Daniel Bwala, Special Adviser to President Bola Tinubu on Policy Communication, said Nigerians earning modest wages at home are better off than many who emigrated abroad. He made the remark during an interview on The Morayo Podcast Show on Wednesday.
Bwala said many Nigerians with Masters and Ph.D degrees now work menial jobs abroad, including house care and warehouse keeping. He told listeners who feel they are suffering at home that they are ahead of colleagues who left the country five years ago.
“Some of you Nigerians, who think you are suffering, you are better off than your colleagues that travelled out five years ago,” Bwala said. He added that he is a UK resident himself and described the outcome for many graduates who move there as troubling.
Bwala said a Nigerian who graduates with a first class or second class degree often moves to the UK, adds another qualification, and still ends up working at a care home. He called the arrangement a form of modern day slavery. He said the work amounts to less than domestic help, since a house help cannot perform some of the tasks care workers handle.
The remark echoes a separate account from Upshot Reports, which quoted Bwala describing the trend using the popular Nigerian term for emigration, japa. In that account, he said most Nigerians who left the country five years ago now work in care homes and called the situation modern day slavery.
Nigeria’s national minimum wage stands at N70,000 monthly. Lagos State pays a higher floor of N85,000, and Imo State pays N104,000. An earner on N60,000 sits below the federal minimum, which raises questions about which income bracket Bwala had in mind when he made the comparison.
Household budget reporting paints a tighter picture still. A modest family of four needs between N650,000 and N750,000 monthly to cover rent, food, and school fees in Nigeria’s major cities. Many formal sector workers earn well below that figure, pushing households toward second and third income streams to close the gap.
The World Bank estimates that 129 million Nigerians live below the poverty line, roughly N137,000 monthly. An earner on N60,000 falls well under that threshold too, a detail that complicates Bwala’s framing of local earners as comparatively secure.
Bwala’s comments fit a broader pattern of public statements defending the Tinubu administration’s economic performance. In June, he told Arise Television that Nigeria’s revenue cannot match its population size of more than 230 million people, which he said explains why growth feels slow to ordinary citizens.
In April, Bwala cited International Monetary Fund projections showing Nigeria’s economy was expected to grow faster in 2026 than the United States, United Kingdom, and Germany. He credited the outlook to the administration’s reform agenda.
Critics have consistently pushed back on these comparisons, arguing that headline growth figures and international rankings do not reflect what households actually experience at the till. Bwala has maintained that the reforms are built for long term stability rather than immediate relief.
Neither Daily Post Nigeria nor other outlets covering the podcast interview cited a specific N60,000 figure in Bwala’s direct quotes. The comparison to that wage level appears to be a shorthand summary circulating around the interview rather than a number Bwala stated outright. Readers should treat the exact figure with some caution until the full interview transcript is reviewed.
What is confirmed is Bwala’s core message: Nigerians earning modest wages at home should not assume emigrants are better off, given the working conditions many face in UK care homes. Whether that comparison holds up once UK care sector wages and living costs are weighed against Nigerian minimum wage and inflation data remains an open question for further reporting.
