Not only Nigerians, see a west African village where every young man is trying to migrate to Europe and there reasons

In the village of Sabaa in eastern Gambia, one in eight people have taken "The Back Way" across the Sahara

Village life in Gambia, where many dream of leaving for Europe

                                           Just like other young men in the Gambian village of Sabaa, Ebrima Touray dreams one day of getting married. First, though, he must prove himself as husband material - and these days, that involves a lot more than it did for his forefathers.

No longer is it enough to have good looks and own a decent patch of farmland. Today Mr Touray, 23, is expected risk his life on what is known as "The Back Way" - the perilous 3,000 mile journey across the Sahara and the Mediterranean in search of work in Europe.                                        

A migrant from Gambia embraces a friend after safely completing the sea journey to Europe

“I want to be able to support a family, and to do that, I have to go to Europe," he said, tending the modest watermelon plot that is his only source of income. "Here in our community, if you do not go, you may not be able to even get a woman to marry. I must go - all my friends, those I used to play football with, are gone already.”

A glance at the village around him proves his point. Where was once a hamlet of thatched huts with spartan furnishings now boasts numerous homes with concrete walls, running water and tin roofs, some sporting satellite TV dishes.

Nearly all of it is paid for by remittances sent from locals now in Europe, with as many as 600 of Sabaa's 4,000 residents having tried "The Back Way", according to village elders.

Some succeed, some get deported, and some die en route. Yet no matter what the odds, today the expectation is that any young man worth his salt will give it a go. "Every parent wants their daughter to get married to someone who is in Europe," said Mr Touray.

Reign of fear

The scale of the exodus in villages like Sabaa demonstrates the challenges facing European leaders as they hold a major summit on Wednesday in the Maltese capital, Valletta, to discuss ways of dealing with the migrant crisis.

While the spotlight in recent months has mainly on the influx of Syrians from the east, an estimated 80,000 of the passengers on trans-Mediterranean people smuggling boats since 2014 have been from sub-Saharan Africa.

Gambia, a former British colony on West Africa's Atlantic coast, is a case in point. The tiny country of 1.9 million has neither war nor famine, and is best known to Britons these days as a budget winter tourist resort.

Tough guy - President Yahya Jammeh gives many Gambians cause to flee

But away from the beach resorts, it has much the same grinding poverty as the rest of West Africa - and is also one of the last countries in the region to languish under the rule of an old-school African strongman, President Yahyah Jammeh, an army officer who staged a coup 21 years ago.

Mr Jammeh, whose voodoo-infused personality cult draws comparisons to Haiti's Papa Doc Duvalier, first gained notoriety in 2007, when he claimed to have invented his own herbal cure for HIV.

Human rights groups have compiled fat dossiers against him, accusing him of jailing opponents and running torture chambers not far from Gambia's tourist beaches.

In 2009, Amnesty International also claimed that his presidential guard had force fed hallucinogenic potions to an entire village of Gambians accused of using witchcraft against him.

Faith healer: President Jammeh prays while administering his herbal HIV cure to a patient

While his record falls well short of despots like Charles Taylor or Idi Amin, it is bad enough to convince many Gambians that if they can reach Europe, they will stand a reasonable chance of being granted asylum, whether they have suffered directly at his hands or not.

The exodus, though, is not just a worry for Europe. It is also a major concern for Gambia, where the departure of so many young men is now threatening the long-term future of numerous villages like Sabaa.