Better Soup A visual narrative to illustrate the findings of two World Bank reports on Nigerian labour migration In 2021, the World Bank published two reports exploring the multifaceted issue of migration manage- ment in Africa’s most populous country, Nigeria. “Expanding Legal Migration Pathways from Nigeria to Europe: From Brain Drain to Brain Gain”, co-authored by Samik Adhikari, Nkechi Linda Ekeator with Michael Clemens and Helen Dempster of the Center for Global Development, and “Of Roads Less Traveled: Assessing the Potential of Economic Migration to Provide Overseas Jobs for Nigeria’s Youth”, by Samik Adhikari, Nkechi Linda Ekeator and Sarang Chaudhary, explore the complex topic of migration from Africa’s giant, pointing at the benefits that labour migration agreements would bring, both to Nige- ria and to countries of destination. Throughout our consultancy work, we tried to popularize the findings of the reports and to build a pro- duct that might meet the needs of a differentiated audience, from policy makers to average citizens and donors, both in Europe and in Nigeria. Better soup is a 18 minutes video production composed of two consecutive parts: - A 15 minute long character-driven video, based on interviews and shooting in three locations in Europe; - A 3 minute long edit based on remote interviews with three key experts and stakeholders. The characters are: 1. Chris Obehi Musician, 24 years old, originally from Edo State; Obehi left Nigeria in 2015 and landed in Sicily the same year, after travelling through Niger and Libya. He obtained a permit to stay and settled down in the city of Palermo, where he started studying at the city music academy and learned traditional Sicilian music. He’s currently recording his first full studio album, mixing Southern Italian music with the Nigerian afro- beat tradition. He’s both a narrator and a protagonist. His song “Non siamo pesci” (We are not fishes), is played at the end of the video. 2. Amarachi Nzekwe: A 28 years old software engineer, Nzekwe left Nigeria in 2019, after graduating and working for a few years in a growing IT sector. As a participant to the EU-funded Digital Explorers programme, she then moved to Lithuania to work for international startups. She lives in Vilnius, she runs a video blog on the challenges of living abroad and she mentors young Nigerians who want to start a career in her field. A3. Jennifer Omigie At 33, Omigie is a cultural mediator with a local NGO providing legal, medical and social support to marginalized families in Castel Volturno, a city in Southern Italy, known for being heavily influenced by powerful criminal groups, and for the presence of a big undocumented population, largely made up of Nigerian and Ghanaian citizens. She’s originally from Edo State and travelled to Italy in 2011, risking her life in the Sahara desert, in Libya and crossing the Mediterranean sea. Labour and sexual exploitation are prevalent in Castel Volturno. The three experts providing insight into policies, choices to migrate and offering different angles to the subject are: 1. Hon. Godwin Obaseki, Governor of Edo State; 2. Ms. Abike Dabiri-Erewa, chair of the Nigerians in Diaspora Commission; 3. Dr. Helen Dempster, researcher at the Center for Global Development. Here is the storyboard: Title: Better soup Overlay 1: As a Nigerian Pidgin proverb says, “better soup na money kill am”. The more you invest in it, the more your dish will be tasty. Overlay 2: Migration is about investing. About making informed choices, personally and as a community. Overlay 3: About making a better soup from what we have. Scene 1 Exterior, daylight, Palermo (Sicily, Italy). Chris Obehi sits in front of the seaside. Images rolling by, with voice-over speech. We see him walking on the docks. Aerial views. – Chris Obehi: Sometimes I sit in front of the sea and I shiver. Tens of thousands of Nigerians tried to cross this shim- mering, mutating stretch of water in the last twenty years. Too many didn’t make it. Families were torn apart. Hopes dashed. My name is Chris Obehi, and I’m one of them, one of the lucky ones who survived. Every single day, my mind goes back to Nigeria, my home country. I am proud of Nigeria. I love its food, its nightlife, its creativity and - of course - its music. But I keep asking myself how many talented and promising youth will have to follow my path? How many plumbers, engineers, hairdressers, teachers will have to risk their life across deserts and seas, instead of hopping on a plane? Is there something different we, our governors, could think and do? – Overlay 4: Nigeria is facing one of its most acute unemployment periods ever. With limited legal pathways to move abroad, Nigerians risked their lives to find employment and safety in Europe. Overlay 5: In 2016, at the height of the so-called migration crisis, almost 40,000 Nigerians survived the Mediterra- nean Sea crossing to reach Italy. It sounds simple: Europe needs young people, workers. Nigeria has them. But in practice, obtaining a work visa is still an unreachable dream for most Nigerians. That’s why we travelled through these dange- rous roads. SCENE 2 Transition to Vilnius, Lithuania. Amarachi Nzekwe appears walking by the city’s river. – Overlay 6: Despite such a quick demographic growth, emigration from Nigeria is still limited. But mo- ving to Europe or the United States of America is a dream for many Overkay 7: Amarachi Nzekwe travelled to Lithuania as a part of Digitla Explorers, a pilot project for IT workers. – Amarachi Nzekwe: It was a bit of a challenge talking about moving to a country that most people have never heard of before. But at the end of the day I realized that the IT sector was booming in Lithuania, doing really well, which is something that Lithuania and Nigeria have in common, they have lots of startups. So my first thought was “Lithuo-what?” and then it became “Oh it doesn’t seem like such a bad country, it’s just cold”. SCENE 3 Exterior, daylight, streets of Castel Volturno (Italy). Jennifer Omigie walks to her office. Images of the town roll by. – Overlay 7: In the last 20 years, many Nigerians had to travel irregularly, facing risks on the way and challenges once they reached their destinations: an uncertain legal status, leading to limited job opportunities. Overlay 8: Jennifer Omigie is one of them – Jennifer Omigie: In Nigeria, I was planning to be an accountant. But because of economic problems, I couldn’t afford my studies, so having the opportunity to be in Italy, I had the opportunity to go to school in this place, so now I’m a mediatrice (mediator) in Italy. I work with Operatori sanitari nel mondo, we render assistance to people, not just here, also in Africa. Interior, daylight. A woman with a baby on her back walks inside the office and goes to speak with Jenni- fer, who sits at a desk. We have doctors, we have lawyers for those who are in need of documents. As for me, why did I decide to become a mediator? Seeing the situation here in Italy, there are so many people that are in need. I am kind of doing my own part as an African citizen giving help not only to Africans, also to Italians, because in this place, we also attend Italians, not only Africans. SCENE 4 Interior, daylight, room in Vilnius. Amarachi Nzekwe sits at her table, in her flat. She starts working at the pc. Details. Amarachi Nzekwe (Sound in camera) - That’s where I work, every day since the pandemic started. This is where I get up and come to resume my daily work. It’s a good thing that everything’s online, so I don’t need to be physically present at work. Amarachi Nzekwe (from interview): My title is software quality assurance engineer. To put it more sim- ply, I’m a tester, I test software products to ensure that what has been built out meets the requirements of the clients. I’m the person you need in a team to say “this doesn’t work”. SCENE 6 Exterior, daylight. Chris Obehi walks through the streets of Palermo. I grew up surrounded by music. Then when I decided to quit, I didn’t know that music was going to be my job. As a bridge-builder, I love making questions, challenging narratives. Migration is of course one of these hot topics, one that I confront everyday. And there’s something I want to tell you: things could go differently. Just think about this: the European population is ageing terribly quickly. Italy, my second country, has an average age of 46 years, the fourth oldest country on the planet. Countries in Europe need to attract workers to keep their economy and social systems running. The average age in Nigeria is 18 years. It is Africa’s most populous country; we’re more than 200 millions, but set to be 400 millions in twenty years or so. Interior, daylight. Chris Obehi enters into a club, his guitar on his back. He says hello. SCENE 7 Exterior, late afternoon. Amarachi Nzekwe walks on the banks of the river, in Vilnius. Then we see her in a bus, listening to music. Voice over. Amarachi Nzekwe: I live in a country where there’s so many jobs, and not a lot of people. Here, every company is constantly hiring. And I think about where I’m coming from, where there are so many talen- ted people and no jobs. For them, seeing me here, seeing people that work ouside, it helps widening their perspectives. They realized that the job market is not only in Nigeria, it’s worldwide, you can literally work anywhere if you have the skills. – Overlay 9: With a shrinking labor force and an ageing population, migrants have a key role in European societies. Many were “essential” workers that prompted recovery during the Covid-19 pandemic. – SCENE 8 Interior, daylight. Office of the NGO Jennifer Omigie works with. She prepares bags with food and basic items and walks out of the building. Then we see her driving through the streets of Castelvolturno, daylight. Views and camera-car over the streets of the city, crumbled buildings, a few people in the background. Jennifer Omigie drives her car. JO - Covid not only here in Italy, every part of the world, brought economic problems. For more than three months, nobody left home and this meant not bringing money to your house. No money, no food and children have to eat. What did we do, as an organization? We did supplies, from house to house, to help those that needed it. She parks and walks inside a seemingly abandoned building, with no electric light. A colleague from the NGO follows her. There, she meets with a Nigerian woman. She brings her two bags of food and sanitary items for her and the kid. They exchange a few words. The woman thanks her in Italian. While she leaves the house, voice over starts. Without documents you definitely can’t do a lot of things. First, you can’t work, since to work you need documents. Not working, means not surviving. SCENE 9 Interior, daylight. Amarachi Nzekwe sits at her laptop in the dining room of her apartment. She’s doing a Lithuanian language class. We see her then walking in the city of Vilnius, passing in front of a mural in a seemingly abandoned Soviet times building. Amarachi Nzekwe - on camera: I encourage people to leave, not because I don’t love Nigeria or I don’t want to see Nigeria prosper or I don’t care about it losing talent, but I feel that gaining experience outside gives you some kind of capacity that you can come back and be more useful. So I encourage people to leave, but also to come back eventually, which is what I plan to do anyway. We talk about people migrating illegally doing jobs elsewhere… at the end of the day, they still find a job to do, which means that there are probably opportunities also for underskilled or semi-skilled people: how about creating opportunities also for them to move into these places? I would love if my people didn’t have to go through all they have to go through to search for better op- portunities. But if you want people to migrate legally, to play by the books, there are so many things in the power of these developed countries that they could do to actually help create opportunities to make this happen. SCENE 10 Interior, daylight. Jennifer Omigie sits in her office. We see some details, close-ups of her. Jennifer Omigie, in camera: If you want to come by land, don’t come. if my sister says “auntie, I want to come to Italy”, then if I have the possibility, making the right document, to bring her here, I’d do it, be- cause having my sister here is great. If there’s a possibility for Nigerians to learn more from other countries, going to other countries to learn more, … Well, you could say we’re stealing but it’s great. SCENE 11 Interior, apartment of Amarachi Nzekwe,Vilnius. She sits on the sofa, her computer on a low table. She calls her father on Skype. They speak about life in Lithuania, about other family members, and exchange a few words. Amy tells him she will soon travel to Nigeria for holidays. AN: Daddy, good evening sir, how is everything at home? Dad: We’re doing fine, I just came back from the village, so how are you? AN: I am okay, everything’s fine, I am looking forward to coming back anyway, for sometime, and seeing everybody. Dad: We wish it’s just tomorrow or next tomorrow. Amarachi Nzekwe, in camera: Since leaving Nigeria I have been able to support my family financially, much more than what I could achieve if I stayed. When you talk about brain drain, people leaving Nigeria and how Nigeria is disad- vantaged, then you don’t look at the full picture: these people leave Nigeria but their money goes back to Nigeria. Overlay 10 In 2019, Nigerian migrants sent 25 billion euros back home. These remittances were invested in educa- tion and health services, and generally for supporting families and communities across Nigeria. Amarachi Nzekwe enters one of the very few African products shops in Lithuania. She interacts with the owner, a Nigerian woman, and buys some food. Food is one thing that I miss about home. I come from a place where pepper is an important part of everything you eat. I was so excited when I learned there was an African shop here. For me, I can’t live without Nigerian food, I’m sorry! SCENE 12 Interior, daylight. Jennifer Omigie sits in her office. Jennifer Omigie - in camera: Life in Nigeria, yes, I miss life in Nigeria. I miss my family. I was in Nigeria 5 years ago. Going back was great, meeting my parents, siblings, it was just great. – Overlay 11: For countries like Nigeria, migration is clearly an employment strategy. But Nigeria currently has no labor agreement with destination countries. Lack of regular migration pathways pushes many Nigerian youth to attempt migrating through dange- rous irregular routes. – SCENE 13 Interior, club with a concert hall, Palermo. Details of the mixer. Then exterior daylight, aerial view of the city. We see Chris Obehi walking on a hill, amid vegetation, and then singing and playing. The city lays on his back. Chris Obehi - Voice over: Back home, we have the wrong image, they always think Europe is this, Europe is that… But if they really want to go, to leave the country, I’ll suggest them to use a plane, not to follow what I went through. I’m here today, I’m safe, I survived, but they may not.. You have dreams, ambitions, want to become someo- ne, be patient. Chris Obehi walks to a stage. He starts playing his guitar. The song is called “Non siamo pesci” (We are not fishes), and deals with the dangers of migrating through land and seas. The lyrics, in Italian, are subtitled in English. Images fade out. – Final overlay: Overlay 12: In addition to discouraging irregular migration, it is essential for countries such as Nigeria to improve managed migration systems to enable a growing number of youth to find employment abroad. Safe and orderly migration, as outlined in the UN Sustainable Development Goals, would benefit Nigeria in terms of reducing unemployment and enhancing transfer of skills, technology and investment Overlay 13: Building skills partnerships with other countries, similarly to what the Digital Explorer pro- gram did with Lithuania, will also help fill their employment gaps in specific sectors, where a surplus of talents in Nigeria matches with needs in that country. Overlay 14: It can be the health, the construction or the booming IT sector: opportunities and needs are there. We need to act. – END CREDITS and logos: [LOGO World Bank] A video production by The World Bank with [Three logos: KPF - Korean-World Bank Partnership Facility NIDCOM - Nigerians in Diaspora Commission Rapid Social Response] Video project by Giacomo Zandonini, Francesco Bellina Post-production: Marco Fato Maiorana Second cameras: Oliviero Russo, Umberto Santoro Soundtrack: Chris Obehi, “Non Siamo Pesci” (Courtesy of 900B) – Overlay 15: Let’s hear from those trying to change policies and narratives. – Extra scene- Video cuts from interviews with three experts: : Godwin Nogheghase Obaseki (GO) - Governor of Edo State Migration is good. There are many positive sides of migration. When you travel, you learn about other cultures, you see how other people do things. Migration has been a source of growth and wealth and pro- gress for the world. So there’s nothing wrong with migration in itself. What is wrong is when you migrate irregularly, or illegally. Because when you do it, you expose yourself to huge risks. If you want to travel, we are working out ways to help you travel legally. Some of those ways will be to help prepare to travel: make sure you have some skills. Abike Dabiri-Erewa (ADE) - Chair Nigerians in Diaspora Commission Governments must invest in the people, particularly the young. They are looking for survival, they are looking for jobs. So why can’t we make migration properly managed, in a way that the country of origin and the country of destination, can work together, have a structured programme saying “these are the available jobs, these are the jobs you can do”, and making it structured, because those jobs are needed in those countries, and these are young Africans going to other countries in search of employment. It can be done, it can be achieved. Helen Dempster (HD) - Center for Global Development It is reasonable to assume that if someone was given the choice, to migrate regularly and safely, or rather run the risks of regular migration, they would chase the former. But we don’t have a way to prove this point, largely because it is a very difficult thing to measure. Our two studies come from the US-Mexico border and the border between Germany and the Western Balkans. Both show that combining new legal migration pathways with robust border enforcement, can reduce irregular migration. GO In Edo, we are creating opportunities for young people. That you don’t have to travel to enjoy what people are enjoying abroad. We are improving the environment, we are investing in infrastructure, electricity, in technology, in fiber optics so that you can stream, you can be online. You can actually work for a com- pany abroad from your location in Benin City, we have hundreds of men and women who are training to do that. We are creating opportunity in technology, because the world is about technology today. We are trying to compete with country like Estonia, Latvia… small countries. We are making sure that we improve the educational system, train young people so that they can have skills. And to make sure that are young people, who are very creative, are given the space to produce and continue producing and creating world class works. ADE We can’t stop migration, regular or irregular, because the world is about migration, but we can reduce irregular migration and encourage regular migration, and still get the benefit of migration. – Final overlay: Migration is what you make of it. Let’s work to better manage migration in Nigeria. –