Ghana Must Go

Reporter: Do you regret the fact that at least ten people are known to have died during the exodus? 

Alhaji Alli Baba: Their death has nothing to do with the quit order. Death could happen at any given time

The young journalist asks me to talk about what it was like being chased out of Nigeria during the 1983 exodus. He asks me to talk about the historical side of it—as commemorative—but it is impossible for me to discuss that without speaking about loss. The loss my family suffered, the one other families endured, or about the lives that perished. Homes were broken. Children, displaced. For me, that is worth talking about—beyond ‘how it started’ or who started it first, and all that.

It has been forty-two years, and I still hear his screams. I relive that day every night. I can’t close my eyes without seeing that look of pain on his face, without his last breath resounding in my ears. It has been forty-two years, and he is still restless, as you’d expect from a body buried without a grave. Joe Boy still scours the physical world. He turns and turns and turns. He still speaks to me. His saman never found respite. The journalist interviewing me, a young man in his thirties with a quiet hunger in his eyes, shifts anxiously in his chair as he scribbles on the notepad in his hand, awaiting my narration.

---

The day Joe Boy slipped out of Maame’s hands and fell, I didn’t think it was the end, but it was. Everything became real, too real. Life was happening so fast that I couldn’t find a second to take a breather and make sense of it all. It seemed as though time itself had morphed into something unknown, separated from its ether and in constant flux. And it carried all of life along with it. I lived through most of those days as a version of myself, an experience from a distant body. 

The announcement. 

The rush to evacuate the country. 

That long walk to refuge. 

The fears. 

The tears. 

The loss. 

Too expeditious were they that they lived in my head as lists; they floated about in my memories like a bad dream I would wake up from, and then thank heavens it wasn’t real. 

Nobody warns you about these things. That life can change overnight; the idea of time can be ridiculed, and no one has control over how the universe plays its game of chess. One second, you are a twelve year old, naive of the pains of life, living happily in a house filled with love, in a country you’ve grown to call home—then the next minute, you are packing your entire life into one bag, everything you have known, lost; then you become an unwilling spectator to the death of the only brother you’ve ever known and loved. 

When it happened, it was Joe Boy’s scream—shrill and harrowing—that made us stop. It called to us. His cries stabbed through the thundering of thousands of lost bodies, each carrying a relic of a life lived on a foreign land, a life borrowed. Maame’s followed right after, a gut-wrenching cry for help. Paapa halted first. His abrupt turn pulled me along. I bumped into one body, my hand almost slipping out of his grip, but he held on tighter. For a second, we had doubts that the screams were from Maame and Joe Boy.  Or maybe we didn’t want to believe it was. But Paapa kept going, because in any case, Maame and Joe Boy weren’t with us. We hadn’t noticed when they got left behind—we couldn’t have. Not with that many people out there. Not with that distress and desperation in the air. Maame would later blame Paapa. She said if he hadn’t left them behind. If he had protected them. Maybe. Just maybe.  

We pushed through the sea of people, trying to get closer to them as fast as we could. The earlier we got there, confirming our suspicions weren’t true, the faster we could look for Maame and Joe Boy and hope nothing bad had happened. Even so, there was still room for worry because how do you find two people—two needles— in this haystack of about a million people? Where do you start from? How do you make it from one end to another, when everyone is headed forward, anxious, tired and pursued? 

Eventually,  we found them. 

We were there in time to see the proverbial final blow. I watched and couldn’t move. Paapa didn’t move either. It was as if we had suddenly lost our motor skills to something unimaginable. 

Joe Boy lay on the ground like a carelessly dropped rugged doll. He was crying, his voice going frail each second, a hollowing pain etched on his face. He was broken. Maame, perched a bit far from him, sat there, helpless. Like a mother bird, standing on top of a tree, watching her fallen hatchling crawl about on the ground, chirping a cry for help, but no way to get it back into the nest. It seemed there had been a rush, and the two had been separated. Maame screamed for people to stop. Nobody did.

‘Joe Boy! Joe Boy! Joe Boy!’ Maame kept screaming, the red checkered bag she had balanced on her head when we set off, sitting close by. 

More sets of feet went for the kill. Two became four, then six, then more. Maame moved, swimming through the legs, pushing herself to get to Joe Boy. But it was impossible. Whenever she tried to get closer, she got pushed away, kicked, or rolled over, sustaining injuries. We couldn’t hear Joe Boy anymore. It was the end. We watched him heave his last breath and couldn’t move, couldn’t save him. 

When Paapa and I eventually made it to Maame, he squatted beside Maame and wrapped his hands around her. 

‘I don’t know what happened,’ she said. ‘I-I-I–’ the words got stuck in her throat. The light in her eyes lost its lustre. Those beautiful eyes I always adored. Those eyes, which I always thought could calm the storm.  

‘Agyeiwaa,’ Paapa said.

‘I was holding his hand. I held him firmly, I did.’

‘Agyeiwaa.’

‘Ah! What am I going to do? Not my baby. Not my Joe Boy.’

‘We have to go, Agyeiwaa, please.’ Father’s pleading voice took me by surprise. That was a first. With it came something more shocking. Tears welled up in those bloodshot eyes as they begged Maame to keep moving. As if to tell her, ‘Let’s get out of here first. We will get time to mourn him.’ I can tell you now, before we conclude this interview, that we never did. We never got the time to mourn him. But for me, though, every day since has been for mourning, struggling to free myself from the shackles of grief. 

Maame, through hesitation and forced by the fact that people kept tripping over us, stood up. Paapa picked the checkered bag, adding it to his load, and moved us along. As we walked away, I turned back. Joe Boy lay there, a few hundred feet away from us, blood oozing out of any part of his body that could. I couldn’t say goodbye. I couldn’t give him the Batman action figure he wanted for his fifth birthday, which was a month away. He was so excited about it. 

‘Sister, you promised to get me that toy. Remember?’ he used to say it every morning, before I left for school and reminded me when I returned without it, displeased. His disappointment, though, wasn’t always that grave because, I think, a part of him trusted that I would get it in time for his birthday. And I was planning to. 

Now, there he lay, lifeless. Where was all that energy he had? I thought. He would lie there and decay and become one with the land—buried without a grave. 

Father pulled us away, his grip stronger, forcing us not to look back, as if we would turn into salt statues if we did. Maybe that would be better. Then we would get to stay with Joe Boy, and he wouldn’t be alone. He would love the company. The Joe Boy I knew always wanted someone around.

---

17th January, 1983.

The day began as usual, with dark clouds gathering in the morning sky and threatening rain—a delight for school children. However, no matter how much I stalled, it didn’t rain. I had to go to school. School was quite ordinary, too. Nothing unusual happened. We learned about future careers, a topic that piqued the interest of almost everyone in the class. When Ikenna said he wanted to be a teacher, we all laughed, but Auntie Linda didn’t. Instead, she applauded Ikenna’s courage and told him the world needed people like him—educators who would shape the next generation of changemakers. 

That was all I could think about on my way home: my future career. Along those dusty paths leading to our one-bedroom flat, I could see it. An older me. In a white coat. A stethoscope around my neck. Wearing a radiant smile as I check on my patient, my heart filled with joy as I give the good news that they will be discharged soon. 

It was Joe Boy’s persistent hug that towed me back to reality. For as long as I can remember, he always ran out to meet me at the house’s unmarked entrance every time I returned from school.

‘What did you bring?’ he asked, those dark-brown puppy eyes staring at me. He always knew how to get me to do his bidding. I dug inside my pocket and brought out a packet of Speedy Biscuits. He forced it out of my hands and ran inside, yelling for Maame. 

I had barely made it to the front door when Paapa ran past me, not stopping to ask me about school. None of his usual How was school? What did you learn? Hope you were a good girl? That was unlike him. I knew something was amiss. I hurried after him. 

Inside the living room, which evolved into a bedroom for Joe Boy and me at night, I found his lanky figure by the wireless radio, which sat on top of the television, turning its antenna amidst constant tssshhhh tssshhhh, which followed each turn. There was something urgent in the way he stood, in the way he moved the antenna. In the frustration with which he slammed the top of the radio. It was as if something precious lay on the other side of the wireless—something he couldn’t miss. Eventually, the radio’s signal got clearer. 

In other news, the Nigerian Minister of Internal Affairs, Alhaji Alli Baba, has announced the immediate expulsion of all illegal immigrants in Nigeria within two weeks.

President Shehu Shagari, in a statement delivered through his spokesman, Mr Charles Igoh, added that, ‘If they don’t leave, they should be arrested and tried, and sent back to their homes. Illegal immigrants, under normal circumstances, should not be given any notice whatsoever. If you break the law, then you have to pay for it.’

Those words have thrown the country into a frenzy as…

The monotonous newscaster voice on the radio faded in the background.

‘Efua!’ Paapa called Maame. 

I stood there watching, not sure what was happening. Paapa paced up and down, his hands on his waist, and my presence blurred. Maame entered hurriedly, sensing the urgency in Paapa’s call. Joe Boy followed close behind her. I remember thinking, Mummy’s boy, and rolling my eyes. Paapa asked me to take him outside. No questions asked, I dragged Joe Boy out, despite his playful hesitation. 

While standing in the compound, I could see the two of them through the lace curtain hand-sewn by Maame, which draped the open window, tête-à-tête, engrossed in an animated conversation. There was some shuffling. Some hands thrown around. Uneasy slouching. Some intermittent pacing. Tears.  Some consolation. Each of these punctuated my anxiety. My mind raced. Maame eventually opened the door to let us in. 

‘Come now, we have to go,’ she said.

‘Go where?’ I asked. She turned, looked at me, and told me everything I needed to know and shouldn’t know with her eyes. Don’t ask questions, do as you are told. Also, you will not like the answer. So, I followed her inside and didn’t say a word. 

Time did its thing after that. I never thought life could be that fast-paced, giving you barely any time to catch your breath.

18th January, 1983.

On this day, we had to make some of the most difficult decisions ever and answer one of the hardest questions: How do you pack almost thirty years of life into three bags? The answer was: you don’t. But we had no choice. We had to. By midday that day, Paapa went to the market and bought three red checkered bags,  the ones people now call Ghana Must Go. He said everyone was rushing for those. Perhaps because they were cheap, spacious, and sturdy enough for long-haul travel. And so, despite the sluggish hesitation from me, Maame’s sniffs and silent turmoil, Joe Boy’s usual animated disturbance, which got Paapa glaring at him intermittently while he, Paapa, moved some of the heavy things out of the way, we made decisions on what was important to pack and what wasn’t. Again, how do you decide that? 

31st January, 1983. 

It was all over the news—or could have been rumoured. No one had the time to fact-check everything we heard—that the Federal government had, in an address, given power to Nigerians to confront any alien (the name we were being called in the news) since the ultimatum given to leave had passed. 

So, they took matters into their hands. We watched neighbours turn into foes. The Nwachukwus, with whom we attended church, glared at us whenever we passed, as if we were an unwanted presence. Mama Adeola, whose shop we always bought from—and sometimes purchased on credit when Paapa had not been paid from his security job—refused to serve us. Mama Nkechi, whose daughter, Chidinma, I used to play with when we were young and was my best friend until eleven when she had to leave with her father after the divorce, led the ‘Concerned Neighbours’ who protested around the neighbourhood.

‘Go home, go home!’

‘What are you still doing here?’

‘Ghana must go!’

  I watched Paapa—a man who seemed sure of everything as he was always ready with the answer for this or that—prance around in circles, lost on what to do or where to go, yet maintaining a countenance that suggested he had everything under control. In retrospect, he was very much afraid, as any one of us, but he also knew we all looked at him for a way out, and he would rather not fail us. Or even show any signs of destitution. 

On the streets of Lagos, from Ajah to Lekki, from Victoria Island to Ikeja, over fifty thousand Ghanaians were thrown into hysteria as we ran for our lives. Families clung to each other, fear draping them like an oversized shawl. And that was only Lagos, not to mention other states. My family was part of this statistic. 

We strutted out onto the streets, lost and unsure where to go. We joined the masses who were headed in the same direction, retracing their steps back to Ghana. All of us had missed it when the Ghanaian government sent assistance to evacuate Ghanaians by air when the quit order was announced. All of us had refused to leave when the opportunity arose, and we suffered the consequences. Panic gripped our throats as everyone trekked towards the Seme border, balancing different colours of ‘Ghana Must Go’ bags on our heads and holding on to other important belongings. What hurt most and caused our hearts to bleed was the shock—the shock that Nigeria could turn against us, hurl us out like some bad food that refuses to settle in the stomach.

We watched as they set Ghanaian-owned shops ablaze. The smoke from the charred remains filled the air, clung to our throats. That, combined with burning anger from Nigerians, made the streets hotter than a furnace. And the sun didn’t hold back either. Out on those streets, in the markets, in houses, in churches, and in mosques, they chased families out, clubs in their hands, as they escaped with only the clothes on their backs. The Nigerian police also physically harmed some and gassed the crowd.

The long walk from Ajah to Ikeja, to Ojo, to Badagry, and to the Seme border took about twenty-four hours. The border was chaos itself—crowds pressed shoulder to shoulder, men and women balancing chairs on their heads, dragging checkered bags that split at the seams, selling off whatever they couldn’t carry to afford fares that had already doubled. Millions poured out through different parts of the State. From afar, it looked like a colony of ants throoping out of an anthill. It was there, in that frenzy, that we lost Maame and Joe Boy—and the next thing we heard was their cries tearing through the air.

---

After we left Joe Boy’s body uncared for, my family became grief-laden and never recovered. Maame never stopped crying. Hunger gnawed at the walls of our stomachs. Heat crawled over our bodies like tendrils. Tears mixed with sweat, our tongues filled with the salty remains. At some point of this unholy pilgrimage, we were forced to camp at the border because we were denied entry into Benin, as they were also reluctant to deal with an influx of immigrants. 

The young journalist nods. He might have read about the news of the ten people who died of hunger while waiting to cross the border. This was where it happened. No one expected this hold at the border. The hysteria got worse. The hunger grew, throats became parched. People got weaker, and some lost their lives. 

Then we heard of the arrival of new open-haul trucks picking up more people across the border, and we were determined to get into one. It became a race in the jungle: only the fittest survived. Determined not to make the same mistake as earlier, Paapa sat me on his shoulder, clutched Maame’s hand. Leaving our bags behind, the fight began, but after the warfare through the crowd, the men operating the trucks instructed that: We have space for only two people in a family. 

Paapa turned to Maame, then to me. Without saying a word, the decision was made. Maame shook her head. Paapa nodded and hugged us. 

‘I can make it across on foot,’ Paapa assured. 

‘There is no time. Are you entering or not?’ One of the men shouted. 

Paapa carried me into the truck and helped Maame to climb. Inside, we saw that it was full of only women and children. 

We departed with Paapa watching us, holding back tears. He waved and waved and waved until we didn’t see him anymore.

We followed the trail through the Seme border out of Nigeria, stumbling into the Republic of Benin with thousands of others still on foot, then pressing onwards towards Lomé in Togo, and finally to Aflao, the gateway into Ghana. It took about half a day—longer than usual, as I had heard someone say in the truck.

Sometime during the journey, I turned and saw Maame staring at her wedding ring, her thoughts swirling between hope and hopelessness. As if removing the petals of a rose one by one, each petal burdened with an option:

Pluck. He will come back to us.

Pluck. He will not come back to us.

Pluck. He will…

He never did. We never saw Paapa again till this day. 

Further into Aflao, Maame, and many other passengers, asleep, the truck came to a sudden halt, tyres screeching, throwing people a little off their seats. 

‘Get down!’  a man screamed from outside. 

‘Get down!’ he shouted again. 

Rigged with panic, everyone ran out, only to be met with the faces of the driver and the other man he had with him. They held guns, or something that looked like guns. 

Out, they made us lie on the ground, our faces in the dirt and our hands at our backs. 
I see terror creeping on the journalist’s face. But this is not one of those stories. It has enough sadness, already. The men didn’t take advantage of the women and girls. Not in that way. Daabi. They only searched our pockets, inserted their hands at different parts of our bodies, looked through bags, all in search of one thing: money. When they got enough, they left us there, in the middle of nowhere and drove off. It didn’t matter. We were already in Ghana.

---

February 1983.

We left Nigeria whole and entered Ghana broken. We left Nigeria as a family and entered Ghana, something else. Something unrecognisable to us. Maame blamed Paapa for what happened to Joe Boy and never stopped grieving. And then blamed him further for leaving us in this state of despair and confusion. Was he alive? Was he not? What had happened? To this day, no one knows what became of him.

And what made it worse, he was not there to receive the blame. His absence amplified her grief. She became lost to herself and to me. I did my best. I tried. But I was not enough. She spent the next five years afflicted until she couldn’t anymore. Until she was befallen with sickness. Until she gave up on her fight for life. 

At her funeral, as I sang ‘Amazing Grace’ together with the choir, I smiled, knowing that she would finally join Joe Boy. Maybe then, she could be happy again. And even though that left me an orphan, I was joyful for their reunion.

End of interview. 

The journalist hits the stop on the recorder in his hand, sighs, and flashes Yaba, who sits across from him, a sympathetic look. This fifty-four-year-old woman, whose eyes hold deep pain, he thinks as he puts the last of his devices in his bag.

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Boakye D. Alpha is a Ghanaian writer, filmmaker, creative entrepreneur, and a Global Voices Scholar at the University of East Anglia (UEA), where he completed an MA in Creative Writing. He writes poetry, prose, screenplays, and creative nonfiction and has been published in GUAP Magazine, Lolwe, and The Shallow Tales Review, among others. His short story was longlisted for the 2025 Commonwealth Short Story Prize. 

Cover credit: Ebumnobichukwu Agu.