Sheikh Adelabu was a postgraduate in Damascus in the early 1990s when Syria reviewed its national security after the Oslo Accords. Syria, like many other countries around the world, witnessed during this period, a flood of refugees from war troubled nations like Somalia, the arrival of people from Algeria during the civil war, resettlement of Palestinians as well as other African migration for many other reasons. As a delegate of the African Students Union and general secretary of the West African Students' Union in Syria, Lebanon, and Jordan, Adelabu visited prisons and hospitals during the time when over 10,000 African migrants had been killed, jailed, or wounded in their adventures to reach the Middle-East, many for sanctuary and others to get to Europe for what they had expected to be a better life.