Category Archives: Nigeria

Nicki Minaj to spotlight plight of Nigerian Christians in UN speech arranged by White House

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Rapper to give address on Tuesday after supporting Trump’s post condemning Nigerian government

The US-based Trinidadian rapper Nicki Minaj will work alongside the White House to highlight claims of Christian persecution in Nigeria.

Minaj is expected to deliver a speech at the United Nations headquarters in New York on Tuesday, according to a Time journalist who first posted about the collaboration on Sunday, adding that it was arranged by Alex Bruesewitz, an adviser to Donald Trump.

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Protesters target major new Nigerian museum embroiled in looted artefacts row

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Protest at Mowaa comes amid dispute over ownership of Benin bronzes looted by British colonial forces

Protesters have disrupted a preview event at a major new museum in the Nigerian city of Benin that has become embroiled in a row over the restitution of artefacts looted by British colonial forces.

The demonstrators asserted that the opening of the Museum of West African Art (Mowaa) is a violation of Benin City’s cultural heritage, which falls under the authority of its traditional ruler, the Oba of Benin, Ewuare II.

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Terrorist turf war battle in north-eastern Nigeria leaves about 200 dead

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Fighting between Boko Haram and rival militants from Islamic State West Africa Province broke out on shores of Lake Chad

As many as 200 terrorists were killed in a turf war on Sunday between rival jihadists in north-east Nigeria.

The fighting between Boko Haram and rival militants from Islamic State West Africa Province (Iswap) broke out over the weekend in the village of Dogon Chiku, which lies on the shores of Lake Chad, a restive area located at the junction of Nigeria, Niger, Chad and Cameroon.

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My Father’s Shadow looms over competition at British independent film awards

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Akinola Davies Jr’s Nigeria-set drama has 12 nominations, including best film and besr director

Nigeria-set drama My Father’s Shadow is the leading contender at this year’s British independent film awards (Bifas), after it scooped 12 nominations, including best British independent film, best director for Akinola Davies Jr, and best screenplay for Davies’s brother Wale. The film came out ahead of Pillion, adapted from Adam Mars-Jones’s coming-of-age relationship story, which got 10 nominations, and biopic I Swear, which got nine.

My Father’s Shadow, which stars Sope Dirisu and is Davies’s debut feature as a director, premiered at the Cannes film festival to admiring reviews. The Guardian’s Peter Bradshaw described it as “a transparently personal project and a coming-of-age film in its (traumatised) way, a moving account of how, just for one day, two young boys glimpse the real life and real history of their father who has been mostly absent for much of their lives”. The film is yet to be released in the UK, but has already come out in Nigeria.

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Trump threatens to go into Nigeria ‘guns-a-blazing’ over attacks on Christians

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US president says he ordered Pentagon to begin planning for action, without mentioning Muslim persecution

Donald Trump on Saturday said he had ordered the Pentagon to begin planning for potential military action in Nigeria as he stepped up his criticism that the government was failing to rein in the persecution of Christians in the west African country.

“If the Nigerian Government continues to allow the killing of Christians, the USA will immediately stop all aid and assistance to Nigeria, and may very well go into that now disgraced country, ‘guns-a-blazing,’ to completely wipe out the Islamic Terrorists who are committing these horrible atrocities,” Trump posted on social media. “I am hereby instructing our Department of War to prepare for possible action. If we attack, it will be fast, vicious, and sweet, just like the terrorist thugs attack our CHERISHED Christians!”

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Wole Soyinka, Nigerian Nobel laureate and Trump critic, says US visa revoked

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Soyinka, 91, who recently compared US president to Idi Amin, says ‘I have no visa – I am banned’

The Trump administration has revoked the visa for Wole Soyinka, the acclaimed Nigerian Nobel prize-winning writer who has been critical of Trump since his first presidency, Soyinka revealed on Tuesday.

“I want to assure the consulate … that I’m very content with the revocation of my visa,” Soyinka, who won the 1986 Nobel prize for literature, told a news conference.

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Disabled Nigerian man living in UK for 38 years wins appeal against deportation

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Anthony Olubunmi George, who arrived in 1986 and has no criminal convictions, given right to remain

A disabled Nigerian man who has lived in the UK for almost 40 years has won an appeal to stay in the country despite the Home Office wanting to deport him.

Anthony Olubunmi George, 63, came to the UK at the age of 24 in 1986. He has not left the UK since and has no criminal convictions. He had two strokes in 2019 that left him with speech and mobility issues.

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Gunmen kidnap more than 50 people in north-west Nigeria

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Latest ‘mass capture’ in Zamfara state shows banditry crisis shifting from land conflict to organised crime

Gunmen have kidnapped more than 50 people in north-west Nigeria in a mass abduction, according to a private conflict monitoring report created for the UN and seen by Agence France-Presse on Sunday.

“Armed bandits” targeted the village of Sabon Garin Damri in Zamfara state Friday, the report said, the latest attack in a region where residents in rural hinterlands have long suffered gangs who kidnap for ransom, loot villages and demand taxes.

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Kemi Badenoch says she no longer sees herself as Nigerian despite upbringing

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Conservative party leader, who grew up in Nigeria and US, says she has not renewed her Nigerian passport in decades

​Kemi Badenoch has said she no longer considers herself Nigerian and does not possess a Nigerian passport.

The Conservative party leader, who was born in London, but grew up in Nigeria and the US and did not return to the UK until she was 16, said she had not renewed her Nigerian passport in two decades.

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Former Nigerian president Muhammadu Buhari dies aged 82 in London

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Leader who ousted Goodluck Jonathan in 2015 three decades after brief stint as military ruler dies after ‘prolonged illness’

Nigeria’s former president Muhammadu Buhari, who led Africa’s most populous country from 2015 to 2023 and was the first Nigerian president to oust an incumbent through the ballot box, died in London on Sunday, a presidential spokesperson has said.

President Bola Tinubu’s spokesperson said in a post on X: “President Buhari died today in London at about 4.30pm [1530 GMT], following a prolonged illness.”

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High-risk HIV groups facing record levels of criminalisation as countries bring in draconian laws

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Curbs on LGBTQ+ rights and a halt to US funding may reverse decades of progress in fight to end Aids epidemic, warns UNAids

People at higher risk of HIV, such as gay men and people who inject drugs, are facing record levels of criminalisation worldwide, according to UNAids.

For the first time since the joint UN programme on HIV/Aids began reporting on punitive laws a decade ago, the number of countries criminalising same-sex sexual activity and gender expression has increased.

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Nigerian communities to take Shell to high court over oil pollution

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Residents of Bille and Ogale in Niger delta are suing Shell and subsidiary, but company denies liability

Residents of two Nigerian communities who are taking legal action against Shell over oil pollution are set to take their cases to trial at the high court in 2027.

Members of the Bille and Ogale communities in the Niger delta, which have a combined population of about 50,000, are suing Shell and a Nigerian-based subsidiary of the company, the Shell Petroleum Development Company of Nigeria, which is now the Renaissance Africa Energy Company.

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Home Office accused of ‘racist crackdown’ on Nigerians after denial of visit visa

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Officials refused entry to man who runs top security firm in Nigeria and his family to spend holiday with his sister

The Home Office has been accused of a “racist crackdown on Nigerians” after refusing a visa to a man who runs one of the west African country’s top security firms for a holiday to see his family.

Samuel Onyekachi Ibeawuchi runs BKay Security Ltd, which provides close protection for high-profile people in Nigeria and abroad. He and his wife, a successful businesswoman, had applied to come to the UK with their 18-month-old child for three weeks in the summer so they could spend time with his sister, Hope Ibeawuchi-Beales, and her husband, Nick Beales, who is head of campaigning at Ramfel, which supports vulnerable migrants.

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Weather tracker: Nigeria hit by deadly flooding described as ‘worst in 60 years’

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At least 150 people killed, thousands displaced and buildings destroyed after heavy rains in north of country

Significant flooding affected Nigeria last week, with more than 150 deaths reported so far. Heavy rain struck the north of the country on Wednesday night and continued into Thursday, leading to flooding along the Niger River, displacing thousands and destroying hundreds of homes. The district head said it was the region’s worst flood in 60 years.

Heavy rain is not unusual at this time of year in Nigeria. The country has a tropical climate and is influenced by the west African monsoon, with the wet season running from April until October. This type of seasonality is linked to land-sea temperature differences, alongside the shifting intertropical convergence zone (ITCZ), a band of low pressure roughly around the equator that shifts north and south with the angle of the sun.

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Forty-two people killed in central Nigeria in attacks blamed on herders

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Attacks in state of Benue latest wave of violence amid conflict between Fulani herders and Indigenous farmers

Forty-two people have been killed in four communities in central Nigeria in attacks blamed on itinerant herders, in the latest wave of violence that continues to upend life in the rural region.

Reuters reports quote a local official, Victor Omnin, the chair of the Gwer West local government area in Benue state, as saying 10 people were killed in a Saturday attack on the villages of Tyolaha and Tse-Ubiam. Thirty-two others were killed the following day in a separate attack in the nearby Ahume and Aondona villages.

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Nigerians, Pakistanis and Sri Lankans face UK student visa crackdown

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Applicants will be targeted by Home Office due to suspicions they are most likely to overstay and claim asylum

Nigerians, Pakistanis and Sri Lankans applying to work or study in the UK face Home Office restrictions over suspicions that they are most likely to overstay and claim asylum, Whitehall officials have claimed.

The government is working with the National Crime Agency to build models to profile applicants from these countries who are likely to go on to claim asylum.

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Lifesize herd of puppet animals begins climate action journey from Africa to Arctic Circle

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The Herds project from the team behind Little Amal will travel 20,000km taking its message on environmental crisis across the world

Hundreds of life-size animal puppets have begun a 20,000km (12,400 mile) journey from central Africa to the Arctic Circle as part of an ambitious project created by the team behind Little Amal, the giant puppet of a Syrian girl that travelled across the world.

The public art initiative called The Herds, which has already visited Kinshasa and Lagos, will travel to 20 cities over four months to raise awareness of the climate crisis.

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‘The devil wants this pattern of mass death repeated’: Actors Guild of Nigeria calls for better regulation after two actors die

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After two actors died in Owerri, Imo State, AGN head Emeka Rollas drew comparisons to events last year, when popular Nollywood actor Junior Pope drowned

The president of the Actors Guild of Nigeria has called for mass prayers and increased unionisation after the death of two actors in Owerri, the capital city of Imo State.

Posting on Instagram, Emeka Rollas advocated spiritual intervention and better workplace regulation to try to prevent future tragedies after the two men, who have not yet been named, died on Friday.

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‘We are all Natasha’: senator’s sexual harassment claims roil Nigeria

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Treatment of Natasha Akpoti-Uduaghan, who has been suspended from senate, shines light on women’s rights

Last July, Nigeria’s third-most powerful man gave a rare apology on the floor of the senate which he heads.

Godswill Akpabio had chastised his colleague Natasha Akpoti-Uduaghan for speaking out of turn, saying: “We are not in a nightclub”. But after receiving what he said was a deluge of insulting text messages from Nigerians, he apologised publicly a few days later.

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Internet shutdowns at record high in Africa as access ‘weaponised’

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More governments seeking to keep millions of people offline amid conflicts, protests and political instability

Digital blackouts reached a record high in 2024 in Africa as more governments sought to keep millions of citizens off the internet than in any other period over the last decade.

A report released by the internet rights group Access Now and #KeepItOn, a coalition of hundreds of civil society organisations worldwide, found there were 21 shutdowns in 15 African countries, surpassing the existing record of 19 shutdowns in 2020 and 2021.

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