NAIJAFEED

Wednesday, March 24, 2021

Boko Haram brutality against women and girls needs urgent response

Boko Haram fighters targeted women and girls with rape and other sexual violence, amounting to war crimes, during recent raids in northeast Nigeria, new research by Amnesty International has revealed.

In February and March 2021, Amnesty International interviewed 22 people in a cluster of villages in northern Borno State that Boko Haram has repeatedly attacked since late 2019.

During violent raids, Boko Haram fighters killed people trying to flee and looted livestock, money, and other valuables.

“As Boko Haram continue their relentless cycle of killings, abductions and looting, they are also subjecting women and girls to rape and other sexual violence during their attacks. These atrocities are war crimes,” said Osai Ojigho, Director of Amnesty International Nigeria.

“The targeted communities have been abandoned by the forces that are supposed to protect them, and are struggling to gain any recognition or response to the horrors they’ve suffered. The Nigerian authorities must urgently address this issue.

“The International Criminal Court must immediately open a full investigation into the atrocities committed by all sides, and ensure those responsible are held accountable, including for crimes against women and girls.”

After repeated displacement, the affected communities have mostly moved to military-controlled areas, but many have yet to receive any humanitarian assistance.

Rape and other sexual violence

Survivors and witnesses described attacks involving sexual violence in at least five villages in the Magumeri local government area of Borno State. During raids, usually at night, Boko Haram fighters raped women and girls who were caught at home or trying to flee.

One woman was physically assaulted by Boko Haram fighters as she fled from an attack in late 2020. She crawled to a home and hid there with her children, and saw fighters return and enter a nearby home.

She said: “In the next house, I started hearing some women were shouting and screaming and crying. I was very afraid. After some minutes, maybe 30 minutes, I saw the men come out of the house. There were five or six of them with their guns. Then afterwards, the women were confused. Their dresses were not normal.”

Amnesty International interviewed three other witnesses who similarly described the same attack, including hearing women’s screams and seeing them extremely distressed after Boko Haram left. A traditional healer said she cared for several women following the attack who had been raped.

The same healer had previously treated two other survivors, including one who was under 18 years old, after a Boko Haram attack on another village. She said: “I could see the pain on their faces. [The first survivor] told me what happened. I saw her private parts. They were very swollen. So I understood it was more than one or two people who had raped her. She was suffering.”

Another woman told Amnesty International that during the same attack fighters shot people who were running away, then came to her house and sexually assaulted her. She said: “The men entered my room. I asked what they wanted. They took my jewellery and belongings. Then they fell on me.”

Some witnesses also described Boko Haram abducting women during several attacks, taking them away on motorbikes. The women were returned to their village days later, showing clear signs of trauma.

Rape and other forms of sexual violence constitute war crimes in the context of the conflict, as defined under the Rome Statute.

No survivors Amnesty International interviewed appear to have accessed formal health services. Stigma and fear of repercussions mean such incidents are significantly underreported, even within affected communities. At least one of the survivors continues to suffer health complications some months later.

Access to abortion is illegal in Nigeria, except when life is at risk, which means survivors of rape do not have access to safe and legal abortion.

Killings and looting

During raids, Boko Haram fighters stole almost everything they could find. Witnesses consistently described fighters arriving on motorbikes and on foot, before firing into the air. In several attacks, Boko Haram targeted and murdered civilians as they fled; in one attack, several older people who were unable to flee were killed inside their homes.

Fighters often went house-to-house, rounding up livestock and stealing valuables including money, mobile phones, jewellery, and clothes. Witnesses described fighters loading the looted property onto their motorbikes, or on donkeys from the village. To steal livestock, fighters often forced young men to herd the animals into the forest.

A 40-year-old man whose village was raided told Amnesty International: “Before, if you came to our house, you’d see we had cows and goats. I didn’t have many, just a few, but with that I was content. Now, we have nothing… They took everything from us.”

Some fighters wore Nigerian military uniforms, while others wore traditional dress of the region. Witnesses said they knew the perpetrators belonged to Boko Haram, and not the Nigerian military, for several reasons. They could hear the fighters speaking languages common among Boko Haram members; the fighters came on motorbikes, not military vehicles; and the fighters dressed in a combination of attire. Even those fighters wearing stolen Nigerian military uniforms often wore sandals or had bare feet, instead of military boots.

Many witnesses also reported that some children, aged between 15 and 17, were among the attackers, along with men in their 20s.

Urgent response needed

After repeated attacks in recent months, communities from this cluster of villages fled to areas within the Nigerian military’s established perimeters. Many people settled less than a kilometre from an internally displaced persons (IDP) camp outside Maiduguri. Some tried to move into the camp, but were told it was full.

Officials from the nearby IDP camp visited and took people’s names, reportedly around two months ago, but no-one had returned since, according to everyone displaced to that location whom Amnesty International interviewed. Many women remain frustrated that no-one from the government or the humanitarian community has spoken with them to understand the targeting of women during attacks, and what support is needed now. Many added they wished the government would acknowledge and apologize for what happened, and bring the perpetrators to justice.

Months after settling near the IDP camp, the communities have still not received any assistance, including food, shelter, or health care. In early March, a young child died, and her family told Amnesty International she was malnourished and that they believed that factor contributed to her death. Everyone displaced near the camp described widespread hunger.

One woman told Amnesty International: “We need food assistance. All around us are malnourished children. Some of the women go to the camp, [but they’re] told to go away. Some are begging. Some [of us] are selling our things.”

“This is a humanitarian crisis that is getting worse day-by-day. The Nigerian authorities and partners must act now to support those most in need, and ensure this horrendous situation doesn’t continue to deteriorate,” said Osai Ojigho.

Background

The conflict in northeast Nigeria has created a humanitarian crisis, with more than 2,000,000 people now displaced. Boko Haram has also frequently targeted aid workers trying to respond to the crisis.

Amnesty International has repeatedly documented crimes under international law and other serious violations of international human rights and humanitarian law in northeast Nigeria.

The Nigerian authorities have not taken any genuine steps towards investigating and prosecuting crimes by Boko Haram or the Nigerian security forces, including crimes of sexual violence. Last December, the chief prosecutor of the ICC announced that her office had concluded a decade-long preliminary examination into the situation in Nigeria, saying that it had found sufficient evidence of crimes to open a full investigation. No formal investigation has yet been opened.

The conflict continues to have a dire impact on civilians, as documented in Amnesty International reports on the experience of women, children and older people.

Amnesty International

Nigeria’s booming kidnap-for-ransom enterprise threatens security

Lagos, Nigeria – It was early in the morning when Aliyu Kagada received the distressing news.

An armed gang, known locally as bandits, had just stormed a dormitory at the Government Science College in Kagara, a town in Nigeria’s Niger state, kidnapping his 18-year-old son, Nurudeen.

Twenty-six other students, as well as three staff members and 12 of their relatives, were also snatched in the raid, while one boy was killed.

The days that followed were agonising for Kagada, a father of 12. “I felt really sad,” he said. “I couldn’t sleep well … I couldn’t eat well; we only prayed.”

After days of tense negotiations with the bandits, the authorities announced on February 27 that all 42 abductees had been released from their 10-day captivity.

‘Economic survival’

Since December 2020, gangs of bandits seeking lucrative ransom have kidnapped a total of 769 students from their boarding schools and other educational facilities across northern Nigeria in at least five separate incidents.

The region has long been afflicted by violence fuelled by disputes over access to land and resources, among other factors. Criminal gangs have taken advantage of the lack of effective policing to launch attacks, pillaging villages, stealing cattle and spreading fear.

But with climate change affecting livestock in the arid north and herdsmen migrating down south in search of pasture and water, these groups – believed to largely be comprised of Fulani pastoralists who collaborate with other nomadic tribes – have recently turned to mass abductions for financial gains.

In the Kagara case, authorities did not disclose if a ransom was paid for the abductees’ release. However, experts agree that the growing instances of mass abductions of boys and girls in the region are an offshoot of a booming kidnapping-for-ransom criminal enterprise that has become one of Nigeria’s main security challenges.

At least $18.34m was paid to kidnappers as ransom – mostly by families and the government – between June 2011 and March 2020, according to a report by SB Morgen (SBM) Intelligence, a Lagos-based political risk analysis firm.

“The motivation of these groups appears to be purely economic,” Ikemesit Effiong, head of research at SBM, told Al Jazeera. “They don’t seem political. The high rate of poverty in this country has led many to resort to such criminal activities for economic survival.”

‘Schools are soft targets’

Kidnapping for ransom in Nigeria can be traced to the country’s oil-rich Niger Delta region in the early 2000s, mainly targeting expatriates. It then spread across Nigeria, where 40 percent of people in Africa’s most populous country live below the poverty line.

Abductors have historically targeted the country’s middle- and upper-class, demanding ransoms between $1,000 and $150,000, depending on their victims’ net worth and capacity to pay, according to police.

In other cases, however, the sums are much larger.

In 2017, authorities announced the arrest of Chukwudi Onuamadike, popularly known as Evans and often referred to as Nigeria’s “richest and most notorious kidnapper”. Police said ransom money was paid to him in “millions of dollars”, with some victims being kept for up to seven months “until the last penny is paid”.

High-profile Nigerians have long been a target. In 2018, John Obi Mikel, the captain of Nigeria men’s national football team, received the news of his father’s abduction just a few hours before a crucial World Cup match against Argentina. Police later rescued his father following a shoot-out with the abductors in a forest in southeastern Nigeria.

In 2015, the family of James Adichie – a renowned professor of statistics and father of award-winning novelist Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie – paid an undisclosed amount of ransom for his release following his kidnapping on a highway, also in southeastern Nigeria.

Such main roads, especially the notorious Kaduna-Abuja highway, have long been a hunting ground for kidnappers. But in recent times, as the industry took hold in northern Nigeria and the number of casualties associated with it grew, the bandits have turned their attention elsewhere: learning institutions located outside of cities and town where security is often lacking.

“Schools are soft targets,” said Ikemesit. “They target school children as well as women because the incentives behind securing their release are much higher. Also, men are always considered to be in much more position to possess the finances to secure the release of their wives and children.”

Thirty-nine college students are still being held hostage by bandits after being taken from hostels in a March 11 raid outside the northwest city of Kaduna.

The latest bout of kidnappings began in December with the seizure of more than 300 boys from their boarding school in the town of Kankara, in northwestern Katsina state.

The incident evoked memories of Boko Haram’s 2014 abduction of 276 schoolgirls in the northeastern town of Chibok that garnered global outrage. More than 100 of the girls seized by the armed group – whose name means “Western education is forbidden” are still missing. Boko Haram said it was behind the December 11 abduction in Kankara, but that claim later proved to be wrong. The boys were released after six days but the government denied any ransom was paid.

While there is no known link forming between the groups, the growing threat of abductions has terrified parents and forced authorities to briefly shut down schools.

“These [abductions] will affect school enrollment in the coming months,” said Henry Anumudu, founder of Sharing Life Africa, a nonprofit that supports quality education and women empowerment in low-income communities, calling school kidnappings an attack on the fragile education system in the country’s north.

Some 10.5 million children in Nigeria are not in school – one in every five of the world’s out-of-school children. The majority of them are in northern Nigeria, according to the United Nations.

“If we can’t solve the problem of insecurity and safety, ensuring that children will go to school and get back home there’s going to be a big problem,” Anumudu told Al Jazeera. “Security is the basic thing right now.”

‘Criminality must be eliminated’

In the past, the government has launched military operations involving the bombing of suspected hideouts to tackle banditry and rescue victims of kidnappers.

But since the kidnappings spiked in December, there have been no arrests or prosecution. This lack of accountability, combined with the authorities’ failure to step up security and intelligence operations, contributes to a deep-rooted sense of mistrust among vulnerable citizens that puts them at odds with the government, analysts say.

Many have also criticised certain state authorities such as in Katsina and Zamfara for negotiating with bandits and introducing amnesty schemes, saying they should instead focus on protecting citizens in the first place. Negotiations and impunity, critics say, end up encouraging criminal activity as perpetrators know they will be able to at least negotiate conditions for safety or even get paid huge ransoms.

Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari, who took office in 2015 on the back of promises to tackle insecurity, has also blamed local and state authorities for the increase in mass abductions. In a Twitter post last month, he said they must improve security around schools and warned the policy of “rewarding bandits with money and vehicles” could “backfire with disastrous consequences”.

But his federal government has also come under fire. Experts say the members of the country’s security agencies are overstretched, poorly paid and underequipped, while the police forces are largely centralised and unable to handle internal security challenges. Others have also criticised the government after it commended “repentant bandits” for playing a role in the recent release of Kankara schoolboys.

“Criminality must be eliminated, not mitigated,” said Dickson Osajie, an international security expert. “Sadly, the government does not have the political will power in Nigeria to achieve that,” he told Al Jazeera.

“Bargaining with the enemy [the bandits] is a sign of weakness,” Osajie added. “Even if you want to bargain, do it from the side of strength by carrying out a risk analysis of what is happening, then you prioritise the risk by attending to each security threats as it comes.”

Anumudu agreed. “We just have to invest in the security of schoolchildren by setting up checkpoints and deploying military personnel across the affected regions,” he said.

By Festus Iyorah

Al Jazeera

Monday, March 22, 2021

Boko Haram kills two Cameroonian soldiers in Nigeria

Two Cameroonian soldiers deployed to Nigeria were killed late Saturday in a Boko Haram attack in northeastern Borno state, two Nigerian military sources said Sunday.

The insurgents, on foot and in several trucks fitted with machine guns, attacked Nigerian soldiers outside the town of Wulgo. Cameroonian soldiers were then also attacked after deploying from across the border to assist.

“Two CDF (Cameroonian Defence Force) soldiers were killed in the 40-minute gunfight with the Boko Haram terrorists,” a Nigerian military source said.

“Another three CDF soldiers and a Nigerian soldier were injured in the fight,” said the military officer, in an account confirmed by a second Nigerian military source.

An armoured vehicle belonging to the Nigerian army and two Boko Haram trucks were destroyed in the fight while “several” jihadists were “neutralized”, the second military officer said.

The jihadists launched the attack from the nearby Wulgo forest, a known Boko Haram hideout.

The jihadist insurgency in northeast Nigeria has killed 36,000 people and displaced around two million from their homes since 2009, according to the United Nations.

The violence associated with Boko Haram and its splinter group ISWAP, the Islamic State West Africa Province, has spread to neighbouring Chad, Cameroon and Niger.

Earlier this month, ISWAP claimed in a statement that it used two vehicle-borne improvised explosive devices, killing and wounding 30 soldiers near Wulgo, a claim that AFP could not independently verify.

In 2015, a regional military coalition, the Multinational Joint Task Force (MNJTF) was tasked with fighting the insurgents.

Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari replaced the country’s top military commanders in January in a sudden overhaul after months of pressure over deteriorating security.

AFP

Nigeria's Burna Boy says Grammy win marks 'big moment' for African music

Modern African music is altering perceptions of the continent as part of a global cultural shift that marks a “big moment”, Nigerian music artist Burna Boy told Reuters after hailing his first Grammy award.

Burna Boy was awarded a Grammy for the Best Global Music Album this month for ‘Twice As Tall’ which was released last year.

He is part of a generation of Nigerian music artists, which include Wizkid and Davido, that has enjoyed global success in recent years as proponents of the Afrobeats sound. The African genre is now almost as likely to be heard in London or Los Angeles as it is in Lagos.

“It’s a big moment and a big time for African music and Africans in general,” said Burna Boy, during an interview at his home in Nigeria’s commercial capital Lagos.

The artist, whose real name is Damini Ogulu, said his award was part of a “domino effect” that gives Africans more control over the way they are perceived through technology, as streaming services take the continent’s arts to a global audience.

“I didn’t even want to be African when I was little,” he said. “I wanted to be anything but who I was, because who we are wasn’t really the cool thing to be,” said the artist, who grew up in southern Nigeria and moved to London as a child before returning to the west African country.

He said his win showed that African music was attracting worldwide respect.

Those sentiments were shared by many at Edge Music Academy, in the Jakande district of Lagos, where students compose music in a studio decked out with microphones, laptops and a keyboard.

“The future is bright,” said student Obi Prince. “The way Afrobeats is represented in the world right now can only be a start for Nigerian artists. We just have to do our thing and bring out ourselves more globally,” he said.

The academy’s chief executive officer, Michael Tijani, said Burna Boy’s win was a “huge deal” for Nigerian music.

“People coming into the industry now have a more concrete belief that you can actually get as far as anybody else in the world can go,” he said.

Reclining in a chair in his home studio, Burna Boy reflected on his success.

“You can’t mention the top five musicians in the world without throwing me or an African in there,” he said, smiling. “Now we’re eye to eye with the people we used to look up to.”

By Alexis Akwagyiram, Angela Ukomadu

Reuters

Friday, March 19, 2021

Nigeria approves funding to overhaul Port Harcourt oil refinery

The Nigerian Government has reportedly approved $1.5bn in funding to repair the Port Harcourt refinery, which was closed two years ago.

Petroleum Minister Timipre Sylva was cited by Agence France-Presse (AFP) as saying that Italian firm Maire Tecnimont has already been selected by the government to undertake the repair work at the Port Harcourt refinery, which has a refining capacity of about 210,000bpd.

Due to the lack of domestic refining capacity, the country relies on imported petroleum products despite being Africa’s top oil producer, reported AFP.

Sylva told reporters: “We are happy to announce that the rehabilitation of productivity refinery will commence in three phases.”

The first phase of the refinery overhaul project is scheduled to complete in 18 months. It aims to bring the refinery’s production to 90% of its nameplate capacity.

The second phase and third phases are expected to be over in 24 months and 44 months, respectively.

Quoting Sylva, Premium Times said that the funding of the refinery repair work will come from sources including the Nigerian National Petroleum (NNPC), Internally Generated Revenue (IGR), budgetary provisions, and Afreximbank.

Sylva noted that the country would implement rehabilitation work on the Kaduna and Warri refineries on or before May 2023.

The Port Harcourt Refinery Complex is owned by Port Harcourt Refinery Company (PHRC), a unit of NNPC.

The Port Harcourt Refining Company operates two refineries. The old refinery with a nameplate capacity of 60,000 barrels per stream day (bpsd) and new refinery with an installed capacity of 150,000 bpsd.

The two refineries bring the Port Harcourt Refinery’s combined crude processing capacity to 210,000bpsd.

Hydrocarbons Technology