98, Not 136 Nigerians Covered By Ethiopia Prison Deal, FG Insists
The Federal Government has dismissed as fabricated a viral list claiming that 136 Nigerians are held in Ethiopian prisons, insisting that only 98 inmates fall under the newly signed Transfer of Sentenced Persons Agreement between Abuja and Addis Ababa.
Minister of Foreign Affairs, Amb. Bianca Odumegwu-Ojukwu, made the clarification in a statement issued on Friday and signed by her Special Assistant on Communication and New Media, Dr Magnus Eze. She said the agreement sits within the citizen diplomacy framework of President Bola Tinubu’s Renewed Hope Agenda, prioritising the welfare of Nigerians in the diaspora.
“The list trending online is a made-up list. We don’t have 136 inmates in Aba Samuel and Kaliti prisons. Those that are subject to this agreement, the transfer of sentenced persons, are 98 inmates of that prison,” the minister said. She described some of the crimes attributed to the inmates as “wild tangents.”
The agreement was signed in Addis Ababa on June 10, 2026, by Nigeria’s Attorney General and Minister of Justice, Lateef Fagbemi, and Ethiopia’s Minister of Justice, Hanna Arayaselassie. According to Ethiopian authorities, about 98 Nigerian inmates, 96 men and two women, are expected to benefit, provided they consent and have at least one year remaining on their sentences. Most are held in the maximum-security facilities at Kaliti and Aba Samuel.
Odumegwu-Ojukwu rejected suggestions that the inmates would be freed on arrival, noting that the Memorandum of Understanding bars either country from granting “pardon or amnesty for the person requested to be transferred without the consent of the sentencing state.” She also countered claims that the prisoners came from one region. “A lot of them are from the Southeast. There are also those from the Southwest, from the South-South: crime has no ethnicity. All these people are Nigerian citizens in a foreign jail,” she said.
The minister said negotiations had stretched across several years because of difficulties in establishing the true number of Nigerians in Ethiopian custody, and that four inmates died before the deal was concluded. She cited “precarious living conditions; health challenges; inadequate medical facilities; poor feeding; denial of visitation rights; lack of adequate legal services; and language barrier” as the reasons the prisoners had long pushed to return home.
The Ethiopia pact is the latest in a long line of such arrangements. Nigeria and the United Kingdom signed a prisoner transfer agreement in January 2014, allowing nationals of each country to serve sentences in their homeland, building on commitments first made under former leaders David Cameron and Goodluck Jonathan. Records from the Consular and Immigration Services of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs have put the number of Nigerians in prisons abroad at no fewer than 15,316.
The deal also lands amid wider migration diplomacy. In April 2026, Interior Minister Olubunmi Tunji-Ojo insisted that a separate migration pact with the UK would not allow the transfer of foreign prisoners into Nigeria, stressing that the framework strictly covers the return of Nigerian nationals.
Officials of the Nigerian Correctional Service say arrangements are in place to receive the returnees at the Kuje Correctional Centre for documentation before transfer to facilities closer to their families. Detainee rights groups have alleged that many Nigerians at Kaliti were travellers arrested on drug-related charges at Addis Ababa’s Bole International Airport, a claim that may shape public scrutiny as repatriation begins.