Authorities say 19 more were seriously injured in blasts at wedding, hospital and funeral in country’s north-east
At least 18 people have been killed and 19 seriously injured in suicide attacks targeting a wedding, a hospital and a funeral in north-east Nigeria, authorities have said.
In one of three blasts on Saturday in the town of Gwoza, a woman with a baby strapped to her back detonated explosives in the middle of a wedding ceremony, according to state police.
Continue reading...‘Unfair’ rejection rates of up to 70% harm cultural diversity and create a ‘global apartheid’, say promoters and musicians
Musicians, authors, producers and festival managers have hit out at “humiliating” and costly visa-rejection rates for African and Asian artists visiting Britain and European Union countries, saying it is having a chilling impact on cultural diversity.
Analysis shows the UK last year raised £44m in fees for visa applications that were then rejected, mainly coming from low- and middle-income countries. The EU made €130m (£110m).
Continue reading...Electricity substations shut down, flights suspended and parliament gates blocked in protest over minimum wage
Nigeria’s main labour unions have shut down the national grid, disrupted airline operations and blocked the gates to parliament as they began an indefinite strike over the government’s failure to agree a minimum wage.
A minimum wage of N30,000 (£15) a month, agreed in 2019, expired this April. The unions are asking for an increase to N494,000 (£257).
Continue reading...High Commission to meet leaders at university after currency crash in home country meant students couldn’t pay for tuition
Delegates from the Nigerian high commission in London are to meet bosses from Teesside University to discuss the treatment of a group of students who were ordered to leave the UK after failing to meet tuition repayments.
The Nigerian students were left distressed and in some cases suicidal after they were involuntarily withdrawn from their courses and ordered to leave, in what has been described as a “serious diplomatic issue”.
Continue reading...The viral disease kills 5,000 people a year in west Africa, and has been described as an epidemic threat to global health
Clinical trials for the first new treatment for Lassa fever in almost 40 years are planned to be held in Nigeria this year.
The neglected tropical disease kills about 5,000 people a year and is endemic in west Africa.
Continue reading...Post-colonial anthem dropped in 1978 reinstituted with little debate amid escalating economic crisis
Nigeria has reverted to a national anthem it dropped nearly 50 years ago after lawmakers replaced the current one, prompting widespread criticism over the lack of public consultation on the change.
The country’s president, Bola Tinubu, confirmed the law on Wednesday, a day after it was approved by both chambers of Nigeria’s national assembly, which is dominated by the governing party. The federal lawmakers introduced and passed the bill in less than a week – an unusually fast process for important bills that usually take weeks or months to be considered.
Continue reading...Anthony Olubunmi George, 61, has been refused leave to remain despite living most of his adult life in Britain
A disabled man who has lived in the UK for 38 years has been threatened with removal from the UK by the Home Office.
Anthony Olubunmi George, 61, came to the UK at the age of 24 in 1986 from Nigeria. He has not left the UK since and has no criminal convictions. In 2019, he had two strokes, which left him with problems with speech and mobility.
Continue reading...Tigran Gambaryan faces allegations of ‘serious criminality’ on behalf of world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange
A Nigerian court has ruled that Tigran Gambaryan, the Binance executive detained on charges of tax evasion and money laundering, can face trial on behalf of the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange.
In a judgment in Abuja on Friday – Gambaryan’s 40th birthday – the presiding judge, Emeka Nwite, denied the American national bail, saying he was likely to abscond.
Continue reading...Petition launched to halt mass ceremony that organisers say is for 100 orphans whose parents were killed by gangs
Human rights activists in Nigeria have launched a petition to stop a plan to push 100 girls and young women into marriage in a mass ceremony, which has caused outrage in the west African country.
The plan, sponsored by Abdulmalik Sarkindaji, the speaker of the national assembly in the largely Muslim north-western state of Niger, were criticised by Nigeria’s women’s affairs minister, Uju Kennedy Ohanenye. She said she would seek a court injunction to stop the ceremony next week and establish if any of the girls were minors.
Continue reading...Lydia Simon, recovered along with three children born in captivity, was one of 276 schoolgirls taken in 2014
Nigerian troops have rescued a pregnant woman and her three children 10 years after she was abducted by Boko Haram militants when she was a schoolgirl in the town of Chibok.
Lydia Simon was rescued in Gwoza council area, about 95 miles (150km) east of Chibok, from where 276 schoolgirls were seized in April 2014. As many as 82 are still missing a decade after the high-profile mass kidnapping.
Continue reading...Boy who took his own life allegedly told to pay $500 to stop personal photos being shared with family and friends
Two men in Nigeria have been charged over an alleged sextortion case that led to a teenage Australian boy taking his own life.
The boy had been engaging online with an unknown person who threatened to share personal photos of him with his family and friends if he did not pay $500, NSW police said in a statement on Monday.
Continue reading...Students and staff snatched by gunmen from school in Kaduna state freed days before ransom deadline
The Nigerian army has rescued students and staff who were abducted by gunmen from a school in the country’s north earlier this month, the military said, days before the deadline for a ransom payment.
School officials and residents had said 287 students were taken on 7 March in the town of Kuriga, in the north-western state of Kaduna. A military spokesperson said 137 hostages – 76 female and 61 male – were rescued in the early hours of Sunday in the neighbouring state of Zamfara.
Continue reading...High temperatures in February affected millions of people and put further pressure on chocolate prices
A searing heatwave that struck west Africa in February was made 4C hotter and 10 times more likely by human-caused global heating, a study has found.
The heat affected millions of people but the number of early deaths or cases of illness are unknown, due to a lack of reporting.
Continue reading...Two mass abductions were the latest in a series of group kidnappings by gunmen
Nigerian security forces continued to search forests and set up roadblocks in the north-west of the country on Sunday in an attempt to find hundreds of kidnapped schoolchildren, but observers said combing the woodland expanses could take weeks.
More than 280 children aged between seven and 18 were taken from a school in Kuriga on Thursday in one of the biggest mass-abductions in recent months in Nigeria’s turbulent north-west. A further 15 children were taken in another raid on a school in Sokoto on Saturday.
Continue reading...Attackers force their way into school days after 300 children abducted in different Nigerian state
Gunmen kidnapped at least 15 pupils from a school in Nigeria in a dawn raid on Saturday, days after about 300 children were abducted in another armed raid.
The gunmen forced their way into the school premises in the Sokoto village of Gidan Bakuso, in the country’s north-west, and started firing shots sporadically, waking and causing panic among the pupils, said the school’s owner, Liman Abubakar Bakuso.
Continue reading...President sends in military after mass abduction from school in north-western state of Kaduna
Nigeria’s president, Bola Ahmed Tinubu, has sent troops to rescue more than 250 children kidnapped by gunmen from a school in the north-west of the country in one of the largest mass abductions in recent years.
The mass kidnapping in Kaduna state was the second in a week in Nigeria, where heavily armed criminal gangs on motorbikes target victims in villages and schools and along highways in search of ransom payments.
Continue reading...Assailants reportedly surrounded Kuriga school as pupils were starting the day in second abduction in country in less than a week
Gunmen have attacked a school in Nigeria’s north-west region seizing at least 287 students, in the second mass abduction in the West African nation in less than a week.
Authorities had said earlier that more than 100 students were taken hostage in the attack. But Sani Abdullahi, the headteacher, told Kaduna governor Uba Sani when he visited the town on Thursday that the total number of those missing after a headcount was 287.
Continue reading...Firm told it must take responsibility for toxic legacy of pollution and safe decommissioning of abandoned oil infrastructure
The oil firm Shell cannot be allowed to withdraw from the Niger delta before it takes responsibility for its toxic legacy of pollution and the safe decommissioning of abandoned oil infrastructure, a report says.
Shell plc is preparing to divest from the delta but a report warns that it must remain until it has cleaned up its legacy of pollution.
Continue reading...Scam involves more than 700 healthcare workers who used proxies to pass test in Nigeria enabling them to work in the UK
Hundreds of frontline NHS staff are treating patients despite being under investigation for their part in an alleged “industrial-scale” qualifications fraud.
More than 700 nurses are caught up in a potential scandal, which a former head of the Royal College of Nursing said could put NHS patients at risk.
Continue reading...Access Bank CEO Herbert Wigwe, his wife and son die in crash, along with former group chairman of Nigeria’s stock exchange
The chief executive of Nigeria’s largest bank, his wife and his son were among six people killed in a Friday night helicopter crash in a remote part of the Mojave desert along the California-Nevade border, according to officials.
Access Bank CEO Herbert Wigwe, his wife, Doreen Chizoba, and son Chizi, died in the crash along with the former group chairman of Nigeria’s stock exchange, Abimola Ogunbanjo. Those identities were first released by the director general of the World Trade Organization, Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, in a post on X.
Continue reading...