2025/10/03 by Mshelia, Isma'il
#Emigration #Fourth Republic #Nigerians #human security threats
paper · doi:10.82265/czzn-3797
As endemic poverty and unemployment continue to inflame terrorism, banditry, and other security challenges in the Nigerian Fourth Republic, the country is, much more than at any time since its civil war of the 1960s, facing existential threats. This paper analysed the threats which affect human security, undermine the country’s national objectives, and skyrocket japa—Nigeria’s slang for desperate emigration—with its attendant implications. Guided by emancipatory realism theory, the paper adopted a qualitative research approach to synthesise ideas and facts from a pool of published scholarly and experts’ discourses. The paper revealed that internal conflicts, corruption, inequality, and exclusion embody the human security threats that infect Nigerians with the japa syndrome. The paper further expounded how emancipatory politics could accelerate the achievement of human security in the country. Thus, the paper provides valuable insights on how to curtail the japa syndrome that is eating deep into the country’s most productive human resources, and by implication, its developmental potential.