Reported by: Oahimire Omone Precious | Edited by: Pierre Antoine
Nigeria has formally called for a new global framework to govern the migration of health professionals from developing countries, warning that the continued outflow of doctors, nurses and other skilled personnel is placing acute pressure on already overstretched health systems. The call was made by the Minister of State for Health and Social Welfare, Dr. Iziaq Adekunle Salako, during the 2026 United Kingdom Global Health Summit held at the Royal College of Physicians in London on 16 March.
Salako’s intervention was not framed as a general complaint about emigration. It was a structured argument that the current global model is skewed against lower-income countries that bear the cost of training health workers but then lose them to wealthier countries with stronger salaries, better working conditions and more stable health systems. In the minister’s telling, migration is compounding a wider Nigerian health-sector crisis already shaped by underfunding, infrastructure gaps and heavy out-of-pocket costs for patients.
The summit itself gave Nigeria an international platform for that message. According to the World Health Organization, the UK Global Health Summit convened ministers, diplomats and health-sector leaders around questions of system resilience, workforce pressures and global preparedness. Salako used that forum to argue that what is often described in Nigeria as “japa” is no longer just a domestic staffing issue but part of a broader global imbalance in how health labour is sourced and retained.
The strongest part of Nigeria’s case lies in the numbers and structural imbalance Salako cited. He said Africa carries more than a quarter of the world’s disease burden but has less than three per cent of the global health workforce and under one per cent of global health expenditure. He also said Nigeria’s physician-to-population ratio is about four doctors per 10,000 people, far below the World Health Organization’s recommended minimum benchmark of 10 per 10,000. Those figures were used to argue that continued unmanaged migration from countries like Nigeria is not neutral labour mobility but a direct threat to health-service delivery.
Salako’s remarks went beyond diagnosis into policy demands. He called for stronger international cooperation on ethical recruitment, fuller implementation of the WHO Global Code of Practice on the International Recruitment of Health Personnel, and more balanced bilateral arrangements between source and destination countries. He also pushed the idea that countries benefiting from imported health labour should support the systems that train those workers, rather than simply absorbing them without compensating for the resulting gaps.
That is where the phrase “new global framework” or “global compact” becomes important. Nigeria is not merely asking destination countries to slow down recruitment. It is asking for a rules-based model in which workforce mobility is managed in a way that recognises the rights of professionals to migrate, but also the obligations of richer systems not to hollow out poorer ones. Salako argued that the present pattern, where poorer countries invest in training and richer countries reap the service benefit, is unjust and strategically shortsighted.
He also broadened the discussion beyond migration alone. In his keynote address, Salako said Nigeria’s health workforce crisis is being worsened by persistent underinvestment, infrastructure deficits, demographic pressure, climate-linked health threats and the financial burden carried by households that pay directly for care. That framing matters because it shows the government is not presenting migration as the sole cause of the crisis. Rather, it is describing migration as an accelerant acting on a health system already under strain.
Another notable part of the speech was Nigeria’s effort to reposition diaspora engagement. Alongside criticism of unmanaged out-migration, the Federal Ministry of Information reported that Salako called for fuller integration of diaspora health assets into national and global health strategies. That suggests Nigeria is trying to move from a purely loss-based narrative to one that also treats the diaspora as a strategic asset for training, knowledge transfer, specialist missions and health-system collaboration.
The minister’s message also carried a security logic. He argued that weak health systems in developing countries are not just local tragedies but global vulnerabilities, because pandemics and other health emergencies do not respect borders. That line places Nigeria’s case within the wider international debate over preparedness: if poorer countries lose too much of their skilled workforce, the consequences can spill far beyond national boundaries.
What is verified from the currently available reporting is that Salako made the call in London, tied it explicitly to Nigeria’s health workforce crisis, invoked both ethical recruitment and fairer global arrangements, and linked the issue to wider pressures on the health system. What is not yet clear from the public record is whether any specific multilateral process has begun in response, or whether destination countries have signalled concrete support for the kind of compensation or managed-mobility model Nigeria is advocating. For now, the proposal remains a strong policy demand rather than a settled international initiative.
Stone Reporters note that the significance of the statement lies in its timing and tone. Nigeria is no longer treating the loss of health workers as an unfortunate side effect of globalisation. It is trying to redefine it as a governance issue requiring international rules. Whether that gains traction will depend on how willing wealthier countries are to accept that their staffing solutions may be worsening the fragility of the systems they recruit from.
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