‘Japa’ Is Outsourced Slavery: Osundare Warns of Nigeria’s Talent Exodus

NIGERIA’S continuing loss of highly skilled professionals is more than a migration story, according to renowned poet and essayist Niyi Osundare.

The award-winning writer described the country’s talent exodus as a form of “blood money” and “outsourced slavery.”

Osundare spoke at a public conversation organised by The Booksellers Limited and Bookcraft in Ibadan. The event focused largely on his latest book, Truth is Trouble: Essays, Speeches, Tributes, Farewells, and Five Pivotal Interviews.

The conversation moved beyond literature. It became a wider examination of migration, education, intellectual life, Nigerian universities and the country’s struggle to retain the people capable of transforming it.

The Cost of ‘Japa’

The discussion began with Nigeria’s growing “Japa” phenomenon.

Osundare rejected the tendency to measure the value of migration mainly through remittances. He argued that the country must also count the knowledge, skills and institutional experience lost when highly trained Nigerians leave and never return.

He said Nigerians could be found across virtually every continent. Yet, in his experience, many remained emotionally connected to a country they had left because of difficult conditions at home.

For Osundare, the central issue is not that Nigerians travel abroad. It is that Nigeria has repeatedly failed to create conditions that encourage them to return and deploy their knowledge at home.

He contrasted Nigeria’s experience with post-war Japan. According to him, Japan deliberately sent people abroad to acquire technological knowledge and expected them to return and apply it domestically.

The strategy helped contribute to the emergence of globally competitive Japanese companies.

Nigeria, he argued, has struggled to replicate that model.

The result is a persistent outward flow of doctors, academics, engineers, technology professionals, creatives and other skilled workers whose training often benefits countries other than the one that invested in their early development.

Development Does Not Happen by Accident

Osundare’s argument goes beyond migration.

He linked the talent exodus to the broader question of national development.

A country that loses its best-trained people without creating a system for attracting them back risks deepening the very problems that drove them away.

The cycle can become self-reinforcing.

Weak institutions encourage migration. Migration reduces the pool of expertise available to strengthen institutions. Weakened institutions then make the country less attractive to the people who might otherwise return.

Osundare therefore framed development as a matter of deliberate policy rather than historical luck.

His argument places responsibility on governments to create credible institutions, functional universities, decent infrastructure and economic opportunities capable of making return meaningful.

The University as a National Institution

The writer was equally critical of the condition of Nigerian universities.

He warned against reproducing the culture of political dysfunction inside academic institutions.

“We must not run our universities the way our politicians are running Nigeria,” he said.

His criticism focused particularly on relationships between supervisors and students.

He described an academic environment in which authority can replace mentorship and argued that academics must examine whether they are teaching students with the same openness and intellectual generosity they experienced from their own teachers.

For Osundare, the university should not merely produce certificates.

It should produce independent thinkers, researchers and citizens capable of questioning established assumptions and contributing to society.

That requires an academic culture built around dialogue, mentorship and intellectual freedom.

Why Writers Need Communities

The conversation also explored the importance of literary communities.

Osundare argued that writers rarely develop in isolation.

He recalled the creative writing workshops he organised at the University of Ibadan during the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s. Writers and students gathered, wrote together and subjected their work to criticism.

He described such relationships as essential to literary development.

“Every writer needs a community,” he said. “Every writer needs a group of conspirators.”

His point carries implications beyond literature.

Creative industries need ecosystems. Young writers need publishers, editors, critics and readers. Musicians need venues and audiences. Filmmakers need funding, distribution networks and professional institutions.

Talent alone cannot sustain a cultural industry without the structures that nurture it.

Ibadan & a Changing Cultural Landscape

Osundare also reflected on his long relationship with Ibadan.

He first arrived in the city in 1962 as a student. He recalled seeing a television set for the first time at Government College, Ibadan.

He described the city as one of Africa’s historic centres of publishing and intellectual activity.

But he expressed concern about the disappearance of the green spaces that once helped define Ibadan.

His criticism reflected a broader anxiety about how Nigerian cities are developing.

For Osundare, urban development should not mean destroying the environmental and cultural characteristics that give cities their identity.

Ibadan, in his description, is both a source of inspiration and a place increasingly threatened by careless development.

From Ibadan to New Orleans

Osundare’s long relationship with New Orleans also featured in the conversation.

He has spent significant periods in the United States over several decades. Yet he drew strong cultural parallels between New Orleans and Ibadan.

Both cities, he suggested, possess distinctive relationships with music, food and creative expression.

He described New Orleans as a place where music is woven into everyday life.

The comparison also reflected Osundare’s broader understanding of culture.

Creative energy does not exist only inside books, galleries or universities. It emerges from streets, communities, traditions and everyday interactions.

Democracy Cannot Survive Extreme Poverty

The conversation eventually moved into Nigeria’s political condition.

Osundare argued that poverty weakens democratic choice because citizens facing severe economic hardship can become vulnerable to political manipulation.

“Poverty and democracy cannot live in the same house,” he said.

He pointed to vote buying as one manifestation of the problem.

His argument was blunt: citizens and political leaders share responsibility for the condition of the country.

Nigeria cannot depend permanently on outsiders to solve its institutional and economic problems.

“The fate of Nigeria is in our hands,” he said.

Literature as a Form of Public Engagement

The public conversation demonstrated why Osundare’s work continues to extend beyond poetry.

Truth is Trouble brings together essays, speeches, tributes, farewells and interviews. Its subjects range from literature and criticism to migration, intellectual independence and public life.

The Ibadan event transformed those themes into a wider conversation about the direction of Nigeria.

The central question was ultimately larger than whether Nigerians should leave or return.

It was whether Nigeria can build a society worth returning to.

Until that question is confronted through functioning institutions, credible governance, strong universities and a productive economy, the country’s talent drain is likely to remain both a symptom and a cause of underdevelopment.

Osundare’s intervention therefore placed the “Japa” debate where he believes it belongs: not merely in conversations about individual ambition, but at the centre of Nigeria’s national development crisis.