Abuja, April 26. 2025 – About 231 Nigerians trafficked to Ghana are expected to arrive in Lagos on Friday.
Magnus Eze, the Media Aide to Bianca Odumegwu-Ojukwu, the Minister of State for Foreign Affairs, disclosed this in a statement.
The statement said the victims were rescued by Ghanaian authorities from a human trafficking gang that forced them into cybercrime operations.
The victims, mostly young men, were discovered confined in about 25 rooms within a residential estate in Accra.
According to the statement, the minister visited the Economic and Organised Crime Office {EOCO) in Accra, during her recent visit to Ghana where she commended the professionalism of the EOCO operatives and their humane handling of the rescued individuals.
She alleged that some of the victims were abused, with visible injuries with one suffering broken legs after allegedly failing to remit illicit earnings.
The minister, who described the ordeal as a form of modern slavery, warned Nigerian youths against falling for attractive and irresistible job offers abroad.
“Under that situation, they are obliged to hand you over to law enforcement, correctional facilities in Nigeria and then you know what will happen. It’s another cycle of your relatives coming to prison to bring you food,” Odumegwu-Ojukwu said.
Bashiru Dapilah, the Executive Director of EOCO, said his agency acted on intelligence to uncover the trafficking operation.
He said some Ghanaians involved in the crime, including the estate owner where the youths were housed, had been arrested and would face prosecution.
“We are not looking at this as a Nigerian crime because you have some backing from the Ghanaian. The estate where they lived, we arrested the owner, and he will be prosecuted.
“We require collaboration between our two countries. The crime is committed here in Ghana, but we know that somebody in Nigeria was behind it. So, these persons have been rescued but the next thing is the collaboration to ensure that the perpetrators are apprehended.
“As you go home, take the message to our counterpart in Nigeria that we will be needing collaboration to roundup the perpetrators,” he said.
