Nigerians spend over $1.5bn on foreign junkets during the first six months of 2023

NIGERIANS spent a total of $1.58bn on foreign personal matters over the first six months of 2023 with health tourism and foreign education gulping up a huge amount of foreign exchange according to figures just released by the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN).

Data just published by the bank in its Balance of Payment compilation spanning the first six months of 2023 showed that Nigerians spent $245.68m on overseas health-related issues, $896.09m on foreign education and $434.63m on other personal foreign needs. In an explanatory note titled, Note D, the CBN defined balance of payments as a systematic record of economic and financial transactions for a given period between residents of an economy and non-residents.

Medical tourism and foreign education have continued to put pressure on foreign exchange demand in the country, according to experts. Poor health infrastructure has been cited as one of the reasons why Nigerians travel abroad for proper health services.

Dr Obinna Ogbonna, the national vice chairman of the Joint Health Sector Unions, said: “Nigerians who are well-to-do lack confidence in our medical facilities. Even though we have well-trained personnel that can handle all medical cases, the infrastructure and the equipment are not adequate.

“They prefer to spend their money abroad but when they get there, it is still Nigerian doctors that will attend to them. We hope President Bola Tinubu will make our health centres attractive by putting up standard infrastructures and equipment that are up-to-date with the current emerging diseases ravaging the country.”

Nigeria is making moves to reverse the trend of medical tourism amidst declining revenues and a bill seeking to prescribe a jail term of seven years and, or a fine of N500m recently passed a second reading in the House of Representatives. According to Professor Aminu Muhammad, the president of the Medical and Dental Consultants Association of Nigeria, the best time to reverse the trend of medical tourism is now.

Professor Muhammed said: “The government and the medical practitioners can reverse the trend. You know that the affordability of people travelling will be restricted to a few people because of the rising exchange rate, so the best time to reverse the trend is now, everybody wants the forex to be okay and now is the best opportunity to do so.”

Recently, the federal government allocated N1.33trn ($1.46bn) to the health sector in its 2024 budget, a 23.15%  increase from the N1.33trn the sector got in 2023. In 2022, Nigerians spent about $1.01bn on foreign education, representing a 40.36% increase from the $720.05m that was spent in 2021.

Nigerians migrating for education has become a new norm considering the sorry state of the country’s economy and security situation. Recently, an Open Doors Report, published by the Institute of International Education, revealed that the number of Nigerian students studying in the US rose to 17,640 in the 2022/23 academic session from 14,438 in the 2021/2022 session.