Abroad by Any Means is Edo culture

The front page news of Vanguard Newspaper of today, May 12th refers to a story of Gaius Obaseki, Edo State Governor, talking about how he is educating Edo youths to understand, on the whole, the idea of abroad. According to Abaseki, there were 30, 000 Edo youths in Libya alone, when he became the Governor of Edo State. 

I wasn’t surprised there were this much of Edo youths in Libya alone. The love of travelling abroad is a culture around that region of Nigeria and goes more than fifty years back. As far back as then, a lot of other people have not taken notice because it hasn’t become an issue to the foreign destinations of desperate travellers. 

As a member of the National Youth Service Corps, I served in Edo State, staying in the St. Saviour area of Benin City. That was as far back as 1993. It was a time when commercial buses carried huge iron drums in the back, rather than passengers’ baggage. The drums housed huge speakers from where the sounds of Shaka Demus/Pliers, Mad Cobra and Shaba Ranks rose. It was a time when women wore long skirts with slashes that began from the helm right up to the thigh; you would think they were sabotaged with Gillette razor blades. That crazy skirt was referred to as “Shaba,” after Shaba Ranks who happened to be the king of Dancehall at the time. Certainly, the girls who wore those skirts are now grandmothers and are now looking back at what time has done to their pride. 

The Liberian war was ongoing at the time. Liberians were accepted as refugees in many parts of the Western world. All that was required of them was to present a Liberian passport. I was at a barbing saloon at the last bus stop in Inhiwhinwhi area when a guy approached me with a fake Liberian passport, pitching to get me to buy it. He requested an amount with a five as the starting digit. I can’t recall if it was five or fifty thousand. But I came from Jos and we don’t have that huge adventurous culture on the Plateau. In my typical Plateau mindset, I just looked forward to getting a job with Nigerian Petroleum Development Company, where I served or getting back to Jos and seeing what Heaven brings.  

Four years later, I found myself in Port Harcourt, Rivers, hustling. I run into a guy from Agbo, Delta State –they are all related, you know.  He studied Mechanical Engineering and had two options in life: either he find a job with an oil company or conserve enough money from the petty jobs and find his way abroad. He was always talking about the adventurous journeys, saying, “Where I come from, they don’t care about your graduate shit. What they want to see is how much you have.” He eventually left to travel abroad and I never heard from him anymore, despite searching all social media. I dread the idea of my friend ending up in a Moroccan pit of hell.

While still in Port Harcourt, there was this lady from Edo. She was an English teacher in one of the schools in Port Harcourt. Her ambition was to travel to the Netherlands. I had feelings for the dark slim and brilliant Edo woman. She knew it but I didn’t have what she wanted.  One day, I heard the shocking news that she was in Holland, already.  She was civil enough to avoid the idea of travelling through the desert with all manner of companions –desert storms, aridity, the ignorant, the young and old, the clean and the clumsy, uncertainty... She just worked to save enough money to travel via a safe, legitimate option. Her case is one of a known, documented success. 

Travelling by any means necessary has moved from what it is to trafficking kids that are, at times, willingly offered by their parents. The reasoning is that “Well since I am not young enough to go through the hassle, my kids can go, get the money and send it back.” 

Obviously, economics is at the root of the epidemic. It is the reason why it will spread and it has, indeed, spread. The Edos were just the first to see and understand it from a distance.

While the war in Libya got so messy everything became chaotic, warranting some Libyans to begin taking black Africans as slaves, I watched footage on YouTube, beholding the ignorance some victims played out and I wondered how someone with such profound ignorance would navigate the complex societies of the west, their ultimate destination. The depth of ignorance was such that you can’t help but ask yourself the question: what is she going there to do?

The profundity of ignorance can best be addressed through education and, hence, Gaius Obaseki hits the nail on the head. But education will do little to someone whose psychology is hardcore and rooted, since it is going to rest largely on reorientation –poverty and hardship have already given their orientation. It is the reason why basic education of the right quality is what is needed, not only in Edo state but across the length and breadth of the Nigerian space.