JONAED

Labour mobility is a situation where skilled and unskilled labour migrate in search of greener pastures and is fast-tracked by regional integration, which involves national or international states forging co-operation, mutually beneficial relationship or common front to work together through exchange of ideas, knowledge, labour goods, services and technology. Education facilitates enhanced labour mobility and attracts higher returns in terms of wages which boosts personal status and national economy of both the sending and receiving countries. This study, using quantitative and descriptive methodology, examines the roles of education, and the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), a regional body, and education in labour mobility in West Africa with particular reference to Nigeria. The study finds out that level of education and professional specialization influence labour mobility; that labour mobility produces a win-win-win situation where the migrant, the sending and receiving countries each benefit from the movement and that despite these, it is fraught with dangers especially for the migrant who faces discrimination, underpayment and underemployment, expulsion and all forms of stigma and ill-treatment from the receiving countries. It also discovers that while regional integration bodies like ECOWAS were supposed to facilitate labour mobility through friendly laws and protocols by members of the regional bodies a lot still has to be done in liberalizing movement through more relaxed protocols. It recommends, among other things, that ECOWAS protocol and such other similar international protocols on free movement of persons, goods and services, should be exhaustively and comprehensively implemented by all member states to improve labour mobility.