La migration ne se résume pas au fait de se déplacer d’un pays à un autre. Derrière chaque demande de visa se trouve une personne porteuse d’un rêve, une famille nourrissant des attentes, un étudiant à la recherche d’opportunités ou un professionnel qui aspire à un avenir meilleur.

Pour Oluwagbolahan Oluwatobi, cette compréhension a façonné son travail dans les domaines du conseil en matière de visas, du voyage, de la sensibilisation aux questions migratoires et du développement communautaire.

En tant que conseiller en visas et voyages chez Suit-U Travels and Tours, Oluwagbolahan accompagne les demandeurs confrontés à la complexité des voyages internationaux et des procédures de demande de visa. Son travail va au-delà de la simple préparation des documents. Il estime que les demandeurs ont besoin d’informations précises, d’un accompagnement adéquat et d’une compréhension claire des exigences et des procédures à suivre.

Comprendre le demandeur

Pour Oluwagbolahan, une demande de visa ne se résume pas à des formalités administratives. Chaque demandeur a une raison précise de vouloir voyager.

Certains recherchent des opportunités d’études, tandis que d’autres voyagent pour affaires, pour le tourisme, pour rendre visite à leur famille ou pour poursuivre leur développement professionnel. Comprendre les motivations du demandeur constitue donc un élément essentiel d’un accompagnement responsable.

Il estime qu’un bon conseiller doit fournir des orientations honnêtes plutôt que de faire des promesses irréalistes. Les demandeurs doivent comprendre leurs responsabilités, fournir des informations véridiques et éviter les raccourcis susceptibles de compromettre leur demande ou leurs futures possibilités de voyager.

Se tenir au fait des politiques migratoires

Les politiques d’immigration évoluent constamment. Les pays mettent en place de nouvelles voies d’obtention de visas, réexaminent les critères d’éligibilité et ajustent leurs systèmes migratoires.

Ces changements ont une incidence directe sur les demandeurs.

Oluwagbolahan estime donc que les professionnels du secteur des visas et de la migration doivent continuer à se former et à rester informés des évolutions politiques et réglementaires. Les demandeurs ont également la responsabilité de vérifier les informations et de rechercher des conseils fiables avant de prendre d’importantes décisions liées à la migration.

Son approche repose sur l’information, la transparence et une prise de décision responsable.

La migration au-delà du voyage

L’engagement d’Oluwagbolahan dans le domaine de la migration dépasse son activité professionnelle.

Il est également directeur de Giving Is Healing Foundation, une organisation à but non lucratif axée sur l’autonomisation par l’éducation, le bien-être communautaire et la protection des migrants.

À travers cette fondation, la migration est abordée dans une perspective sociale plus large. Si la migration peut créer des opportunités, les personnes peuvent également devenir vulnérables lorsqu’elles ne disposent pas d’informations précises ou qu’elles ont recours à des voies migratoires dangereuses.

La protection des migrants constitue donc un volet important du travail de la fondation, notamment à travers la sensibilisation, l’engagement communautaire et les initiatives visant à encourager des choix plus sûrs et mieux informés.

Deux fonctions, un même objectif

Son travail au sein de Suit-U Travels and Tours et de Giving Is Healing Foundation lui offre deux perspectives différentes mais complémentaires.

L’une consiste à aider les individus à naviguer dans les procédures de voyage et de demande de visa, tandis que l’autre aborde la migration sous l’angle de la protection, de l’éducation et du bien-être communautaire.

Ensemble, ces deux expériences ont renforcé sa conviction que le débat sur la migration ne devrait pas se limiter à la question de savoir si une personne peut voyager. Il devrait également prendre en compte les raisons qui la poussent à migrer, la mesure dans laquelle elle est correctement informée et la manière dont elle peut prendre des décisions sûres et responsables.

Se préparer au changement

La technologie, les événements mondiaux et l’évolution des politiques d’immigration continuent de transformer les secteurs du voyage et de la migration.

Pour Oluwagbolahan, il est essentiel de s’adapter à ces changements. Il considère que l’apprentissage continu, la connaissance des politiques migratoires et une communication responsable sont des qualités importantes pour les professionnels qui travaillent avec les migrants et les demandeurs de visa.

Son objectif n’est pas simplement d’aider les personnes à déposer leurs demandes. Il est de les aider à comprendre leurs options et à prendre des décisions éclairées.

À travers ses activités professionnelles et son engagement dans le secteur associatif, Oluwagbolahan Oluwatobi continue de contribuer aux discussions sur le conseil en matière de visas, la sensibilisation aux questions migratoires, l’évolution des politiques et l’impact social.

Sa philosophie est simple : la migration doit être abordée avec des informations précises, une préparation adéquate, un sens des responsabilités et dans le respect de la dignité humaine.

Spain, France, and a tournament built on the movement of people — and the double standard that greeted it

On Sunday night, 19 July 2026, in New Jersey, Nico Williams cut down the left wing, cushioned a header into the path of Ferran Torres, and watched Torres send Spain to a second World Cup title. It was the goal that beat Argentina. It was also, in a quiet way, the story of the whole tournament.

After the final whistle, Williams did something that said more than the assist did. He took his winner’s medal, walked over to his mother, María Arthuer, and put it around her neck. Years earlier, while pregnant with Nico’s older brother Iñaki, María had crossed the Sahara Desert on foot, leaving Ghana in search of a safer, better life.

She eventually reached Spain. Both her sons grew up to play for the national team. One of them just became a world champion. A few metres away, eighteen-year-old Lamine Yamal was doing his own kind of history. Yamal’s father, Mounir Nasraoui, left Larache in Morocco as a boy. His mother, Sheila Ebana, left Bata in Equatorial Guinea.

They met in Catalonia, raising their son in a working-class neighbourhood outside Barcelona. That son is now one of the best footballers alive, and openly proud of all three flags he carries — Spanish, Moroccan, Equatoguinean.

Spain’s champions were not an exception in this tournament. They were the pattern. France told the same story from a different angle. Kylian Mbappé, who closed the tournament as the World Cup’s all-time leading scorer, grew up in Bondy, a working-class suburb outside Paris, the son of a father who moved from Cameroon and a mother whose family came from Algeria’s Kabyle region.

Mbappé has never hidden where he comes from. He has also never been in any doubt about who he plays for. “My nationality is French,” he has said, “but my origins are Algerian and Cameroonian.” Nearly a third of France’s squad this tournament were born in Africa or carry family roots there — not a quirk of one generation, but the ordinary shape of French football for decades.

Nearly every serious contender in this World Cup told some version of the same story. That is worth sitting with, because it is usually the part of the migration story that gets left out.

What migration actually is

It helps to say plainly what the word means, because it gets thrown around loosely. Migration is simply the movement of people from one place to another — across a town, a country, or a continent — in search of work, safety, family, or opportunity. It is not one thing. It includes the trader who moves from Ibadan to Ghana for better business. The nurse who moves from Lagos to London for a job. The mother who crosses a desert on foot, pregnant, because staying was worse than leaving.

The father who leaves Morocco as a nine-year-old with no say in the matter at all.

Most migration in the world is not dramatic. It is ordinary people making ordinary, difficult decisions about where their families will have a better shot at life. María Arthuer’s crossing was extraordinary. Most migration stories are not — they are quieter, slower, and no less deserving of dignity.

The part nobody wants to say out loud

Here is the uncomfortable truth this World Cup also showed. The same movement of people that produces Nico Williams and Lamine Yamal is, in dozens of countries right now, treated as a crime. Migrants are held in detention centres for the offence of arriving without the right paperwork. Families are separated at borders. Asylum seekers are described in political speeches as invaders, floods, or threats, long before anyone asks who they actually are or why they left home.

During this very tournament, football delegations themselves were not spared that suspicion. There were reports of players from African teams facing extended customs checks simply for arriving to compete. If a national team travelling under FIFA’s own banner can be treated as suspect at the border, it says something about how much harder that same border is for a migrant with no federation behind them, no visa sponsor, no stadium waiting.

That is criminalisation — treating the act of migrating itself as something closer to a crime than a decision. It rarely gets named that plainly, but it is what is happening when movement is met first with suspicion and only later, if ever, with a fair hearing.

The double standard nobody wants to own

Here is what makes this so hard to defend. The same governments, commentators, and ordinary fans who treat migration as a threat when it shows up at a border checkpoint spent the last month on their feet cheering it in a stadium. Nobody watching Nico Williams’ assist paused the celebration to ask whether his mother’s crossing was legal.

Nobody watching Mbappé lift the Golden Boot demanded to see his father’s original entry papers into France. The migration was not just tolerated in that moment — it was the reason for the joy.

That is the double standard in plain sight. Migration is magic when it wins you a trophy and a menace when it asks you for asylum. The same journey — leaving one country because another one offers more — is applauded on a football pitch and criminalised at passport control, sometimes by the very same people, often in the very same week. A double standard this obvious does not need a research paper to prove it. It needs only a scoreboard and a headline printed side by side.

The benefit is not an afterthought

It is worth being direct about what migration actually gives the places that receive it, because that side of the story is usually told in half-sentences, if at all. Spain did not win a World Cup despite migration. It won partly because of it. The same is true well beyond football.

Migrants build homes, staff hospitals, start businesses, fill labour gaps, pay taxes, send money home that lifts entire communities, and raise children who go on to represent the only country they have ever known — sometimes at the very highest level a country can offer.

Nico Williams did not simply overcome his mother’s journey. He was the return on it. Lamine Yamal did not simply survive his parents’ migration. He is, right now, one of the finest footballers on earth because of the life they built after it. That is not a sentimental point. It is the actual, measurable outcome of migration done right — given time, given dignity, given a fair chance to belong.

Why this shouldn’t end with the trophy

Spain lifted the World Cup on July 19. The stadiums are empty now, the flags are being packed away, and the conversation is already moving on to next season’s club fixtures. But the questions this tournament raised about migration do not go away because the football stopped.

For those of us working on migration governance across West Africa and beyond, the lesson is not that football should be more grateful to migrants. It is that the way we talk about migration everywhere else — in our policies, our borders, our news coverage — should catch up to what football already knows without needing to be told: that people who move, and are given a fair chance, tend to build extraordinary things. Not despite where they came from. Because of the courage it took to leave.

María Arthuer crossed a desert so her sons could have a chance. Nobody handed her that chance. She and thousands like her earned it the hard way, and it is long past time the systems meant to receive them recognised that.

Aihawu Victor is the Director of the Centre for Youths Integrated Development (CYID) and the Platform for Cooperation on Mixed Migration (PCMM).

Fracesca De Masi is the President of Be Free Cooperative Against Trafficking Violence and Discrimination, an association of  women  taking care of women-victim of trafficking and violence. The  organization was established in Roma in 2007.

According to her, Be Free is part of the national anti-trafficking system.  “In Italy , we have a system which can accept women or men victim of exploitation- sexual exploitation and labor exploitation too,”she said, adding that there are in Italy, 1,500 places for victim of trafficking. 1,500 shelters founded by the government.

“We manage shelter with 6 places available for women who are escaping from sexual exploitation.”

In the course of doing her work, Fracesca has met and supported many Nigerian girls fleeing from violations occasioned by being used for sexual exploitation. Her love and support for Nigerian girls saw her visiting the country and even uses words  spoken by the different tribes in her conversation. “In my journey in Nigeria, I stayed 40 days, more than one month.  I spent 20 days in Lagos with these religious sisters and 20 days in Benin City. It was around the time the Oba of Benin placed a curse on human traffickers.

“And it was very beautiful, because the Nigerian girls in Italy that  I supported, they knew that I was in Nigeria that period.  And they sent me some message telling me, but is it true Oba spoke about us.  And it was very beautiful, because for the first time, the victims had someone speaking about them.

What the Oba did was okay but not enough to stop the traffickers. Human traffickers are criminals. They break human laws, and break even God’s laws too.

She noted that many trafficked girls that  her organisation came across and supported suffered from mental health problems and other health challenges.

“They have symptoms of  depression as part of the consequences of exploitation they have experienced. They have difficulty sleeping and also suffer from even  physical problems. Some come up with HIV. In our shelter, we are, we support them in every kind of procedure. We  accompany them to the hospital, and make them have some healthcare checks.”

 Fracesca decried Nigerian girls’ attitude to seeing psychologist for examination.

 “Nigerian girls think that if they go to the psychologist,  it means that they are crazy.  But it’s not so. So please, please, if you can write this, let them know that going to a psychologist is not aboutbeing  crazy. Going to the psychologist means that you take care about your mental wellness, that it’s very hard to buy.  With all the violence these girls passed through during their journey, the exploitation, the rape,   they psychologist support.  it just helps them to be okay and  happy in life.I know that there are just 200 psychiatrists in all over Nigeria of  200 million people.  I know a lot of things.”

In spite of their reluctance to go for psychological checks, Francesca described  Nigerian girls as fighters and strong willed people “because they are heroic in even finding some way to escape from their madam.

“I have a lot of stories of life about the girls I met in these years.  They are able to escape from their madam. And if they have some support, like our support, they can reach their freedom.

 “But on the other side, this rebellion is very hard, because obviously they have a lot of fear and I agree with them.The fear is about the family in Nigeria, because the traffickers know where the families are.  And so they have fears that the traffickers, if they escape from prostitution, the traffickers can assault the family.”

She noted that the number of Nigerians being trafficked to Italy through irregular pathways has drastically reduced in recent time. “The trafficking changed a little bit in this area because until 2021, we had most of girls coming from Nigeria. Now the data is  a little bit different.  There are even other nationalities like Ivory Coast, Guinea, Mali etc .

“On the contrary, in the past, even in the national system, almost 80% of the people identified by the anti-trafficking system were Nigerians. So we have a lot of experience with Nigerian girls.  For example, in 2016, in those years, Nigeria was one of the first people arriving by boat.  Today, the data is different because we were thinking and asking, where are the Nigerian girls now? Because they don’t arrive anymore by boat to Italy.I think that they remain blocked, for example, in Libya or in other places.”

Fracesca added that Nigerian girls now are less than the pastors in Italy but “they remain very vulnerable following  their situation.  Because even if they are able to escape from the exploitation, they don’t find a very good environment. Italy, especially with the new government, is not welcoming the migrants. It’s a little bit difficult to build with the migrant people a stable project of life.  They remain in precarious situation. So, for them, it’s very difficult to have a good life.  We try our best, okay, because in Italy there are law protecting people escaping from exploitation and trafficking.

“And this law can help them, first of all, to get a residence permit because they are victim of a big crime. Trafficking in my opinion, is the most serious  violation of human rights in the world, because in trafficking, there are different types of  violence. There is rape inside trafficking, there is  prostitution, there is even, for example, sometimes domestic slavery. In my opinion, one of the most dreadful crimes is trafficking.  I cannot tell you, in a sense, the volume of money around this phenomenon, because we have just the world data and not the Italian data.It’s very hard to, first of all, understand how many people are involved in trafficking as victim and how much money the traffickers earn.  

“The data of the national anti-trafficking system is lesser than the reality.  This data is just the people whom we are able to identify as victims. For example, in 2025, the national anti-trafficking system identified 3,000 people as victims of trafficking. Just in 2025.  But we think that there are more and more, because it’s very difficult to find them, especially after COVID. Before COVID, there were a lot of girls on the road and they were more visible. But after COVID, the exploitation moved in closed places something like connection houses.And this kind of places is very hard to identify.”