Japa season (literally means to escape in Nigerian street lingo) is here again. And as it has been earlier predicted by a lot of reports on migration, thousands of young Nigerians with UK visas will be leaving the country in droves in search of better lives abroad.

According to a report released by the World Bank titled, “Of Roads Less Traveled : Assessing the Potential of Economic Migration to Provide Overseas Jobs for Nigeria’s Youth”, many Nigerian youths, despite “creating a vibrant and dynamic society within” are willing to leave the country in search of work, legal settlement and education.

While this looks easy in imagination, achieving relocation dream is difficult for Nigerians owing to many factors. It is against this backdrop that CareerEdu, an education technology platform, is simplifying the process of landing UK visas and hooking young Nigerians up to the right schools, the right jobs, through very cost effective means and an overall seamless process.

Over 31,000 members and more than 1,000 success stories

Founded “by accident” in October 2020, by a UK-based medical practitioner Kelvin Alaneme, CareerEdu was established as a reaction to the Nigerian government’s response to the shootings that brought the #EndSARS protest to a sudden end.

“I was angered by the government’s response to the protest, and made some Facebook posts stating that anyone who wanted to relocate should contact me for free information on how to do so. For the next 48 hours, I received about 500 messages inbox and responded to all,” Kelvin said on how the platform came to life.

But responding to each of those 500 messages was very exhausting. That was when Kelvin decided he needed a WhatsApp group to broadcast his knowledge and instructions. But what he didn’t envisage was that a WhatsApp group would be too small for the traffic he was about to experience.

“The group filled up in 2 hours,” he said. “But rather than create a second WhatsApp group, we decided to move to Telegram and in two days we had 2,000 members. Our Telegram group has over 31,000 members now. We also have a lot of members following us on various social media platforms.”

In its 22 months of operation, CareerEdu has deliberately tailored its services to helping young Nigerians succeed in their plans to relocate abroad, and because not everyone would relocate abroad, getting great jobs back home.

“In our 22 month of operation, our startup has helped over 1000 Nigerians get Visas to the UK. This is a conservative estimate we got from the poll we took on the group and the cumulative feedback we got from persons who have used our services,” the founder said.

How CareerEdu works

CareerEdu provides guidance for young Nigerians who wish to travel abroad for study to get study Visas (Tier-4 Visas in the UK). It also helps those relocating for work with guidance on how to get work Visas (Tier 2 Visa in the UK). Kelvin talks more about these classes of visa as well as why Nigerians should be exempted from IELTS in this BBC interview.

The facilitators on the CareerEdu platform share free information on the step-by-step approach of landing a Masters admission in the UK. This is more like a do-it-yourself service.

But for users who can’t do it themselves, the platform has its Premium Masters Service and the Premium PhD service which they can subscribe for. This is a done-for-you service which helps the users to directly obtain the admissions they seek.

CareerEdu also has a Care Job Pathway Service which has proven to be very effective at helping people find jobs and relocate to the UK to work as Healthcare Assistants. Through this service, the platform prepares applicants to improve their chances of landing employment by inserting them into job pools, helping them prepare for interviews and generally providing guidance till they land job offers.

“Many of our members have applied these steps, gotten UK visas and are currently in the UK. While many of them are students, a good number of the persons we have helped to relocate are those who came for work such as doctors, nurses and most recently healthcare assistants,” Kelvin said.

Aside from the Premium Masters Service, Care Job Pathway Service and Premium PhD Service, CareerEdu also has other paid services to help serve the community like its IELTS Masterclass and its Premium Visa Application Service. Most recently, CareerEdu has launched its Australian services aimed at helping Nigerians secure both undergraduate and postgraduate admissions in Australia.

Helping prospective UK visa applicants cut cost

One of the major challenges facing the average Nigerian UK visa applicant is cost. From visa application cost to processing fees, tuition, flight fees and even accommodation, relocating abroad for study or work is capital intensive. But CareerEdu has various programmes aimed at helping the prospective applicant to cut costs up to half.

Its Premium Masters and Premium PhD services, for instance, are designed to help applicants get very affordable schools with flexible tuition plans. This is all-so-important especially for study
visa applicants because it can greatly reduce the upfront costs of relocation.

“Our Premium services are super-affordable as we do not want finances to stop people from chasing their dreams. At the moment, we don’t give out loans. But we have a financial product in the works that will help ease survival for students who have relocated,” the founder said.

CareerEdu is currently in touch with some homeowners in the UK to find affordable accommodation for young Nigerians coming to the UK. This is to help provide some degree of soft landing for them as they come. Because sometimes, efficient planning for traveling abroad involves earning a good income back in Nigeria, CareerEdu also helps young Nigerians find gainful employment back home. It does this through its ‘Hot Naija Jobs’ section on its website.

The startup posts between 10 to 15 jobs every day from genuine vacancies sent directly to it from employers and recruiters around the country.

Aside from its Telegram group, the education technology platform also has a website. It also recently launched an app which is an extension of its website. The app is currently available only on Android. The iOS version will be launched in the near future.

Saving the country from the fence: A note of assurance from our founder, Kelvin Alaneme

People often ask if we are not worried about Nigeria’s brain drain because of the nature of work that we do at CareerEdu. Their worry is that if our best talents and professionals all leave, who will be left to build the country? My response has always been the same – CareerEdu is securing Nigeria’s future. We are saving the country from the outside and I’ll tell you how.

One of Nigeria’s most important resources happens to also be its most neglected: human resource. Nigeria has a vibrant, energetic, and resourceful young population— 70% of the country’s population is below 29 years old. But what have we done with this teeming population
of potentially productive youths? Absolutely nothing!

The country has failed in providing them the basic resources that guarantee productivity. There is a total lack of skills acquisition and development programmes. And even when they manage to learn skills, they aren’t empowered enough to earn a living with those skills.

The country has some of the worst quality of tertiary education in the world. University education has also been stifled in the country with numerous ASUU strikes, the latest now entering its sixth month. Nigeria’s futures are languishing at home, left entirely idle and subject
to societal elements.

Even when they manage to graduate, there is an abject lack of quality jobs that will empower them to support themselves, not to talk of dependents. Nigeria’s unemployment rate is at its highest ever, with 33% of our potential workforce left with no work. As of the end of 2020,
youth unemployment stood at 53.40%.

All this is even as the economy continues to collapse with Nigeria’s human capital development ranking among the worst globally according to the World Bank. Inflation is at a 17-year high of 19.54% and the Naira continues its free fall making sure that the value of cash in hand continues to diminish quite alarmingly.

One of the key things propping up our failing economy besides the returns from oil (most of which is stolen and unaccounted for) is diaspora remittances. These are funds that Nigerians abroad send back home to their families. Diaspora remittances to Nigeria hit $19.2bn in 2021.

Note that this figure only captures funds transferred through formal money transfer channels. Other informal means like crypto, direct cash transfers etc are not factored in and according to the IMF, they are 50% the size of the formal transfers.

Diaspora remittance is a major reason more Nigerian families have not been plunged into poverty. It is the lifeline of most persons, especially those whose relatives are abroad. For a nation with broken institutions and systems, some salvation will have to come from the outside.

With western countries bogged down with their own problems to offer aid to African countries and our leaders running out of loan sources, there is only one way left to save this nation from the outside – increase our diaspora remittances.

But how do we go about that? By exporting our human resources— doctors, nurses, engineers, tech developers. This is where our job at CareerEdu is crucial because we provide a launchpad for global opportunities for young Nigerians, helping them to acquire the global skills and financial independence that will be needed in the future to save Nigeria’s soul.

How do we prevent brain drain while at it? The answer is simple. Invest massively in education so that we can produce more doctors, nurses, engineers, graduates. ASUU strikes should be a thing of the past because the longer our students stay home, the more potential we rob ourselves of.

Massive investment in education and exporting our human resources to the global market is the key for Nigeria to stay competitive in the 21st century and stop going bowl in hand begging for handouts or taking bad loans out of desperation.

India, another country with a massive population, has executed this to perfection. They made a massive investment in education, especially in medicine and engineering. Today, India is renowned for exporting human resources to the US and UK with many Fortune 500 companies
headed by Indian CEOs.

Like Nigeria, the Indian culture is family-centric and diaspora remittances from these human resources abroad are huge.

This is our dream at CareerEdu: to amass an army of young, globally-prominent Nigerians who are not only making valuable contributions on the world stage but can make significant contributions towards saving our country— not just through diaspora remittances, but also
through a vast array of other means.

Registered in both Nigeria and the UK, and with an active membership of over 31,000 people on its Telegram platform, CareerEdu is one of the biggest relocation platforms in Nigeria. It has helped more than 1,000 young Nigerians secure UK visas in less than 2 years of operation.

The goal is for liberated individuals to join hands not only in liberating others, but also in building viable systems and institutions.

This is how we save Nigeria from the outside