Unemployment and Nigeria’s Human-Capital Flight (1990 – 2020): An Empirical Investigation of a Modelled Case Study of Recruitment of Nigerian Doctors by Saudi Arabia

Abstract

Unceasing substantial loss of intellectuals and technical personnel from any nation causes dire depletion of the economy of that nation and should give anyone who means well for the nation serious cause for concern. Offor P. U. et al (2022) used matching function model to analyse reasons for brain drain with a case study of a recruitment exercise organized in August 2021, in Abuja, by the Saudi Arabia health ministry for Nigerian medical doctors. This paper is all about investigating empirical relevance of Offor P. U. et al (2022)’s matching function model. With the model, our target is to carry out empirical investigation of the relationship between unemployment and Nigeria’s brain drain (1990 – 2020) using secondary data. The ARDL model is our parameter estimator. The matching function model is found to be stable and the empirical investigation reveals that Nigeria’s brain drain is not necessarily caused by unemployment rate in Nigeria; some other variables like poor real GDP (PPP based) are significantly responsible. The study concludes with a recommendation that Nigerian authorities should take giant strides to fix the insecurity problems of the country in order to create safe environment that can attract both local investments and foreign direct investments which will, among other benefits, favour Nigeria in exchange rate, improve her GDP and discourage brain drain.