My despair over the plight of our fellow citizens outside the shores of the country worsened, following their experiences in Libya and Italy. Let me quickly add that many Nigerians are daily facing series of persecutions, danger, servitude and agony in foreign lands in their bid to explore travel opportunities in their costly search for greener pastures. It is time to go a step further and urgently do something in curbing this malaise.
Travails of Blacks were caused by their being tagged as mercenaries, fighting for the former Libyan leader, Muammar Ghadaffi. Those fighting the government of Ghadaffi during that time are now in power and are exercising the opportunity to inflict harm, pain and suffering on Africans for supposedly being loyal to the former dictator. There is an urgent need for the international community to investigate the large-scale slave markets in Libya; to ensure that the perpetrators are brought to justice, as such acts clearly violate the fundamental human rights of victims. Nigerians should no longer be allowed to be the sacrificial lamb.
The first leg of illegal migrants’ tortuous adventure from Nigeria mainly involves passing through North Africa. In the process, many are sexually abused and others perish in the desert. According to the National Agency for the Prohibition of Trafficking in Persons (NANTIP), in the course of such interceptions, about 5,000 Nigerian girls were said to be engaged in prostitution in Mali alone. Other gory reports show that notorious sex slave rings engage in recruiting young Nigerian girls for European sex trade while over 10,000 Nigerian prostitutes are known to ply the streets of Italy.
In responding to the plight of Nigerians, the Federal Government recently announced that Nigerian migrants in accessible detention camps in Libya were ready for repatriation while some had already arrived the country. After the severe agitations over the plight of Nigerians, the nation’s embassy had been visiting detention camps in Libya, to identify Nigerians for registration and issuing them Emergency Travel Certificates (ETC). This effort, in collaboration with the International Organisation for Migration (IOM), had led to the repatriation of migrants, on a weekly basis. While these efforts are commendable, the government should move ahead of the seemingly more organised, rich and well-coordinated syndicate engaging in brazen cruelty against their fellow human beings.
Again, the tragic loss of 26 women and girls, who were allegedly heading to Europe to seek greener pastures, but perished in the Mediterranean, is another sad take. However, with the series of comments on the unfortunate development, it is not certain whether they were actually victims of shipwreck, or dastardly acts by wicked persons, who reportedly assaulted and abused the female victims before discharging them into the Mediterranean, or they could probably have had their body organs harvested and simply dumped into the sea. The contradictory accounts on the true identities of the victims, the nature of their deaths and the hurried manner with which they were buried, call for thorough inquiry.
While Nigerians continue to lament the gruesome fate that met the Nigerian women and girls on the Mediterranean, the remote causes of the desperation by Nigerian youths to undertake risky foreign trips, remain unanswered. There is the need to put a stop to this huge calamity. The lasting solutions to the above problems entail an urgent imperative of addressing the despicable socio-economic climate at home. Nigeria, a country that is blessed with abundant human and natural resources, is currently rated as having the largest absolute poverty level in the world, as many citizens currently live below less than $2 per day.
Another area that should be looked into is how to mitigate the continued deceit being extended to vulnerable Africans such that, they there are not lured into taking all sorts of jobs in their desperate bid to travel abroad. I don’t know why many Nigerian youths still respond to deceitful advertisements by these faceless organisations that promise phony opportunities. The lesson here is that our foreign missions should possibly screen all job alerts made available to innocent Nigerians. The bitter truth is that until the present harsh conditions improve and felt by the people, the nation may continue to witness these types of terrible and unfortunate occurrences. Over the years, the economy has been unable to create jobs to absorb its growing army of graduates and restive youths.
We cannot afford to continue to pay lip service on this serious issue; various arms of government such as the Ministry of Foreign Affairs should officially call for a thorough probe of the events that led to the untimely death of the Nigerians abroad and do a follow up on the progress of the investigation and by diplomatic means, to curb the trend. Immigration services should be strengthened to reduce illegal migration. Relevant committees of the national assembly should also wade in without further delays. These problems had always existed over the years, but nothing much had been done to sort them out by our leaders. Now is the time to act very fast.
