YAOUNDÉ, Cameroon – A Cameroonian priest, Father Humphrey Tatah Mbuy, has criticized African leaders and the intelligentsia for their silence on the issues of human trafficking, illegal migration, and brain drain — ills that, according to him, have hindered the continent’s progress.

In his weekly reflections titled “Faith Seeking Understanding”, Mbuy recounted the harrowing story of a young Cameroonian girl he encountered at the Cameroon-Nigeria border. Deceived by a human trafficker with promises of a well-paying job in Ghana or Burkina Faso, she was fortunately intercepted by the Nigerian police before her journey could continue.

“She was one among more than 50 others struggling to cross the border into Ikom and on to Lagos to meet someone, supposedly a representative of a company recruiting young people for job opportunities in Ghana and Burkina Faso. The girl in question had never moved out of the region, and she neither knew where Lagos was nor the agent in charge of the operation,” Mbuy recounted.

He said the girl’s father had already shelled out thousands of dollars “to a certain Mr. Ibrahima Oudraogo, whom they only encountered on the internet and who made all the flowery promises.”

“The girl was to meet him in Lagos and then take a taxi to some address which was written on some scruffy paper and then Mr. Oudraogo would start making things happen for her to go to Ouagadougou,” the priest added.

A drivers’ union at the border were the first to raise red-flags and that is how the Nigerian Police was able to intercept the convoy of potential victims of human trafficking.

Mbuy asserts that her story is a stark reflection of the daily reality faced by many African youths, who undertake dangerous journeys across the Mediterranean Sea and the Sahara Desert in desperate attempts to reach Europe, America, or even parts of Asia.

“Apart from using dangerous and overcrowded boats on turbulent seas, secretive migration routes through forests and deserts, the hazards and gruesome experiences which these young people encounter are simply inhuman,” Mbuy said during his weekly Sunday reflections.

“Many die on the way, and nobody ever says anything about them. A good number have been unaccounted for, and some people who pretend to be bona fide representatives of companies seeking laborers manipulate these people. The girls and women in particular are often the first victims, as they are raped, sodomized, and carried off to some unknown destinations,” he said.

The priest describes these perilous migrations as a modern form of slavery — less brutal than the historical transatlantic slave trade that forcibly took approximately 12.5 million Africans between 1526 and 1867, but not any less significant.

“Today, while conscientious Africans are still coming to terms with this disgraceful past, here comes yet another version of slavery, and for this we can no longer just fold our arms and watch,” he said.

A study conducted by Tanzanian geopolitics and international policy expert Ezra Ninko, based in Dar es Salaam, revealed that over 7,000 Africans were reported dead between January 2020 and May 2024 due to these dangerous migrations. An additional 1,180 perished while attempting to cross the Sahara Desert to reach the Mediterranean.

Mbuy says the triple ills have significant consequences for an African continent reeling from poverty, and blighted by a chronic lack of the necessary manpower.

“Most of those who are trafficked or who go on these dangerous, illegal emigration as well as brain-drain are the most precious of what any continent and any country would want to keep,” the priest told Crux.

“Basically, they are the young people-the future of any society, and I think this is the most painful cost that we have to pay,” Mbuy said.

“The cost of this brain drain, and trafficking and illegal migration, is the fact that we will get worse and worse, because when you lose your best, you cannot get any better,” he told Crux.

He said that as long as Africa’s best continue to leave the continent, “Africa remains slaves and enslaved, because we keep on imagining that the best is out there and not with us.”

Citing various Biblical texts as well as papal statements, the Cameroon priest and intellectual said any act that leads to the enslavement of humans is “forbidden and considered as a sin against humanity and fundamental human rights.”

“According to Pope John Paul II, this modern slavery is an affront to fundamental values which are shared by all cultures and peoples, values rooted in the very nature of the human person. It is an open wound and a scourge on the mystical body of Christ,” Mbuy said.

He underscored the need for concerted action against the scourge, and that begins with what he described as “the decolonization of the mind.”

“We need to do some mental decolonization to accept that we can find the gold and the eldorado where we are,” he told Crux.

“The first thing we need to do is mental decolonization: to believe in ourselves, to know that there is nothing wrong in staying where you were born  and that each of us can make it where we are, if we choose to. For example, the amount of money that people waste trying to find their way out, if they use that money on the soil, tilling the soil, doing something practical, they will gain far more. If they invested that money in some businesses in Cameroon, they will gain more,” he explained.

Mbuy said that for that to happen, the education system also needs to be decolonized and tailored to suit the demands of the job market.

“All of us must begin to realize that the education system that we have is outdated, and definitely not tailored towards helping our young people to become better. Therefore, each individual must be concerned about the kind of holistic education that we need, and the kind of quality education that me need,” he said.