ABSTRACT
Emergent economic, social, and political situations in Nigeria aggravated emigration from the country. Migration that had hitherto been an adventurous globe trotting affair among Nigerians gradually turned to commercialized human traffi cking as some innocent but pauperized citizens were lured into modern-day slavery because of the gain to the traffi ckers and the hope of a better future on the part of the traffi cked. The social situation in Nigeria, from immediately after the civil war of 1967-1970 to the present day, was a very precarious one for the nation. Emerging from a three-year war without external defi cit, the country was faced with the problem of reconciling its various indigenous groups; reconstructing known social and physical, or infrastructural, damages; and rehabilitating the groups that may have viewed themselves as the pariahs of the oncetroubled nation. Despite these diffi culties, the early 1970s was a bloom period for the nation as oil prospecting was yielding more than the nation could dispense with. Because of this, agricultural practices gradually gave way to oil drilling. Hence, the disappearance of the famous groundnut pyramid in the north and cocoa and coffee in the western region as attention was concentrated on oil because of the income it was generating in the world market. It was a time when a head of state was rumored as saying that the problem of Nigeria was not capital, but what to do with it. However, the resultant effect was mismanagement of the once-blooming resources and gradually gloom set in. The effect of the gloom was that the diverse indigenous groups were more interested in sectional cum personal welfare. Individualized living overthrew communal interest, and thus everybody was more interested in cutting than baking the economic cake. Crime and avarice became rampant in the quest for the “gleam.” As economic doom pervaded, crime and grime took over the society as citizens developed insatiable appetites for opulence; thus there was a need to explore what the globe could offer as succor to some Nigerians. The thrust of this chapter therefore is the nature, scope, and effects of these migrations on some Nigerians and the globe in general.
