Nigeria rescue workers by police 'trapped in rice factory'

Officers in Nigeria have freed over 100 people they claim have been locked up in a rice processing factory and forced to work during a lockdown of coronavirus. The men were apparently not permitted to quit the mill in the northern city of Kano since the end of March. The employees were given an extra $13 (£ 10) a month in addition to their $72 monthly salary-any who did not agree were threatened with the sack. Five managers were detained at the Indian-owned factory.

Police official Abdullahi Haruna said that the plant was now closed down and the owners were being questioned for "keeping the people against their will." He said 126 people were found, even though workers said there were 300 people.

Some of the men say they were pressured, with little food, to work most of the time during their confinement. d"We were only allowed to rest for a short time, no prayers were allowed, no family visits," Hamza Ibrahim, 28, one of those rescued said. When one of them contacted a human rights organisation, the police were tipped off about the men's plight.

"what I have seen was heart breaking. It's not fit for animals where the company kept these people to live," Karibu Yahaya Kabara of the Global Human Rights Network said. 

"Their dishes were not enough and there were no drugs for those who got sick," he said. Mr. Kabara said his organization took up the case to make sure the men got justice. Nigerian companies were ordered to close shop late March as part of government recommendations to stop coronavirus spread. The country has much more than 20,000 known cases of Covid-19, the virus-caused respiratory illness.

Lagos stays the epicenter of the virus in the south, but Kano-the second-biggest city in Nigeria and the capital of the state of Kano-has the most cases in the north. Lockdowns elsewhere in the country have been eased-but people in Kano are still only permitted to go out at stipulated times on Mondays , Wednesdays and Fridays to buy the food.

Famous farm workers say that they were asked in February to double their hours as their employers wanted to stockpile in readiness for a shutdown. In March they say the plant had been determined to keep going in giving them more money-or the boot-to stay on the job. Nevertheless, having decided to stay on the staff found that they had been stopped from ever leaving the factory.