How Abraham Adesanya Polytechnic, Ijebu Igbo, Is Protecting Its Students from the Alabuga Start Program

The Student Union Government of Abraham Adesanya Polytechnic, Ijebu Igbo, has launched a campaign to warn its students, especially female students, about a dangerous Russian recruitment scheme known as the Alabuga Start Program.

The program finds its victims on social media. It promises free flights to Europe, big salaries, and a chance to work abroad, all without any certificates or work experience.

To apply, a young woman only needs to play a computer game and answer a few Russian vocabulary questions. Simple. Attractive. And deeply deceptive.

Because what is waiting on the other side has nothing to do with the life the program advertises.

Young women who went through the Alabuga Start Program have come back with a very different story. Instead of the training and hospitality jobs they were promised, they ended up working inside a drone factory in Tatarstan, Russia, producing weapons being used in the war in Ukraine. They left home looking for opportunity. They found a weapons assembly line.

“This is not a program that is far away from us,” said John Orimisan, the SUG Public Relations Officer of Abraham Adesanya Polytechnic, Ijebu Igbo. “It is actively targeting our students, our sisters, our friends. We can not fold our arms and watch young women walk into a trap dressed as an opportunity.”

The Alabuga Start Program has been widely condemned by human rights groups and international observers for deliberately going after young women from poor backgrounds in African countries like Nigeria, Rwanda, Kenya, South Sudan, Sierra Leone, and Uganda, as well as Sri Lanka. These are young women who want a better life, and the program uses that desire against them.

Orimisan did not hold back in describing what the scheme truly is.

“What they are calling a work-study program is nothing but a 21st-century human trafficking scheme,” he said. “They use the language of empowerment to lure young women into a situation where they have no control, no protection, and no easy way out.”

The student union’s campaign is not limited to putting up notices around campus. Members are going directly to students, entering lecture halls and hostels, and having honest conversations about the dangers of the Alabuga Start Program.

“We want every female student on this campus to hear this clearly: do not apply, do not share your details, and if anyone approaches you with this offer, report it immediately,” Orimisan said.

Male students are also being called upon to play their part.

“When you see your sister excited about a foreign job offer she found online, ask questions,” Orimisan said. “Knowledge is the only thing that can break the power of this kind of deception, and we all have a duty to share it.”

The campaign has gone beyond the polytechnic gates as well. Comrade Joseph Daniel, a member of the Student Union Government, appeared on Lion FM 93.9 in Ijebu Imusin, where he spoke in both English and Yoruba to make sure the message reached as many people as possible. He explained how the Alabuga Start Program recruits its victims and what young people can do to protect themselves.

For Orimisan, the bottom line is straightforward.

“If it sounds too easy to be true, it probably is,” he said. “No opportunity worth having requires you to disappear into a foreign country to build weapons for a war that is not yours. 

We will keep talking, keep sensitizing, and keep protecting our people.”

The campaign is still ongoing. The student union of Abraham Adesanya Polytechnic, Ijebu Igbo, has made one thing clear: they will not stop until every student on that campus knows exactly what the Alabuga Start Program really is.