On Patriotism and the Right to Leave Nigeria

Every time a young Nigerian announces they are relocating abroad, someone tells them they are abandoning their country. Every time a Nigerian doctor treats patients in a British hospital, someone calls it brain drain.

This argument mistakes the obligation of the citizen for the obligation of the state. Before we ask Nigerians what they owe their country, we might ask what their country owes them.

A state owes its citizens security, justice, basic infrastructure, and economic opportunity within which talent can flourish. A state that provides none of these things and then claims the loyalty of its citizens is not invoking a social contract. It is invoking sentimentality.

The right to leave is not a betrayal. It is the exercise of exactly the kind of individual agency that a functioning state should protect and a malfunctioning one has forfeited the right to constrain.

Written by

Fatima Kabir