A costly step

Also published in Daily Trust

Since time immemorial, man has always emigrated from one place to another for various reasons. Also though the introduction of immigration regulatory systems following the emergence of modern sovereign political entities (e.g. countries) has regulated human migration, which also restricts the flow of particularly prospective illegal migrants across international borders, the trend continues anyway.

By the way, many countries have succeeded in building successful, stable and prosperous countries, whereas the persistent leadership failure in many other countries has rendered a significant number, if not the majority, of their citizens hopeless hence desperate to flee, given the opportunity. While the later have effectively shattered the hopes of their citizens, the former have succeeded in dramatically and substantially turning their people’s lives around.

Over the past few decades for example, many hitherto unstable and poverty-stricken countries have been able to transform into productive and prosperous countries while also inspiring their citizens with hope, in such a way that they would not have to look beyond their shores in order to pursue and realize their individual potential.

Yet even if a particular individual wants to emigrate anyway; he hardly emigrates out of desperation. In any case, wherever he chooses to emigrate to, he largely enjoys better recognition and respect, because notwithstanding his actual skills or capabilities, his native country’s prestige has already earned him an added value and advantage.

Incidentally, I highlight this situation in the context of my regret over the situation in many other countries like Nigeria, where despite being abundantly blessed with all what it takes to build a prosperous, peaceful and advanced nation, Nigerians have been struggling with a seemingly perpetual leadership-inflected and hope shattering failure.

Though the resultant hardship is quite severe, the apparent sense of despair and desperation consciously or unconsciously displayed by the vast majority of Nigerians with respect to the possibility of turning things around in the country is particularly frustrating. The fact that, almost everybody is hell-bent on grabbing as much as he can confirms the absence of hope that things would actually change for the better in the country at least in the foreseeable future.

While the few “lucky” Nigerians who are entrusted with the responsibility of keeping and spending our common wealth for our common good at various levels and sectors of government display this attitude in the form of reckless plunder of public wealth, an increasing number of other Nigerians who are not that “lucky” desperately engage in extremely risky pursuits in the process of which they either put their own lives at serious risk or pose real threats to the lives and security of others, or both.

Though taking on crime particularly a violent crime for any reason whatsoever is absolutely unjustifiable, yet the amount of the sense of frustration caused by an entrenched culture of crude injustice, monumental theft, impunity and other hope crushing vices, is huge enough to render an increasing number of people hopeless and desperate hence behave accordingly.

For instance, though the virtually overwhelmed, largely demoralized and ill-equipped Nigerian security operatives already use proportionate and sometimes disproportionate force against armed robbers, kidnappers and other violent criminals in the country, the alarming rate at which such crimes grow anyway confirms how the worsening condition in the country continues to instil despair in the minds of a growing number of Nigerians who, having lost hope, take on such serious crimes.

However, not all desperate Nigerians take on crime to display their frustration, desperation and hopelessness, instead many of them take on some equally perilous though legally less serious actions e.g. taking the risk of travelling through the hills and valleys of the desert and through the Mediterranean Sea in order to illegally immigrate to Europe.

Though multitudes of people die in the desert out of sheer exhaustion, thirst and hunger, and also in the sea, where the overcrowded and poorly maintained boats conveying them capsize every now and then, so many Nigerians still find this risky adventure worth trying anyway, because they simple hope for enjoying a better life over there.

After all, while the trauma of the recent fatal accidents involving hundreds of illegal migrants from different African countries, probably including Nigeria, whose boats capsized in the Mediterranean Sea on their way to Europe still lingers, more than eighty bodies of people who had died out of thirst in the desert between Niger Republic and Algeria were found, as reported yesterday by the BBC.

Incidentally, contrary to the widespread assumption that such adventurous illegal migrants  expect instant and smooth access to a better life in Europe or any country they migrate to, the reality is that they are not that naïve anymore, after all many of them are educated. They are actually aware of the fact that, even if they manage to sneak into Europe for instance, they will definitely have to grapple with many challenges, only that they would, at least have hope and attainable goals to pursue, no matter how little, which according to them justify taking that risk.

Therefore, in as much as I recognize the need to discourage people from taking such risk, I am not that naïve to expect that this trend would stop anytime soon. After all, just as in the case of taking on crime out of hopelessness as I pointed out earlier, no matter how such adventures across desert and sea cost lives, people would still undertake it, as long as the status-quo persists in the country. Many people would still prefer to take such extreme risks in search of hope elsewhere not matter what the cost, instead of leading what they regard as hopeless life back home.