World Bank urges FG to initiate bilateral migration policy
By Joseph Ayinde
The World Bank has urged Nigeria to create a bilateral migration policy that would support the legal migration of Nigerians, saying that legal migration would be a boost to remittances as well foster economic growth.
Economist at World Bank, Mr. Samik Adhikari, made this call yesterday at the virtual webinar organised by World Bank titled, ‘Nigeria: Perspectives on Labour migration and diaspora.’
He urged Nigeria to sign a bilateral migration agreement with countries that are in need of skills the country possesses in abundances such as the United Kingdom who are in need of nurses, a construction partnership with Germany and an ICT partnership with European countries and other global partners.
He said: “Nigeria’s working-age population as we know is expanding rapidly. If we look at the population pyramid of Nigeria between now and 2015, we know that the working-age population is set to expand by 133 million between now and 2050 adding to the existing employment pressure in the economy, whereas high-income OECD countries are facing a rapidly ageing population.”
Many countries in Sub-Saharan Africa including Nigeria, remain young and will remain young until 1950. If we look at comparable countries there Nigeria’s population growth is the steepest in terms of growth compared to other countries such as Bangladesh, Indonesia, between now and 2015. While the population has expanded rapidly, we also know for a fact that the opportunities in the Nigerian labour market have dried up.”
On recommendations, he said: “So the first one really is on securing more and larger partnerships with destination countries. This is directly relevant to the Sustainable Development Goal, one of the Sustainable Development Goals of you know, opening new channels for safe orderly and regular migration. And you know, along with efforts to curb irregular migration, the opening of new channels for safe, orderly and regular migration through bilateral labour agreements (BLA) because this is something Nigeria can benefit from.”
“The second bucket of recommendation is on providing migrants abroad representation as well as reducing the fees of remittances by increasing competition in the remittance market. “
The third bucket of recommendation is on mainstreaming migration in some of the key national policy documents. One there are several policy documents related to labor migration and migration.”
He noted that the FG has remained a bit silent when it comes to the national development plans or the economic growth and recovery plan ignoring the fact that migration as something that the country can benefit from.
He further added: “It’s also necessary to reduce the fragmentation among stakeholders through the existing migration groups. Finally, we highlight that there needs to be better collection and dissemination of migration
data.
Data in any sector is paramount to policymaking, but especially when it involves cross border collaboration, learning about different profiles migrants and understanding their needs and concerns.”
He also noted that Nigerians migrating is a modest percentage contrary to the perception that Nigerians are migrating alarmingly.
He said: “Nigeria is not a country in exodus mode. And the number of international migrants from Nigeria is actually modest.
“The absolute number of Nigerian migrants over the last few decades has increased threefold and stands at about 1.4 million in 2019. However, if we look at the percentage of international migrants from Nigeria as a percent of the population, we see that it is largely constant and hovering around below 1% of the population.”
On his part, Governor of Edo State, Mr. Godwin Obaseki said: “Government needs to have a strategy to support migration and also understand what is going on. Register these people and help provide those services that would aide them.”
He further urged the FG that policies that would spur growth. he said: “Your monetary and exchange rate policies do not support growth and except you accept an overhaul that you’re not going to find space and you are not going to have the economy, growing and opportunities being created.”
On his part, the Country Director World Bank, Nigeria Mr. Shubham Chaudhuri, added that the bank would continue to partner with Nigeria to finance initiatives that would spur growth.
He said: “We would continue to provide large scale financing that goes through government channels. We are here to help work with all government partners at the sub-national as well as at the federal level on thinking through what are the most promising avenue to support beyond financing.”
“We are here as partners supporters, choices are Nigeria’s sources and right now, Nigeria is at a critical point where the choices it makes within the next year or even the next few months are going to determine the next few decades,” he added.
