work, and the appeal of experience abroad. “Some just Japa for some safety reasons,” one student said. Others said they intended to return with skills to improve life at home. That aspiration — to leave, learn and come back — sits uneasily beside the reality that many who leave do not return.
The cost of migration limits who can go. With estimates that roughly half of Nigerians live in poverty — some figures cite about 130 million people — the route north is prohibitively expensive for many. Those who can afford passage often confront traffickers, perilous deserts and uncertain reception in Europe. For those who remain, the departure of nurses, lecturers and skilled workers is already felt in hospitals, universities and public services.
“Japa” captures an emotional arc: the hope of greener pastures, the fear that drives flight, the high price of migration and the mixed outcomes that greet returnees. For policy makers, researchers and families, the phenomenon poses urgent questions: how to create opportunity at home, how to protect vulnerable migrants abroad, and how to measure a movement that is increasingly invisible to official tallies.
There are no simple answers. The stories emerging from Lagos and from the desert routes of North Africa are reminders that migration is both an individual gamble and a national challenge, shaped by youth, aspiration and structural gaps that push citizens to seek futures elsewhere.
By Abdiwahab Ahmed Axadle Times international–Monitoring.
