Nigeria has recently seen the resurgence of a years-old rumor: The story goes that some Chinese companies import prisoners from China to work in Nigeria.
The rumor has been making rounds among Nigerians, fueled by several Nigerian officials, including Adams Oshiomhole, the chairman of the Senate Committee on Interior.
“I have it on good authority that prisoners from foreign land are working in Nigeria as construction workers,” Oshiomhole said earlier this month. “I even believe and dare say that there are foreign prisoners working in Nigeria. They were sent to our country to serve their prison terms.”
Caroline Wura-Ola Adepoju, the newly inaugurated comptroller general of immigration, commented on the allegations last week, without agreeing or denying that detainees had actually been taken to Nigeria.
“To say that Chinese prisoners are being brought and working in their companies in Nigeria is very subjective,” Adepoju said. “It is against international convention to name a particular race. However, before anyone comes into the country, they undergo thorough checks before visa applications are issued.”
Such a practice would not be tolerated, Antepoju said, stressing that “there’s a new sheriff in town.”
As often as the practice of bringing prisoners into Nigeria is repeated, proof is hard to come by. Nigerian economist and public policy expert Zuhumnan Dapel spoke to DW about the difficulties of providing data.
“Immigration, they are law enforcement. They carry firearms to enforce the law,” Dupelle told DW. “[Caroline Wura-Ola Adepoju is] member of Nigeria’s national security team. So he’ll have more information than the average person on the street — but I can’t verify that as an individual.”
There is no place for foreign prisoners in Nigeria
If this was indeed the case, legal experts leave no doubt that there is no basis for such a practice.
“Nigerian labor law, international labor law and its conventions and the Nigerian Immigration Act — nowhere do the laws provide that a foreign prisoner must obtain a work permit and obtain the status of an employee of a foreign company in Nigeria,” Zachary Sogga, a lawyer based in Kaduna, told DW.
“There is also no bilateral agreement between a foreign country and Nigeria to legalize prisoners serving prison sentences in their country for any crime to enter Nigeria as employees of a foreign company. Such a practice is illegal and cannot be legally defended.” .
Zuhumnan Dapel said such cases required action by the immigration inspector general. “If Chinese prisoners find their way into Nigeria through the back door, they have no rights or work permits to work. This is illegal, and as the country’s chief immigration officer, she is. [Caroline Wura-Ola Adepoju] work to crack down on illegal immigrants who come to work in the country.”
Why are these rumors spreading?
Social scientist and China expert Barry Sautman has been investigating rumors of Chinese prisoners working in various African countries for more than a decade. They are persistent in Nigeria and Zambia, but also circulate in countries such as Tanzania or Angola, Sautman told DW. During his investigations, however, he was unable to produce any inconceivable evidence of such a practice.
“No person has ever confirmed any aspect of it,” Sautman said. The Hong Kong-based academic, who is renowned for his thorough research, has also been criticized for holding views close to the Chinese government’s line.
According to Sautman, Chinese businessmen found the talk of prisoners being sent to Africa unthinkable. “Of course they have all kinds of problems with getting their staff to Africa. And those problems are bad enough with bringing people who are free laborers. Bringing someone who is a convict and having to manage and secure that person – to them it’s just comical.”
One reason for the reputation, Sautman suggested, is the kind of closed and secure compounds found across Africa where Chinese laborers live. “Some Africans I talk to about this have seen these kinds of compounds and think ‘this looks like a prison to us’. They also know that in some cases companies will take their workers out as a group to go shopping, have entertainment … and then they come back.”
The politics behind complaints
To understand the dynamics behind the narrative of Chinese prisoners working in African countries, time can be decisive. “These claims most often rear their head during election cycles,” said economist Zuhumnan Dapel. “Nigeria was going to elect its next president in 2019, that’s when these allegations surfaced.”
At the time there were protests from unemployed Nigerian graduates, Dapple explained. “These protests were apparently ‘you’re taking on the jobs we should be doing.’
Four years later, the argument is still circulating. “It’s more or less like making people who can do their job effectively, you make them redundant,” one woman in Nigeria’s capital, Abuja, told DW. “Why are you making people who are in prison come to serve in another country? I think it’s unfair.”
This is also true for other African countries, Sautman said. “In those African countries where the opposition has made China an issue, the idea that there are Chinese prisoners taking jobs away from the locals, that’s something that can be useful in their political discourse,” he added.
He reported from his research in Zambia that several opposition figures who opposed Chinese rule on the continent relaxed their stance when he was in government.
Chinese companies have a strong presence in Africa
A major reason for the outcry, it seems, is the strong presence of Chinese companies across Africa, companies known to have contract workers from China. According to data compiled by Johns Hopkins University in the US state of Maryland, the number of Chinese (contract or salaried) workers peaked at 12,199 in 2019 – the year allegations of Chinese companies bringing convicts to Nigeria made the rounds.
This, along with the perceived lack of transparency in China-Africa cooperation, may have set the stage for the debate to begin.
“What leaders owe to their people is to tell the truth, to be transparent,” Dappel said. “When there are gray areas, people try to understand the unknown, and in an effort to understand the unknown, they come up with conspiracy theories. And not giving in to conspiracy theories means coming out clean.”
Dappel also pointed to the fact, irritating to many, that Chinese companies have a history of bidding out local and international competitors — although, he explained, China’s minimum wage is about seven times higher than Nigeria’s.
Sautman, the Hong Kong-based expert, however, has a reason for this. “Many Chinese companies don’t have the same perception of profits,” he pointed out. While Western companies often expected projects to generate at least a 30% profit, things are different for Chinese bidders, he said.
“Five to 10% profit is fine because in the Chinese market, the profit range is between 1 and 4%.
Ben Adam Shemang in Abuja contributed to this report.
Editor: Benita van Eyssen