Shell wins case ruling against Nigeria pollution claims

Royal Dutch Shell has won a victory before London's High Court in a case brought by Nigerian farmers and fishermen who claimed their lands were polluted by the company's actions.

Shell had argued the case should be heard in Nigeria, and the court agreed.

U.K. law firm Leigh Day promised to appeal. The lawsuits were filed by the Ogale and Bille people alleging that decades of oil spills have fouled the water and destroyed the lives of thousands of fishermen and farmers in the Niger River Delta, where a Shell subsidiary has operated since the 1950s.

They brought their fight to Shell's home base because they say the Nigerian courts are too corrupt.

AP

Video - Advocacy group in Nigeria fights to end traditional practice of killing twins

A rights group in Nigeria is trying to end the practice of killing twins, especially in the southern parts of the country. The tradition dates back many years, stemming from a belief that twins are evil spirits. Advocacy and education has reduced the practice, but hasn't completely ended it.

Boko Haram now using babies in suicide bomb attacks in Nigeria

Islamist terror groups in Nigeria are now using female suicide bombers with babies to avoid detection before carrying out their attacks, officials have warned.

Two women carrying babies blew themselves up in the town of Madagali on 13 January, killing themselves, the infants and four others.

They passed a security checkpoint after being mistaken for civilians because they were carrying children, the BBC reports.

Two other women were stopped at a security checkpoint and detonated their explosives.

Officials told the broadcaster the use of babies could signal a "dangerous" trend.

Islamist group Boko Haram is widely suspected of being behind the attack.

The insurgent group has used scores of women and girls in suicide bombings, prompting suspicions some of those are among the many thousands they have kidnapped over the years.

In one particularly horrific example, a female suicide bomber carrying a baby on her back was shot by soldiers at a checkpoint on 28 November, detonating her explosives and killing the woman and the baby.

On New Year's Eve, a 10-year-old girl was used in a suicide bomb attack in the north-eastern city of Maiduguri.

Boko Haram's seven-year insurgency has killed more than 20,000 people, forced 2.6 million from their homes and created a massive humanitarian crisis.

Independent

Video - Nigeria's central bank cautions financial lenders against Bitcoin

Nigeria's central bank is rallying commercial lenders against virtual markets to fight money laundering and terror financing.

Virtual or digital currency is just emerging in Nigeria. But it's feared to be gaining traction on the back of Nigeria's troubled foreign exchange markets.

Three-quarters of prisoners in Nigeria serving time without sentence

New data from Nigeria’s National Bureau of Statistics suggests Nigerian prisons may hold more innocents than guilty criminals. The report, covering data from 2011 to 2015, shows that 72.5% of Nigeria’s total prison population are inmates serving time while awaiting trial and without being sentenced.

The alarming figures highlight key flaws in Nigeria’s criminal justice system with proceedings often going on for years without conclusion. While lawyers often cite a large number of cases being tried as a reason for long drawn-out trials, the charged inmates on the other side of the divide often spend years waiting to get convicted or win back their freedom. In one instance, an inmate accused of murder spent 16 years in a prison in Nigeria’s southeast without being tried.

While lengthy court proceedings are an obvious problem, the figures in the NBS report also highlights a worrying culture of arbitrary arrests by Nigerian law enforcement agencies. Local police officers have been known to arrest people randomly for frivolous offenses such as “loitering”. To secure their release, family members of those arrested are expected to pay bail fees dictated by the police in an elaborate racket. In other cases, inmates land in prisons only due to the suspicion of having committed a crime, and not an actual conviction. Arrests over petty crime such as shoplifting and traffic offenses also often see people land in maximum security prisons without being charged.

In total, NBS data suggests Nigeria officially has a low incarceration rate with a total prison population of 62,260—much less than 1% of the total population. Compared to countries with populations between 100 and 350 million people, Nigeria has the lowest prison population rate per 100,000 citizens.

Quartz