Britain is considering stepping up its military efforts to help the Nigerian government defeat Boko Haram, following a rise in terrorist activity in the country’s north-east in the past year, Jeremy Hunt has said after a visit to the region.
The UK foreign secretary said on Wednesday that he will be discussing what more the British government can do in terms of aid and military support to combat the terrorist group, warning the crisis had the potential to trigger a humanitarian catastrophe on the scale of that in Yemen.
Britain provides £240m in aid to Nigeria, of which £100m goes to the north-east, making it the second-largest donor after the US, and giving the UK a sizeable stake in what happens in the region.
Boko Haram and Islamic State in west Africa have terrorised the region for several years, but their activities came to the world’s attention when hundreds of Nigerian schoolgirls were kidnapped in 2014.
British military personnel in Abuja and the wider region are giving strategic advice to Nigerian forces on how to run counterinsurgency operations, with their advice focused on combining humanitarian and military activities.
The Nigerian military has been repeatedly criticised by humanitarian groups for running brutal campaigns that make little effort to win over hearts and minds.
The 120,000-strong army is structured on very traditional lines but sends troops to highly hostile areas for as long as four years. Operating on a small budget, soldiers are often underpaid and morale is low.
Speaking on a visit to Maiduguri as part of a week-long trip to Africa, Hunt said: “It has got all the hallmarks of something that if you do not nip in the bud, it will get a lot worse. Conversely, it feels like a situation that it is something that could be dealt with if there was appropriate action by the government of Nigeria with international support.”
He said the crisis had spread to Niger, Chad and Cameroon. “There is a potential solution here … Nigeria is huge country and it is very stretched,” Hunt added.
Asked if he supported an increase in military action in the region, the UK foreign secretary said: “I think the crucial deciding factor is the willingness and enthusiasm of the Nigerian government and the Nigerian army to work closely with us – we would like to support and help them, but they are a sovereign nation and they have got to want our help.”
He said Britain wanted to bring holistic solutions, suggesting by implication that the Nigerian army has focused too heavily on militaristic solutions. “I think our approach is potentially a very significant one, because we could bring not just the British army but also DfID [the Department for International Development] and our experience in holistic solutions to these kind of situations,” Hunt added.
“This is a region of Africa that is being massively destabilised by conflict. These things can escalate quite quickly and get out of control. We know from Sri Lanka that Daesh [Isis] are looking to make their presence felt now they have lost their territory. We have to be vigilant.”
He said Sri Lanka was not on anyone’s radar, and showed how threats can escalate. Nigeria was “an area where all the warning signs are there”, he said, adding that not all the conflict was driven by religion.
“The feedback I got from NGOs on the ground is that lack of trust between the authorities and local people is one of the things that is fuelling the problem at the moment. The Nigerian army strategy is largely about herding people into towns and saying if you are not in a secure area, we are going to assume you are Boko Haram and/or Islamic State west Africa,” he said.
“Such an approach was understandable in the short term, but the long-term risk is that you are depriving people of their livelihoods and their farms. There are 2 million people displaced living there at the moment in pretty horrific circumstances.
“Both NGOs and military analysts fear the recent increase in violence reflects changes in the terrorist leadership, and a failure by the Nigerian military to establish humanitarian plans to follow the military clearances of areas. The brutal methods only lead to a loss of support for the military.”
The Guardian
Thursday, May 2, 2019
Wednesday, May 1, 2019
Two shell oil workers kidnapped in Nigeria rescued
Two Royal Dutch Shell oil workers who were kidnapped in Nigeria’s southern Niger Delta region last week have been rescued, a police spokesman and Shell Petroleum Development Company of Nigeria Limited (SPDC) said on Tuesday.
Kidnappings for ransom occur in much of Nigeria, Africa’s biggest oil producer, but are particularly prevalent in the Niger Delta which produces the majority of the country’s crude oil.
The pair were attacked in southern Rivers state last week while returning from an official trip to Bayelsa state.
“The tactical team of the command rescued the victims in the early hours of Tuesday,” said Nnamdi Omoni a spokesman for Rivers state police force.
A spokesman for SPDC also said the pair were free. “They are well and being supported after their ordeal,” said SPDC spokesman Michael Adande.
Reuters
Kidnappings for ransom occur in much of Nigeria, Africa’s biggest oil producer, but are particularly prevalent in the Niger Delta which produces the majority of the country’s crude oil.
The pair were attacked in southern Rivers state last week while returning from an official trip to Bayelsa state.
“The tactical team of the command rescued the victims in the early hours of Tuesday,” said Nnamdi Omoni a spokesman for Rivers state police force.
A spokesman for SPDC also said the pair were free. “They are well and being supported after their ordeal,” said SPDC spokesman Michael Adande.
Reuters
Student from Nigeria arrested for drug trafficking in Saudi Arabia freed
A Nigerian student who was arrested last year for alleged drug trafficking in Saudi Arabia has been freed, the Nigerian government says.
Zainab Aliyu was accused of smuggling 2,000 packs of a strong pain killer.
The Nigerian authorities later found that the drugs had been planted in her luggage by a criminal gang.
Drug trafficking is a capital offence in Saudi Arabia, which practices conservative Islam. Those found guilty are executed.
This was the fate earlier this month of a Nigerian woman, who was beheaded in the city of Mecca, along with two Pakistani men and a Yemeni man.
Ms Aliyu's detention sparked protests and with supporters in Nigeria using the hashtag #FreeZeinab to call for her release.
Her freedom comes as hundreds of her fellow students gathered at Maitama Sule University in the northern city of Kano on Tuesday to demand her release.
On Monday, President Muhammadu Buhari ordered the attorney general to intervene in the matter.
His aide tweeted the news of Ms Aliyu's release using the popular hashtag #FreeZeinab.
Ms Aliyu was arrested at her hotel in Medina by Saudi police last December, shortly after arriving for the lesser hajj with her family - and remained in detention until Tuesday.
The Saudi authorities had accused her of trafficking 2,000 packs of Tramadol in a bag tagged with her name that had been left at the airport.
Recently, the National Drug Law Enforcement Agency of Nigeria (NDLEA) said it had uncovered a criminal gang that had been planting illicit drugs in travellers' luggage.
An investigation was launched after Ms Aliyu's father reported the case to the police and it led to the arrest of six officials at Mallam Aminu Kano International Airport.
They have been accused at a federal high court of framing Ms Aliyu and have not commented on the charges.
BBC
Zainab Aliyu was accused of smuggling 2,000 packs of a strong pain killer.
The Nigerian authorities later found that the drugs had been planted in her luggage by a criminal gang.
Drug trafficking is a capital offence in Saudi Arabia, which practices conservative Islam. Those found guilty are executed.
This was the fate earlier this month of a Nigerian woman, who was beheaded in the city of Mecca, along with two Pakistani men and a Yemeni man.
Ms Aliyu's detention sparked protests and with supporters in Nigeria using the hashtag #FreeZeinab to call for her release.
Her freedom comes as hundreds of her fellow students gathered at Maitama Sule University in the northern city of Kano on Tuesday to demand her release.
On Monday, President Muhammadu Buhari ordered the attorney general to intervene in the matter.
His aide tweeted the news of Ms Aliyu's release using the popular hashtag #FreeZeinab.
Ms Aliyu was arrested at her hotel in Medina by Saudi police last December, shortly after arriving for the lesser hajj with her family - and remained in detention until Tuesday.
The Saudi authorities had accused her of trafficking 2,000 packs of Tramadol in a bag tagged with her name that had been left at the airport.
Recently, the National Drug Law Enforcement Agency of Nigeria (NDLEA) said it had uncovered a criminal gang that had been planting illicit drugs in travellers' luggage.
An investigation was launched after Ms Aliyu's father reported the case to the police and it led to the arrest of six officials at Mallam Aminu Kano International Airport.
They have been accused at a federal high court of framing Ms Aliyu and have not commented on the charges.
BBC
Tuesday, April 30, 2019
Video - Nigeria you've probably never seen before revealed
Nigeria has long been known as the giant of Africa for its abundant resources, exploding population, and cultural influence. In this informational documentary; PenresaTV takes you on a journey to discover the vast potential of the nation's thriving industries and wondrous beauty.
Biafra dream lives on in underground radio broadcasts in Nigeria
Every evening as five o’clock approaches, the clogged, perpetually dusty streets of this industrial city in southeast Nigeria begin to empty.
Groups of men just off work go inside, shut their doors and tune their radios to 102.1 FM.
Then an anthem begins to play, and a voice says “Kedu” — “how are you” in the Igbo language — to welcome listeners to the daily broadcast of Radio Biafra.
For the next 90 minutes, hosts and various guests proselytize for the revival of an old dream: the creation of an independent state called Biafra.
The broadcasts, conducted live from an undisclosed location in Nigeria, are illegal, and the group behind them — the Indigenous People of Biafra, or IPOB — has been classified by the government as a terrorist organization since 2017. Its leaders say they eschew violence and want a peaceful settlement of the issue through a national referendum.
Activists say people caught listening to the station have been arrested or beaten. But many residents here say they are willing to take the risk.
Radio Biafra is a daily reminder of the bloody civil war that ravaged Nigeria between 1967 and 1970. The conflict started when a Nigerian military general, Chukwuemeka Odumegwu Ojukwu, declared an independent state of Biafra. It ended after more than a million deaths, mostly from starvation after the government imposed a food blockade on the region.
Ultimately, the rebels surrendered and the area was reintegrated into Nigeria under the government motto “No Victor, No Vanquished.”
But the memory of the brutal war looms large in Aba, feeding enthusiasm for the broadcasts despite extremely long odds that Biafra will ever come to be.
The main host is a man who goes by the name Emma Powerful and dedicates much of his airtime to railing against the government and organizing protests such as a short-lived boycott of national elections earlier this year.
Stay home “to make an everlasting impression on the world stage that we Biafrans are prepared to sacrifice everything,” he instructed listeners. “Anybody or family found outside on election day will perpetually suffer the ignominy of being labeled a traitor.”
Much of the radio station’s wrath is directed at President Muhammadu Buhari, who was reelected in February and has said that Nigeria’s unity is not negotiable, shutting the door on any discussions about a referendum.
Buhari is from the Muslim-dominated north.
The supporters of Biafran independence are from the southeast, mostly from the Igbo ethnic group, which numbers about 29 million people, or about 14% of the the country’s population.
Many Igbo people feel marginalized by the government far away in the capital, Abuja, and resent the heavy military presence in the region.
In 2016, Amnesty International accused the Nigerian military of embarking on a “chilling campaign of extrajudicial executions and violence” that resulted in the death of at least 150 peaceful pro-Biafra protestors over the course of a year.
The Nigerian military denied the claims, with Brig. Gen. Rabe Abubakar calling the report part of “a series of spurious fabrications aimed at tarnishing the good image of the Nigerian military.”
Outside experts and some locals suggested in interviews that tensions were on the rise.
“We feel like slaves in our own land,” says Victor Smith, a 23-year-old university student living in the city of Enugu. “It’s only a matter of time until [the army] pushes and people push back. We are getting stretched to the limit.”
Smith, who studies political science, said he listens to Radio Biafra, but has mixed feelings about it. He said he would like more discussion of the concrete policies he thinks will be necessary for a new state to function.
“What about policy discussions? Trade agreements?” he said. “We are making plans to leave, but where are we going. How are we going?”
A frequent voice on Radio Biafra is its founder, 51-year-old Nnamdi Kanu, who is patched in from London. The station first aired in 2009, only to close because of financial difficulties. It was revived three years later, when Kanu founded IPOB.
In 2015, after Kanu told a conference in Los Angeles that his group needed guns and bullets, he was arrested by the Nigerian government and charged with criminal conspiracy, intimidation and membership of an illegal organization. Kanu’s lawyers said his comments were political rhetoric and not an actual call to arms, according to the Telegraph newspaper in London.
Kanu spent 19 months in prison without trial before being released on bail in 2017. Later that year, according to IPOB, the Nigerian army raided his palatial home in Abia state, where Aba is located, and killed several of his supporters. The army denied that the raid ever took place.
This January, Kanu tweeted that he was in Britain. He holds citizenship there and in Nigeria.
The Nigerian government at various points has claimed to have blocked Radio Biafra broadcasts by shutting down radio frequencies and seizing transmitters.
But any successes were short-lived, and the efforts have become fodder for more ridicule of the government, including criticism that it is failing in its fight against Boko Haram, which nobody disputes is a terrorist organization.
“The government is insistent on spending scarce resources on tracing and jamming Radio Biafra while northern Nigeria is terrorized by Boko Haram daily,” Powerful said in an interview.
Gauging support for the cause of Biafra is difficult, as is determining how many people tune into the radio broadcasts.
One listener is Julius Nwokorocha, who at age 21 was drafted by Ojukwu’s army to fight in the war and served until he was injured in an explosion.
Today at 72, he lives in a tiny cement bungalow in Aba and never misses a broadcast.
Nwokorocha doesn’t agree with everything he hears, but he believes that there needs to be a national conversation about independence for Biafra.
“We still don’t feel like a part of Nigeria,” he said. “The army said, ‘No victor, no vanquished,’ but look at the federal roads here in the east. Most of them are bad. It feels like we are punished every day.”
“Kanu says a lot of things that are impossible,” he said. “But if Biafra happens tomorrow, it will be one of the greatest countries in the world.”
The end of each broadcast means his day is complete.
Life begins to return to the city as listeners emerge from their homes and shops. In the beer parlors, arguments can be heard about the day’s show.
By OLUWATOSIN ADESHOKAN and KRISTA MAHR
LA TIMES
Groups of men just off work go inside, shut their doors and tune their radios to 102.1 FM.
Then an anthem begins to play, and a voice says “Kedu” — “how are you” in the Igbo language — to welcome listeners to the daily broadcast of Radio Biafra.
For the next 90 minutes, hosts and various guests proselytize for the revival of an old dream: the creation of an independent state called Biafra.
The broadcasts, conducted live from an undisclosed location in Nigeria, are illegal, and the group behind them — the Indigenous People of Biafra, or IPOB — has been classified by the government as a terrorist organization since 2017. Its leaders say they eschew violence and want a peaceful settlement of the issue through a national referendum.
Activists say people caught listening to the station have been arrested or beaten. But many residents here say they are willing to take the risk.
Radio Biafra is a daily reminder of the bloody civil war that ravaged Nigeria between 1967 and 1970. The conflict started when a Nigerian military general, Chukwuemeka Odumegwu Ojukwu, declared an independent state of Biafra. It ended after more than a million deaths, mostly from starvation after the government imposed a food blockade on the region.
Ultimately, the rebels surrendered and the area was reintegrated into Nigeria under the government motto “No Victor, No Vanquished.”
But the memory of the brutal war looms large in Aba, feeding enthusiasm for the broadcasts despite extremely long odds that Biafra will ever come to be.
The main host is a man who goes by the name Emma Powerful and dedicates much of his airtime to railing against the government and organizing protests such as a short-lived boycott of national elections earlier this year.
Stay home “to make an everlasting impression on the world stage that we Biafrans are prepared to sacrifice everything,” he instructed listeners. “Anybody or family found outside on election day will perpetually suffer the ignominy of being labeled a traitor.”
Much of the radio station’s wrath is directed at President Muhammadu Buhari, who was reelected in February and has said that Nigeria’s unity is not negotiable, shutting the door on any discussions about a referendum.
Buhari is from the Muslim-dominated north.
The supporters of Biafran independence are from the southeast, mostly from the Igbo ethnic group, which numbers about 29 million people, or about 14% of the the country’s population.
Many Igbo people feel marginalized by the government far away in the capital, Abuja, and resent the heavy military presence in the region.
In 2016, Amnesty International accused the Nigerian military of embarking on a “chilling campaign of extrajudicial executions and violence” that resulted in the death of at least 150 peaceful pro-Biafra protestors over the course of a year.
The Nigerian military denied the claims, with Brig. Gen. Rabe Abubakar calling the report part of “a series of spurious fabrications aimed at tarnishing the good image of the Nigerian military.”
Outside experts and some locals suggested in interviews that tensions were on the rise.
“We feel like slaves in our own land,” says Victor Smith, a 23-year-old university student living in the city of Enugu. “It’s only a matter of time until [the army] pushes and people push back. We are getting stretched to the limit.”
Smith, who studies political science, said he listens to Radio Biafra, but has mixed feelings about it. He said he would like more discussion of the concrete policies he thinks will be necessary for a new state to function.
“What about policy discussions? Trade agreements?” he said. “We are making plans to leave, but where are we going. How are we going?”
A frequent voice on Radio Biafra is its founder, 51-year-old Nnamdi Kanu, who is patched in from London. The station first aired in 2009, only to close because of financial difficulties. It was revived three years later, when Kanu founded IPOB.
In 2015, after Kanu told a conference in Los Angeles that his group needed guns and bullets, he was arrested by the Nigerian government and charged with criminal conspiracy, intimidation and membership of an illegal organization. Kanu’s lawyers said his comments were political rhetoric and not an actual call to arms, according to the Telegraph newspaper in London.
Kanu spent 19 months in prison without trial before being released on bail in 2017. Later that year, according to IPOB, the Nigerian army raided his palatial home in Abia state, where Aba is located, and killed several of his supporters. The army denied that the raid ever took place.
This January, Kanu tweeted that he was in Britain. He holds citizenship there and in Nigeria.
The Nigerian government at various points has claimed to have blocked Radio Biafra broadcasts by shutting down radio frequencies and seizing transmitters.
But any successes were short-lived, and the efforts have become fodder for more ridicule of the government, including criticism that it is failing in its fight against Boko Haram, which nobody disputes is a terrorist organization.
“The government is insistent on spending scarce resources on tracing and jamming Radio Biafra while northern Nigeria is terrorized by Boko Haram daily,” Powerful said in an interview.
Gauging support for the cause of Biafra is difficult, as is determining how many people tune into the radio broadcasts.
One listener is Julius Nwokorocha, who at age 21 was drafted by Ojukwu’s army to fight in the war and served until he was injured in an explosion.
Today at 72, he lives in a tiny cement bungalow in Aba and never misses a broadcast.
Nwokorocha doesn’t agree with everything he hears, but he believes that there needs to be a national conversation about independence for Biafra.
“We still don’t feel like a part of Nigeria,” he said. “The army said, ‘No victor, no vanquished,’ but look at the federal roads here in the east. Most of them are bad. It feels like we are punished every day.”
“Kanu says a lot of things that are impossible,” he said. “But if Biafra happens tomorrow, it will be one of the greatest countries in the world.”
The end of each broadcast means his day is complete.
Life begins to return to the city as listeners emerge from their homes and shops. In the beer parlors, arguments can be heard about the day’s show.
By OLUWATOSIN ADESHOKAN and KRISTA MAHR
LA TIMES
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