The Leap of Dance academy has brought ballet to children in a poor district in Africa’s largest megacity
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Nigerian social media star appears in US court on fraud charges
‘Ray Hushpuppi’ is alleged to have laundered hundreds of millions of dollars
A Nigerian social media star, known for flaunting a luxurious lifestyle to millions of his followers on Instagram, has appeared in court in the US charged with running a global fraud operation, including targeting a Premier League football club, a bank and a US law firm.
Ramon Olorunwa Abbas, a 37-year-old known as “Ray Hushpuppi” who claims to run a real estate business, is alleged to have conspired to launder hundreds of millions of dollars through business email compromise (BEC) frauds and other scams, the US Department of Justice (DoJ) said.
Continue reading...Petrol sold to Nigeria from Europe ‘dirtier’ than black market ‘bush’ fuel
Samples from illegal refineries in Niger delta found to be of a higher quality than imported petrol in new analysis
Black market fuel made from stolen oil in rudimentary “bush” refineries hidden deep in the creeks and swamps of the Niger delta is less polluting than the highly toxic diesel and petrol that Europe exports to Nigeria, new laboratory analysis has found.
Shell, Exxon, Chevron and other major oil companies extract and export up to 2m barrels a day of high quality, low sulphur “Bonny Light” crude from the Niger delta. But very little of this oil is refined in the country because its four state-owned refineries are dysfunctional or have closed.
Continue reading...Former England boxer Kelvin Bilal Fawaz wins 16-year battle to stay in UK
Exclusive: Fawaz, who was trafficked to the UK from Nigeria as a child, won his Home Office appeal last week
The former England boxer Kelvin Bilal Fawaz has won his 16-year legal battle to live and work in the UK after the Home Office granted him leave to remain for 30 months.
Fawaz, who has represented England six times and was once an amateur champion, has been struggling to establish his adult nationality and immigration status after being trafficked from Nigeria to the UK as a child and kept in domestic servitude.
Continue reading...Nigerian pop star allegedly abducts woman after she accuses him of rape
Seyitan Babatayo’s claims against D’banj spark outrage in Nigeria as activism against sexual abuse rises
A woman who accused an Afrobeats star of rape has claimed she was subsequently targeted by police and then held hostage by the singer, sparking outrage amid rising activism in Nigeria against endemic sexual abuse.
Seyitan Babatayo reported to Nigerian police on 6 June, three days after she alleged on Twitter that the music star D’banj, whose real name is Oladapo Oyebanjo, had forcibly gained access to her hotel room as she slept and raped her.
Continue reading...Lagos distributes free phones in bid to bridge digital and educational divide
Closure of Nigeria’s schools during lockdown has hit access to learning for poorer children
Like millions of other children in the sprawling Nigerian city of Lagos, 15-year-old Sharifa Umar switched from classroom learning to lessons over radio, TV and the internet when schools were closed in March because of the coronavirus outbreak.
Programmes set up by the city authorities for public schools have aired on television and radio, following statewide timetables. Individual schools have made online classes available. But for disadvantaged students, access to learning throughout the pandemic has been a challenge.
Continue reading...Islamic militants kill at least 60 people in north-east Nigeria
The attack in Borno state follows the massacre of 69 villagers in a raid in the same area
Islamic militants have killed at least 20 soldiers and more than 40 civilians and injured hundreds in twin attacks in north-east Nigeria, residents and a civilian task force fighter said.
The attacks, in the Monguno and Nganzai districts of Borno state, came just days after militants killed at least 69 people in a raid on a village in a third area, Gubio.
Continue reading...Nigeria to cut healthcare spending by 40% despite coronavirus cases climbing
Nurses say they have been left without promised compensation as £75m set aside for renovation of parliament buildings
Plans by Nigeria’s government to cut healthcare spending risk undermining the country’s coronavirus response and severely impacting already strained services, health and transparency groups have warned.
Funding for local, primary healthcare services will be cut by more than 40% this year in a revised budget expected to be passed into law in the coming weeks.
Continue reading...Global report: Moscow relaxes lockdown despite high caseload; Nigerian deaths rise
South Africa warns pandemic could last up to two years; Indonesia reports largest daily rise in infections
Moscow has partially lifted its lockdown despite Russia reporting thousands of new daily cases and Spain’s government said face masks would remain mandatory in public as Europe continued to emerge from the first phase of its struggle against Covid-19.
Concern mounted, however, over the spread of coronavirus in Africa and elsewhere, with Nigeria confirming 600 deaths from a previously undetected outbreak and South Africa warning its pandemic could last up to two years.
Continue reading...Rape and murder of student in church sparks outrage across Nigeria
Brutality of 22-year-old Vera Uwaila Omozuwa’s killing has shocked the country amid a chorus of demands for justice
Vera Uwaila Omozuwa, a 22-year-old microbiology student, sought the quiet of her empty church in Benin City, southern Nigeria, as a place to study. Hours later she was raped and killed in a crime that has sparked outrage across Nigeria.
Last Wednesday evening, a church security guard found Uwa, as she is known, unconscious in a pool of blood, according to her family.
Continue reading...‘Many girls have been cut’: how global school closures left children at risk
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.
Continue reading...Nigerian forces accused of torture and illegal detention of children – report
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.
Continue reading...Experts sound alarm over lack of Covid-19 test kits in Africa
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.
Continue reading...West Africa facing food crisis as coronavirus spreads
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.
Continue reading...‘People are more scared of hunger’: coronavirus is just one more threat in Nigeria
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.
Continue reading...‘We depend on God’: gravediggers on frontline of Kano’s Covid-19 outbreak
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.”
Continue reading...Coronavirus could ‘smoulder’ in Africa for several years, WHO warns
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.
Continue reading...‘I had no choice’: the desperate Nigerian women who sell their babies
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.”
‘We needed to do more’: volunteers step up in lockdown Lagos
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.
Continue reading...Fears for Nigerian humanist held for blasphemy in sharia state
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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