TheCable

The National Association of Seadogs, a humanitarian organisation, says the rate of unemployment in the country is the immediate cause of illegal migration of Nigerians to Libya.

In a statement by Arthur Boje, its president, the group said it conducted a poll tagged “Libya Slave Trade: What should be done to discourage Nigerians from these dangerous journeys?’, on Twitter.

Boje said the poll is “part of the strategy to keep and retain the conversation on slavery in Libya as a major burner in the public space”.

“The issue of the inability of the Nigerian government to tackle the seemingly intractable problem of unemployment has been fingered as the reason why Nigerian youths risk their lives through dangerous Sahara desert routes to Libya in their bid to reach mainland Europe via the Mediterranean Sea,” the statement read.

“In a new poll conducted by the National Association of Seadogs on its Twitter handle, @NASPC1952, as part of its ongoing campaign to draw the attention of the world to the unacceptable practice of slavery going on in Libya.

“The sample size participants of 222 Nigerians, who were given four multiple choice options to choose from that include: Tackle Unemployment, Instant Deportation, deportees to pay for their flight tickets back to Nigeria and Public Enlightenment, all came up with different options they think could checkmate the trend.

“At the end of the exercise which lasted for 48 hours, 64% of those sampled chose the tackling of unemployment as the only panacea for stopping young Nigerians from embarking on these suicidal missions to Europe.

“Twenty-five percent listed Public Enlightenment as the solution, while 6% and 5% point at the radical step of Instant Deportation and Deportees shouldering the cost of their deportation respectively as the answers to discourage these undocumented migrations.”

According to the group, one of the participants, however, said some of the immigrants embarked on the journey due to their “greed and inordinate ambition.”

“In rejecting the issue of unemployment as the reason why youths embark on these perilous adventures, one of the participants in the polls, Akanariko Adiri, in his tweet argued that ‘The spate of emigration is not fuelled by unemployment, especially as 75% of victims pay as high as 500k for the journey to Europe through Libya,” but insisted that the blame should be laid on the doorstep of the greed and inordinate ambition of these young lads,” the statement read.

Boje added that the group is putting final touches to its planned picketing of the Libyan embassies in Lagos, Abuja and other parts of the world where they maintain embassies like in Europe, USA, Canada and Australia with visible presence.