Forty-six years ago, there once existed a small fishing village called Bao’on County with a population of 30,000 people quietly fishing and selling their fishes. It had only one major road, an old street with a few inner roads leading off it. A few shops and restaurants were Bao’on’s only claim to modernity. Today it is called Shenzhen, a generic city that moved in less than two decades from a countryside village to a major industrial and commercial hub on the world map. By 2008, the population had grown to 12 million with migrants from all over the world putting their tents and businesses in different corners.
All it took to establish this uncommon transformation was one leader who knew trees don’t just grow until seeds are planted, that greatness does not happen to men who think it and then sleep all day. Deng Xiaoping had a dream and dared to wake up to bring it to reality. When everyone saw a tranquil cluster of fishing villages, Xiaoping saw a sprawling city of manufacturing giants and skyscrapers rising from the ground. And he made it happen. This once-upon-a-time village is today the city of technology entrepreneurs and start-up hubs. Whatever Deng Xiaoping saw 46 years ago has today surpassed his dream of creating China’s first special economic zone. This is the home of Huawei, Tencent, IBM, ZTE and hundreds of other technology giants.
This beautiful transformation and the years it took, of course, will leave a girl like me gaping and gasping. Why not? I’m older than Shenzhen. Nigeria’s independence is older by more than two decades too!
I have visited China twice and each time I returned with a lot of questions. Why is China so big and beautiful in so many easy ways while my country seems to be forever struggling with the easiest of tasks? Why does China make development look like Candy Crush Soda, my favorite Android game?
How is it that you can drive 18 hours through different cities and not find a pothole? The roads are wide and marked, hedged beautifully by trimmed trees and flowers. In Nigeria, the steel or aluminium barricades on our highways have been stolen and melted to make party cooking pots and cooking spoons. The governors who dared to plant floweres in the towns and cities have to make protective barricades for the poor plants so that we and our roaming goats will not eat or uproot them. Yes, Nigerian goats and cows still struggle with man, bikes and cars in the year of our Lord 2025. Nigeria is among the civilised countries of the world, really?
In China, there seems to be a permanent Premier League where the trophy is for who has the tallest, most beautiful big building where each structure must outdo the other in size and beauty. It is at night that you see the competition. The cities are like Christmas trees at night, all the colours of the rainbow and a bit more glorious.
In Nigeria, bungalows are built on waterways. Duplexes erected without drainages and in the centre of government approved streets and roads are advertised for sale with the most flowery adjectives. Civil servants saddled with the responsibility of urban planning wait for the buildings to get to roofing stage and then come with red ink to write ‘Stop Work’. Before they get back to their offices, the developer paints over or plasters over the red ink and continues work. I hear there is more to it than this simple marking and painting over but what does this tell you? Something is wrong with the builder, something worse is wrong with the civil servant who knows (because he is trained and paid to do better) that flooding and its cousins will eventually show up to disrupt lives. A few days ago, somebody from an urban planning agency showed me an entire ‘estate’ built on a stretch of access road!
I rode on China’s bullet train from Shanghai to Beijin and it sped through the 1,318 kilometers in four hours, thirty minutes at 330km/hr. Lagos to Maiduguri is 1,227km! Do the math. And the train stations (Shanghai and Beijing) are bigger than our biggest airport.
Why does Nigeria not have trains that can do long distances in comfort? I’m not even asking for a bullet train, just regular trains that work would do. Train stations that are functional, clean and comfortable.
Why does China have leaders and political leaders who through the years could conceive transportation systems that will take care of their growing population? How did they know that the country’s growing size means that traditional train would have to graduate to bullet trains? And our own leaders through the years have moved from what to what, good old train to rickety old train or what? Go on say it, Lagos has modern trains, now. Shame, should Lagos be the only state operating air-conditioned trains? How is ‘one-over-36’ a pass mark?
All these recollections are from seven years ago China. Imagine how many giant leaps that nation has taken since 2018.
Let us come back to the present and our doctors and health sector problems.
There is this man called Nwoke who is well endowed in between his legs in addition to his handsome face and physique. So, women swarm around him like bees around honey and he married many of them. We all thought since his harem is rich and colourful , he would stay at home and service them. But no, he left them hungry, unattended, sometimes halfway to paradise with unfulfilled promises. These women protested individually and as a group but their husband did not do his duties. He must have thought the women had no choice, no alternatives, after all he married them with his money, they are his wives! He soon found out to his pain and chagrin that any land left attended, uncultivated will be considered eventually a no-man’s land. Sturdy, focused and even more endowed men moved into this fallow land and started cultivating it vigorously, effectively, investing serious sweat and energy.
At first, Nwoke’s wives were going for service and returning home. Then they started attending more than one service. Then they attended vigils, seven-day vigils. Nwoke’s rivals were sweet and strong and consistent, so the women started leaving one after the other until only one wife is left in the big compound of Nwoke. He now has to pamper that remaining one because the poor woman is overworked in every sense of the word. She is constantly threatening to leave too.
Nwoke, that is Nigeria. Those neglected wives are Nigerian doctors, overworked and underpaid. Nigeria thought they had no alternatives. Nwoke’s rivals are the U.K, USA and all those other endowed nations who have ‘stolen’ our doctors and are still stealing more even as you read this.
According to a Bloomberg report, the US under the leadership of an energetic, well-endowed Trump has decided that ‘Doctors could be exempted from the new $100,000 fee for high-skilled US H-1B visa applications imposed by the Donald Trump administration. The application fees can be waived if the secretary of Homeland Security determines that the hiring of these workers on an individual basis, or to work for a specific company or industry is “in the national interest”. That ‘national interest ‘ proclamation will make room for ‘ poaching’ of professionals. Bloomberg report calls it ‘exemptions, which can include physicians and medical residents.’
Yes, while Nigeria was training doctors in their thousands with petrodollars, smarter nations have well-laid out plans to reap the fruits of my country’s labour because we are planless, full of excuses and explanations for why many things do not work.
The executive order which was released in September, 2025 according to the Bloomberg report showed that H-1B visa has served as a gateway for some of Nigeria’s brightest minds to enter the US workforce, acting as a crucial launchpad for building long-term careers in America.
Data from the US Citizenship and Immigration Services also revealed that tech, education, and medicine topped the list of careers where Nigeria was and is losing its best, brightest and most brilliant professionals to America and indeed other continents. In other words, while Nigeria was pretending that all was well, smarter nations were offering our doctors, nurses, teachers and tech gurus career growth opportunities and better lives.
Bloomberg information further showed that ‘Amazon secured more than 10,000 H-1B visas in the first half of 2025, while Microsoft and Meta Platforms had more than 5,000 approvals each. The programme allows for 65,000 visas annually, with an additional 20,000 for applicants with advanced degrees.’
And the most painful part: Nigeria was ranked 11th largest export of talents to the US and the number one in Africa.
Read that again. Nigeria is the 11th exporter of talents to the US and number one in Africa. Go on, let out the adjectives that come to your mind. Exporting talent is good and cool, in sane circumstances but not in this instance. The World Health Organisation recommends one doctor to 600 patients but in Nigeria it is one doctor to 9,038 patients! Who exports what is not enough at home? America knows that we are a people that sits on its thinking cap, so it decided to insert a clause in its visa policy that would ease our doctors’ right of passage into the American system. Love or hate him all you want, President Trump does not joke with America’s national interest.
What is the adjective for a country where doctors ‘japa’ in droves and nobody seems to be doing anything to encourage them to stay back or bring back those who left? Both can be done if we are serious but then, the same reason behind having a Sugar Development Council when we do not even have a sugar cane plantation is the reason why we are where we are.
Is it impossible to start with mouth-watering incentives to bring at least 100 consultants and Specialists back? Is it impossible to keep the ones still here happy and fulfilled? Is it impossible to get this simple task done even if we can’t build modern trains and good roads?
