A cholera outbreak in north Nigeria's Kano state has killed at least 329 people since March, a state government official said on Wednesday.
Addressing a media forum on the cholera outbreak in the state capital Kano city, Sulaiman Iliyasu, a disease surveillance officer in the state, said 11,475 suspected cholera cases were reported across the 44 local government areas of the state since March.
Iliyasu said out of the number, 11,115 cases had fully recovered, while 329 people had died, noting that 31 cases were still receiving treatment from three local government areas of the state as of Tuesday.
The officer said Kano ranked second in the country in terms of the number of cholera cases, adding the state government has established cholera treatment centers and intensified social mobilization and community awareness in the state as part of measures to check the disease.
Cholera is a highly virulent disease characterized in its most severe form by a sudden onset of acute watery diarrhea that can lead to death by severe dehydration.
The outbreak of cholera in Nigeria has remained persistent, occurring annually mostly during the rainy season and more often in areas with poor sanitation, overcrowding, lack of clean food and water, and areas where open defecation is a common practice.
Friday, September 24, 2021
At least 329 people killed by cholera in Nigeria's northern state
Nigerian court orders alleged separatist freed, lawyer says
A Nigerian court on Thursday ordered the immediate release of a woman held in detention since February accused of being a member of a banned separatist organisation, her lawyer said.
The court in Abuja ruled that the police had illegally detained Ngozi Umeadi and ordered it to pay her damages of 50 million naira ($121,500), lawyer Ejiofor Ifeanyi said.
Nigerian authorities routinely detain people for months or years without charge.
Umeadi was accused of being a member of the Indigenous People of Biafra, which campaigns for the southeastern region to secede. Nigerian authorities blame it for attacks on police stations and other targets and have been cracking down on the group, which denies wrongdoing.
IPOB members and supporters accuse the authorities of arbitrary killings and detentions in the southeast, which they deny.
Ifeanyi also represents IPOB's detained leader, Nnamdi Kanu, who is facing trial for treason.
Kanu disappeared from Nigeria while on bail in 2017 after spending two years in jail. The Nigerian authorities announced in June that he had been captured abroad and brought back for his trial to resume, without explaining the circumstances.
Kanu's family and lawyers have alleged that he was illegally transferred from Kenya to Nigeria. Kenya has denied involvement.
Kanu's detention, and the fact that the authorities failed to produce him in court at the last hearing in July, have fuelled tension in the southeast, where a series of mass "sit-at-home" protests have taken place in solidarity with him.
Amnesty International said in August that Nigerian security forces had killed at least 115 people in the southeast this year and arbitrarily arrested or tortured scores of others. The authorities made no comment on the findings.
The southeast, homeland of the Igbo ethnic group, attempted to secede in 1967 under the name Republic of Biafra, triggering a three-year civil war in which more than a million people died, mostly of starvation.
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Nigerians offer artworks to British Museum in new take on looted bronzes
A new guild of artists from Nigeria's Benin City has offered to donate artworks to the British Museum in London as a way to encourage it to return the priceless Benin Bronzes that were looted from the city's royal court by British troops in 1897.
Created in the once mighty Kingdom of Benin from at least the 16th century onwards, the bronze and brass sculptures are among Africa's finest and most culturally significant artefacts. European museums that house them have faced years of criticism because of their status as loot and symbols of colonial greed.
The Ahiamwen Guild of artists and bronze casters says it wants to change the terms of the debate by giving the British Museum contemporary artworks, untainted by any history of looting, that showcase Benin City's modern-day culture.
"We never stopped making the bronzes even after those ones were stolen," said Osarobo Zeickner-Okoro, a founding member of the new guild and the instigator of the proposed donation. "I think we make them even better now."
"Part of the crime that's been committed, it's not just ok, these were looted, it's the fact that you've portrayed our civilisation as a dead civilisation, you've put us among ancient Egypt or something," he said.
The artworks on offer, unveiled in Benin City in a ceremony attended by a member of the royal court, include a 2-metre-by-2-metre bronze plaque with carvings representing historical events in Benin, and a life-size ram made entirely from spark plugs.
Asked to comment on the offer, the British Museum said only that it was a matter for discussion between itself and the parties offering the objects.
Zeickner-Okoro, who travelled from Benin City to London this month partly to advance his initiative, said he had a meeting coming up with curators from the museum's Africa department.
While Germany has said it wants to return Benin Bronzes from its museums to Nigeria, the British Museum, which houses the largest and most significant collection of the items, has stopped short of making a clear commitment.
It says on its website that its director, Hartwig Fischer, had an audience with the Oba, or king, of Benin in 2018 "which included discussion of new opportunities for sharing and displaying objects from the Kingdom of Benin".
But many people in Benin City see no justification for European museums holding onto loot.
"They must bring it back. It is not their father's property. The property belongs to the Oba of Benin," said bronze caster Chief Nosa Ogiakhia.
Zeickner-Okoro, who grew up partly in Britain before moving back to Benin City, acknowledged that the Benin Bronzes' presence in European museums had allowed them to reach a global audience. But he said they should now return to the place and the people that created them.
"The descendants of the people who cast those bronzes, they've never seen that work because most of them can't afford to fly to London to come to the British Museum," he said.
"They have these catalogues, PDF copies of the catalogue from the British Museum, which they use to reference the work of their ancestors, and I think it's so sad."
By Tife Owolabi and Estelle Shirbon
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