Lagos, April 25, 2025 – The Federal Government has commended Ghanaian authorities for rescuing at least 219 young Nigerians who were trafficked to the country and forced into cybercrimes.
Bianca Odumegwu-Ojukwu, the Minister of State for Foreign Affairs, made the commendation during her visit to the Economic and Organised Crimes Office (EOCO) in Accra, Ghana, where the victims of trafficking were being detained.
She was also in Ghana for the official launch of the 50th anniversary of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) and the Extraordinary Session of the ECOWAS Council of Ministers on the withdrawal of Mali, Niger and Burkina Faso.
The minister thanked the operatives for doing their job professionally and treating the victims with dignity.
She described human trafficking as modern slavery, obnoxious and man’s inhumanity to man and advised Nigerian youths to shun attractive and irresistible job offers abroad.
She said the Nigerian High Commission in Ghana had last Thursday, alerted her of the incident and how the victims were held under inhuman conditions by the perpetrators before the sting operation that burst the evil syndicate.
“Prior to their rescue, these boys had been locked up in about 25 rooms within the estate where they were used to perpetrate cybercrimes.
“At the time of their arrest, many of them, being locked inside confined spaces with computers for weeks on end without being let outside, were even unable to get their eyes to adjust to the sun when they were led outside those dark rooms.
“Some had been serially abused with visible lacerations inflicted on them by their criminal ‘don’ while one had his legs broken for not tendering all the proceeds of his cybercrime,” Odumegwu-Ojukwu said.
While addressing the victims at the premises of the Agency, she said that they were lucky to have been rescued, disclosing that many had lost their lives in similar circumstances while others rot in jails in parts of the world.
“Count yourselves lucky as next time, it may not be a benevolent country like Ghana. It may not be a circumstance within a location where we have excellent bilateral relations.
“There are countries that take cybercrimes very seriously and by the time they lock you up, they will throw away the key. We are still trying to this day to ensure that Ethiopia signs our exchange or transfer of sentenced persons MoU so that we can bring those nationals who are trapped in their prisons back to Nigeria. So we don’t lose even more of them.
“We are happy that this commission has excellent relations with NAPTIP and they have been kind enough.
“I was really humbled when the Executive Director said their interest is not for these young men to get back to Nigeria into the prison system; because that’s what usually happens.
“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.
She advised the victims, to take advantage of this second chance that God has made possible for them by keying into some of the intervention programmes of the federal government.
