After a perilous journey through five African countries, Oluwasegun finally reached Spain - only to discover that a quarter of the workforce had no jobs, that people were queueing in front of charity canteens and that former members of the middle class were begging on the streets. "If I had known that the situation in Spain was like this, I would have stayed in Nigeria," Oluwasegun told dpa in the Madrid suburb of Parla.
His experience is shared by thousands of other west and central Africans who - even if they have a vague idea of Europe no longer being as wealthy as before - believe that life there cannot be worse than it is at home. "Hearing just one success story (of an African emigrant) motivates them to leave," says Antumi Toasije, president of Madrid's Pan-African Centre.
There is even an increase in the numbers of Africans crossing the Strait of Gibraltar to Spain, Miguel Garcia from the Red Cross in the southern city of Cadiz said. In 2011, the Red Cross attended to 650 incoming migrants in the area. This year, the number has risen to about 1,070 so far. Not only are more Africans coming in, but they appear increasingly desperate.
"They buy toy boats, inflate them, cram half a dozen people inside and set off on the sea, where their flimsy vessels can be hit by storms, currents or waves made by tankers," Red Cross rescue specialist Antonio Fernandez says. Thousands more migrants are believed to be waiting in Morocco to make the leap to Europe. Some of them left their homes even before the economic crisis.
The reasons for the increase in the numbers of incoming Africans are not clear. Experts say it could be a temporary phenomenon, given that the crisis has generally reduced the numbers of migrants in recent years. Only 3,657 migrants arrived in Spain by the sea in 2011, down from 13,600 in 2004, Fernandez said.
As Oluwasegun recalls his five-month journey to Spain, he tries to smile, but distressing memories keep surfacing. One of the vehicles that the Nigerian travelled in suffered an engine failure in the desert in Niger, and he saw some of his companions die under the scorching sun. He barely escaped the incipient civil war in Libya. He saw fellow migrants kill each other in power struggles and rape women travelling with them in Algeria.
He was robbed and beaten by Moroccan police, and cheated by a guide who promised to take him and others to Spain, but led their boat to a Moroccan island. Another boat carrying people belonging to the same group did head for Spain, but it capsized. All of its occupants, whose number Oluwasegun estimates at several dozen, drowned. Oluwasegun later tried to climb the wall surrounding the Spanish enclave of Melilla, but had to flee shots fired by Spanish police.
Finally last April, in the Moroccan port of Tangier, he was desperate enough to risk anything. He was given a life vest, a swim ring, and led into the water. He was tied to another migrant and a Moroccan boy - the only one of the three who could swim, and who would pull them across the Strait of Gibraltar.
The group was half-way through the 14-kilometre crossing, when seagulls circulating above them betrayed their presence to a Spanish police patrol boat. Oluwasegun was taken to the Spanish enclave of Ceuta. He was fed by the Red Cross, placed in a prison-like centre for undocumented immigrants in the port of Algeciras, and finally put on a bus towards Madrid. "Such a voyage is like going to war," he says. "Only the strong survive."
Oluwasegun is now surviving with the help of fellow Africans in a country whose own citizens are leaving in their tens of thousands to seek a better life in other European countries, Latin America or the United States. Spaniards even emigrate to Africa, where some companies are seeking opportunities in Nigeria or Equatorial Guinea, Toasije told dpa. Despite all the difficulties he faces in Spain, Oluwasegun - who does not speak Spanish - believes he will eventually carve a future for himself. "There is no way back home," he says.