INVESTIGATION: How Nigerian young footballers are trafficked, abused, abroad
Yemisi Akinbobola , Paul Bradshaw and Ogechi Ekeanyawu It was January 2014. Among a group of about 30 young boys, some as young as 12, are Ebuka Ogbuehi and Joel Izeh from Lagos. They are about to board a boat at Calabar seaport in southeast Nigeria, going to neighbouring Cameroon. With them are two football coaches — one known to the boys as their coach, Emma (pronounced Ima) — along with a nurse, a dry cleaner and Mr Eric Fred Toumi: a football agent. Some weeks before, all of the boys’ families paid Mr. Toumi N300,000 (US$1,500): the cost, he said, of enrolling them into his football academy in Cameroon where they will take part in trials for European clubs, while getting secondary school education. Joel, 25, explains: “The agent was brought to our team by our coach [Emma]. When the man came the first time he picked those he would pick (sic) and he travelled [away]. “The second time when he came, that was when he picked me. So he asked us to pay some ...