Soyombo opens Sahara migration photo exhibition

Investigative journalist and founder of the Foundation for Investigative Journalism, Fisayo Soyombo, on Monday night, opened his first photography exhibition, a visual record of his tortuous journey through the desert to document the heart-wrenching experience of African migrants on the Sahara route to Europe.

He used the occasion to call on government agencies to act against the traffickers and on public officeholders to restore the hope that drives citizens to leave.

Titled ‘Desserts from the Desert’, the exhibition opened at Alliance Française de Lagos, Ikoyi, with a three-hour invite-only ceremony which began at 6 p.m. It draws on his three-part undercover series, “UNDERCOVER: Europe Through the Sahara Desert and the Mediterranean Sea”.

Soyombo spent 47 days travelling as a migrant from Kano through Zinder, Agadez and Dirkou in the Niger Republic, then through al Gatrun and Sabha to Tripoli, Libya. He returned with accounts of death, starvation, rape, physical assault, abduction, torture and modern-day enslavement of citizens of Nigeria, Ghana, Niger, South Sudan, Eritrea and Somalia by Arab traffickers.

“’Desserts from the Desert: An Exhibition of Photos’ will tell stories a million words can’t,” he said.

The opening drew media executives, civil society leaders, industry players and members of the public.

The former Managing Director/Editor-in-Chief of PUNCH, Sir Ademola Osinubi, and the current Managing Director/Editor-in-Chief, Dr Adeyeye Joseph, were at the event.

Others included TheCable’s Founder and Chief Executive Officer, Simon Kolawole; Leadership newspaper’s Editor-in-Chief, Azu Ishiekwene; and former Editor, The PUNCH and Lagos State Commissioner for Information and Strategy, Steve Ayorinde.

From civil society came the founding Executive Director of Enough is Enough Nigeria, ‘Yemi Adamolekun, and the Executive Director of the Wole Soyinka Centre for Investigative Journalism, Motunrayo Alaka. Chairman of the CORA Board of Trustees, Chief Kayode Aderinokun, was there. Lagos governorship candidate of the Nigeria Democratic Congress, Funso Doherty; the actress, Kate Henshaw; former Editor, Sunday Guardian, Mr Jahman Anikulapo; Group Head of Corporate Affairs, FCMB, Diran Olojo; and Group Head, Brand Marketing and Comms, Lotus Bank, Oluwaseun Banwo, were also present, along with representatives of the Ford Foundation as well as the founder of the Chess in Slums Initiative, Tunde Onakoya.

Soyombo, who acknowledged the support that he had received from his former bosses and selected media chiefs over the years, paid tribute to those who had mentored, encouraged and supported him throughout his journalism career.

He also gave special acknowledgement to Joseph for having been on the lookout for him and asked his colleagues about his conspicuous absence from public space. Upon returning, Soyombo said he shared the details of his work trip with him, and Joseph advised that an exhibition had to be held for experiential public access to the work.

Among the exhibits is a photograph of the exterior of the Kano house where a group of migrants, the journalist among them, spent a night.

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Others trace the journey deeper into Libya. One shows a hall in a compound in Ash Shwarnyf, a desert town in the south-west, where migrants from Somalia, Eritrea, South Sudan, Ghana, Niger and Nigeria were hidden and barred from stepping out. Another, captured at 5.45 am on July 1, 2026, shows a brightly lit sky over open desert in the valley of Jabal al Gharbi, the Western Mountain district in the north-west, where African migrants “dreaming of Europe” sleep in the open. A third shows a migrant house on the outskirts of Misrata, Libya’s third-largest city, with a single small hole for ventilation that leaves the air heavy with heat and odour.

In Ghut Shaal, Janzur, a city in the north-west, a dusty vehicle bears the words “God Save Me,” scrawled by a migrant begging for rescue from a holding house. Another image shows migrants dumped outdoors in the same compound.

The final images show a dishevelled Soyombo. One, titled “A journalist posing as a migrant takes his final picture in Tripoli,” was taken after he paid a ransom to secure his release from the Ghut Shaal holding house.

Addressing guests, Soyombo described what is happening in the desert as a humanitarian crisis of large proportions. “Somebody has to do something about these traffickers. The government agencies have to do something,” he said.

Asked by a Ford Foundation representative, Umar, why so many Nigerians still take the route, Soyombo gave three reasons.

The first was despair, a complete loss of hope that life at home can improve. Public officeholders, he said, must restore that hope in the minds of the people.

The second was the cost already sunk into the journey. By the time migrants understand the danger, they have invested too much money, suffering and stress to turn back.

The third was a conviction that one’s own case will be different, a dogma widely linked to individualistic outlooks propagated in Nigeria’s religious circles, which analysts have argued detaches citizens from the collective consequences of bad governance.

During the interactive session, Onakoya volunteered to cover the cost of the rescue of one migrant back to Nigeria after Soyombo explained that it cost about N800,000 to N1m, with the process lasting no less than three weeks across multiple layers of efforts. Former Chief Executive Officer of the Federal Competition and Consumer Protection Agency, Babatunde Irukera, also pledged to cover the rescue of one migrant.

The evening also highlighted FIJ’s wider record. Guests were told that its reports had helped recover more than N440m for Nigerians in five years, and that the National Agency for the Prohibition of Trafficking in Persons (NAPTIP) had charged the founder of the Arrows of God Orphanage Home to court after an FIJ investigation.

Cited recoveries included N16.85m refunded to a Europe-based Nigerian by Adron Homes; N42m returned to a waste-collection operator in Lagos by a recycling firm; N12m paid by the Federal Road Safety Corps as the entitlements of a deceased official; and N2.5m refunded to customers by Guaranty Trust Bank.

Others were N2m returned by Kwara State police officers to a forex trader from whom they had extorted it, and N600,000 refunded to a Lagos panel beater by Access Bank.