Recently, the International Police Organization (Interpol) published red alerts that exposed the harsh reality of life overseas. The alerts exposed heinous crimes in various countries allegedly committed by 14 persons who claim Nigerian citizenship. These crimes range from armed robbery and kidnapping to human trafficking and drug dealing.
Most people trying to escape from Nigeria are not doing so for the purpose of resorting to high crimes overseas. Most will also not embark on these perilous journeys abroad if conditions for existence are favourable back home.
I am concerned as a Nigerian on the import of this story. At first, I thought it was a joke. However, checks on the Interpol website verified it. A dozen of our brothers and two sisters who traveled abroad ended up with their names being linked to crime.
How I wish that we do not brush the issue under the carpet, as we normally do. We should amplify this story. It is a teachable moment for uneducated and unskilled African youths warming up to escape abroad.
The story of these dozen men and two women is both sobering and reflective of deeper societal issues. If indeed these are Nigerians (criminals often engage in identity fraud), then they are our brothers and sisters. It is safe to assume that they escaped from Nigeria in search of greener pastures. Was it because they couldn’t live the easy life they envisioned overseas that they succumbed to the lure of crime?
This story highlights the harsh reality that no place in the world guarantees easy success.
The desperate gambles of youth
Some of our youths who travelled abroad paint rosy pictures of life overseas. They hide the reality that the struggle for survival is more intense and demanding abroad; that it takes a lot more to make the sort of income that they falsely advertise to our youths.
The sad reality is that many more young men and women are warming up to undertake similar hazardous journeys. Everyone wants to escape the harsher reality of life in Nigeria. Unfortunateley, this desperation to escape is driven by ignorance and by the criminal tendencies of two parties. Our young people are oblivious of the harsh reality about life overseas. The actios of those who govern Nigeria and those who successfully escaped motivate the youths to become economic migrants.
Some of those who successfully escaped refuse to admit the harsh reality about the life they met overseas. This reality is that there is no free lunch out there and no well-paying jobs to pick on the streets.
The harsh reality of living overseas
As already noted, some of our youths who travelled abroad paint rosy pictures of life overseas. They hide the reality that the struggle for survival is more intense and demanding abroad. It takes a lot more to make the sort of income that they falsely advertise to those back home. This is what the Interpol red alerts expose. Lured by the false rosy pictures, desperate youths who escape overseas find that there are no well-paying jobs. Most do not possess basic qualifications or cognate skills to compete for the few available jobs. And they can only compete after getting permission to stay and work- another tall order.
Low skilled migrants could get by if they stick to low paying jobs that thier hosts are moving away from. But for the criminally-minded among them, the urge to also sell rosy stories back home exerts a more powerful pull. This is what disposes this small group to embark on short cuts to wealth. The Interpol Red Alerts serve as a reminder of these short cuts to wealth. They include armed robbery, drug dealing, wire fraud, kidnapping, human trafficking, and more.
Hopefully, the news media will soon abandon this story of the real situation that desperate young Africans face overseas. We should amplify the voices that warn about what to expect overseas after risking perilous journeys to escape from home. There is a lesson in this story for our young men and women, whether here or abroad. For those abroad, it is better to endure hardship with integrity than take a shortcut that leads to disgrace. Imagine this. The 14 persons have now become notorious individuals whose identities are with every police department on this planet.
Our governments are complicit but…
Finally, hasn’t the latest Interpol exposure underscored what we continue to warn about governance in Africa? In Nigeria, state and federal governments neglect to address the root causes of poverty. What are they thinking? It is criminal to continue to deny our youth sustainable opportunities to make it here in Nigeria.
Finally, there are many other lessons from this story. As long as elected governors sustain bad governance, Africans will continue with this heartrending cycle of fraud and criminality abroad. Most youths will not embark on these perilous journeys abroad if conditions for existence are favourable back home. Again, most people trying to escape from Nigeria are not doing so for the purpose of resorting to high crimes overseas. They do so because our governments are not empowering them with the education, skills, and enabling environment for economic growth.