Death in search of the Golden Fleece

 

I like to read for pleasure in my spare time. In the last few weeks, I read two books, back to back, from my library. Incidentally, both books have the same theme which is the irregular migration of our youths to greener pastures. The phenomenon, which is now known by the street parlance ‘japa’, has assumed a frightening dimension. The first book I read on this phenomenon is titled “Daughter in Exile” by a Ghanaian author, Bisi Adjapon.  The second is titled “Tent 59”, authored by Ifeanyi Ajaegbo, a Nigerian.

In the first book, Lola, a 21-year-old daughter of a Ghanaian High Court Judge had a stint working in Senegal where she met a Black American Marine named Armand who impregnated her and made plans for her to go and give birth to their child in the United States. Things went awry as Armand abandoned Lola to her fate in America and she had to go through a decade of harrowing experience as a single mother before she was able to have her stay in the US regularised. The main character in “Tent 59” is a young lad from Port Harcourt who fled home in search of the ‘Golden Fleece’ in Europe. As the saying goes, “Between the promise and the promised land, there is a wilderness.” Zino and his friend Mado went through the Israelite journey of being smuggled through the Sahara Desert and Mediterranean Sea en route Island of Lampedusa in Italy. While Zino survived all the odds to arrive in Europe, his friend, Mado, was not lucky as he died when their pontoon boat capsized on the Mediterranean.

My further research on the issue of migration showed that migration is not illegal as many of us leave our ancestral homes to resettle elsewhere. The motive for migrating could be for economic, political, social, security, diplomatic or cultural reasons. For instance, as the war rages between Israel and Palestine, Ukraine and Russia, as well as the fratricidal war in Sudan, many will flee their ancestral homes into some more secure countries. This creates the problem of refugees and Internally Displaced Persons.

As the cost of living crises bite harder across the globe, many people are bound to flee to other countries in search of greener pastures or the Golden Fleece. That’s why a lot of Nigerians are leaving the country in droves. A number of family and friends have left the country despite having what to do in the country. Those who ‘japa’ from Nigeria are in two categories. There are those who legitimately left. These include those who win the visa lottery or highly skilled migrants. It is no news that many of our university lecturers and medical personnel are being recruited to legitimately work abroad. The New Telegraph reported on August 22, 2022, had a story that read, “Brain drain hits Nigerian banks as tech experts, others resign in droves.”

I am not seriously worried about those who legally and legitimately relocated abroad. My concern is about those who have to dare the odds of traversing the Sahara Desert and the Mediterranean Sea all because they want a better life for themselves in Europe. The International Organisation for Migration defines irregular migration as the “movement that takes place outside the regulatory norms of the sending, transit and receiving country.” A migrant in an irregular situation may fall within one or more of the following circumstances: He or she may enter the country irregularly, for instance with false documents or without crossing at an official border crossing point; he or she may reside in the country irregularly, for instance, in violation of the terms of an entry visa/residence permit; or he or she may be employed in the country irregularly, for instance he or she may have the right to reside but not to take up paid employment in the country.”

Irregular migration is otherwise called illegal, undocumented, unauthorised and clandestine migration. The IOM documented 686 deaths and disappearances of migrants on the US-Mexico border in 2022, making it the deadliest land route for migrants worldwide on record. Nearly half (307) of the deaths on the US-Mexico border were linked to the hazardous crossing of the Sonoran and Chihuahuan deserts, far more than other desert regions where irregular migration is prevalent. At least 212 people died in the Sahara Desert in 2022.

Again, according to the IOM, when a boat crammed with over 500 women, men, and children sank off the coast of the Italian Island of Lampedusa 10 years ago, the world said “never again.” Today, on the tenth anniversary of that shipwreck, we have not lived up to that commitment. 2023 has recorded the deadliest first quarter since 2017, and by October 2, 2,517 people were accounted as dead or missing this year alone in the Mediterranean. The figure represents nearly half of the 1,457 migrant deaths and disappearances recorded throughout the Americas in 2022, the deadliest year on record since the IOM’s Missing Migrants Project began in 2014. Across North and West Africa, 43 shipwrecks were recorded along the Western Africa Atlantic Route to Spain’s Canary Islands in 2022, resulting in the deaths of at least 559 people at sea, half of whom were presumed drowned as their remains could not be recovered. In comparison, 1,126 migrants died in 74 shipwrecks on this route in 2021.

An online source reported that several national laws and regulations had been introduced by many countries to restrict entry for asylum seekers, despite being signatories to the United Nations 1951 Refugee Convention and its 1967 Protocol. This creates the paradox in which asylum seekers have a right to apply for asylum but cannot enter a country legally to do so and therefore have to enter in an irregular way, sometimes with the assistance of migrant smugglers. One of such measures, according to The BBC report of July 12, 2023, is the five-year trial – announced in April 2022 by the United Kingdom that would see some asylum seekers sent to Rwanda on a one-way ticket, to claim asylum there. They may be granted refugee status to stay in Rwanda. If not, they can apply to settle there on other grounds, or seek asylum in another “safe third country.” The BBC said, “The policy is unlawful; the Court of Appeal has ruled. That decision could itself be challenged at the Supreme Court.”

Globalisation is seen as a cause of irregular migration as irregular migrants help provide cheap labour.  In 2018, UN member states adopted the Global Compact for Safe, Orderly, and Regular Migration and the Global Compact on Refugees. These compacts were born in part as a response to tragedies such as Lampedusa; intended to be implemented complementarily, they represent historic frameworks.

In closing, it behoves African leaders to bridge the inequality gap that is making our brothers and sisters risk their lives going through a hazardous journey of irregularly migrating to Europe and the Americas. African leaders need to do more to curb corruption, unemployment, poverty and insecurity which have been identified as the main drivers of irregular migration. To those who are about to be trafficked out to Europe, it’s not worth the risk.  What awaits them on this perilous journey include premature death, starvation, organ harvesting, slavery, racial discrimination and regrets. Truly, the resources they are willing to deploy to defray their cost of being trafficked out could enable them start a profitable business here at home.