Details: Nigerians Making Sudden Wealth- Resulting Death Of Loved Ones – In Brief Visits To Senegal

A Non Governmental organization has raised alarm over sudden wealth acquired by increasing numbers of Nigerians who pay brief visits to Senegal.

Emmanuel Obiyan, the Executive Director of Global Initiative Against Illegal Migration has fingered these sudden wealth in the mysterious deaths of some of the loved ones of these new rich people with no identifiable means of income.

Obiyan raised the alarm in an interview monitored by societynow.ng on the punchng.com which reads in part…

Que:You recently harped on the Senegalese route during a recent symposium held by your organisation, Global Initiative Against Illegal Migration held in Lagos, what exactly is your concern?

Ans: If you followed my argument that day, I am saying there is more to our young men traveling to Senegal than meets the eye. The Senegal route, as we are beginning to see, has some underlining factors we need to investigate further. Using the Soutsouth Region of Nigeria, where Global Initiative has a footprint, we have discovered that 99.9 percent of returnee migrants travel as poor persons and return very rich.

This is the aspect I am most concerned about. As we speak, we have about seven undocumented but verified cases, where unemployable persons would travel the irregular routes to Senegal and between six to nine months, return very rich, such that within what you may term a twinkle of an eye, they lift their parents out of poverty. They tell their fathers, ‘Daddy, I no longer want you in this house, I want to break it down and put up something befitting for you. And such child puts up a massive building for their parents within six months. However, it doesn’t stop there. Give another three months, and it’s either the father dies in a mysterious circumstance, or the mother or one person from that immediate family dies.

The question is what is responsible for this? These young men are not going to Senegal to prostitute; they go to Senegal to do something we do not know. Unfortunately, people are not able to link the calamity with the trip and sudden wealth, because often what you hear them say is, ‘Oh, this man could not even stay to enjoy what his son has done for him a little.’ They never stop to worry about why that son was not at the burial of the father – because they never attend. That’s why I wanted the Senegalese ambassador present at our recent symposium in Lagos in January, to throw some light on their activities, but they told me the invitation was too short.

Que: Basically, you are suspecting some fetishism or diabolical activities.

Ans: Fetish? I would actually be very generous to use the word cultism – because cultism is more accepted to the international community than when you say fetishism. I want to believe that there is this cult that they get initiated into and the consequences of the initiation is that in one fold, they get rich, in another fold, they pay a priceless price. That is the curiosity I want us to unearth.

Our organisation, Global Initiative Against Illegal Migration, as a non-profit, is born out of our desire to complement the activities of government and non-governmental agencies in their campaigns against irregular migration. When I hear people say ‘fight, fight’, the truth is that it is not a fight, it is a campaign. The battle against illegal migration is a kind of asymmetric warfare; it’s not something you say, ‘Okay, they’re gathering by Banex Hotel, let us get AK47 and go and round them up.’ Even the modus operandi of these people is dynamic and growing by the day. As you discover A, they go into B; so what we try to do is to campaign and create enough awareness among our people. As regards the point raised on that day concerning prosecution; the truth is it will be difficult for government agencies to successfully prosecute traffickers for two basic reasons: one, both parents of the trafficked are complacent, they are part of the issue and (two) it boils down to poverty, which can be summed up as total government failure. A very good example is what you saw during COVID-19 and EndSARS protest, when Nigerians were moving from one warehouse to another. It’s a classic definition of poverty