On Monday, Mazi Okechukwu Isiguzoro, the chieftain of Ohanaeze Ndigbo, wrote to President Bola Tinubu, asking him to use the visit of Narendra Modi, the prime minister of India, to have conversations on the release of 1.3 million Nigerians incarcerated in Indian prisons.

Isiguzoro said Nigerians were detained across the 28 states of India and that he arrived at this figure based on verified intelligence. He said most of them who were students, medical tourists and business persons were detained due to stringent immigration policies by the Indian government.

“It is imperative that President Tinubu utilise this diplomatic opportunity to advocate for the swift release of those unjustly detained, particularly individuals who are innocent and have faced prolonged detainment without fair trials,” Isiguzoro wrote.

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“Our call for action does not extend to those serving prison sentences for legitimate criminal activity, but rather to those trapped by systemic challenges or racial discrimination.”

However, this plea has since generated controversy on X here, here and here, regarding the statistics of Nigerians who are currently serving jail terms in India or those who might be behind bars.

Some questioned how 1.3 million Nigerians would be incarcerated in another country when only 85,000 were in Nigerian prisons.

We don’t have more than 85k inmates in Nigerian Prisons (including awaiting trial) so how stupid do you have to be to believe there are 1.3M Nigerians in Indian Prisons. We don’t even have 100k Nigerians in India. Y’all need to go back to primary school— Arthur of Camelot (@KingArthurOG) November 18, 2024

“We don’t have more than 85,000 inmates in Nigerian Prisons (including awaiting trial) so how stupid do you have to be to believe there are 1.3 million Nigerians in Indian prisons. We don’t even have 100,000 Nigerians in India. You all need to go back to primary school,” he wrote.

CLAIM

There are 1.3 million Nigerians incarcerated across 28 states in India.

VERIFICATION

To verify this claim, EQ checked reliable data sources that provide accurate information on the figures of prisoners held in India’s prisons and those who were Nigerians.

According to the National Prisons Information Portal (NPIP), a digital initiative by the Indian Government, there are only 527,032 prisoners in all 28 states and about 1,400 prisons in the country.

The NPIP’s dashboard.

A manual calculation of the same figures on the database showed that the number of inmates held across the country was only 517,690. This was below half of the figures Isiguzoro suggested for Nigerian inmates alone.

Also, according to the Tribune Online, in a report published in August, there were more Nigerians in the United States than in any other country. The report showed that there were about 353,885 in the country while 215,000 were in the United Kingdom, the second most popular migration destination for Nigerians.

Italy, the United Arab Emirates, Brazil, Germany, Canada, Spain and South Africa, were the eight other top countries Nigerians migrated to.

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CONCLUSION

Isiguzoro’s claim that there are 1.3 million Nigerians in Indian prisons is false. The total number of prisoners held in the country, irrespective of their nationality, is below half the number the chieftain claimed.

VERDICT

The claim that 1.3 million Nigerians are imprisoned in India is false.
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