Soccer star’s ship carried child labourers

Nigerian international footballer Jonathan Akpoborie said a ship he owns carried child labourers but neither he nor the vessel’s captain had been aware of it, media organizations reported on Tuesday. A BBC report quoted the footballer as telling the German weekly news magazine ‘Stern’ that the 13 children found on board MV Etireno were “probably being taken from Benin to Gabon to work”. Earlier media allegations in May that the ship had up to 250 children on board were revised when the ship finally docked at the Benin port of Cotonou with 13 children on board. Akpoborie, a striker for the German club Wolfsburg, has been cleared of any personal responsibility by the Nigerian government and the German NGO Terre des Hommes, which had mounted a publicity campaign over the incident. However, the news reports said carmaker Volkswagen, which owns Wolfsburg, had decided to drop Akpoborie from the club because of the incident.