President Bola Tinubu has ordered the deployment of a high-level federal delegation to Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, to negotiate the immediate repatriation of nearly 300 Nigerian inmates serving prison terms in the country, The Punch reports.
Officials in the Presidency and the foreign service, who are familiar with the directive, said the Nigerians are being held in what they described as worsening conditions at Kaliti Maximum Security Prison in Addis Ababa.
The delegation, which includes the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Bianca Odumegwu-Ojukwu, and the Attorney-General of the Federation, Lateef Fagbemi (SAN), has been tasked with concluding a Memorandum of Understanding with Ethiopian authorities to enable the transfer of the prisoners to Nigeria, where they will complete their sentences in domestic correctional facilities.
A source said the President personally issued the directive, prompting the team’s urgent departure to Addis Ababa on Tuesday.
“We are leaving because we have prisoners. The President has directed us to get these prisoners back.
“He directed that we go there right away with the Attorney-General, get an MOU quickly signed, so that these prisoners can be transported back to Nigeria, so that they can serve out the rest of their sentences here,” the official revealed.
A second official linked the urgency of the mission to the alleged deteriorating health and living conditions of the inmates.
“They are dying. We have almost 300 prisoners in the open-air prisons in Ethiopia,” the official told our correspondent.
The move represents President Tinubu’s first direct intervention in a crisis that has lingered for over three years despite sustained diplomatic engagements.
Official records from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs indicate that over 270 Nigerians are currently serving various prison sentences in Ethiopia, most of them for drug-related offences.
The majority are detained at Kaliti Prison in Addis Ababa, where rights groups have long alleged severe overcrowding, starvation, inadequate medical care, and physical abuse since 2019.
On March 12, 2023, Nigerian inmate Chizoba Favour Eze died in custody at Kaliti Prison following alleged brutality by prison officials.
Another inmate, Uchenna Nwanneneme, reportedly died of tuberculosis on September 21, 2023, after allegedly receiving insufficient medical attention.
A third Nigerian, Basil Lawrence Ilobi, also died while in detention.
Their deaths triggered protests from Nigeria’s diplomatic mission in Ethiopia and renewed pressure from families demanding a formal prisoner transfer agreement.
In November 2024, Justice Inyang Ekwo of the Federal High Court in Abuja ordered the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Nigerians in Diaspora Commission to facilitate the return of the affected inmates, noting that Ethiopian authorities had admitted financial constraints in caring for foreign prisoners.
The order, however, was not immediately implemented.
On April 17, 2025, Ojukwu, then Minister of State for Foreign Affairs, led a delegation to meet Ethiopia’s Ambassador to Nigeria, Legesse Geremew Haile, urging swift ratification of the agreement.
“Our people don’t want to hear that another Nigerian inmate died in an Ethiopian prison,” she declared during the meeting.
She further stated, “The ministry has fulfilled its own side of the formalities for the Transfer of Sentenced Persons MOU. It is the Ethiopian side that is stalling.”
The Ethiopian envoy, while reaffirming cordial bilateral relations, said the agreement was still awaiting approval by the country’s House of Representatives.
In September 2025, relatives of Nigerian inmates at Kaliti Prison appealed directly to President Tinubu, the Senate, and the Nigerians in Diaspora Commission to urgently activate the transfer arrangement.
By January 2026, Ethiopia’s House of People’s Representatives had ratified prisoner transfer agreements with China and Brazil, as well as a criminal extradition agreement with South Africa, but Nigeria’s arrangement remained pending.
Ethiopia previously granted amnesty to Nigerian prisoners in 2019, though several reportedly returned to the country and were later re-arrested for alleged drug-related offences.
Since the 1980s, the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime has encouraged international prisoner transfer agreements, allowing inmates to serve their sentences in their home countries to support rehabilitation and reintegration.
Advocacy groups maintain that many Nigerians detained at Kaliti Prison were transiting through Addis Ababa’s Bole International Airport, a major African aviation hub, before being arrested on drug charges.
They also allege that some of the detainees were unknowingly used as drug mules, with narcotics allegedly planted in their luggage.
