Category Archives: Nigeria

‘Many girls have been cut’: how global school closures left children at risk

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Covid-19 lockdown made children vulnerable to abuses including FGM and child marriage say NGOs, as schools in England prepare to reopen

Covid-19 school closures have exposed children around the world to human rights abuses such as forced genital mutilation, early marriage and sexual violence, child protection experts say.

Globally, the World Bank estimates that 1.6 billion children were locked out of education by Covid-19. As schools in England and around the world prepare to reopen this week, NGOs warn that millions of the world’s most vulnerable children may never return to the classroom, and say that after decades fighting for girls’ education the pandemic could cause gender equality in education to be set back decades.

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Nigerian forces accused of torture and illegal detention of children – report

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Amnesty International alleges that at least 10,000 died while being wrongly held – some of them in a centre part funded by the UK

Widespread unlawful detention and torture by Nigerian security forces has aggravated the suffering of a generation of children and tens of thousands of people in north-east Nigeria, according to a new report.

At least 10,000 victims – many of them children – have died in military detention, among the many thousands more arrested during a decade-long conflict with jihadist groups, according to Amnesty International.

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Experts sound alarm over lack of Covid-19 test kits in Africa

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Global competition for kits and national constraints cause concern as lockdowns ease

Public health experts have warned about the risks of low supplies of coronavirus test kits as lockdowns in African countries begin to ease and urban populations become more mobile.

Different countries on the continent have adopted a range of testing strategies, but international competition for test kits and a lack of global coordination of resources have meant many African countries are testing with significantly limited reach.

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West Africa facing food crisis as coronavirus spreads

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Pandemic adds to jihadi and climate change threats to present ‘immense challenge’ for region

More than 43 million people in west Africa are likely to be in urgent need of food assistance in the coming months – double initial estimates – as the Covid-19 outbreak accelerates, the World Food Programme has said.

Food insecurity could also double this year to affect 265 million people across the continent; west Africa, where the outbreak of the virus is most severe, is of increasing concern.

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‘People are more scared of hunger’: coronavirus is just one more threat in Nigeria

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The pandemic has left many people in Orile, Lagos state, struggling for survival – and compounded the risks of the area’s heavily polluted air and water supply

  • All photographs by Nurudeen Olugbade

For Nurudeen Olugbade taking photographs of life in Orile-Iganmu, Lagos state, during the pandemic is a way to affirm that the disruption it has wrought on the neglected town does matter.

“We are not really seen. There’s very little attention paid to us but the struggle out here is real,” says Olugbade, 28, who has documented the crisis on his phone.

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‘We depend on God’: gravediggers on frontline of Kano’s Covid-19 outbreak

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Outbreak in northern Nigerian city highlights difficulties faced by authorities in detecting and controlling the virus

Musa Abubakar used to dig two or three graves a day at the main cemetery in the northern Nigerian city of Kano. Then overnight it became 40.

“I have never witnessed mass deaths like this,” the 75-year-old said, his white kaftan muddied from his work at the Abbatuwa cemetery, where he has dug graves for 60 years. “From the first day of Ramadan to date, over 300 people have been buried.”

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Coronavirus could ‘smoulder’ in Africa for several years, WHO warns

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190,000 people could die on the continent in the coming 12 months, agency says

The Covid-19 pandemic could “smoulder” in Africa for several years after killing as many as 190,000 people in the coming 12 months, the World Health Organization has said.

The WHO warned last month that there could be 10m infections on the continent within six months, though experts said the pandemic’s impact would depend on governments’ actions.

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‘I had no choice’: the desperate Nigerian women who sell their babies

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With limited access to abortion and antenatal care, many young mothers are falling prey to the country’s human traffickers

Two months after 17-year-old Ebere fell pregnant last year, she considered having an abortion. But she was told by a doctor that such a process – eight weeks into her pregnancy – could lead to complications.

Going home to her parents after visiting the doctor wasn’t an option for Ebere, who feared her strict father would beat her and shame her in their neighbourhood. The father of the baby had denied all responsibility and threatened to kill her if she ever tried to contact him again.

A nurse, who saw the troubled young girl sitting in the hospital, approached her to find out what was wrong. Ebere explained her situation and the nurse showed her a Facebook page of a man she said was a social worker who helped pregnant women in her position. She told her to call the phone number.

“When I called and explained my situation, he asked me to meet him at a popular restaurant in town,” says Ebere, speaking to the Guardian in her home city of Enugu, in south-eastern Nigeria. “When we met, he offered to take me to his home and care for me until I gave birth, but only if I was willing to sell the baby to him.”

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‘We needed to do more’: volunteers step up in lockdown Lagos

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Groups of professionals are helping deliver essential packages in Nigeria’s largest city

Twelve friends fill hundreds of carefully arranged aid packages into four cars, then trail through Oniru’s empty streets, past sky-coloured luxury apartment blocks.

In what is notionally an affluent suburb along Lagos’s coastline, the cars stop outside the shells of abandoned, part-constructed buildings, and the friends file into the informal housing compounds that sprawl within.

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Fears for Nigerian humanist held for blasphemy in sharia state

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Mubarak Bala, head of humanist association, taken to Kano after Facebook posts criticising Islam

A prominent Nigerian humanist accused of blasphemy has been arrested and taken to the northern city of Kano, according to figures close to him.

Mubarak Bala, the president of the Humanist Association of Nigeria, was taken from his home on 28 April in neighbouring Kaduna state and taken to Kano, where a warrant for his arrest was issued, Leo Igwe, a fellow Nigerian humanist and human rights advocate, said.

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Deaths in Nigerian city raise concerns over undetected Covid-19 outbreaks

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Doctors in Kano state report surge in fatal cases of pneumonia among elderly

Nigeria’s president has announced an immediate two-week lockdown in Kano, the largest city in the north, after local reports of a big rise in deaths in recent days.

The federal government would deploy “all the necessary human, material and technical resources” to support Kano state, Muhammadu Buhari said on Monday night.

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‘It’s just beginning here’: Africa turns to testing as pandemic grips the continent

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Nations battle to contain spread after World Health Organization warns of 10 million cases within six months

African nations are banking on aggressive screening and testing strategies as their best – and possibly only – defence against the Covid-19 virus.

After a slow start, a sudden rise of more than 40% in the number of Covid-19 cases on the continent in the last 10 days – to 28,000 – and a similar increase in the number of deaths – to 1,300 – has worried specialists.

The World Health Organization has warned of 10 million cases on the continent within three to six months, though experts say that the death toll could be lower if authorities are able to move swiftly to contain outbreaks of the disease.

“We are at the beginning in Africa,” Dr Mike Ryan, executive director of the WHO’s Health Emergencies Programme, said last week.


Though some of the worst effects of infection may be mitigated by the relative youth of many people on the continent, others may be made more vulnerable by malnutrition or existing conditions, such as HIV.

Under-resourced health systems are unlikely to cope with a significant surge of those infected by the disease. Provision of intensive care facilities on the continent is grossly inadequate. Many countries with populations numbering tens of millions have only a handful of ventilators.

So far it has been difficult to fully grasp the extent of the spread of the disease in Africa, as testing has been patchy.

Djibouti has recorded 98.6 cases per 100,000 people, the highest prevalence on the continent. But the tiny country has conducted just over 10,000 tests, as many as neighbouring Ethiopia, which has more than 100 million people.

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Nigerian president’s chief of staff dies from coronavirus

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Abba Kyari was the top aide to President Buhari and one of the most powerful men in the country; deaths on African continent have passed 1,000

The Nigerian president’s chief of staff, Abba Kyari, has died after contracting Covid-19, two presidency spokesmen said on Twitter, as Covid-19 deaths on the continent pass 1,000.

Kyari, who was in his 70s and had underlying health problems, including diabetes, was the top official aide to 77-year-old President Muhammadu Buhari and one of the most powerful men in the country.

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As coronavirus spreads around the world, so too do the quack cures

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Politicians, faith leaders and other authority figures have been touting dubious remedies

In India, politicians from the ruling Hindu nationalist BJP party have been touting cow urine as a cure for Covid-19. In Tanzania the president has promised that taking communion in church would “burn” the virus away. In Brazil a congressman claimed a day of fasting would halt its spread.

And the leader of the most powerful country in the world, Donald Trump, has been touting as a miracle cure an unproven anti-malarial drug that has contributed to at least one death.

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Rapper Naira Marley: ‘It’s better to have a big bum than qualifications in Nigeria’

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He’s been attacked by pastors and jailed by the authorities. But the outspoken rapper will not be silenced. He talks about his cult-like following – and the weird rules ‘Marlians’ live by

Depending on who you talk to, Naira Marley is either the scourge of the next generation of Nigerians or their saviour. But whoever’s talking, the pop star – arguably the most controversial in Africa – is spoken about in near-mythological tones, which makes his amiability very arresting when we meet in London a few weeks before lockdown.

He arrives flanked by an entourage, photoshoot-ready in a reflective puffer, and oscillates between class clown and deep thought. To some, the 25-year-old’s meteoric rise over the past two years has been sudden: selling out Brixton Academy in three minutes; accruing three million Instagram followers, tens of millions of streams, and a cult-like fandom. But the signs of stardom have always been there.

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Whether in the UK or the developing world, we’re not all in coronavirus together

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In the slums of Delhi or Lagos, social distancing is a dream while social exclusion is all too real and pernicious

‘The virus does not discriminate,” suggested Michael Gove after both Boris Johnson and the health secretary, Matt Hancock, were struck down by Covid-19. But societies do. And in so doing, they ensure that the devastation wreaked by the virus is not equally shared.

We can see this in the way that the low paid both disproportionately have to continue to work and are more likely to be laid off; in the sacking of an Amazon worker for leading a protest against unsafe conditions; in the rich having access to coronavirus tests denied to even most NHS workers.

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Fears for civilians in Chad after army suffers devastating Boko Haram attack

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Local communities flee as boundaries with Lake Chad become a war zone following ambush in which almost 100 soldiers died

The Chadian army that lost nearly 100 soldiers to a Boko Haram ambush a week ago has declared the Lake Chad borderlands a war zone, heightening fears that civilians will suffer an escalation in violence.

President Idriss Déby travelled to the region to announce the Wrath of Boma operation, named after the island where Boko Haram launched a seven-hour assault that Déby said was the worst the country’s military had ever suffered.

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Beaten, raped and forced to work: why I’m exposing the scandal of Nigeria’s house girls

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Mariam and Edna were just two of millions of children trapped in domestic slavery. Their tragic stories inspired me to write a novel targeting a practice that is rife in the country

One day, when my daughter was eight, I asked her to help me unload the dishwasher. She moaned, dragged her feet and pleaded for Haribo in exchange for this simple task. I asked her if she knew how lucky she was and told her that, in many homes in Nigeria, girls as young as her were forced to do chores all day, every day. They were not allowed to go to school, or eat at the table, or watch TV. She was amazed. Looking into her face, the horror of what was considered so normal during my childhood really hit me. It was child slavery – and it continues today. It was for these forgotten girls, trapped in domestic slavery, that I wrote my debut novel, The Girl With the Louding Voice.

According to the International Labour Organization (ILO), the number of working children under the age of 14 in Nigeria is estimated to be as high as 15 million, but due to the nature of the problem it is almost impossible to land on an accurate number. A large proportion of these children are young girls, who work as “house girls”: domestic servants who are often underage and forced against their will into this kind of work. Many of them never see their “wages”, as they are paid directly to agents or family members.

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Dutch authorities issue alert over missing pregnant asylum seekers

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At least 25 heavily pregnant women have disappeared from asylum shelters since November, sparking fears of trafficking and illegal adoption

This article is part of the Guardian’s This is Europe series

Dutch authorities have issued an alert over the disappearances of dozens of pregnant African women housed in asylum shelters in the Netherlands.

The unusual alert, seen by the Guardian and Argos Radio of the Netherlands, was put out by the Expertise Centre for Human Trafficking and Smuggling (EMM), a collaboration between the Dutch National Police, the Royal Netherlands Military Police, the Social Affairs and Employment Inspectorate and the Immigration Service.

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Set them free! The judge who liberates Nigerians forgotten in jail

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Ishaq Usman Bello is shaking the conscience of the courts – and nearly 4,000 wrongly detained prisoners are grateful for it

In a crowded prison courtyard in Suleja, Nigeria, a judge flipped through a battered folder detailing the case against a young woman who stood quietly before him in a faded pink dress.

She was charged with “issuing a dud cheque”, a crime that carries a maximum sentence of two years in prison. But she’d already spent three years in prison awaiting the outcome of her trial.

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