28/09/2023
DISTORTING THE CURRENT BRAIN DRAIN SYNDROME IN NIGERIA
In 2005, entry level Process Engineer at Weyerhaeuser, a United States corporation salary was $61,500 with about $6,000 in annual take home bonuses.
Skilled professional were offered to return back to work in Shell Nigeria as a Maintenance Engineer and then salary prospects was about N700k monthly with allowances totaling N200k monthly.
At the time, an average skilled worker earnings would have been $6,000 (exchange rate of N150- N160/$) as an employee of shell Nigeria, compared to monthly earnings of $5,125 as an employee of Weyehaeuser Corporation in the USA.
Many skilled worker peer grouping were conflicted with whether to stay behind or relocate to Nigeria. Visiting Nigeria on holidays then, could never have matched the spending power of the peers in Nigeria who had moved back to work for blue - chip companies locally.
Living expenses and monthly savings outweigh what could ever have been accumulated by employees in the United States.
The most limiting factor for many who wanted to return to Nigeria at the time, was the NYSC requirement which was truly hard to provide, thus moving back was often a pipe dream deferred to future years.
Today employees of these companies will go for salaries from western climes in an effort to get settled abroad, given the fact that the income opportunities within both economies would be the reverse for skill sets competency.
An entry level engineer 20 years later, earns about $81,000 - $102,000 for the same position available in the US, back date 2005.
That means skilled professional take home salary on the average in Naira is N7.5m at $7,800 monthly.
Today's virtualized tech economy has created earning opportunities for talents in IT ecosystem, enabling them make good incomes without leaving Nigeria.
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