There was a time when migration was a dream whispered in hostels, church youth meetings, and on Twitter threads about “japa plans.” It was a conversation of hope, a promise of better systems, stable light, and a government that worked. But for many Nigerian youths today, migration has become more than a dream. It has become an exodus, a quiet evacuation of minds, hearts, and relationships that once formed the fabric of our lives.
In 2015, leaving the country was a choice. In 2025, it feels like survival.
Every week, another friend leaves. Some go quietly, afraid of attracting attention before their visa is stamped. Others post a final airport selfie with captions like “We move!” or “Next chapter.” Those who remain behind clap and comment “Proud of you, bro,” but later sit in silence, feeling something sink inside them, not jealousy, not bitterness, but an awareness that another piece of their world has gone missing.
Migration, for all its promise, has quietly become one of the most painful social disruptions of this generation. It has stretched friendships across time zones, replaced touch with text messages, and turned relationships that once felt like home into distant echoes. The Nigerian youth is learning that love and loyalty were never built to survive eight-hour differences and unpredictable Wi-Fi.
Friendship, in the age of migration, now happens through screens. Group chats that once buzzed with laughter now struggle to stay alive. Someone in Canada is asleep while another in Lagos is just getting off work. Birthdays are celebrated with virtual toasts, and people attend weddings through Instagram Live. The warmth of shared presence: the hugs, the inside jokes, the spontaneous meetups, has been replaced by emojis and delayed voice notes.
It is not that the friendships die immediately; they fade slowly. First comes the adjustment to new routines, then the excuses — “I’ve been so busy with work,” “The time difference makes it hard,” “Let’s catch up soon.” Before long, people who once spoke daily now struggle to hold a five-minute call. The bond doesn’t end with a fight; it simply dissolves under the weight of distance.
Romantic relationships fare even worse. Migration exposes love to tests it was never trained to pass. Couples who once shared everything now live in separate realities. One partner sends voice notes from a snow-covered street while the other replies from a noisy danfo. Calls are scheduled, texts are misread, and gradually, intimacy gives way to politeness. Many have discovered that love, no matter how strong, cannot thrive without presence.
For some, the pain is deeper, not just because they were left behind, but because migration has redefined what it means to build a future together. A person you once imagined a life with can now be halfway across the world, beginning a new chapter that no longer includes you. It is not betrayal; it is a matter of geography. But knowing that doesn’t make it easier.
The emotional toll of migration on Nigerian youth is often ignored because it is silent. We celebrate the successes (the visa approvals, the new jobs, the snow pictures), but rarely talk about the grief that comes with losing entire communities.
Every departure is a small funeral, not of death, but of shared time. The person still exists, but not here, not in the spaces where they once mattered.
Young Nigerians are grieving in group chats, on TikTok, and in the quiet moments after seeing yet another “I made it” post. They are grieving the friendships that used to fill their weekends, the cousins who no longer return for Christmas, the lovers whose love couldn’t survive delayed replies. It is a collective mourning, disguised as congratulations.
The worst part is that everyone understands. Nobody blames those who leave, because everyone wants to leave too. Migration has become the new metric of success. Those who stay behind are often seen as either unlucky or unambitious, as though endurance were failure. So people pretend not to feel abandoned. They repost farewell pictures with smiling emojis, even when their hearts ache.
This unspoken pressure is reshaping emotional life in Nigeria. Friendships are becoming temporary, relationships fragile, and commitment conditional. People hesitate to love deeply because everyone is preparing to leave. The question is no longer “Do we love each other?” but “Can this survive immigration?”
Love, which once required patience and communication, now requires visas and international flight tickets.
But the tragedy is not just personal; it is communal. The social networks that once sustained the Nigerian youth are losing members faster than they can adapt. Talented people leave, and those left behind must rebuild from fragments.
Communities become unstable because friendships no longer last long enough to form the trust needed for progress. Even activism, once fueled by collective anger and proximity, is harder to sustain when half the organizers are now abroad tweeting solidarity from a distance.
The Nigerian youth is learning to live with emotional displacement. You can remain physically present in Lagos, but all your friends are in London, Toronto, and Houston. You wake up to their stories, laugh at their new lives, and yet feel strangely invisible in theirs.
Migration has not only scattered people across the world; it has fractured the rhythm of togetherness that once gave life meaning.
Yet, beneath the loneliness, there is understanding. People are not leaving out of greed or pride; they are leaving because the country has made staying unbearable. When jobs vanish, when degrees lose value, when safety becomes a privilege, the mind begins to look elsewhere. Migration becomes a form of hope, the only way to breathe again.
And so, those who remain do not resent the ones who leave. They simply mourn them quietly. They scroll through old pictures, replay old memories, and hold on to the idea that maybe, one day, everyone will find their way back.
But the truth is harsh: many of those who left will never return. Not out of choice, but because life will build new roots around them. Children will be born, mortgages signed, and the rhythm of another land will take hold. The “home” they left will slowly become memory.
This is the reality Nigerian youth are grappling with, a generation bound by love but divided by survival. They are learning to maintain friendships that stretch across oceans and to love people who exist only on screens. They are redefining what connection means in a world that keeps scattering them.
And somehow, despite it all, they keep hoping, that in this era of migration, love and friendship can still find new forms. That distance does not have to mean disappearance. That even as Nigeria empties itself of its brightest, the ties that bind its people might yet find a way to endure.
Because what migration has taken in proximity, perhaps time will return in memory. And maybe, years from now, when the noise of survival fades, we will look back and realize that even in separation, we were still together, just differently.
Samuel Aina