A 25-year-old Nigerian student in the United Kingdom, Anderson Ishiekwene, has been sentenced to three years in prison for attempting to meet a person he believed was a 14-year-old girl for sex after grooming her online.
The BBC reported on Monday that Ishiekwene was also informed he is likely to face automatic deportation after completing his prison sentence.
He was arrested in Washington, England, on January 10 after arriving at a shopping centre to meet the supposed teenager, who was actually a decoy operated by an online paedophile hunter group.
According to prosecutors, Ishiekwene, who arrived in the UK on a student visa in August 2025 and lived in Sunderland, first contacted the profile on Facebook on January 2 before moving the conversation to WhatsApp.
Newcastle Crown Court heard that over an eight-day period, he exchanged more than 300 pages of messages with the decoy despite repeatedly being told the person was 14 years old.
The prosecution said he asked questions about the girl’s school, school uniform and body, requested explicit photographs, sent an indecent image of himself and repeatedly asked the supposed teenager to delete their conversations.
The court also heard that he arranged to meet the “girl” at the Galleries shopping centre in Washington, where he intended to kiss and sexually touch her.
However, he was confronted by members of the paedophile hunter group before police officers arrested him.
Although Ishiekwene denied travelling to meet a child for sexual purposes, a jury found him guilty after a three-day trial of attempting to meet a child following sexual grooming. He had earlier admitted attempting to engage in sexual communication with a child.
While sentencing him, Judge Robert Spragg said the sexual activity Ishiekwene intended was a precursor to full sexual intercourse on a later occasion.
The judge also noted that the probation service believed there was “little doubt” that Ishiekwene was sexually attracted to children.
In addition to the prison sentence, the court ordered him to sign the sex offenders register and comply indefinitely with a Sexual Harm Prevention Order.
The judge further stated that Ishiekwene would most likely be automatically deported from the UK after serving his sentence.
