Africa's new 'boat people' set sights on oil-rich EGuinea

After a four-week ocean journey to nowhere, Raimi was tired and disillusioned on return to Benin's port of Cotonou, which he had left in high hopes of reaching the oil "El Dorado" of central Africa: Equatorial Guinea.

Standing bag in hand on the bridge of a ship intercepted by the Beninese navy, he watched helplessly as fellow would-be migrants -- hoping for work -- disembarked ahead of him.

Twenty-seven year old Raimi looked thin and dehydrated. Gritting his teeth, he told of the voyage south to Gabon with about 200 others before the boat was intercepted by authorities there and sent back to Benin.

"We left Cotonou on October 5 and picked up other passengers en route. I paid 300,000 CFA francs (about 460 euros/680 dollars) to the captain, who told us that he would take care of the transport and the visa formalities as far as Libreville," the capital of Gabon, just south of Equatorial Guinea.

"Alas, off the coast of Libreville, we were seized and turned away and that is when I realised the trap," said Raimi, who has a degree in mathematics. He is determined to try to sail again.

Like its neighbor Gabon, whose oil wealth in the 1980s attracted many Beninese to work in education and the informal sector, little Equatorial Guinea has become a favoured destination among west Africans, according to Beninese sociologist Fiacre-Aristide Ekpangbo.

"It's clear the 'Uncle Gabon' phenomenon has started for Equatorial Guinea," said Ekpangbo. "People were envious when they saw the projects expats returning home from Gabon were able to undertake so they felt they too had to migrate, to do like the son of the neighbor."

The discovery of oil and gas in the early 1990s has created a booming economy that often sees Equitorial Guinea, once one of the world's poorest countries, presented as a future "African Kuwait".

Today it ranks as sub-Saharan Africa's third crude oil producer.

Though the benefits have yet to trickle down to the population -- the World Bank sets the poverty rate at 77 percent -- the boom holds out hope for many in the region.

"You have to go abroad to survive," said 26-year-old Aisha from the arid desert state of Mali.

Sitting on the ground in Cotonou's central police station where many from the boat were taken, she, like Raimi, was not ready to renounce future attempts at going into exile.

In the meantime, the would-be migrants would be questioned by authorities and probably sent home.

"Life is getting harder and harder in my country," she said. "My idea is first to go to Gabon and then to settle in Equatorial Guinea, where it's easier to get a job.

"In Europe, the whites don't want us any more," said Aisha.

"In Africa too, where there's talk of integration, we're chased away. But if it should please God, I'm going to go back because there's money there," she said, nodding gently.

Other passengers were taken for questioning to immigration headquarters in Cotonou, where officials are trying to figure out who is running the migration racket and plying the vessels along the west and central African coast.

Though exact figures were not available, Equatorial Guinea border police say hundreds of illegal migrants, notably from Nigeria and Cameroon, enter the country each month, attracted by the oil money.

At Benin's immigration office, 32-year-old Clotilde from Togo awaited her turn, sitting on a pile of baggage.

"I paid to get off at Libreville before going on to Equatorial Guinea, where I planned to join a cousin. Once there, I knew that I was going to start up a small business in making clothes, with material from Cotonou," she said calmly, amidst the commotion.

"We're chased out of France and (...) even in Africa, people say that we're foreigners," Clotilde said.

"Where are we going to end up? Afterwards, they talk to us about African integration. We're in Africa and we're still persecuted. But I know that I'm going to go back."