Trade Union in Nigeria resist 'criminal' fuel price hike

Nigeria's trade union federation has said it will resist what it calls the "criminal" 66% rise in the petrol price, as fuel subsidies are removed.

The government announced on Wednesday that the price was to increase in a bid to ease crippling fuel shortages.

The Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) said the rise from 86.5 naira ($0.43) a litre to 145 naira should be reversed.

In 2012, the government was forced to back down on a similar price rise after nationwide protests.

The subsidy, which has kept the price low, costs the government $2.7m a day and there is no provision for it in the recently approved budget for this year, the petroleum ministry said in a statement.

Recent fuel shortages have seen Nigerians paying up to 350 naira a litre on the black market, it added.

Despite being one of Africa's largest oil producers, Nigeria has to import fuel to meet demand as its refineries are dilapidated and work at a fraction of their capacity.

Petroleum Minister Emmanuel Ibe Kachikwu said that the price rise should stabilise the market and help end the fuel scarcity.

But "even with the new price regime, Nigeria would remain one of the cheapest fuel markets in Africa," he added.

Some fuel stations in Nigeria have already begun to sell petrol at prices dictated by the market.

Many here in the capital, Abuja, started last night after the announcement that the subsidy had been scrapped.

Only filling stations owned by the state-run NNPC firm are selling at the old price until they exhaust their current stock.

And fuel is likely to be even more expensive in northern Nigeria because of the cost of transporting it there.

BBC

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Video - Giwa Barracks of Nigeria "A place of death"

A new report by Amnesty International says children are dying in military detention in northeast Nigeria.

The victims and their families are being held in Giwa Barracks, in Maiduguri in Borno State. 

Amnesty says more than one hundred children - some as young as five - are being held in over crowded and inhumane conditions.

But the military says most of the detainees are Boko Haram fighters and suspects.

Video - Nigeria struggling to keep up with crude oil output

Recent attacks on oil facilities by militants in the delta region are pushing Nigeria's oil production to a near decade low. The attacks and continued threats by militant group Delta avengers, has forced several oil companies to shut operations.

Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg impressed with Nigeria's jobberman

Following the launch of Free Basics in Nigeria yesterday, Facebook founder and CEO, Mark Zuckerberg to his Facebook page to make the announcement.

In the post, he outlined the partnership with Airtel Africa to launch the Internet.org platform in Nigeria, adding that there is a lot of innovation across Africa right now.

The Facebook founder also touted Nigeria as being home to a lot of talented developers before going on to praise Olalekan Elude, Ayodeji Adewunmi, and Opeyemi Awoyemi - the three guys who founded jobs site, Jobberman in 2009 - for being innovation leaders in the Nigerian tech space.

According to Zuckerberg, Jobberman now get 5, 000 applications a day, with the platform being one of the top 100 websites in the country.

"Free Basics offers Nigerians, including 90 million people who are currently offline, the opportunity to access news, health information and services like Jobberman that were built by Nigerians and other developers across West Africa -- all without having to pay for data," said Zuckerberg in the post.

The Facebook CEO says Free Basics is now in more than 40 countries - half of which are in Africa. He also expressed hopes of connecting developers with people that can use their apps as well as partnering with local companies to bring Internet to the people who don't have access to it.

Pulse

Related story: How Nigerian students created Nigeria's biggest online-job search site Jobberman

President Buhari embarrassed by Cameron's 'fantastically corrupt' statement

Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari is “embarrassed” by British Prime Minister David Cameron saying the country is one of the most corrupt in the world, according to his spokesman.

Cameron made the comments on Tuesday while being filmed at a Buckingham Palace reception for Queen Elizabeth II’s 90th birthday. Speaking ahead of an anti-corruption summit in London on Thursday—at which Buhari will speak—the prime minister told the Queen: “We’ve got some leaders of some fantastically corrupt countries coming to Britain.”

He went on to describe Nigeria and Afghanistan as “possibly the two most corrupt countries in the world,” before Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby interjected to defend Buhari, saying that “this particular president is not actually corrupt.”

“The prime minister must be looking at an old snapshot of Nigeria,” said Buhari’s spokesman Garba Shehu on Tuesday. The spokesman added that “the eyes of the world” were watching Buhari’s anti-corruption drive in Nigeria and that “things are changing with corruption and everything else” in the West African country.

The Nigerian president—who was elected on an anti-corruption ticket in March 2015—has himself lamented the country’s association with corruption and crime. Buhari told The Daily Telegraph in February that Nigerians’ reputation for criminality, especially drug and human trafficking, meant that Europe and the U.S. were reluctant to receive Nigerian migrants.

Buhari has also vowed, however, to uproot corruption from the country. He has requested greater cooperation from the international community in returning Nigerian public funds stolen by officials and hidden abroad, including more than $300 million stored in Switzerland by the late Nigerian military ruler Sani Abacha. The president has also ordered the arrest of a number of high-profile figures—including former national security advisor Sambo Dasuki—in connection with a $2 billion scandal in which state funds earmarked for procuring arms to fight Boko Haram were diverted elsewhere.

Nigeria was ranked 136th out of 168 countries in Transparency International’s Corruption Perceptions Index 2015, the same position it held in 2014. In a December 2015 report, Transparency found that 75 percent of Nigerians felt that corruption in the country had risen in the previous 12 months.

Newsweek