With over 200 million people and an emerging middle class, Nigeria is witnessing a boom in demand for meat. Most of the demand is met by pastoralists from the ethnic Fulani group, who follow time-honoured techniques of raising cattle, driving them south to pastures and taking them to market
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Bomb attack on busy market kills 30 people in north-east Nigeria
Further 42 people wounded as three people detonate devices in Konduga, Borno state
Thirty people were killed when three people blew themselves up on Sunday night in a busy market in north-east Nigeria, which has seen a recent increase in attacks by militant groups.
Many were watching the evening news and waiting for the football to come on when the bombs went off in the village just outside Konduga, Borno state, wounding a further 42 people.
Continue reading...In a world full of wars, why are so many of them ignored? | Simon Tisdall
Instability across central Africa has resulted in a humanitarian crisis. There needs to be greater focus on conflict resolution
Cameroon, a central African state of 24 million people on the Gulf of Guinea, is rarely in the news – which is surprising, given the awful things happening there. In a warring world full of conflict, the country’s troubles barely rate a mention. That’s short-sighted. As Yemen shows, today’s local difficulties have a habit of becoming tomorrow’s international crises.
Long-running tensions between Cameroon’s French and English-speaking communities came to a head last week with the arrest of at least 350 members of the main opposition party, whose leader has been jailed since January. Human Rights Watch accused security forces of using “excessive and indiscriminate force”.
Continue reading...Fight the fakes: how to beat the $200bn medicine counterfeiters | Helen Lock
Armed with blockchain and AI, health workers and campaigners are battling the bogus business that kills thousands
By the time the teenage boy was standing in front of Bernice Bornmai, feverish and delirious, it was already too late.
It wasn’t just the malaria that was killing the 17-year-old, it was the time he’d wasted taking fake medicine. The antimalarials did nothing to stop the disease marching through the young Ghanaian’s body: his organs were already shutting down.
Continue reading...Can Buhari win over his enemies to unite a deeply divided Nigeria? | Orji Sunday
As the president is sworn in for a further four years, the challenges of tackling corruption, poverty and conflict grow ever more intense
Nigeria’s president Muhammadu Buhari will be sworn in on Wednesday, the former military dictator taking a new four-year tenure after a keenly contested election in February.
When the results were announced, it cleanly split national emotion into joy and sadness – a divide that now has knitted back together into widely felt indifference.
Continue reading...Nigeria accused of ‘scurrilous’ attempt to gag press
Access to country’s law-making National Assembly will be restricted, says Guild of Editors
Strict new conditions for covering government proceedings and the re-arrest of a prominent journalist on terrorism charges have raised concerns about deteriorating press freedom in Nigeria.
To be permitted to report on the country’s National Assembly, the highest law-making authority, journalists will now have to prove that their media outlet has a daily circulation of 40,000 copies or online media 5,000 daily views.
Continue reading...Images from Nigeria, land of the ‘inseparable two’
In the west African country where there are many more twins than anywhere else in the world, photographers Bénédicte Kurzen and Sanne de Wilde explore ‘double birth’ and its mythology
Ten young people pose for a group shot, boys in front, girls behind. Almost identically dressed, they stare straight to camera with a mixture of shyness and defiance familiar from school photographs the world over. But the brightness of their uniform, the playfulness of their headgear, suggests that this is no ordinary gathering – and indeed it is not. These children, togged out in their holiday best, were among more than 2,000 sets of twins who poured into the Nigerian town of Igbo-Ora last autumn for the state of Oyo’s first twins festival – an event celebrating the town’s claim to be the twins capital of the world.
Continue reading...Women dressed ‘provocatively’ are being arrested in Nigeria. The law’s still failing us | Sede Alonge
Those arrested in Abuja nightclubs were labelled prostitutes – despite there being no evidence. In this society, you don’t need any
Nigerian media has been awash with news of a recent police raid in the capital, Abuja, in which dozens of women were arrested in and around nightclubs on charges of prostitution. A city official said one way police assessed the potential guilt of the women was if they were dressed “provocatively”. No men were arrested in the raid. There was also an ominously conspicuous absence of any evidence of soliciting, which is a crime under Nigerian law. Most alarming of all, there are witness reports of rape, sexual assault and financial extortion of the women by the policemen who arrested them. Some of the women were taken to a mobile court and allegedly pressured to plead guilty to charges of prostitution on the spot.
Such arrests don't just disregard due process but send a clear message as to who's in charge: men
Continue reading...Nigeria’s missing: ‘We want to know whether our sons are alive or dead’
Roughly 20,000 people have been detained by Nigeria’s military over the past decade, leaving their families fraught with anxiety
It was on a chilly morning in October 2011 that Hajja Gana Suleiman’s world began to unravel.
The news came that her son had been arrested by military men. Mustapha “Saina” Abdulkareem had been saying his morning prayers at a nearby mosque when he was taken away.
Continue reading...Dutch court will hear widows’ case against Shell over deaths of Ogoni Nine
Judges order oil firm to release confidential documents as wives of late Nigerian activists get go-ahead to pursue claim
A Dutch court has ruled that it has jurisdiction to determine whether Royal Dutch Shell was complicit in the Nigerian government’s execution of the Ogoni Nine, environmental protesters who fought against widespread pollution in the Niger Delta.
In a 50-page ruling hailed by campaigners as an “important precedent” for global human rights cases, judges at The Hague’s district court said on Wednesday that they would allow the case to go forward, also indicating that the claimants – widows of four of the activists – would be able to bring further evidence to prove their case.
Continue reading...British woman Faye Mooney killed by kidnappers in Nigeria
Gunmen also kill Nigerian man and abduct three others near northern city of Kaduna
The family of Faye Mooney, a 29-year-old British aid worker killed in Nigeria by kidnappers, have paid tribute to her bravery and belief in societal change that “took her to places others feared”.
A Nigerian man was also shot dead in the attack on a holiday resort in northwestern Nigeria, 37 miles (60km) south of Kaduna, in which three other people were abducted late on Friday evening, local police and the British high commission said.
Continue reading...Double standards on oil spills in Nigeria must end | Letters
Oil companies must respect human lives and clean up the damage their industry does wherever they operate, say Dr John Sentamu, Baroness Amos, Prof Michael Watts, Njeri Kabeberi and James Thornton
The devastating impact of oil spills is widely recognised. The past decade has witnessed the destruction caused to human life and the environment from spills including the Deepwater Horizon spill in the Gulf of Mexico in 2010 and the Montara spill in Australia in 2009.
On each occasion the global community has reacted with horror, demanding the oil industry clean up local ecosystems and communities. Yet in Nigeria, and particularly in Bayelsa state in the Niger Delta, these calls are ignored.
Continue reading...Children trapped after fatal building collapse in Nigeria
At least four people dead and scores feared buried under rubbe of Lagos building
Dozens of children are among scores of people feared trapped after a four-storey building collapsed in Nigeria’s economic capital, Lagos, killing at least four people.
Officials said the children were attending an illegal school in the residential building when the structure collapsed. “Dozens of children were trapped inside,” said Adesina Tiamiyu, the head of Lagos state emergency management agency, which was supervising the rescue operation.
Continue reading...Breast-ironing: victims urge stronger action to root out dangerous custom
Medical experts and victims say practice, deemed by perpetrators to protect girls from sexual harassment and rape, is child abuse
Comfort was nine when her older sister told her she was going to flatten her chest with a stone to prevent her breasts from developing too soon, telling her it was for her own good.
“She said it’s so that girls don’t get abused as children or as teenagers,” Comfort said.
Continue reading...More than 50 missing after oil pipeline explosion in Nigeria
Spillage following blaze sparked stampede in Nembe kingdom, Bayelsa state
More than 50 people are missing after a leaking oil pipeline exploded and caused a stampede in southern Nigeria, a local official said on Saturday.
The blast early on Friday caused massive oil spillage in the Nembe kingdom in Bayelsa state, the Nembe Chiefs Council spokesman, Chief Nengi James-Eriworio, told the Associated Press.
Continue reading...Democracy has failed in Nigeria when voters no longer care who wins | Remi Adekoya
A dismally low turnout in the presidential elections revealed the fractured relationship between politicians and populace
You know a democracy is in trouble when two out of three voters don’t bother to turn up for a presidential election. In Nigeria’s just-concluded presidential poll, incumbent Muhammadu Buhari was re-elected with the backing of 15.2 million voters compared to the 11.3 million votes his main rival Atiku Abubakar, was able to amass.
Although this gave Buhari 56% of the total votes cast, in a country with a population of close to 200 million, including more than 84 million registered voters, 15.2 million votes hardly qualifies as a huge mandate. The 35% voter turnout was down from 44% in the 2015 presidential election and way down from the 54% turnout in 2011. In fact, turnout for Nigerian presidential elections has been dropping at an alarmingly consistent rate since 2003. So why are increasingly fewer Nigerians feeling the need to vote in elections that decide the most powerful political office?
Continue reading...Muhammadu Buhari wins Nigerian election with 56% of the vote
The incumbent is declared the winner by the electoral commission but the opposition rejects outcome
Nigeria’s president Muhammadu Buhari has been declared the winner of the country’s election after results showed that he claimed 56% of the vote.
Related: Nigeria election: ‘Mr Honesty’ tainted by failure to tackle corruption
Continue reading...Italy’s hardline stance on immigration leaves sex trafficked women fearful
Thousands of Nigerian women could be expelled or left homeless as Salvini decree abolishes protective measures
Princess stares out of the window of a welcome centre an hour outside Rome, watching the sky turn red. She clutches her three-month-old child tightly. The baby is all she has left after Nigeria stole her freedom, and Italy her hope.
Princess, 31, born among the muddy streets and shacks of Benin City, left everything to come to Italy in 2008. Now she is one of the thousands of women trafficked into the country who could soon find themselves on the streets, or deported back to Nigeria, under a decree that cements the populist government’s hardline immigration stance.
Continue reading...Nigeria election marred by vote buying, tech failures and violence
Reports of attacks and gunfire in some areas as voters go to polls to elect president
Nigeria’s long-awaited presidential election went ahead on Saturday, marred by heavy gunfire in the north-east, killings in the south and reports of technology failures and vote buying across the country.
Some voters arrived at polling stations at 3am to ensure their ballot was counted in an election dominated by the current president, Muhammadu Buhari, and a former vice-president Atiku Abubakar.
Continue reading...Nigeria prepares to go to polls again after last-minute postponement
Nigerians are hoping vote will go ahead following delay over unspecified ‘challenges’
Nigerians are preparing to go to the polls again, hoping the presidential election will go ahead on Saturday morning after last weekend’s 11th-hour postponement.
The incumbent, Muhammadu Buhari, and his main challenger, Atiku Abubakar, resumed campaigning this week after the announcement by the independent national electoral commission (INEC) at 3am last Saturday, five hours before polling stations were due to open, that the vote was being pushed back.
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