Who wants to Japa, why and where? Developmental idealism, migration aspirations, and destination choice among Nigerian youth

This study investigates how young Nigerians evaluate development and how such evaluations relate to migration intentions and destination preferences. Although economic hardship, unemployment, and other structural constraints are important drivers of migration aspirations, they do not fully explain why individuals imagine specific destinations as desirable. Drawing on the concept of developmental idealism, the study examines whether respondents’ perceptions of Nigeria’s developmental standing are associated with their intention to leave and whether perceived development shapes destination choice. The analysis uses original survey data collected through two complementary surveys of educated Nigerian youth. The pooled dataset contains 835 respondents, of whom 729 aged 15–35 constitute the analytic sample. The analysis combines binary models of migration intention with an alternative-specific conditional logit model of destination choice, allowing the study to examine both respondent-level migration intentions and destination-level developmental evaluations. Higher ratings of Nigeria’s development are negatively associated with migration intention in the logistic model (OR = 0.941, p = 0.047), although the corresponding probit estimate is borderline (AME = − 0.0059, p = 0.052). Among respondents who expressed an intention to leave, perceived destination development is strongly associated with destination choice: each one-point increase in a destination’s development rating is associated with approximately 20% higher odds of selection (OR = 1.198, p < 0.001). The findings suggest that developmental perceptions are more consistently associated with where Nigerian youth want to migrate than with the binary decision of whether to leave. The study extends emerging research linking developmental idealism and migration by examining both origin and destination evaluations in the Nigerian japa context.