Trapped in Togo’s Prison: How Expensive Nigerian Flight Ticket Robbed Balogun A Dreamed Life In Canada
If this should go viral, I don’t know what will be the outcome of me and my friend in the next coming days as we are still in their custody. I just don’t know yet!
Beaten, robbed, and allegedly assaulted by Togolese Police Officers, Oladimeji Balogun found himself in one of the worst imaginable conditions when he sent the above message to Dr. Olumuyiwa Igbalajobi. A picture of the tiny cell where he was being held showed shirtless men lumped together like sardines with little or no space to stand or walk. In the slightly lit cell, people could be seen lying over one another, some sitting. Others yawned. A small electronic device, which appears to be a television; arrays of clothes, and rubber buckets were placed on a wooden counter while grown adults struggled to sleep beneath in the cell that no doubt emanates heat.
That has been Balogun’s living condition for the last eight weeks since he bid his family farewell from Lagos, Nigeria. It was still his condition on the night of December 3, 2023, when Dr. Igbalajobi, a Nigerian Canada-based academic known for helping Nigerians secure scholarship opportunities abroad, forwarded Balogun’s Save Our Soul (SOS) message to a Neusroom correspondent. For now, Balogun’s concern is not about continuing his journey to Canada or his quest to make a decent living there; he’s focused on surviving the deplorable conditions in this tiny cell where he was to live for the next six months or a year. The truth is that as at the moment Balogun turned to social media for help on December 3, he was not given the human courtesy of knowing the longevity of his jail term.
With his dream dashed, his life hangs in the balance.
It all began on November 6, 2023, when Balogun, a Nigerian from Kwara State in North Central Nigeria, left for Togo with his friend, identified simply as Cosmas. Their Ethiopian airline flight from Togo to Canada was scheduled for Wednesday, November 8, 2023. However, the duo not only missed the flight, but their dreams of a better life in Canada were also taken away as they were humiliated, molested, harassed, and subjected to one of the worst inhumane treatments by officials of another West African country, just barely 269 kilometres from Lagos, Nigeria’s economic hub.
Arriving in Togo from Nigeria on the 5th meant that Balogun and his friend were to lodge in a hotel and wait for their departure day. Things turned sour when, at the terminal, Balogun and his friend were denied entry by immigration officers who claimed that their visas were fake.
“Before we got to the airline stand (Ethiopian Airlines), we were called by some of the airport officials. They asked us to show them our travel documents, which we did. They delayed us for hours to the point that we missed our flights, and eventually, they said our visas were fake,” Balogun wrote in a series of messages he shared with Dr. Igbalajobi.
After a heated exchange, Balogun said that the officials claimed that not only were their visas forged, but their passports were also fake.
He became certain they wanted to extort them.
“Even if we were not sure about our visas, we were 100% sure of our passports because we went to the immigration office in Ilorin to obtain them. We followed the right procedures we saw other people follow at the immigration office,” he said.
After refusing to pay a bribe of $600, Balogun was handed over to the police where he experienced a violation of his basic rights; he was beaten, denied basic amenities, and robbed.
“We got to the police station that evening with the hope that they were taking us to the place where they would conduct a proper investigation. Instead, they beat us mercilessly and dragged us inside the cell. Our human rights were violated. They confiscated all our belongings and the $200 that was with us.”
With soaring inflation, lack of jobs, and insecurity, Nigeria is witnessing a ‘japa’ wave – used in local parlance to describe the rate Nigerians relocate abroad in search of greener pastures. Sadly, in a scenario where 73% of Nigerians were looking to emigrate abroad with their families, according to a 2021 report by the Africa Polling Institute (API), some Nigerians fall victim to travel hazards, especially when seeking ways to mitigate travel expenses. Canada, like the UK, has proven to be one of the preferred locations for many Nigerians seeking to escape some of the challenges facing the country. The number of Nigerians seeking to relocate to Canada increased by nearly 42% from 15,595 in 2022 to 22,130 the following year, according to data from Immigration, Refugees, and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) published in June 2023.
In December 2021, Balogun, who studied Biochemistry at Adekunle Ajasin University, Ondo State, was posted to Awgu in Enugu, Southeast Nigeria, for his compulsory one-year National Youth Service Corps (NYSC). However, before then, Balogun had set his eyes on relocating outside Nigeria. Neusroom findings show that Balogun began the application for his passport in November 2021 in Ilorin, the capital of Kwara State, and after five months and a fee of ₦35,000, he was issued the passport on April 21, 2022. For his Visa application process, although Neusroom was unable to verify the authenticity, Dr. Esther Sogbamu, Balogun’s aunt, said it was a student visa.
“He sent his ticket, and with it, I was able to get where he got the visa. That’s how we knew it was a student visa,” Dr. Sogbamu, told a Neusroom correspondent.
But the seemingly desperate need to ‘japa’ sometimes comes with a cost – from extortion by travel agents to immigration officials seeking bribes. Balogun fell into the hands of the latter.
Dr. Esther Sogbamu disclosed that the reason why Balogun chose to travel to Canada from Togo was to save cost.
“I think it’s the price gap that tempted him to decide to travel to Canada through Togo instead of Nigeria,” she said.
Neusroom’s findings show that there is as high as a 57 percent price difference between flights from Lagos, Nigeria, to Canada and flights from Togo or Ghana to Canada. According to ticket prices from Ethiopian Airlines, an Economy class ticket for a Boeing flight scheduled to depart from Lagos on Friday, January 5, 2024, to Calgary International Airport, Canada, costs around ₦4.4 million. Another flight scheduled on the same day from Lomé–Tokoin International Airport, Togo, to Calgary International Airport costs 1.26 million CFA, which is around N1.87 million using the exchange rate of 1 CFA equals ₦1.4834 (January 2) obtained from the official website of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN). Similarly, a flight from Accra, the capital of Ghana, using the same airline, costs around $2,515, an equivalent of 2.36 million in Nigeria’s currency, which is ₦2 million cheaper than the price from Lagos to the same destination.
A Nigerian who left for Germany in February 2023 told Neusroom, on the condition of anonymity, that the high cost of flight tickets in Nigeria relative to other West African countries has made Nigerians seeking to relocate abroad sometimes choose Togo or Ghana for their trip.
“Travelling from some of these countries is far cheaper. It’s a hack that some Nigerians have come to realise,” he said. “But it is not only that flight tickets from most West African countries are cheaper; obtaining visas from there most times is seamless and even cheaper when compared with the hassle that Nigerians go through to obtain them in Nigeria.” He told Neusroom that he obtained his visa in Ghana.
The high cost of flight tickets in Nigeria has been linked to the unification of the exchange rate, a monetary policy initiated by President Bola Tinubu upon assumption of office, as well as trapped funds close to $1 billion. However, the inability of the Nigerian government to find a lasting solution to these issues has not only dashed Balogun’s dreams but has put his life in grave danger.
“When Balogun dropped a voice note to me, he pleaded that we should not take any action against the Togolese government as it might further put their lives in danger,” Sogbamu said.
After two court proceedings, Balogun was sentenced but could not ascertain if his prison term was to last for six months or a year, as the judgment was delivered in French. He was not allowed access to an interpreter. Having spent eight weeks in prison, Balogun also claimed that many Nigerians are being held in the prison awaiting trial.
“In fact, we have so many Nigerians here that have spent over five years without a court hearing or judgment. It’s so unfortunate that the population of Nigerians here is more than the population of the Togolese people,” he wrote in his SOS message.
When Neusroom spoke with an official of the Nigerians in the Diaspora Commission, she said she has no update regarding the case and suggested we send a mail to the commission’s media team. Neusroom is yet to receive a response.
