The sun in Agadez, Niger Republic, does not set with grace. It burns out like a furnace gone wild, sucking moisture, hope, and breath from every corner of the Sahara.
That was the last place anyone saw Kunle Adeyemi alive.
Kunle was not a criminal. He wasn’t lazy either. He was a welder—a good one. One of those men with burnt fingertips, rust-stained trousers, and dreams bigger than the ceilings they patched.
But Nigeria was eating him alive.
Fuel scarcity, dollar hikes, no jobs, no peace. Every day was a new story of someone "making it" in Europe. Through the desert. Through the sea. Through death, if necessary.
So when his friend Alao mentioned the trip, Kunle didn’t hesitate.
“No passport, no problem. No embassy, no wahala,” Alao had said, grinning. “Just a strong will and a bag of garri.”
They left on a Wednesday night, sneaking through the northern border like shadows with broken destinies.
There were twelve of them in the truck. Men and boys. Some had wives. One had a baby on the way. None of them knew the desert’s hunger.
By the third day, the water ran out.
By the fifth, Kunle could no longer speak. His tongue was dry. His lips cracked open like wounds.
He whispered to Alao, “Tell my mother I tried.”
On the sixth day, his body was too heavy for the truck. The smuggler kicked him out. Left him there—another black body buried in heat and dust.
Alao returned six months later. Thin, silent, and full of nightmares.
Kunle’s mother had kept his room just the way he left it. His welding boots under the bed. His garri sack untouched.
When Alao delivered his final words, she fell to the ground and wailed.
“He was a good boy,” she said. “All he wanted was to live.”
But in a country where dreams die faster than bodies, living had become a luxury.
There was no grave for Kunle. Just sand. Just memory. Just warning.
Let his name not be forgotten. Let his pain be a wake-up call.
Because for many Nigerians, the road to survival is a death sentence. And the cost of a better life is sometimes… life itself.
