AFRICAN FAMILY AND MIGRATION SYNTHESIZING RELIGIOUS POTENTIALS IN A GLOBALIZING WORLD

Abstract

Before Africa’s modern civilization, cases of family members looking for greener pastures outside their primordial and natural abodes had been an ongoing phenomena. Immigration whether trade orchestrated or forced implicates the incursion of globalization among families of African and Nigerian origins. For instance, Awka blackmisths had casted an iron gate which till this day is domiciled in the imperial Museum in London and tradesmen of Igbo origin had been found in several states in America. Apart from the trans-athletic slave trade which had seen thousands of people of African origin doing menial jobs in the Americas and the Indies, being tos had been spotted in Nigeria during the colonial era. This crop of people was the early formators of African and especially Nigerians post colonial democracy. Those days, not many people found their ways outside Nigerian shores. Increasing rate of movement of many families started in the 1980s till date. From the Nigerian Immigration statistics in 2017, about 52% of Nigerians working age youths had migrated to many countries of Europe and America between 1980-2017 in search of greener pastures and a lot more are vying for International Passports to escape. Thousands of African immigrants had been found dead along the deserts in Morocco or stranded in capsized Ships in the shores of Italy. The aim of this work therefore is to uncover reasons why employable youths of working age are leaving countries that seem to offer better work opportunities and conditions. The work employs the use of Critical Discourse analysis C.D.A to explore the details of the findings. The researcher discovers that employable Nigerians leave the country for other countries because the religious leaders have failed abysmally to instruct on the need for honest civic duties to the nation. They have also failed to preach on the dangers involved in travelling out of the country in most cases illegally to other countries and the consequent risks involved in hibernating in those countries. The need to create employable jobs for the teaming graduate of Nigeria has not been also be buttressed by Nigerian religious leaders sufficiently. The researcher discovers that if the religious leaders will do their duties well, the youths exodus in Nigeria will greatly reduce if not stopped completely.