Category Archives: Nigeria

Surgery by candlelight: hospitals in Nigeria suffer losing power – and staff

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As a failing electric grid further burdens the creaking health system, doctors continue to seek opportunities abroad

The waiting rooms at the Ifako Ijaiye hospital in Lagos are overcrowded with patients waiting to see doctors. Often people have to stand outside.

“It is now like this every day. We have to come early and pick numbers before we can meet the doctors. Even though the doctors try to see everybody, it has got worse,” says Oluchi Ezegbo, a market trader from Okearo, in nearby Ogun state.

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First men go on trial under Nigeria’s anti-homosexuality laws

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All 47 men deny offence of same-sex displays of affection, which carries 10-year jail term

Forty-seven men went on trial in Nigeria on Wednesday for public displays of affection with members of the same sex, an offence that carries a 10-year jail term in the country.

The men were among 57 arrested in a police raid on a hotel in the impoverished Egbeda district of the commercial capital, Lagos, in 2018. They pleaded innocent at a hearing last month.

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It’s time to act against the oil companies causing death and destruction | John Sentamu

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Repentance, reparation and remedy for the terrible damage done to the people of Bayelsa state in Nigeria is long overdue

• John Sentamu is the archbishop of York

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights begins: “All human beings … should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood.” It is now widely acknowledged that human rights cannot be enjoyed without a safe, clean and healthy environment. The right to a healthy environment is enshrined in more than 100 constitutions all over the world because human and environmental rights are intertwined.

However, despite the endorsement of the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights, oil companies exploiting irreplaceable resources in the Niger Delta are callously flouting fundamental human rights. That is the conclusion I have been forced to draw from my work as chair of the Bayelsa State Oil and Environmental Commission (BSOEC).

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‘This place used to be green’: the brutal impact of oil in the Niger Delta

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Bayelsa state once offered rich pickings for farmers and fisherman. Then oil companies arrived and wrought an environmental catastrophe

• All photographs by Arteh Odjidja, whose work features in the exhibition Rise for Bayelsa, which runs in London until 20 December 2019

Almost every day, Udengs Eradiri is informed of another oil spill in Bayelsa state, in the Niger Delta. Most of the time, little or nothing is done to clean up the mess, says Eradiri, the state’s commissioner for the environment.

“You just need to take a tour to understand the magnitude of the environmental abuse,” he adds. “[Bayelsa] used to be green, you could go to farm or fish. We used to have very impressive harvests. You would spend just an hour in the water and you have a lot of fish.”

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Croatia wrongly deports Nigerian table tennis players to Bosnia

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Organisers of competition students travelled to attend demand their return to Nigeria

The organisers of an international student sports competition have called for two Nigerian table tennis players to be returned to their own country after Croatian police wrongly deported them to a Bosnian refugee camp.

Abia Uchenna Alexandro and Eboh Kenneth Chinedu, students at the Federal University of Technology Owerri in Nigeria, arrived in Zagreb on 12 November, on their way to participate in the fifth World InterUniversities Championships, held this year in Pula, Croatia.

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Polio outbreaks in Africa caused by mutation of strain in vaccine

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New cases of highly infectious disease that should be ‘consigned to the history books’ reported in Nigeria, the DRC, CAR and Angola

New cases of polio linked to the oral vaccine have been reported in four African countries and more children are now being paralysed by vaccine-derived viruses than those infected by viruses in the wild, according to global health numbers.

The World Health Organization (WHO) and partners identified nine new cases caused by the vaccine in Nigeria, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Central African Republic and Angola last week. Along with seven other African countries with outbreaks, cases have also been reported in Asia. In Afghanistan and Pakistan polio remains endemic, and in Pakistan officials have been accused of covering up vaccine-related cases.

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Bronze cockerel to be returned to Nigeria by Cambridge college

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Benin bronze statue at Jesus College to be repatriated after 1897 theft by British forces

A bronze cockerel taken by British colonial forces and donated to Jesus College Cambridge is to be returned to Nigeria in an unprecedented step that adds momentum to the growing repatriations movement.

The Okukor, described by the college as a “royal ancestral heirloom”, will be one of the first Benin bronzes to be returned to Nigeria by a major British institution since the punitive expedition in 1897 when thousands of bronzes were stolen from Benin City by British forces.

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Nigeria launches first sex offender register

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Publicly accessible list will allow schools and hospitals to conduct background checks

Campaigners have hailed the launch of Nigeria’s first sex offender register as a vital step towards tackling reported cases of sexual abuse, which are rising across the country.

The publicly accessible onlineregister of people prosecuted for sexual violence since 2015 will allow public bodies and police authorities to conduct background checks and identify repeat offenders.

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‘Climate of fear’: Nigeria intensifies crackdown on journalists

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Activists warn muzzling of press under President Buhari could herald return to dark days of military rule

Fisayo Soyombo was eating an evening snack in Lagos in late October when a colleague called to warn him about a plan hatched by Nigerian government officials at a clandestine meeting to arrest him.

Hours earlier, the second in a three-part undercover series by the Abuja-based investigative journalist on corruption in Nigeria’s criminal justice system had been published.

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Abuse and torture of mental health patients ‘rife’ across Nigeria, says report

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Human Rights Watch said people were chained and faced physical and sexual violence in both state and religious centres

Nigeria has been urged to end all forms of abuse in state-run mental health institutions as well as religious healing centres.

In a report published on Monday Human Rights Watch (HRW) said thousands of Nigerians with mental health conditions face prolonged detention, chaining, physical and sexual violence or forced treatment, including electroshock therapy.

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Relief for Windrush sisters as removal threat overturned

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Bumi Thomas, whose sister got citizenship, wins appeal against removal from UK

Two Windrush sisters who describe themselves as inseparable are celebrating after a judge ruled that one of them should not be sent back to Nigeria.

Bumi Thomas, 36, was at risk of removal from the UK and at one point was given 14 days to leave, while her sister Kemi, 38, was not because of their different dates of birth.

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Lake Chad shrinking? It’s a story that masks serious failures of governance | Oli Brown and Janani Vivekananda

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Our two-year study shows the lake has been stable since the 1990s. Costly ‘solutions’ shift focus from the complex causes of the region’s deadly crisis

Lake Chad is a hydrological miracle – a life-giving, freshwater lake in the Sahara desert. But the region around the lake has been engulfed in a violent crisis for more than a decade, which has left nearly 10 million people in urgent need of humanitarian assistance.

Military crackdowns on insurgent groups such as Boko Haram have failed to end the violence. Bringing durable peace to the region requires unpicking a Gordian knot of many interlinked factors: poverty, sectarian mistrust, political marginalisation and corruption. The risks posed by the climate crisis to the rainfall-dependent livelihoods of the people of Lake Chad are an important strand of this challenge.

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Wahala: trouble in the Niger delta – photo essay

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Photographer Robin Hinsch travelled to the Niger delta, visiting the gas flaring sites, artisanal refineries, and meeting the communities living in the hugely polluted environments caused by the oil industry

Covering 70,000 sq km (27,000 sq miles) of wetlands, the Niger delta was formed primarily by sediment deposition. It is home to more than 30 million people and 40 different ethnic groups, making up 7.5% of Nigeria’s total land mass.

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‘We cry and cry’: pain endures for mothers of missing Chibok schoolgirls

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Five years after she last saw her daughter, Yana Galang fears the world has forgotten a tragedy that splintered families and is now the subject of an award-winning documentary

Last week, Yana Galang left her small farm in Borno state, Nigeria, in the care of seven of her eight children and travelled by bus and train for the first time to the capital, Lagos. From there, she became the first member of her family ever to board a plane, and came to New York.

The mother of one of the 112 Nigerian schoolgirls of Chibok still missing after being abducted by Boko Haram in 2014 came to the city during the UN general assembly, on a mission to remind the world that – five years on – their children still have not been brought home.

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‘He took huge risks to get to the truth’: rights activist Patrick Naagbanton dies

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Tributes paid to the inspirational Nigerian campaigner and writer, who was hit by a car outside his home in Port Harcourt

A leading activist, journalist and writer who fought for the environmental rights of Nigerians in one of the most polluted places on earth has died after being hit by a car.

Friends and colleagues of Patrick Naagbanton described him as highly respected in the Niger Delta, Africa’s most important oil-producing region. They said his death, and the absence of his work holding the government, companies and individuals with interests in the region to account, would leave an enormous hole.

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Nigeria warned it risks humanitarian disaster by expelling charities

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Aid agencies strongly deny Nigeria’s claims they are diverting funds to Boko Haram

Nigeria has been warned it risks a humanitarian disaster if the government goes ahead with its threat to throw aid agencies out of the north-east of the country, claiming they are in league with extremist Islamic groups.

A spate of aid offices have been forcibly shut after unproven claims they have been acting as conduits for cash that has ended up with Boko Haram, or Islamic State West Africa Province (Iswap).

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Hundreds of captives, many boys in chains, rescued in Nigeria

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Children rescued from the school were said to have been abused and starved

More than 300 captives, most of them children and many in chains, have been rescued from a building in the northern Nigerian city of Kaduna.

All the children, seen by a Reuters reporter at the scene, were boys aged from five to their late teens. Some had their ankles manacled and others were chained by their legs to large metal hubcaps.

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Nigerian army orders closure of aid agency for ‘aiding terrorism’

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Action Against Hunger urges authorities to allow ‘life-saving’ work to continue after sanction imposed without ‘notice or explanation’

The Nigerian army has ordered Action Against Hunger to close its main office in Maiduguri, in Nigeria’s north-eastern Borno state, amid allegations the group has been “aiding and abetting terrorism”.

Soldiers forced the organisation to stop its work in the region on 18 September.

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UK deportation of three men halted after detention centre death

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Court rules deportees may have evidence about death of Oscar Okwurime in Harmondsworth

The deportation of three men from the UK to Nigeria on Tuesday night was halted by the high court because they may be able to provide evidence about the death of a man in a detention centre.

Oscar Okwurime died in Harmondsworth detention centre next to Heathrow airport last Thursday. In an order made in the high court on Tuesday preventing the three men flying, Mr Justice Butler said: “There is a serious issue that there should not be a removal of persons for whom there are grounds to believe that they may have material evidence to give in relation to the death of Oscar Okwurime.”

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