Countless Nigerians are dying almost daily in the Sahara Desert beyond Nigeria’s northern borders and in the Mediterranean Sea north of the desert. These are part of the large numbers of Nigerians who, in total desperation, are attempting these days to flee to Europe from the hopelessness of Nigeria. Many are those who have become tired of standing on line fruitlessly and endlessly for visas at foreign visa offices, or those who are downright unable to put together even the little money needed for application for any visas, or those who hear of some other persons who have made it to Europe through this enormously dangerous route and who believe that they too will be lucky, or those who are influenced by equally desperate and ignorant friends to jump at what they believe to be a viable option but is essentially a jump into the hands of death.
The news of this disaster that is consuming countless citizens of our country never fails to come these days. Stories of groups of Nigerians and other Africans getting stranded in some small oases in the desert are common. So are stories of groups perishing on the desert sand, or in poor, out-of-the-way and isolated oasis. Quite commonly, guides who contract to take groups across the desert are not as informed about the desert conditions as they claim to be; and, in such cases, the groups are simply defrauded of the money they collect among them to pay the guides. It is not uncommon for parents at home in Nigeria to suddenly receive telephone calls from unknown persons from some strange place in the desert, with demands for more money for their son or daughter who is said to need more money to get on further beyond a point in the desert.
Some months ago, members of a family in my large extended family suddenly called me in the night to tell me, in great agony, that their daughter was in the Sahara Desert somewhere, and that they had not known until a telephone call from the desert that she had left Lagos where she had been living. It was a sad and scary development. Through a long chain of connections, we managed to contact the office of a Nigerian agency that was handling such matters. By and by, we learnt of a Nigerian woman who is located in the said agency abroad, and who has been doing very excellent work in finding and extricating some of the Nigerians who get themselves enmeshed in this terrible, and potentially deadly, mess.
But only a very few ever get so lucky as to be successfully traced, retrieved, and sent back home to Nigeria. As for the rest, a few do make it to Europe – there to find themselves in a life with countless, and mostly harrowing, possibilities; many never make it to Europe, but perish in the desert or in the sea.
A few days ago, the Nigerian media reported on the same day two stories in this tragedy. One story was about some 140 Nigerians who were rescued in the deserts of Libya and brought back home to Nigeria. These 140 are part of the minority who, from time to time, get lucky. The other story on the same day was about 26 young Nigerian women whose dead bodies were delivered to Italian authorities by a boat that had crossed the Mediterranean Sea from the North African coast.
The instances are not infrequent of large numbers of people dying on boats that do make it across the Mediterranean Sea. In such cases, no information is usually available about the circumstances leading to the mass deaths. There is no information available about the mass deaths of the 26 Nigerian women of a few days ago.
Much larger numbers of people are known to be dying by drowning in the Mediterranean. The causes of the drowning are fairly easy to tell. The boats that carry the desperate immigrants across the sea are smugglers’ boats. Most of these boats are poor in condition, and also poor in the quality of their crews. And, for the voyage across the sea, they are almost always grossly overloaded – because very many immigrants from Sub-Saharan Africa and even parts of the Middle East are desperate and rushing to reach Europe, while the smugglers are eager to collect as much in fares as possible. The boats therefore often run into trouble, or sometimes even break up or capsize, on the high sea, resulting in the drowning of many people.
There have been reports of smugglers packing people in the holds meant for cargo, holds where no humans are supposed to be carried. And there have been reports of people suffocating and dying in such holds. Could it be that this is what happened to the 26 Nigerian women whose dead bodies arrived in Italy a few days ago on a Spanish war boat? Were the officials of the war boat engaging in some share of the human smuggling business, or had they merely offered the good service of collecting dead and living immigrants from distressed boats on the high sea and bringing them to the nearest port in Italy?
It was reported that the boat brought the dead bodies of the Nigerian women in its refrigerated holds, and that there were as many as 375 smuggled immigrants abroad the boat. Italian officials are reported to have promised a thorough investigation of this horrid story, and there have been indications of suspicion that the women might have been sexually abused and then killed on the voyage across the Mediterranean Sea. However, as has commonly happened in the past, the world is likely to hear no more about this whole incident.
The Nigerian media reported this past Tuesday that the federal government intends to evolve policy to curb illegal migration of Nigerians to other countries. Naturally, every patriotic Nigerian would welcome even this bare intention, in the hope that some welcome direction will soon emerge in this situation. The development involving continual deaths of large numbers of Nigerians in the Sahara Desert and the Mediterranean Sea has long deserved the most serious attention of our federal government. It dehumanizes countless Nigerians on a regular basis, and it casts deep aspersions on our country’s image – and even on our country’s presumption of itself as a viable country in the word.
So, we look eagerly to see our federal government’s policy. We Nigerians must all hope that it will not take the form that our federal government’s policies have tended to take in recent years in response to serious social situations – the direction of resorting to authoritarianism, of calling out the military, and of supporting all these with grand statements of threats, of drawing red lines in the sand – and of ludicrously claiming that change had been thus achieved.
No. Such directions will not work. What we have here is a very serious socio-economic and ethical malaise, with very deep roots not only in the poverty that our rulers have foisted upon us as a country, but also in the pattern of relationships that predominates over our country. The tap root of it is the poverty – deep and hopeless poverty. But the general atmosphere of mutual hostility and hatred among Nigerian peoples is a major strand of the roots. Large numbers of our youths cannot see how they belong in this country. Many psychologically regret being born in Nigeria, and are prepared to take even the most manifestly dangerous steps to get out. Many of these young people do hear the stories of the frequent death and ruin on the Saharan and Mediterranean path out of Nigeria, but that does not deter them from trying that route. A wise country would not threaten such people or set up measures for constraining or coercing them. Fundamental changes are needed to convince these people that their country and the rulers of their country love all its citizens and all its peoples, that the topmost government of their country is not there by conquest but by love, that such love holds out some hope of general change and improvement, and that, even though the poverty is yielding only slowly, Nigeria is nevertheless a home and a heritage worthy to hold on to. For Nigeria to have any chance of making it in the world, this kind of new direction must plainly begin to evolve.
