Muhammadu Buhari’s comments come amid escalating violence and resurgence in secessionist sentiment
Twitter has deleted a tweet by Nigeria’s president Muhammadu Buhari in which he threatened to punish pro-Biafra groups blamed for escalating attacks on government and security authorities.
The social media firm said Buhari’s tweet violated its “abusive behaviour” policy, leading to a 12-hour suspension of his account.
Continue reading...One person shot dead after armed gang on motorcycles attack town in north-central Nigeria, ‘shooting indiscriminately’
An armed gang has abducted students from an Islamic school in the north-central Nigerian state of Niger.
The school’s owner, Abubakar Tegina, told Reuters he witnessed the attack and estimated about 150 students had been taken. “I personally saw between 20 and 25 motorcycles with heavily armed people. They entered the school and went away with about 150 or more of the students,” said Tegina, who lives around 150 metres from the school.
Continue reading...Defendants left in prison for months awaiting trial as staff strike over judicial system’s financial autonomy
A nationwide strike of court workers in Nigeria is paralysing the justice system, resulting in extended prison remands for those awaiting trial or sentencing and lengthy delays for everyone else.
In March last year, Taiwo Ebun*, 27, was arrested for alleged armed robbery in Lagos. Since then he has been in detention.
Continue reading...Analysis: jihadists regroup after Boko Haram ‘defeat’ in the north-east while secessionist forces grow in south-east
“Can our president keep us safe when we travel to any part of this country?” said Muhammadu Buhari in 2015, months before the former military dictator won the Nigerian presidency on a wave of mass anger at jihadist violence and corruption. “Is your life better today than it was six years ago?”
Halfway through his second term, the same questions are being levelled at him. As an insurgency in the north-east has persisted – and grown in recent years – security crises have proliferated around the country. Criticism has mounted against his administration, including from within his own party.
Continue reading...After being abducted on assignment in Afghanistan, journalist Mellissa Fung shares an intense bond with the teenage girls who were held captive by Boko Haram
The journalist and filmmaker Mellissa Fung is showing me her wound – or to be precise, the scar where her wound once was. It’s from the struggle with one of the Afghan rebels who, 12 years ago, kidnapped Fung near Kabul and held her in a pit in the ground for a month, a place she refers to simply, and rather chillingly as, “the hole”.
“In combat training they teach you not to fight back, but I played ice hockey as a kid so I couldn’t help it,” Fung says. “The guy had a knife so I learned my lesson.”
Continue reading...Analysis: reported death of Boko Haram’s leader will increase the influence of Islamic State affiliates
For more than a decade, Nigerian security services and their international supporters have struggled to end Boko Haram’s brutal reign of terror over north-eastern Nigeria.
But few observers of the conflict are celebrating – even though it appears increasingly likely that Abubakar Shekau, the Islamist extremist movement’s notoriously violent leader, is dead, its strongholds overrun and remaining fighters scattered.
Continue reading...Abubakar Shekau dead or seriously wounded after clashes in forest, Nigerian authorities say
Intelligence officials in Nigeria have claimed the leader of Boko Haram is dead or seriously wounded after trying to kill himself to avoid capture during clashes with a rival extremist faction.
There is no confirmation of the claims, and Nigeria’s intelligence services and military have reported Abubakar Shekau’s death many times before.
Continue reading...Culture minister says country is facing up to ‘historic and moral responsibility’ by returning artefacts to Nigeria
Germany is to become the first country to hand back the Benin bronzes looted by British soldiers in the late 19th century, after the culture minister, Monika Grütters, announced it would start returning a “substantial” part of the artefacts held in its museums to Nigeria from next year.
“We face up to our historic and moral responsibility to shine a light and work on Germany’s historic past,” Grütters said after museum experts and political leaders struck an agreement at a summit on Thursday.
Continue reading...From Senegal to Nigeria, a growing wave of salons and small cosmetic companies are challenging colonial notions about how to wear and care for hair
Women kick the sand from their slippers, and ease into the cool comfort of a natural hair and skincare store in central Dakar. On the shelves are jars filled with handmade supplements of organic shea butter, coconut, castor and olive oils, sourced from across west Africa.
In floral silk hijabs and abaya dresses, the women sit on sofas near the back of the store, discussing their hair beneath a mural of poised black women and men, wearing a mixture of classic natural black hairstyles.
Continue reading...Armed conflicts, the climate crisis and Covid-19 are contributing to chronic risk of food insecurity in the region, says Unocha report
A record 29 million people will need humanitarian assistance in the Sahel and the Lake Chad basin in 2021 amid a deepening crisis, a report by the UN office for humanitarian affairs (Unocha) has estimated.
Almost one in four people in the border areas of Burkina Faso, northern Cameroon, Chad, Mali, Niger and north-east Nigeria are expected to need aid in 2021, 5 million more than a year ago, and a 52% rise on 2019.
Continue reading...Interviews undermine the US state department claim that extremist group has links to Islamic State
Insurgents in Mozambique have abducted hundreds of women and girls, forcing many into sexual relations with fighters and possibly trafficking others elsewhere in Africa, interviews with some who have escaped the extremists reveal.
Most of the abducted women are under 18, with the youngest about 12 years old. They are being held in a series of camps and bases across insurgent-controlled territory in north-eastern Mozambique.
Continue reading...President Buhari condemns ‘act of terrorism’ after gunmen destroy part of prison walls in Owerri, Imo state
Almost 2,000 prisoners have escaped after a jailbreak in south-east Nigeria blamed on armed separatists, in the latest in a string of armed attacks on law enforcement authorities.
A prison facility and police command centre in the city of Owerri, Imo state, was targeted early on Monday by gunmen who destroyed part of the prison walls with explosives, freeing 1,844 inmates. One police officer was shot and injured in the attack.
Continue reading...It’s never too late to learn, says 50-year-old Shade Ajayi, who attends Ilorin grammar school in Kwara state, Nigeria
Continue reading...Analysis: Buhari’s deputy wants to create jobs, feed pupils and cut red tape. Is he too high-profile for his critics?
The role of vice-president is one that John Adams, the first person in the US to hold the position, called “the most insignificant office that ever the invention of man contrived”.
Nigeria’s Patience Jonathan captured the situation in her sarcastic response to a journalist who asked about her husband, Goodluck Jonathan, when he was vice-president. She said: “He is in his office reading newspapers.”
Continue reading...My family is in Lagos. I’m in London – and there’s no chance of a flight home. Zoom does many things, but it can’t give hugs
It’s been two years since I last saw my father. He lives in Nigeria, just a six-hour flight away, but the last time either of us set foot in an airport was 2019. I don’t miss the cramped seating and recycled oxygen of planes. Nor do I miss the anxious buzz of airports – of standing in my socks on a cold floor, queuing to walk through a metal detector. But I do miss my father and he is at the other end of a plane journey in a world where, for now, the skies are almost empty.
Mostly, I see my father on a screen. His beard is slightly more grizzled but he’s obviously drinking enough water. His skin looks great on camera. I hope the rest of his body is well. Three years ago he was ill and admitted into hospital. We don’t talk about his health but we do talk about Nigeria, about politics and the EndSars protest for example, and whether Nigerians are taking the pandemic seriously enough.
Continue reading...Aberdeen says it will repatriate a bust while Cambridge museum has ‘expectation’ its collection could be returned
Regional UK museums could lead a wave of repatriations of disputed Benin bronzes – most of them looted by British forces in 1897 – in defiance of the British government’s stance that institutions should “retain and explain” contested artefacts.
On Thursday, the University of Aberdeen confirmed it would repatriate a bust of an Oba, or king of Benin, which it has had since the 1950s, “within weeks”, a landmark move for a British institution.
Continue reading...As world shifts to green energy, Iraq and Nigeria among those vulnerable to ‘wave of instability’
Oil-dependent countries that are not preparing to adapt to the global shift away from fossil fuels risk their own stability, warns a new report.
Algeria, Iraq and Nigeria are the most vulnerable to “a slow-motion wave of political instability”, according to the risk analysts Verisk Maplecroft.
Continue reading...Charles Oti should be in his NHS job fighting the virus. Instead, the Home Office wants to send him to Nigeria
An infection control specialist who has been offered a job as a senior NHS biomedical scientist to help tackle the pandemic is facing deportation by the Home Office, prompting fresh calls for a more “humane” approach to skilled migrants.
The government has refused Charles Oti, 46, from Nigeria the right to remain in the UK even though the job he was offered is among the government’s most sought-after skilled positions.
Continue reading...Attack in north-west of country is latest in series of mass abductions targeting schools
Gunmen have raided a college in north-west Nigeria and kidnapped 39 students, in the latest mass abduction targeting a school.
The gang stormed the Federal College of Forestry Mechanisation in Mando, Kaduna state, at about 9.30pm (2030 GMT) on Thursday, shooting indiscriminately before taking students. The Kaduna college was said to have about 300 male and female students – mostly aged 17 and older – at the time of the attack.
Continue reading...The streaming giant has come knocking, but a lack of infrastructure and government support continues to hinder the continent telling its own stories
It was the sight of donkeys carrying camera equipment that reminded Lemohang Jeremiah Mosese he was shooting in Lesotho. The director was filming This Is Not a Burial, It Is a Resurrection in a remote part of his tiny home nation, which has no cinemas and – unsurprisingly – zero film infrastructure. “It’s a bit daring to take a crew there and shoot because there’s no electricity,” Mosese says from his home in Berlin. “Especially when we go to the mountains – we had to rely on the donkeys because at some point we just couldn’t carry the equipment.”
The shoot ran on petrol-powered generators. Villagers pitched in as ad-hoc crew members. Many fingers were crossed. “We had to build everything from scratch,” he says. That approach didn’t harm the film. Critically lauded, the stylish mood piece about grief, community and egregious land development has been entered in the Oscars as the country’s 2021 candidate.
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