Health-Worker Migration from Nigeria to the United Kingdom and the United States: Asymmetric Recruitment, Ethical Codes and African Health-System Resilience

Nigeria remains on the World Health Organisation (WHO) Health Workforce Support and Safeguards List, yet it has become one of Africa's principal sources of doctors and nurses for high-income health systems. This article undertakes a comparative, secondary-data assessment of recent migration of Nigerian-trained health professionals to the United Kingdom and the United States. Official regulator series, ministry statistics, the National Health Workforce Accounts, OECD mobility estimates and peer-reviewed cohort studies were synthesised for the period 2018–2026. The United Kingdom is the dominant destination for Nigerian doctors and a leading destination for nurses: the Nursing and Midwifery Council recorded 16,156 Nigeria-educated nurses and midwives on its register by 30 September 2025, while the General Medical Council series place Nigeria among the largest sources of internationally trained doctors. Destination composition differs by cadre. Canada, not the United States, absorbed the largest recorded flows of Nigerian pharmacists and laboratory scientists in 2023–2024, whereas the United States appears more prominent in selected nurse-flow estimates. Domestic density remains far below the WHO indicative threshold of 4.45 skilled health workers per 1,000 population. The UK Code of Practice formally prohibits active National Health Service recruitment from safeguards-list countries, but individual applications and social-care visas have continued to draw staff from Nigeria and Ghana. The United States lacks an equivalent statutory red-list ban. The findings support a shift from unenforceable ethical exhortation towards measurable compensation, bilateral training compacts and domestic retention finance. Without such instruments, African public systems will continue to underwrite workforce expansion in destination states.