Questions have been asked as to whether The Gambia government has now officialised the backway. This comes on the heels of confirmed reports that bus loads of migration frenzy Gambian youths leave the country on almost a daily basis.
Our sources doubt why a government that claims to have shunned the backway is sitting idle while bus loads of able-bodied youths are being transported out of the country. “It has reached a point in which no one cares about fhe future generations of this country,” one source complained. “We have simply reached the tipping point of migration. The government’s lackluster attitude raises many unanswered questions.”
The irony of it all is that these migrant trafficking buses bear foreign license plates. A departure day is assigned for each of the major towns in the Kombo and the Greater Banjul Area. Ticket paying youths who include young girls are transported to Agadez in Niger before getting to Libya. Until they reach Europe through the Mediterranean Sea, the fate of the youths lies in the hands of traffickers. They endure every type of hardship.
The backway had become a perilous journey of no return for many would-be migrants. Many of the youths who include Gambians have died at sea when their makeshift boats capsised. There are others whose whereabouts have not been established, leaving their families in total confusion.
The backway has become the only hope of Gambian youths who feel betrayed, forgotten and abused by a government that claims to have empowered its young people.
The human and material cost of the backway are striking. It ripped apart towns and villages as well as slowed down the growth of The Gambia’s sluggish economy. It is reported that even those Gambian youths who reached Europe are not enjoying peace either. Majority of them have spent years in immigration camps waiting for their fate to be decided. “The frustration is just unbearable, it is traumatising our youths. Some are so disturbed that they start drinking alcohol and having affair with women old enough to be their grandmothers,” one Gambian migrant in Italy told Kairo News.
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