Thirty-two-year-old Adaobi knows what it feels like to watch a dream collapse in silence.

She sold her late father’s only remaining plot of land, added her jewellery, and borrowed from friends and relatives to raise N8.5 million.

The money was for what a Lagos-based “travel consultant” described as a guaranteed Canadian work visa. He produced convincing employment letters, immigration documents and photographs of supposed clients already settled abroad. Confident her future had finally arrived, Adaobi resigned from her teaching job. Fourteen months later, she has neither a visa nor her money.

The office where she made the payments has been abandoned. The telephone numbers no longer work. The company’s website has disappeared.

“I thought I was investing in my future,” she says quietly. “Instead, I financed my own ruin.”

Adaobi’s experience is no longer unusual. Across Nigeria, thousands of people are losing life savings to fraudulent visa consultants, fake recruitment agencies and increasingly sophisticated migration scams. As inflation erodes incomes and unemployment remains stubbornly high, migration has shifted from personal ambition to economic survival.

According to the International Monetary Fund’s 2026 Article IV Consultation on Nigeria, approximately 63 percent of Nigerians now live below the national poverty line, while about 27 million people experienced food insecurity in late 2025. These conditions have intensified pressure on families to seek opportunities abroad.

Recognising the growing crisis, the Nigeria Immigration Service recently warned Nigerians against irregular migration, while the National Association of Nigerian Travel Agencies cautioned the public against agents promising guaranteed visas, overseas jobs or priority processing for unofficial payments.

For many, however, desperation outweighs caution. The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) and SOM Observatory research 2022 reported that organised migrant smuggling has become an increasingly sophisticated business across West and North Africa. More than half of Nigerian migrants surveyed relied on a single smuggler throughout their journey, paying an average of US$892 after transport, accommodation, unofficial payments and other expenses, often representing years of family savings.

Not every victim reaches the desert. Some never make it beyond the visa application stage. Nkechi, a university graduate, lost N4.7 million after paying what she believed was the cost of obtaining a Canadian visitor visa. As our conversation continued, she admitted something many prospective migrants rarely say aloud. She never intended to visit Canada temporarily. Her plan was to remain permanently and find work after arrival.

“Everybody online seemed to be succeeding,” she says. “I thought once I entered Canada, everything would work itself out.”

Like many young Nigerians, Nkechi had built her expectations from carefully curated social media posts portraying migration as a guaranteed pathway to financial success. What those videos rarely show are visa refusals, unemployment, homelessness, deportation, or the legal consequences of overstaying immigration status.

Migration experts argue that misinformation has become one of the most powerful drivers of irregular migration.

UNODC and SOM Observatory research from 2022 shows that 49 percent of Nigerian migrants finance migration through personal savings, 27 percent receive financial support from relatives, 23 percent sell personal assets, and 13 percent borrow money. Nearly one-third eventually exhaust their funds during the journey, leaving many vulnerable to exploitation.

The problem has attracted international attention. In 2025, immigration authorities in Canada, the United Kingdom and Australia jointly launched the #FightingVisaFraud campaign to combat visa scams targeting Nigerians. The campaign warned prospective migrants against agents promising guaranteed approvals, accelerated processing or overseas employment in exchange for unofficial payments.

For those unable to secure legal migration pathways, the risks become far greater.

Many turn to smugglers who promise safe passage through Niger, across the Sahara Desert into Libya and ultimately to Europe. For many, Libya becomes the end of the journey. In June 2026, the International Organization for Migration (IOM) assisted 182 Nigerian migrants to voluntarily return home from Libya after failed migration attempts.

Pita’s story reflects the experiences many returnees have described. After losing money to a fraudulent agent who promised her domestic work in the United Arab Emirates, she borrowed even more to finance an irregular journey through Niger, believing Libya would be her gateway to Europe.

From Agadez, she joined more than twenty migrants crammed into the back of a pickup truck bound for the Sahara Desert. With little food, almost no water and temperatures soaring above 40 degrees Celsius, the journey lasted several days. When the vehicle broke down, the passengers were left stranded under the relentless sun, uncertain whether help would ever come.

Eventually, they reached southern Libya, but the promised opportunity never materialised. Instead, migrants found themselves confined in overcrowded compounds controlled by armed groups. Food was scarce. Violence was common. Fear became routine.

Like many others, Pita never reached Europe. Her savings were exhausted before she could attempt the Mediterranean crossing. Burdened by debt and traumatised by the ordeal, she eventually returned to Nigeria with assistance from the IOM.

Her experience reflects a pattern documented by the UNODC. Smugglers frequently confiscate migrants’ mobile phones, isolate them from their families and demand ransom payments before allowing them to continue their journey. Others remain detained until relatives raise additional money.

The violence is equally disturbing. Women face particularly severe risks. UNODC found that 27 percent of Nigerian women paid smugglers through labour, compared with only 6 percent of men, while many who exhausted their money reported sexual exploitation as a means of payment.

For criminals, migration has become a profitable business. Fraudulent recruitment agencies sell fake employment offers. Traffickers lure women with promises of domestic work or hospitality jobs before exploiting them abroad. Unscrupulous recruiters market counterfeit Certificates of Sponsorship for United Kingdom care worker visas, leaving victims burdened with enormous debts for jobs that never existed.

These schemes thrive because they exploit the same combination of hope, financial pressure and limited understanding of complex immigration systems.

Yet experts argue that enforcement alone will not solve the problem.

Human rights advocates are calling for stronger regulation of travel consultants, tighter oversight of overseas recruitment agencies, improved cross-border law enforcement cooperation and sustained public education on legitimate migration pathways.

International organisations have also urged governments to expand safe, regular migration opportunities. In 2025, the International Labour Organisation partnered with Nigeria’s Federal Ministry of Labour and Employment to strengthen labour migration governance and improve support services for prospective migrants.

Until those reforms take hold, hope itself will remain vulnerable to exploitation.

Back in Anambra state, Adaobi has returned to teaching. The salary is modest, but it is honest work. She says she no longer believes anyone who promises an easy route abroad.

“If I had known then what I know now,” she says, “I would have kept my father’s land.”

Her words capture a painful truth confronting thousands of Nigerian families. For many, migration still offers genuine opportunity.

But for countless others, the journey begins not with a visa, but with a lie. (The Guardian)

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