A large number of young Africans are forced into adventure. A situation they find themselves in due to governance problems in their sector of activity. This is the case of a young Beninese professional footballer who, because of difficulties in his sector, went to try his luck elsewhere.

A professional footballer, Boliano has seen his career take a hit because of governance twists and turns. Today, as a coach in a training centre in Allada, southern Benin, he hopes to pass the torch to the younger generations, and tells Dialogue Migration about his ups and downs.

This morning of July 2023, during about two hours of exercises, teenagers, some of whom are making their debut juggling a football, are training, with only one dream: to become professional footballers. 

At the end of the day’s exercise, the young man, aged 30 who supervises them, shares with Dialogue Migration. One could read in his eyes all the happiness that this job brings to his life. Hounguè Boya, alias Boliano, born in 1993 to a taximan father and a housewife mother, is a football fan and big fan since his childhood of German goalkeeper Oliver Kahn. Like his idol, he wanted to become a goalkeeper. Indeed, he is a former resident of the Ajavon Sébastien International Training Center (CIFAS), previously located in Djèfa in southern Benin on the Cotonou-Porto-Novo road, also leading to Sèmè Kraké, the Benin-Nigeria border.

He remembers the strongest emotions that drove him to embrace this career. It was during the 2002 Korea/Japan World Cup. Boliano made his debut at CEG1 Azovè in southwestern Benin in the Couffo department. Coming from a modest family and wanting to fulfil his dream of becoming a goalkeeper, he had not been able to register at the CIFAS Training Center, which cost around 2 million CFA francs a year at the time. However, luck will smile on him. In 2009, the team of his school in which he played became champion of the departments of Mono-Couffo, and it took part in the national phase of the school championship in Lokossa. His performances during the championship caught the attention of the Cifas talent scouts who came to follow the competition. He will be retained in the list of six scholarship goalkeepers to join the CIFAS in 2009, after a test on a hundred athletes. He will be supported by the training centre for his studies and sport in the U-16 category (under 16 years old).

Beginning of the ordeal

A few years later, everything will collapse like a house of cards. Indeed, at the time, there was a crisis that shook Beninese football. “In 2011, to our great surprise, we learned on television that President Ajavon had closed the training centre. There were more than 200 boarding students,” says Boliano. He adds in a stunned voice: “Those whose parents had some money sent their children to Côte d’Ivoire, Ghana, Algeria, Tunisia and others. And we, who had no one, were left to our own. That’s where the ordeal began.” Faced with this situation, Boliano will not give up and has continued his dynamic by training in the neighbourhood. After the closure of Cifas, he was solicited by Soleil Football club, in Cotonou. After which, he found it useful to go on an adventure. “After half a season with the club, I thought it was useful to go outside. Even though I didn’t have the resources and I didn’t know anyone, since I’ve already done my experiences in the country,” he continues. Despite this turnaround in his career, Boliano had only one desire that drove him: to succeed.

Night crossing of the Benin-Nigeria border

“Not knowing anyone outside, I heard about neighbouring Nigeria which is an English-speaking country where things are better. Given the condition in which I found myself in the country, I thought it useful to go elsewhere,”says Boliano. Thus, he undertook to go on an adventure. With the help of a Beninese smuggler who was smuggling goods between Benin and Nigeria, he will reach Nigeria located east of Benin. “I talked to him, he accepted and I took the risk of following him. The gentleman promised to take me and we made an appointment and one day I followed him… I crossed the border into Nigeria for the very first time at 2 AM,” he said. This happened after some shopping in Owodé on the border with Nigeria. Arriving at his destination in Ikoyi,  Nigeria, he will be entrusted to an Igbo security guard  with whom he will now share the cabin and who will ensure his guardianship after the smuggler left  quietly Boliano will finally undertake odd jobs by helping a lady in a nearby dealership with  her restaurant’s washing and serving. After two months, with his tips and daily paychecks, he was able to save 45 thousand Naira and decided to get into the driving school.

Between the brambles…

Boliano stopped school at Grade 10 before continuing the11th  and 12th Grade at Cifas. The professional football training centre was closed the year he was supposed to pass his final exam. Despite this, he wanted to succeed in order to help his parents who were starting to get out of breath, since he was the eldest with younger siblings. Once he got  his driver’s licence obtained in Nigeria, and not having an endorsement, people were afraid to entrust him with their vehicle. And since it was football that led him there, he will seek to get in touch with clubs in his locality.  After two weeks of trial with a club at Yaba, he made a good impression; but the conditions of signing his contract will make him leave. “When they wanted to sign my contract, they brought blank papers and on 4 pages they wanted me to put the signature on my passport,” he describes. The 21-year-old at the time remembered what marked him when he entered Nigeria. “This is Lagos, open your eyes!” Here it is Lagos a city different from the others, be vigilant he had read. Although he had been warned, he had opposed it fearing all that it could entail in case he wanted to leave the club. Back at his starting point in Ikoyi, one of the coaches impressed by his performances took him to another training centre where he did a tournament of over 3 weeks.  The performance of a Ghanaian team that came to take part in the championship will decide him to go to Ghana without any prior contact. Returning  to Cotonou to  prepare, after a few weeks, he took the road to Lomé in Togo and Lomé to Aflao, and from Aflao, he took the bus to Accra. 

Having no contact by necessity, he comes across Beninese who will introduce him to another compatriot who worked in a hotel whose owner is Lebanese, as a cleaner. He will be hired in this place where he earned the equivalent of 14,000f CFA apart from tips. At midday, he was going to play football with a local club. 

Starting for two games against a Ligue 1 club, his performances forced the team officials to licence him for a 17-game tournament that ended in 15 wins, one loss and a draw. 

Boliano will catch the eye of a Moroccan recruiter. To date, he does not know what disagreement there was with his club and the latter so that despite obtaining the visa for Morocco, his transfer could not be concluded. Discouraged, but with the visa in his passport with his savings, he returned to Cotonou to try to get there. “I was missing 156 thousand FCFA to make the trip. I didn’t get that money until the visa expired,” he said. That was in 2014. Subsequently, his savings ran out and not wanting to lose his shape, he started training with the “Black Mamba” club in 2015. 

In the end, he was unable to sign the contract, as the crisis continued in the football sector in Benin. So, he had to survive. This is how he got involved in working life. “I was a tricycle driver for three years, from 2018 to 2021.” Due to difficulties related to this activity, the contract will be terminated. Since he no longer had a job, he started working at the GDIZ site  from Monday to Saturday. One of his acquaintances who noticed his performances during weekend training will recommend him for a training centre to supervise children. The Training Center of Football Youth Education and Prosperity which is an American NGO with which he has just done an academic year. “We want to train intellectual players, who can write their own contracts,” he says.

Call for help

According to Boliano, “If our states can create jobs to allow young people to show off, no one wants to leave their country to go and suffer in another country.” Because, he says, if you have the resources, you can leave your country to find out how things are going elsewhere. “But we are obliged, constrained, given the situation we are living in the country,” he laments.

“When Cifas was going well, I never wanted to leave to go and live this ordeal in Nigeria. It was the closure of Cifas that pushed me out of Benin. I knew that after three years of training at Cifas, there were tests and training waiting for me in France. There were trips waiting for me and I knew that in the end I was going to travel. I focused on studies and sports. So, when the centre was closed, I had to leave my comfort zone, because I didn’t want to lose my talent,” he says.

According to his argument, young people are left behind in their own country and say to themselves: “If I do not look elsewhere to earn a living, it is a problem because there is the family that is there and we must also fulfil ourselves”.

In view of the tragedies taking place in the Mediterranean and elsewhere in Maghreb countries, for him this is justified by a fact. “You learn that elsewhere if you manage to cross the border of your country, your situation will improve. So, we are ready to take the risk there, whatever the consequences are. This is what makes us see thousands of young Africans die at sea.” 

Distraught to see thousands of talents and young people wanting to cross the Mediterranean, Boliano said there are risks that should not be taken. “A dead goat has no fear of death, but I think it’s important that we be patient,” he advises. While most young people think life abroad is easy; on the contrary, it is more difficult, he argues from experience. 

“For me to be a starter at the club where I was in Ghana, I worked twice. It was because of the gap between the Ghanaian goalkeeper and me that I was a starter. Abroad it has never been as easy as we think.”, he says, inviting young people to have their heads on their shoulders. “It’s not enough to leave your country to earn a living,” he observes.