Book on ‘Irregular Migration’

While many African leaders attended the recent Paris Peace Forum, I wonder how many of them paid attention to what the United Nations Secretary General, Mr António Guterres, said about the challenge of demography and migration on our continent. “It took from the Big Bang until the year 1820 for the number of people on Earth to reach one billion. Today that number is approaching eight billion, and half of the growth in the global population will be in Africa…We must come to our senses. Without international cooperation, and if we retreat behind our national borders, we will sacrifice our collective values, and we will perpetuate the tragedy of migrants being exploited by the worst traffickers”, said Guterres.

Unfortunately, the time for action may be more of yesterday than tomorrow given the urgency of the matter. An Associated Press (AP) wire report which I quoted in my statement in Lagos last week has already revealed how thousands of migrants are getting lost without trace. “Barely counted in life, these migrants rarely register in death - almost as if they never lived at all.

A growing number of migrants have drowned, died in deserts or fallen prey to traffickers, leaving their families to wonder what on earth happened to them” wrote AP.

My coming book, ‘FROM FRYING PAN TO FIRE: How African migrants risk everything in their futile search for a better life in Europe’, scheduled for presentation in Abuja next Thursday, 22 November 2018 at the Shehu Musa Yar’Adua Centre addresses some of these salient issues. Chair of the occasion, the Emir of Kano, His Highness Muhammad Sanusi II, will also speak to the challenge of ‘irregular migration’ while Governor Godwin Obaseki, who has been battling the ‘Edo connection’ to the ugly drama that is well captured in the narrative, will present the book after a review by spoken word and performance poetry artist, Mr Dike Chukwumerije.