Militants have killed three soldiers in Nigeria's southern Bayelsa state, in the latest violence in the restive oil region, the army said Tuesday.
Gunmen attacked an artillery unit at Nembe Jetty Monday morning, the army said in a statement.
"During the incident, three soldiers lost their lives," it said, adding that a manhunt has been launched.
Local media said the militants, who had been disguised as mourners to deceive the soldiers, also made off with gunboats and other military hardware as well as ammunition.
Residents of the area were said to be fleeing over fears of a reprisal attack by the military.
Since the start of the year, the Niger Delta Avengers (NDA) militant group has claimed a string of devastating attacks on oil pipelines and facilities in the volatile region.
Oil majors including Shell, Exxon, Chevron, Eni and the state-run oil group NNPC have been targeted.
The attacks have reduced Nigeria's output by a third, hammering government revenue at a time of global low oil prices.
The Avengers claim to seek a fairer share of Nigeria's oil wealth for residents of the region as well as self-determination and political autonomy. They have rejected a government truce.
According to the debt management office (DMO), the country is seeking two lead managers and a financial adviser to organise the issuance of $1 billion (N315 billion) of Eurobonds in 2015.
This is coming a few weeks after Kemi Adeosun, minister of finance, informed Nigerians that the country would be borrowing from foreign sources in the third quarter of 2016.
“We have been borrowing largely from the domestic market because we needed to get the exchange rate sorted out to enable us to borrow from the international market. The international borrowings will begin to come in Q3,” Adeosun said in July.
The issuance of the bond is part of a $4.5 billion Nigeria global medium-term issuance programme, which is to run through 2018.
“The move will enable Nigeria to have the flexibility of quickly taking advantage of favourable market conditions in the international capital market to raise funds if and only when the need arises,” Bloomberg quoted the statement to have read.
The government is reported as seeking to appoint two international banks as joint lead managers and a local lender as financial adviser for the whole program.
With bids expected to be submitted by midday on September 19, the Eurobond sales would be the first since July 2013.
Nigeria is aiming at spending its way through one of the worst economic crisis in about three decades, with gross domestic product (GDP) projected in negative territories.
Nigeria’s GDP shrunk by 0.36 percent in the first quarter of 2016, according to the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS).
Nigeria is expected to borrow about $10 billion to fund the 2016 budget deficit, around N3 trillion.
Boko Haram's shadowy leader Abubakar Shekau has appeared in a new video shrugging off an apparent split in the hard-line jihadist group. Last week, Shekau said in an audio message that he was still the head of Boko Haram despite his purported replacement by former Boko Haram spokesman, Sheikh Abu Musab al-Barnawi. Shekau ridiculed suggestions that he was dead, and looked more composed and energetic than in previous appearances.
Nigeria's national soccer federation has finally found a technical advisor to the national team, the Super Eagles. After French coach Paul Le Guen turned down their offer, the NFF says ex-Burkina Faso coach Gernot Rohr is the new man for the job.
The trafficking of Nigerian women from Libya to Italy by boat is reaching “crisis” levels, with traffickers using migrant reception centres as holding pens for women who are then collected and forced into prostitution across Europe, the UN’s International Office for Migration (IOM) warns.
About 3,600 Nigerian women arrived by boat into Italy in the first six months of this year, almost double the number who were registered in the same time period last year, according to the IOM.
More than 80% of these women will be trafficked into prostitution in Italy and across Europe, it says.
“What we have seen this year is a crisis, it is absolutely unprecedented and is the most significant increase in the number of Nigerian women arriving in Italy for 10 years,” said Simona Moscarelli, anti-trafficking expert at the IOM.
“Our indicators are the majority of these women are being deliberately brought in for sexual exploitation purposes. There has been a big enhancement of criminal gangs and trafficking networks engaging in the sexual exploitation of younger and younger Nigerian girls.”
Although a thriving sex trafficking industry has been operating between Nigeria and Italy for over three decades, there has been a marked increase in the numbers of unaccompanied Nigerian women arriving in Italy on migrant boats from Libya. In 2014, about 1,500 Nigerian women arrived by sea. In 2015 this figure had increased to 5,633.
“Already we have seen nearly 4,000 women come in the first six months of this year,” said Moscarelli. “We are expecting the numbers to have increased again by the end of this year.”
She warned that the current policy of placing Nigerian women in reception centres along with thousands of other migrants was playing to the traffickers’ advantage, with women regularly going missing.
“There is little understanding of the dynamics and nature of this form of trafficking,” said Moscarelli.
“The reception centres are not good places for trafficked women. Just last week six girls went missing from a reception centre in Sicily, they were just picked up in a car and driven away.”
Nigerian women who are entering Italy among migrants on boats from Libya should be immediately identified and treated as trafficking victims. Instead of being processed in reception centres, they should be placed in specialist shelters where they can be given the advice and support needed to break the chain of sexual exploitation, she said.
“Most Nigerian women who arrive in Italy are already victims of trafficking, many have been subjected to serious sexual exploitation on their journey. Many are forced into prostitution in Libya,” said Moscarelli.
“The women we are seeing are increasingly young, many are unaccompanied minors when they arrive and the violence and exploitation they face when they are under the control of these gangs is getting worse. They are really treated like slaves.”
Salvatore Vella, the deputy chief prosecutor in Agrigento, Sicily, who led the first significant investigation of Nigerian trafficking rings in Italy in 2014, said that the reception centres are increasingly being used as pick-up points by those intending to exploit Nigerian women.
The Nigerian women are given a phone number when they leave Nigeria, which they use to inform a contact in Italy that they have arrived.
“The mobsters just come to the camp and pick [women] up,” he says. “As easy as going to a grocery store. That’s what these women are treated like, objects to trade, buy, exploit and resell and the reception centres are acting as a sort of warehouse where these girls are temporarily stocked.
“They wait until the woman has her residence permit or refugee status document and then they just go and pick her up.”
Many Nigerian women arrive in Italy with debts of about £40,000 for their journey from Nigeria to Italy, which they are expected to pay back.
Nigerian trafficking gangs use a toxic mix of false promises of legitimate employment and traditional “juju” ceremonies to recruit and gain psychological control over their victims.
The women are led to believe that terrible things will happen to their families if they fail to honour their debts. They are then forced into prostitution on streets and brothels across Europe.
“Currently the shelters and services we have for those women we manage to identify are at breaking point,” said Moscarelli.
“We must give police prosecutors the financial resources to tackle the traffickers and improve access to legal services if we have any chance of reducing the numbers coming in.”
