Success is a 16-year-old boy from Edou State, Nigeria. As a youth, Success developed his passions for football and hip-hop dance and shared close bonds with his father, mother, and two sisters. But one day at high school changed everything. Success witnessed a young boy being beaten up by a group of older students behind the high school. He began to yell for assistance hoping to help the bloodied young boy. When the older boys threatened to hurt Success, he ran home. The next day at school, Success was beaten up by the same group of older boys, who threatened to kill him if he told anyone of their criminal activities. After treating Success’ wounds at home, his father went to the school administration who said they could do nothing to arrest or punish these older boys. Fearing for his son’s life if he stayed in school and in the village, Success’ father decided to take him out of school and send him to Europe with local smugglers. 

Success remembers the arduous, 2000-mile journey across the Sahara desert with 50 other Nigerians packed in the back of a semi-truck. At one point, the vehicle broke down, and the company was forced to spend four nights in the desert—without food or water—until a vehicle came to pick them up. A few members of his company died in this waiting period, and Success remembers seeing so many dead migrant bodies in the trip across the desert—whose families will tragically never receive information about the final whereabouts of their loved ones. On the fifth day of waiting in the middle of the Sahara desert, the Nigerian smugglers returned with a new vehicle and brought them to Libya. Like the story of hundreds of thousands of other West African migrants, Success was placed onto a rubber dinghy boat before dusk with 120 other migrants, which floated off the Libyan coast awaiting rescue by European NGOs or Coast Guard units. 

Success arrived in Italy soon after his 16th birthday in September 2017. After calling his family upon arrival, Success received the news that his father had passed away. The next day, Success was sent from the port of Augusta, Sicily to a youth migrant camp in the center of Syracuse where he has lived ever since. Success goes to school every weekday, spends time with his local Italian friends, and plays football in the evening. Success hopes to find a job in Syracuse at a hotel when he turns 18 and can legally work.