The Trump administration is planning to add seven countries - Belarus, Eritrea, Kyrgyzstan, Myanmar, Nigeria, Sudan and Tanzania - to its travel ban list, U.S. media reports said on Tuesday.
Some countries will face bans only on some visa categories, the Wall Street Journal reported. The list of countries was not final and could yet change, website Politico said.
U.S. President Donald Trump said in an interview with the Journal that he was considering adding countries to the travel ban, but declined to state which ones. Politico said an announcement was expected as early as Monday.
The move is likely to sour ties between the United States and the countries affected under the expanded ban.
Nigeria, for example, Africa’s largest economy and most populous country, is a U.S. anti-terrorism partner and has a large diaspora residing in the United States.
A senior Trump administration official said that countries that failed to comply with security requirements, including biometrics, information-sharing and counter-terrorism measures, faced the risk of limitations on U.S. immigration.
The Department of Homeland Security did not immediately respond to requests for comment. The State Department declined to comment.
Under the current version of the ban, citizens of Iran, Libya, North Korea, Somalia, Syria and Yemen, as well as some Venezuelan officials and their relatives are blocked from obtaining a large range of U.S. immigrant and non-immigrant visas.
Chad was previously covered under the ban but was removed in April 2018.
Citizens of the countries can apply for waivers to the ban, but they are exceedingly rare.
By Sophie Tanno
Reuters
Wednesday, January 22, 2020
Tuesday, January 21, 2020
Humanitarian hub attacked in Nigeria
Non-State armed groups targeted the humanitarian hub in Ngala, Borno state, on Saturday evening, burning an entire section of the facility as well as a vehicle used in aid deliveries.
Five UN staff were staying there at the time but escaped unharmed due to security measures in place.
Edward Kallon, UN Humanitarian Coordinator in Nigeria, expressed outrage over the incident.
“I am shocked by the violence and intensity of this attack, which is the latest of too many incidents directly targeting humanitarian actors and the assistance we provide,” he said on Monday.
“I am relieved all staff is now safe and secure. Aid workers, humanitarian facilities and assets cannot be a target and must be protected and respected at all times.”
Northern Nigeria has been in the grip of a Boko Haram insurgency for about a decade, which has led to widespread displacement.
Last year, more than 10,000 people arrived in Ngala, searching for security and basic services, the UN humanitarian affairs office, OCHA, reported.
‘Disastrous effect’ on vulnerable
Mr. Kallon said attacks against humanitarians have a “disastrous effect” on the vulnerable people they support.
“Many of them had already fled violence in their area of origin and were hoping to find safety and assistance in Ngala. This also jeopardizes the ability for aid workers to stay and deliver assistance to the people most in need in remote areas in Borno State,” he said.
Overall, the UN and partners are bringing vital assistance to more than seven million people in three states affected by the crisis. Besides Borno, they also are operational in neighbouring Adamawa and Yobe states.
OCHA said aid workers in Nigeria are increasingly being targeted in attacks. Twelve were killed last year, which is double the number killed in 2018.
Meanwhile, the UN and its humanitarian partners continue to call for the safe release of two aid workers who remain in the hands of non-State armed groups after being abducted in separate incidents in Borno state.
Grace Taku, a staff member with Action Against Hunger, was abducted alongside five male colleagues near Damasak in July 2019. The men were all killed, according to media reports.
The other aid worker, Alice Loksha, a nurse and mother, was kidnapped during an attack in Rann in March 2018.
UN News
Five UN staff were staying there at the time but escaped unharmed due to security measures in place.
Edward Kallon, UN Humanitarian Coordinator in Nigeria, expressed outrage over the incident.
“I am shocked by the violence and intensity of this attack, which is the latest of too many incidents directly targeting humanitarian actors and the assistance we provide,” he said on Monday.
“I am relieved all staff is now safe and secure. Aid workers, humanitarian facilities and assets cannot be a target and must be protected and respected at all times.”
Northern Nigeria has been in the grip of a Boko Haram insurgency for about a decade, which has led to widespread displacement.
Last year, more than 10,000 people arrived in Ngala, searching for security and basic services, the UN humanitarian affairs office, OCHA, reported.
‘Disastrous effect’ on vulnerable
Mr. Kallon said attacks against humanitarians have a “disastrous effect” on the vulnerable people they support.
“Many of them had already fled violence in their area of origin and were hoping to find safety and assistance in Ngala. This also jeopardizes the ability for aid workers to stay and deliver assistance to the people most in need in remote areas in Borno State,” he said.
Overall, the UN and partners are bringing vital assistance to more than seven million people in three states affected by the crisis. Besides Borno, they also are operational in neighbouring Adamawa and Yobe states.
OCHA said aid workers in Nigeria are increasingly being targeted in attacks. Twelve were killed last year, which is double the number killed in 2018.
Meanwhile, the UN and its humanitarian partners continue to call for the safe release of two aid workers who remain in the hands of non-State armed groups after being abducted in separate incidents in Borno state.
Grace Taku, a staff member with Action Against Hunger, was abducted alongside five male colleagues near Damasak in July 2019. The men were all killed, according to media reports.
The other aid worker, Alice Loksha, a nurse and mother, was kidnapped during an attack in Rann in March 2018.
UN News
Monday, January 20, 2020
Pipeline Fire Kills Three in Lagos
A fire on a pipeline owned by Nigeria's state oil company in the commercial capital Lagos killed three people on Sunday, a Reuters witness said.
The blaze broke out in the Abule-Egba district of the southwestern megacity. Residents said it started shortly before 8 p.m. (1900 GMT).
A Reuters television camera operator counted three dead bodies at the scene. The fire burned nearby houses and vehicles.
Another witness, resident Ayo Adewale, said there were "many dead people". Reuters was unable to verify the claim.
Many fires on pipelines in Nigeria, Africa's biggest crude oil producer, are caused by theft and sabotage. The methods used to steal oil often result in accidents that cause fires.
"People were running and I was asking where was this happening, then I got near here and they said pipeline vandals did this," said Adewale, who was in the area when the fire took hold.
Oluwafemi Damilola, director general of Lagos State Emergency Management Agency (LASEMA), said he and his team were told "some undesirable elements vandalised the pipeline".
It was not immediately clear what, if any, impact the pipeline fire would have on the operations of the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC).
NNPC spokesman Samson Makoji late on Sunday the state oil company was assessing the situation.
(Reporting by Seun Sanni; Additional reporting by Camillus Eboh in Abuja; Writing by Alexis Akwagyiram; Editing by Kim Coghill)
Reuters
The blaze broke out in the Abule-Egba district of the southwestern megacity. Residents said it started shortly before 8 p.m. (1900 GMT).
A Reuters television camera operator counted three dead bodies at the scene. The fire burned nearby houses and vehicles.
Another witness, resident Ayo Adewale, said there were "many dead people". Reuters was unable to verify the claim.
Many fires on pipelines in Nigeria, Africa's biggest crude oil producer, are caused by theft and sabotage. The methods used to steal oil often result in accidents that cause fires.
"People were running and I was asking where was this happening, then I got near here and they said pipeline vandals did this," said Adewale, who was in the area when the fire took hold.
Oluwafemi Damilola, director general of Lagos State Emergency Management Agency (LASEMA), said he and his team were told "some undesirable elements vandalised the pipeline".
It was not immediately clear what, if any, impact the pipeline fire would have on the operations of the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC).
NNPC spokesman Samson Makoji late on Sunday the state oil company was assessing the situation.
(Reporting by Seun Sanni; Additional reporting by Camillus Eboh in Abuja; Writing by Alexis Akwagyiram; Editing by Kim Coghill)
Reuters
Friday, January 17, 2020
Video - Nigeria celebrates selfless efforts of it's armed forces
Nigeria has marked its 50th armed forces anniversary in the capital Abuja. The ceremony celebrated the selfless efforts of its servicemen and women. Tributes were paid especially to those killed in the line of duty. CGTN's Kelechi Emekalam reports.
Fifty years on, Nigeria struggles with memory of Biafra civil war
He went to some of the finest schools in his West African homeland but says that, like the majority of his classmates, he “didn’t know about Biafra until I was 14.”
When he did begin to find out about the brutal civil war that nearly tore Nigeria apart, it was not in the classroom. Instead it was a schoolmate in his dormitory who showed him a separatist leaflet demanding Nigeria’s southeast break away from the rest of the country.
Before then, Oyeyinka had known nothing about how leaders from the Igbo ethnic group declared the independent state of Biafra in 1967.
He knew nothing of the conflict that resulted and the 30 months of fighting and famine that are estimated to have cost over a million lives before the secessionists surrendered 50 years ago in January 1970.
“We’ve had a very brutal history, the older generation went through a lot of trauma,” Oyeyinka said. “We just sweep it under the carpet, pretending nothing happened. But without knowing our history, we will repeat the same mistakes. Our history is a succession of deja vu.”
It was to try to break this cycle of ignorance that Oyeyinka wrote the novel “Stillborn” — a historic epic about Nigeria from the days of British colonial rule in 1950 to 2010. In it the civil war is the pivotal event.
Unlike other famed Nigerian writers such as Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, with her novel “Half Of A Yellow Sun,” or Chinua Achebe’s memoir “There Was A Country,” Oyeyinka is one of the few non-Igbo writers to have dwelt on the conflict.
“An Igbo friend got angry at me and said ‘You can’t write about us, it’s our conflict,'” he recounted.
But Oyeyinka insists that all Nigerians need to be made aware of what happened.
“We need to address these traumas ourselves, as a country, otherwise we are a tinder box ready to explode.”
While in the rest of Africa’s most populous nation many know little about the history of Biafra, in the former capital of the self-proclaimed state at Enugu the memory of those years lives on.
Biafran flags — an iconic red, black and green with a rising golden sun — make appearances on the front of buildings and hard-line separatists still demand independence.
The security forces — deployed heavily in the region — are quick to stamp out any clamor for a new Biafra.
At the end of the war in 1970, Nigerian leader Yukubu Gowon famously declared there would be “no victor, no vanquished” as he sought to reunite his shattered country.
The leader of the breakaway Republic of Biafra, Chukwuemeka Odumegwu Ojukwu, went into exile for 13 years before being pardoned. He returned to Nigerian politics but was detained for 10 months in prison.
Leading Nigerian intellectual Pat Utomi says that many Igbos — the country’s third-biggest ethnic group, after the Hausa and the Yoruba — still feel marginalized.
One key event was when current President Muhammadu Buhari — then a military chief — seized power in 1983, and stopped the only Igbo to get close to leading Nigeria since the war from becoming head of state.
“In the early 1980s, people had forgotten about the war, but this succession of poor leadership brought bitterness among the new generations,” Utomi said.
Nowadays any incident — from the closure of the only airport in the southeast last year to the sacking of Igbo shops by customs officials in economic hub Lagos — can cause grievances to flare.
“It’s important to deal with history, to write it down. In Nigeria, we try to cover it up,” Utomi said. “We are more divided today than we’ve ever been before the civil war. We learnt nothing from it.”
In order to try to heal the rifts, Utomi helped organize the Never Again conference aiming to bring together key cultural and political figures to discuss the lessons of the Biafra war half a century after it ended.
He is also a patron of the Center for Memories in Enugu, a combination of a museum and library where visitors can come and “dig into history.”
History itself has been absent from Nigerian schools.
The current government reintroduced it only from last term as an obligatory subject for pupils from ages 10 to 13, after more than a decade off the curriculum.
“Teaching history is essential to build our identity as a country, and defend our patriotic values,” said Sonny Echono, permanent secretary at the education ministry.
But schools still remain woefully short of qualified history teachers, and there is no unified narrative about the civil war that does not figure in the lessons.
“We need to teach the war in our schools,” said Egodi Uchendu, a history professor at University of Nsukka, in the former Biafra territory. “Eastern Nigeria is completely different from how it was experienced in other parts of the country. We need to bring in the different angles to it.”
Chika Oduah, a Nigerian American journalist, has crossed the country to collect hundreds of testimonies of the victims and combatants of the Biafra conflict, which she publishes on her website Biafran War Memories.
She says that for many of those she interviewed it was the first time they had retold the horrors of the period.
“A seventy-something former soldier … broke down crying, when he told me how he lost his brother during the war,” she said.
She herself only learned at the age of 17 that her mother as a child spent two years in a camp for displaced people.
“Our parents wanted to move on, not look at the past,” Oduah insisted.
“But we need to talk about it, otherwise we won’t heal.”
By Sophie Bouillon
The Japan Times
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