The growing wave of Japa is leaving more than empty desks across Nigeria’s public relations industry. As experienced practitioners relocate, they take with them years of professional judgement, client knowledge, industry relationships and lessons from past crises, creating a widening gap in the institutional memory needed to sustain the profession.

Truly, a profession can survive a difficult economy, technological disruption and changing consumer behaviour. What is far harder to replace, however, is experience.

For Nigeria’s PR industry, that experience is increasingly walking out of the door,  as practitioners relocate in search of better opportunities, taking institutional knowledge, crisis management skills and professional relationships with them.

While public attention has largely focused on doctors, nurses, engineers, academics and technology professionals, the PR industry has also been losing practitioners responsible for managing reputations, understanding brands, navigating crises and preserving knowledge accumulated through years of practice.

More importantly, the consequence goes beyond a shortage of workers. It is the gradual weakening of the professional memory required to sustain the industry.

The Nigeria PR Report by BHM identified attracting and retaining the right talent as one of the major challenges facing the industry, with 70 percent of professionals having less than five years of work experience.

For a profession heavily dependent on accumulated knowledge, that figure is significant. PR practitioners learn not only through formal education but also through exposure to difficult clients, sensitive reputational issues, crises, stakeholder relationships and complex public conversations.

Consequently, when experienced practitioners leave, organisations are forced to rebuild knowledge that took years to acquire. Beyond recruitment costs, the BHM report noted that organisations spend time and resources recruiting, interviewing and training employees, only for trained professionals to leave with the experience they have gained.

More troublingly, agencies and corporate communication teams can lose something that is difficult to document: institutional memory. Experienced practitioners often carry knowledge of previous crises, stakeholder sensitivities, media relationships, regulatory expectations, client histories and organisational decisions. Such knowledge does not always sit in manuals or databases. Instead, it lives in people.

Once those people leave, organisations may lose the memory of why particular decisions were taken, how earlier crises were handled and which approaches succeeded or failed.

For an industry built around reputation, that memory remains a valuable professional asset. Across the wider marketing and communications industry, the skills challenge is equally evident.

A World Federation of Advertisers and MediaSense global study identified strategic thinking as the biggest talent gap, with 72 percent naming it as the number one talent shortage. Data strategy and execution followed at 46 percent, insight development at 36 percent and marketing fundamentals at 34 percent.

Additionally, 77 percent of organisations reported a scarcity of talent, rising to 85 percent among agencies. Within PR, the implication is clear. The industry increasingly needs judgement, strategic thinking, prioritisation, insight development and business understanding, abilities that are strengthened through experience.

Accordingly, the departure of seasoned practitioners can affect not only staffing levels but also the quality of professional counsel. Oti Ukubeyinje, Senior Vice President, Products, Terragon, recalled an experience while working at an agency where the departure of a data analyst created a gap that was never properly filled.

According to him, the team eventually began conducting data analysis without the professional expertise required, producing reports and insights that sometimes fitted the narrative they wanted clients to hear rather than what the data genuinely revealed.

That experience illustrates how the loss of a specialist can affect decision making. In modern PR, where research, data, measurement and audience insight increasingly shape communication strategies, losing professionals with specialised skills can weaken the advice provided to clients.

Beyond technical expertise, the consequences also reach mentorship. Younger practitioners need experienced professionals to guide them through client management, strategic planning, crisis communication, media relations and professional ethics. Once senior practitioners leave, that informal transfer of knowledge becomes harder.

As a result, the industry can find itself recruiting younger professionals while simultaneously losing some of the people best positioned to train and mentor them.

Uche Ugbor, Managing Director and Founder, Ark Technologies Group, described brain drain as one of the biggest challenges confronting employers.

“One of the biggest challenges now is the brain-drain syndrome; there is a massive ‘japa’ as we call it. The young people that are supposed to be doing the work are all leaving,” he said.

Furthermore, Ugbor said the situation has become particularly difficult for employers who invest in training young professionals only to see them prepare to relocate.

“It has become a worrisome challenge for every employer of labour, including myself, that every younger person working with you is definitely planning to leave for Canada or any other country,” he said.

Therefore, the challenge is not simply replacing employees. It is also about creating conditions that encourage professionals to build long term careers within Nigeria.

A 2024 KPMG survey cited better compensation abroad as the primary relocation motive for 72 percent of Nigerian professionals surveyed. Even so, compensation forms part of a wider calculation involving career development, security, professional exposure, quality of life and confidence in the future.

Against that backdrop, employer branding becomes increasingly important to the PR industry itself. Yomi Olaniwun, CMO, BB Buzz and former SO&U Head of Brand Management, argued that career development and opportunity influence the movement of creative professionals.

He noted that many agencies lack a strong culture of training their best hands, while professionals increasingly seek workplaces where they can see a future, learn from experienced people, expand their networks and access better opportunities.

Consequently, agencies are competing not only with foreign employers but also with startups, technology companies and other platforms offering alternative career paths.

Steve Babaeko, President of the Association of Advertising Agencies of Nigeria, AAAN, similarly highlighted the challenge created when employers invest in young professionals who subsequently leave.

“We are passionate about creating jobs and building businesses. Given the state of the country at the moment, now you have human capital issues, you train young people hoping that they can at least work for another 2-3 years, but next tomorrow they are on their way to Canada or somewhere else,” he said.

Babaeko added that insecurity and the wider economic environment are intensifying the problem, stressing that Japa extends beyond advertising and the creative industry.

“The japa situation is not exclusive to the creative and advertising industry as we all know; if you look at the tech space, they are hemorrhaging, the banking sector too is suffering. The healthcare system too is afflicted, the skilled population are leaving in droves,” he said.

That wider talent drain also affects PR because the profession operates within a larger communications ecosystem that includes marketing teams, media organisations, technology specialists, researchers, creatives and business leaders.

Whenever critical skills disappear from those sectors, PR also loses part of the environment needed to deliver effective communication.

For that reason, recruitment alone cannot solve the problem. The BHM report recommended stronger PR management education and called for clearer understanding of the profession, required skills and available career paths. Similarly, stronger mentorship, specialist training and deliberate documentation of institutional knowledge can help preserve expertise.

Employers, for their part, need to create workplaces where professionals can develop, earn fairly and see credible long term career paths. Anuoluwapo Popoola, SEO and Advent Stock Investor/Project Manager, also argued that employers should provide relevant training, improve employee development and consider compensation as economic pressures intensify.

At its core, therefore, the issue is one of sustainability. Every experienced practitioner who leaves represents more than a vacant position. The industry potentially loses a mentor, strategist, crisis manager, relationship builder, custodian of client history and repository of lessons learned through years of practice.

From the few “Andrews that were checking out” in the 1980s to today’s widespread Japa syndrome, the question has become harder to ignore: what happens to an industry when the people who remember its lessons are no longer there?

For public relations, protecting institutional memory must therefore become part of the response to the talent exodus.

Employers need stronger retention strategies, professional bodies need robust development programmes, institutions need better training, and experienced practitioners need to transfer knowledge deliberately to the next generation.

In the end, the most expensive consequence of Japa may not be the empty desk left behind. It may be the knowledge that disappears with the person who occupied it.

For a profession built on telling stories, the greatest loss may be reaching a point where fewer people remain who remember how the story began.