The inter play of domestic political factors and forces impinge on the policy responses to the challenge of immigration. This is an acute consideration in the African environment, where a pervasive sense of the unlimited solidarity of the earthly wretched across international frontiers in Africa is deeply and conveniently ingrained in society. Borders exist only in reality, but not in any mental recognition of their existence. They are therefore meant to be breached in Africa. This different orientation has led to sharp discourse internal to states and among states on the global immigration crisis. More importantly on the continental aisle is the undeniable lack of political will in many African states to stem emigration through un-abating creation and export of mass produced poor and wearied who are primed to go in search of greener pastures further abroad or in the immediate abroad.

How to realign this mindset has been the thrust of European discourse and Angela Merkel controversial visit. Merkel spoke to establishments whose policies alienate the millions that brave the dangerous waters of the coast of Libya now rendered ungovernable by the West. It is a great paradox that the West that denied Africa as a legitimate stakeholder in Libya, through Angela Merkel, is calling on African states and the African Union to help clean up European mess in Libya.

Angela Merkel visited Niger Republic, Mali and Ethiopia and addressed the African Union, after upbraiding the Ethiopian Prime Minister, whose hand she refused of shake to protest European concerns over human rights violations in that country. First, the trip was unique because Angela Merkel came more as a European envoy with a tough message on migration from a frustrated Europe that refused to take responsibility for instigating the wave of current immigration to Europe from Africa and the Mid East. But it was, notwithstanding the bravura of her statement and a false attention to human rights as the source of Europe’s headache in Africa, also a humbling interaction of Europe with Africa. She needed to be told that human rights abuses have horribly always been part of the challenges of governance in Africa. What changed was just the stabilizing role of Muamar Gaddafi that the United States, France and Grer Britain removed from the tenuous strategic balance. Admittedly thiswas done against the advice of Angela Merkel.

That preeminently qualified her to be the bearer of Europe’s SOS to Africa on Libya. She sought to sweeten her message with development aid package up to Euro 87 million to improve infrastructure and support Agadez region in Niger, which is home to many migrants heading for Europe. The aid included a €10 million package to improve communication equipment and vehicles for the country’s army. She offered training to 500 Ethiopian police in riot control as part of symbolic action to protect the rights of protesters in that country. Paradoxically, she was scheduled to meet with President Muhammadu Buhari of Nigeria and also President Etno Derby of Chad, two contrasting pasts and visions of Africa, on her return back home in Berlin. Etno Derby was condemned Hissene Habre’s operations chief responsible for killing many Chadians. It is normal to wonder if Merkel shook his hands in Berlin.

What a week for the Chancellor dining with saints and demons for the good of Europe. Yet, the paradox goes beyond Africa. Policy makers and politicians are unsure whether the trip that predominantly focused on migration, security and investment actually added any value to Africa. Only Europeans appreciate the logic of Angela Merkel’s statements and donations on the visit to Africa. But as she understands, anything goes for Africa. This, however, does not absolve African governments from blame.

The glaring fact is that the appalling normative regimes of governance in the African state significantly motivate the desire of many Africans to emigrate. African governments to which the Europeans have appealed have never believed in the agenda of the African public good. The spike in the numbers of poor African potential migrants actually taking the risk, a major feature of the current international immigration crisis, cannot be divorced from the unilateral American and European interventions designed to advance of strategic objectives of elite extra-African forces in Africa. The timing of the current wave of immigrants, especially from Africa, resulting in the international immigration crisis, anchored is clearly linked to the implosion of the Libyan state following the intervention of extra-African forces, mainly France and Great Britain, co-opting NATO, to push for a military ouster of Libya leader Muamar Gaddafi. Now, Europe is nervous about receiving more and more immigrants from the current crisis, with the anti-immigration National Front doing so well in the polls.

Countries in Eastern and Central Europe, which house very few asylum seekers, do not want to start opening their doors. Belatedly, in early May, 2015, European Council President Donald Tusk affirmed that Europe will step up efforts to address conflict and instability as key push factors of migration. Mr. Tusk added that the EU would co-ordinate the resettlement of more people to Europe on a voluntary basis and, in classic double speak, “with an option for emergency relocation”. Meanwhile, in the unfolding tragedy, by 21 April the UN refugee agency UNHCR reported that so far in 2015 a total of 36,390 migrants had reached Italy, Greece and Malta by sea. It put the number of dead at 1,750 and missing at 1,776 – including those in the shipwreck on 19 April which claimed an estimated 800 lives.

Europe has thus remained consistent in adopting pragmatic and convenient policies toward Africa. The interest of the West in the Libyan conflict, as with other conflicts in the Third World, was not motivated by the love of Libya or Africans. Their engagements ultimately are only to advance their strategic goals, notwithstanding the potential for the destructive consequences for the states and societies at the receiving end of this poisonous tough love. In the case of Libya, Europe, pursing a single minded policy of regime change no matter the aftermath of this intervention, brushed aside far sighted advice of key African states and statespersons to work toward a negotiated resolution of the crisis.

A negotiated resolution of the Libyan conflict as consistently advocated by major and insightful African stakeholders would have reduced the prospects in the post Gaddafi era of the various nightmares that now confronts Africa in the devastating destabilization of the Sahel and the instability in Libya and its Mediterranean coast. The rise of Islamic militancy in the Sahel is another direct outcome of the disastrous western Interventions in Libya. Africa, including Nigeria, is licking its wounds. Let Europe learn to lick its self induced wounds quietly.

Ademola Araoye is a former Nigerian diplomat and a retired official of the United Nations. Currently a Visiting Professor associated with the SARCHi chair on African Diplomacy and International Relations at the University of Johannesburg, Araoye is author of critically acclaimed books including Cote d’Ivoire: The Conundrum of a Still Wretched of the Earth and Sources of Conflict in the Post-Colonial African State. He is a regular contributor to TheNEWS magazine