Six Nigerians, inlcuding a former member of the Nigerian AirForce, wielding Russia’s AK74M and reportedly fighting for the Russian Army
By Ipole Amajama
There is an urgency for Africa to wake from its lethargy and stop its youth from being trapped in a war they did not sign up for. At present, hundreds of young Africans are being lured from the continent with the promise of lucrative jobs and better lives by Russian fronts, only to end up dying on the frontlines of the more than three years of the war Russia started against Ukraine.
As the continent dithers, the relatives of those entrapped in a war that isn’t theirs, thousands of miles away, relieve fear for their loved ones they might never see again or in body bags.
The numbers continue to stack up, and frighteningly so. From Nairobi to Kampala, Pretoria to Dodoma, Abuja to Yaoundé, Accra and across the African continent, stories are emerging of young Africans deceived into going to Moscow and used as human fodder in the execrable war against Kyiv.
A Washington Post report uncovered an extensive clandestine pipeline (of recruitment) stretching from Nairobi to the forests of eastern Ukraine. Russian recruitment in Kenya is more widespread and more deadly than previously reported, and the effort extends across the continent. The U.S newspaper describes them as the “hidden victims of the largest European conflict since World War II.”
But they are no longer hidden, faceless and without ancestry. These are real people deserving of concrete actions.
Nigeria has not been exempt from this tragedy. In late 2025, Adekunle Adaramola, who resigned from the Nigerian Air Force (NAF) to join the Russian Army, was announced dead by his brother, Abiodun Adaramola. “When Kunle made the difficult decision to join the Russian Army after he resigned from the NAF, he did so with a sense of purpose and a desire for a better future, both for himself and for our family,” he wrote in his tribute. Adaramola is one of the many Nigerians caught in the Russian propaganda.
A few weeks ago, it emerged that four Nigerians – Adam Anas, Akinlawon Tunde Quyuum, Abugu Stanley Onyeka and Balogun Ridwan Adisa — died in combat for Russia. All were recruited on the false pretense of “security job” but ended up being conscripted and deployed to the war front after three weeks of training.
Also, Martin Machira, whose wife, Grace Gathoni, 38, said her husband and the father of their four children, left for Russia on October 21, 2025, after being promised a job as a driver or a cleaner. He was forced to sign a contract he didn’t understand, she said, and deployed to Ukraine. When they last spoke on November 19, she said, Macharia asked for her prayers. A week later, she saw his body on a Kenyan news bulletin.
What of Edison Kamwesiga, Ugandan, who was recently reported to have been killed in Ukraine while fighting in the Russia-Ukraine war? Kamwesiga, it was disclosed, died in Kupiansk, in Ukraine’s Kharkiv region. Kamwesiga was 46!
While Kamwesiga wasn’t so lucky to relieve his ordeal and dispel Russian propaganda, another Ugandan, Richard Akantorana, narrowly escaped forced recruitment into the Russian military.
Akantorana, 43, a father of two, said recruiters promised him well-paying civilian work in Russia. He said armed men later forced him to join the Russian army.
These are a few of the hundreds of ordeals that Africans seeking better pasture are forced to endure. The fact remains that war cannot, and is not, a route to migration. Africa can ill-afford to ignore Russia’s denuding of its youth population through the brutal subterfuge of better lives, only to die for causes they know nothing about. The present demand is for governments and civil society organisations to embark on aggressive sensitisation and advocacy of Russia’s imperialist killer tendencies. After promoting coups in some West African countries and promoting gross human abuses, Moscow has turned its attention to leading young Africans to the slaughter.
It is instructive to state that as Russian troops continue to suffer eyewatering casualties: upward of 750,000 dead and wounded, according to Western estimates, and climbing, Africans are the ultimate casualty in the senseless war against Ukraine by relying on an elaborate recruitment system of deceit and mercenaries to keep a steady flow of men sent into battle.
Fortunately, experts are sounding the alarm, yet these are not African voices. Sascha Bachmann, a professor in law and security at the University of Canberra, said the promise of safe service was “not true”.
“Russia is trying to close a workforce gap. They sign people up for a promised non-combat role, but they then end up as part of Moscow’s meat grinder. It is deception,” he said.
It has become imperative not to ignore what is going on. Data from OpenMinds, a defence tech company, shows that by mid-2025, one in three contract announcements posted by Russian government pages targeted foreigners.
In total, the number of these posts has risen to more than 4,500 per month, up from less than 100 in early 2024.
Prof. Bachmann believed the main reason Russia had increased recruitment efforts abroad was that it “has real problems recruiting from within its population”. He stressed that what is at play is “cognitive domain propaganda”, which he said refers to military activities that are designed to affect the attitude of the public.
“Russia is very interested in having more foreign volunteers … because then they can say they have common power, more boots on the ground. It helps them form a fresh narrative,” he said.
This is therefore a note of caution and a call for action to African leaders and stakeholders. The continent, for too long, has borne the brunt of other people’s wars and should no longer, more than a century after the First World War, have its people caught up in a war they did not bargain for. It is incumbent on governments and civil society to halt the trend, not today, not tomorrow, but NOW!
(Amajama, a social affairs analyst, writes from Abuja @ ipoamajama@gmail.com)
