Why did Nigerian plantation workers leave Equatorial Guinea in the 1970s?

During the 1970s, Nigerian plantation workers left Equatorial Guinea primarily due to the increasingly oppressive and dangerous environment created by the regime of President Francisco Macías Nguema.12

While Nigerian laborers had settled in the country in significant numbers during the 1960s, conditions deteriorated sharply following independence. By the mid-1970s, reports emerged detailing "virtual slave-labor" conditions on the plantations, alongside widespread state-sponsored violence and repressive killings by authorities. These human rights abuses, which also drew international condemnation from organizations such as Amnesty International, turned a gradual departure of workers into a mass exodus.134

In response to these conditions, the Nigerian government took action to protect its citizens, ultimately repatriating at least 45,000 workers by 1976. This mass departure significantly impacted the local economy, as the loss of labor led to a sharp decline in the maintenance and output of the country's vital cocoa plantations.4312