Either on the spur of enhancing patronage or, out of altruistic objective of highlighting a recurring humanitarian crisis, European mass media, usually, give headlines to news of the catastrophic experience of immigrants while going through the perilous sail on the Mediterranean sea.

The stories are usually horrific and heart rendering. They are carried under such headlines as: “Hundreds drowned”; “Thousands stranded at sea” or, “Thousands rescued.”

It is almost all about Africans and other nationals fleeing their troubled native homes in search of the fabled “greener pastures” especially, in the European countries of Italy and Spain. It is like an endless stream, a steady, moving train of humans, without the end in sight.

In the desperate voyage across the Mediterranean, thousands inevitably perish by drowning in capsised, usually over-crowded rafts and rickety boats. The Red Cross counts the dead and rescues the lucky survivors. The missing are estimated. Because, just as there are no footprints on the dunes in the Sahara desert, so are there no footprints on the Mediterranean Sea.

Before getting to the points of departure on the coasts of Libya or Tunisia, large numbers of the immigrants would also have perished in the terribly hazardous crossing of the Sahara. Exhaustion, hunger, dehydration, heatstroke, malaria-related ailments and robberies are the major causes of mortality in the Sahara segment of the journey of thousands of kilometres.

The Trans-Atlantic or Trans-Saharan slave trades were stories of violently uprooted and forceful transportation of the enslaved people across the Atlantic or the Sahara desert. 

On the other hand, the present day mass movement of peoples, citizens of Africa and the Middle East, can be rationally explained as voluntary as it lacked the wars, conquests and brute force used in the times of the Saharan and Atlantic trade in humans. 

Yet, it can be argued that those involved in the present day exodus to Europe, are, as well, victims of certain compelling push and pull factors with external forces acting as catalysts.

The migrants are mostly from countries suffering from the ravages of civil wars such as the Sudan, Somalia and Syria; countries of ramshackle infrastructure ruled by corrupt, incompetent, and repressive regimes – people, simply fleeing their native homes in search of greener pastures.

Separated only by the Mediterranean, Europe appears to be the nearest destination for a safe haven. Europe is additionally attractive due to the age-old fairy-like tales that portray it as a continent of limitless bliss, where milk and honey flow in abundance. 

Another impetus, a pull factor to the migrants, was the reality of the liberal migrant policies of most West European countries, particularly, Italy, Spain and France. That was of course, before the emerging gale of nationalist, anti migrant postures and policy reversals sweeping across the western world.

Like the fictional “Alice in Wonderland”, the majority of the migrants who were lucky to have survived the hazards of the journey, would soon come to terms with the realities of life in Europe. Firstly, because they cannot afford to live in decent, rented apartments, the majority live in shacks.

Sadly, a large number of the migrants, men and women in their youths, are ill-equipped to be gainfully employed. This is on account of their lack of educational qualifications or skills. And, there is no free lunch in their new societies.

To survive, they resort to doing menial jobs, hawking on the streets and begging, among other forms of anti-social activities. While some of the men drift towards crimes such as dealing in drugs, some of the women are drawn, out of necessity, into prostitution. All of these are illegal ventures and as a result, they are soon targeted by the law enforcement agents.

In a lot of instances, a good number of the immigrants who are arrested and clamped into detention are not, per se, guilty of the offences for which they are accused of. The immigrants also face the tortuous fate of long detentions without trial or arraignment in courts of law.

I will give the example of a 2021 experience of thirty-six Nigerians of Niger Delta extraction, who were detained for over two years in an Italian jail. According to a local newspaper, “Gazzetta di Reggio”, they were arrested over credit card fraud and on the suspicion of being members of the Mafia. 

The crime of Mafia membership carries very lengthy jail time in the Italian laws. This implies that the thirty-six Nigerians faced the prospects of long jail terms if they were found guilty by the courts. 

Alas, human rights activists discovered that what the police had labeled as mafia membership was no more than the acts of occasional social gatherings of people of the same nationality and cultural background. Trust Nigerians, such gatherings can be noisy and hilarious. The predicament of immigrants from Africa, particularly, is rooted in their lack of sufficient background understanding of their host countries. 

Also, poor African immigrants, such as the example of the 36 Nigerians given above, suffer injustice and deprivation of their fundamental rights, due to lack of care by their embassies.

There is no gainsaying that the phenomenon of mass migration of citizens of African countries to Europe is a challenge to the contemporary world. It is a transnational crisis that calls for global collaboration in tackling it.

 It will necessarily have to begin with African political leadership firmly resolving to fight the retrogressive culture of endemic corruption which has engendered avoidable catastrophic wars, poverty, repression and dictatorship.

 Africans of this generation owe it a historical responsibility to harness the abundant natural and human resources of the continent to lay the foundation for technological advancement, economic growth, development and a prosperous future. 

In the aftermath of the Second World War, the USA initiated the Marshall Plan to aid the recovery and reconstruction process of Western Germany. Japan was similarly, specially assisted in view of the effects of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

The world, particularly the West, owe Africa some sort of a “Marshall Plan” to rectify the ruination of centuries of the slave trades across the Sahara and the Atlantic as well as, the decades of plundering of resources and distortions wrought on the social, political and cultural institutions and systems of Africans.

The countries which are tacitly engaged in instigating and fanning of violent conflicts and wars in Africa must desist from their nefarious activities. A sizable chunk of immigrants from Africa to Europe and North America are, in fact, refugees displaced by civil strife in their home countries. Sudan, Somalia, and Congo are typical examples.

The leaders of African and European countries, the rest of the world, must rise up to the challenge of the monumental disaster that the mass migration of citizens of Africa and elsewhere on the globe poses for the contemporary world. 

No nation or race deserves to be given the condescending name of “refugees”. 

…Lucky Aghedo is the Secretary of Nigerian Professionals in the UK.