R-L: Prince Akinwale, African Diaspora Institute (left): Publisher of the African Courier Magazine and Director, Media Enlightenment Program for Nigeria, Femi Awoniyi: Deputy Controller of the Nigerian Immigration Service, Mrs Sadat Hassan, and Director, African – Germany- information Centre (AGiC) and Chairman of the Nigerian in Diaspora, Hon. Keneth Gbandi , during the lunching of Migration enlightenment project/ press Conference in Lagos recently. Photo: Peace Udugba
By Nkerumwen Cosmas, Lasgos
Nigerian youths who travel illegally abroad in search of the proverbial greener pastures face such difficulties that only them can testify, with the country suffering from the twin blows of brain drain and damage to its reputation.
This was the conclusion of guest speakers and participants at a recent event to raise awareness of the risks and dangers of irregular immigration by Nigerian youths to Europe.
Speakers who included Mrs Sadat Hassan, a Deputy Controller, Nigeria Immigration Service. Honourable Rita Orji, Chairman, House of Representatives Committee on Diaspora, Mr Kenneth Gbandi, President of Nigeria in the Diaspora organisation and Mr Femi Awobiyi, Publisher of African Courier in Germany, took their turns to narrate experiences and enlighten the participants who were mostly young men and women on the pros and cons of illegal immigration. The event held at the Centre For Management and Development, CMD, Ikeja, Lagos.
In her contribution, Mrs Hassan who was Head of Immigrations at the Nigerian Embassy in Berlin, Germany, for six years said illegal immigration was an unknown death sentence awaiting anyone who embarks on it.
She said: “By virtue of my position then, I issued passports to Nigerians leaving in Germany, foreigners coming to Nigeria and handled general immigration matters like deportation. The one I do not enjoy at all is the third one. The reason is because every time I had to meet with the German police to handle pathetic cases involving our youths. I do not usually use pain killers, but when the cases became regular, I had to, it became an emotional matter for me, may be because I am a mother”.
Illegal immigration and related woes has been attracting global concern following the hazards and increasing deaths of thousands of illegal immigrants, particularly the officially declared 2,500 persons for this year who drowned in the Mediterranean Sea while attempting to ferry across of rickety boats after surviving the horrendous trip across the desert between Niger and Libya.
Only recently, President Macron of France held a meeting with his Nigerien, Burkina Faso and Malian counterparts in an attempt to find lasting solution to the problem, which the receiving points in Spain and Italy have alerted the world to its dangers and erected tough legal barriers against.
Explaining further, Sadat said all illegal immigrants were without exception a victim of ignorance about the opportunities they were leaving behind in the country and the fake picture of a rosy life awaiting them at the European countries of illegal immigration.
“Believe you me I have seen it all. It is too pathetic to narrate and only those involved can feel the pain and bear with the sorrow because of the shame to talk about it”
She said that the effects posed to illegal immigrants ranged from destitution to ill health and lack of self-esteem.
“In Germany one of the conditions for getting your papers was to marry their citizens. Because of this many of our boys started jumping from one woman to the other in order to get them impregnated and marry, yet I saw many of them coming down with HIV/AIDS. “Also because you are an illegal immigrant the possibility of being framed for crimes like rape was high.”
She said all her attempts to persuade many to return home usually failed because they could not bear the shame of been considered failures back home.
Mrs Sadat drew sustained laughter and applause when she narrated the case of a young Nigerian girl whom the German police had arrested for 36 times for prostitution .
“When I offered to pay her fair back home, she merely said, ‘Make I work small’.
But there were a few, according to her, who were courageous enough to come forward to take such offers when the going got too tough and ‘I facilitated their trip back home.’
“ But many who had sold land, cars, houses and abandoned good jobs in the banks and even the police to come there and found a completely different picture, felt too humiliated to make the change. I knew a lady Assistant Superintendent of Police. She was too broken to take the decision to come back. A lot of Nigerian youths are suffering there. That is the truth. It is the same all over Europe.”
Honourable Rita Orji
Adding her voice to Sadat’s revelation, Honourable Rita Orji, disclosed her personal and familial frustrations tied to issues of illegal immigration to buttress her points.
Orji who encouraged many of the youths present at the occasion to seek legal immigration in preference to illegal trip if they must travel, however cautioned that leaving one’s country of origin to search abroad for the “so called el dorado”, is illusive and also has its daunting challenges as well.
“My daughter schooled in the United States and passed in flying colours but when it came to getting a suitable job for which she passed the tests and interviews, after her graduation, she was reminded of her nationality and skin colour. They suddenly realised she was a Nigerian and told her the job was reserved for their citizens. The story of my son is even more embarrassing. He is a student in the UK, holds a two- year USA visa, two-year visa of France. Yet when he wanted to travel to Austria through the transit Paris route, he was detained by the French authorities on the grounds that he had insufficient money. I wanted to travel there and tell to get him into the next available flight to Nigeria. This is the kind of horrors Nigerians who even travel legally go through everyday, let alone those who have no papers.”
She disclosed that there about 32,000 Nigeria asylum seekers in Europe and regretted some of the desperate actions taken by the youths to achieve their ignoble plans. “Many Nigerians travel under false nationality but when they are caught, they disclose their true nationality and start running to seek for help. What help can I render such a person?”
She called for the need for more enlightenment for the youths and parents who were in the habit of encouraging their children to embark on the hazardous trip in order to satisfy their quest for material things.
Earlier, one of the organisers of the campaign, Mr Gbandi who is the President of the 5,000 membership strong Nigeria in the Diaspora Organisation, said the group would sustain the campaign to bring a stop to the undue sufferings and avoidable deaths of manyNigerian illegal immigrants abroad and look for ways to assist those wiling and qualified to travel legally to exploit their talents and skills.
For Mr Awoniyi, Head of the Media team of the enlightenment project, “the media awareness campaign, captioned ‘Look before you Leave’, is designed to educate would-be immigrants in Nigeria about the realities of the journey to Europe.
“The nation is poorer for it in many ways as it needlessly loses citizens who otherwise should be agents of national development to irregular migration. Moreover, irregular immigration damages the national reputation as well as causes a backlash against illegal migration from sender countries”
He urged the youths to think deeper as their are ‘positive alternatives to emigration in Nigeria such as learning technical trades in , for example, practical skills in solar technology, that can lead to lucrative paid employment and self-employment’.
