NAIJAFEED

Monday, May 23, 2022

Video - Nigeria’s medical brain drain

Nigerian doctors are leaving Nigeria in droves to seek better working conditions abroad. Health workers say decades of neglect by the government has led to mass exodus. While the doctor-patient ratio recommended by the World Health Organization is one for every 400, but in Nigeria, its one for 2,500. Nigeria’s nurses’ union says 11,000 members have left the country in the first three months of 2022, to work in hospitals abroad. Senior consultants say while the immediate future is bleak, the government can reverse the trend. Al Jazeera’s Ahmed Idris reports from Kano, Nigeria.

Passport Issuance: Nigeria immigration introduces tracking system

The Nigeria Immigration Service (NIS) said it has introduced a tracking system for the monitoring of statuses of passport applications by applicants.

The acting comptroller general of NIS, Isah Idris, who disclosed this during a brief media interaction on Saturday evening, said the initiative is part of the agency’s efforts toward sustaining transparency and accountability in the passport issuance process.

Mr Idris said since the launch of the online appointment system by the agency, the allegations of corruption and harassment against his personnel have significantly reduced. This is even as he appealed to Nigerians to always stick to the rules and “stop inducing our officers.”

He said: “Like parcels sent through logistic companies or visa applications, we have introduced a tracking system so that people can stay in the comfort of their rooms and know the status of their passport applications.

“You don’t need to offer anyone any kobo. All that you need to do is to log into our website on www.trackimmigration.gov.ng, upload the required details and see an immediate response on the status of your passports.”

Significance of the initiative

According to Mr Idris, the new initiative is part of the efforts to phase out human interactions, saying the rowdiness and delay in the passport issuance would soon be a thing of the past.

He said the best method to address the inadequacies identified with the production process is the deployment of technology and pleaded with Nigerians to always apply for their passport before its expiration or “only when they need it.”

He added that other measures are being put in place to resolve all the challenges identified with passport application in Nigeria, saying the challenges currently being experienced are results of combined problems of the coronavirus disease, foreign exchange scarcity, national identity number validation, among others.

Other measures

The acting comptroller general said apart from the tracking system, the agency will also in the next four weeks introduce self-validation of applicants’ NIN available on its portal and that only when such is done will the applicant proceed to pay and book an appointment for capturing.

He said: “We must also note that passports confer on holders the integrity of a nation, therefore the integrity of producing such documents should also not be compromised. So we must verify the authenticity of applicants’ claims before we proceed for production.

“Also, most times, delays are usually caused by the NIN validation problems and what we want to do now will allow individual applicants to, first of all, verify and validate their NIN and only upload validated NIN before they can pay for passports. By doing that, we would have successfully tackled the issue of a delay from other partners which we don’t have control over.”

Alert system introduction

Meanwhile, Mr Idris also explained that the Service is working on the introduction of an alert system “so that holders of passports can be reminded when it is six months to the expiration of their passports.”

“Like the driver licences, NIS is planning to introduce an alert system as soon as passports have about six months to expire. This is how much we are trying to leverage on technology to ease the stress currently being experienced,” the acting CGI said.

Production domestication

He also spoke on the plan to domesticate the production of passports, saying efforts have reached an advanced stage towards achieving that.

Mr Idris said President Muhammadu Buhari has since issued a directive towards achieving that, and that the ongoing process will only continue pending the completion of the domestication project.

He thanked the minister of interior, Rauf Aregbesola, for his efforts towards achieving the target, and pledged his administration’s commitment to “the dream.”

“If we eventually do that, we would have opened more job opportunities for Nigerians, improve the national economy by stopping the capital flight, and also enhance the sanctity of our nation. But there is more to it than just the production. The integrity of the system matters a lot and we cannot afford to have a passport that would lose its integrity,” he added.

By Mojeed Alabi

Premium Times

Severed head of missing Nigerian lawmaker found in park -police

Police in Nigeria have discovered the severed head of a state legislator who went missing last week in the southeastern state of Anambra, where the government accuses separatists of carrying out a spate of killings and kidnappings, police said on Sunday.

The southeast, homeland of the Igbo ethnic group, is agitating to secede from the rest of Nigeria and the banned Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB) group has been leading those calls.

Okechukwu Okoye, a legislator in the Anambra state assembly and his aide went missing on May 15. His head was found on Saturday night in a park in the Nnewi south local government area, Anambra state police spokesman Tochukwu Ikenga said.

"The lawmaker was killed. His head was found along Nnobi road. There is no suspect in custody yet," Ikenga said.

The Anambra state governor has put up a 10 million naira ($24,000) reward for information on the killers.
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Early this month, gunmen killed and beheaded two soldiers in neighbouring Imo state. The government accused IPOB, which denied the charge.

The violence in the southeast is another layer of insecurity in Nigeria, where kidnappings for ransom are common in the northwest and an Islamist insurgency has been going on for more than a decade in the northeast of the country.

Amnesty International said last August that Nigerian security forces had killed at least 115 people in the southeast in the first eight months of 2021 and arbitrarily arrested or tortured scores of others. The government did not comment.

Reuters

Friday, May 20, 2022

Kidnappers Of Nigerian College Students Arrested One Year Later

The Nigerian police have arrested two men suspected of being behind the high-profile kidnapping of two dozen students in April 2021 in northwestern Nigeria, and the murder of five of them.

"They have both confessed to the abduction of the students from the University of Greenfield, Kaduna State, and the murder of five students before the payment of ransom and the release of the other students," police spokesman Olumuyiwa Adejobi said in a statement on Wednesday evening.

The two suspects, Aminu Lawal known as "Kano" and Murtala Dawu known as "Mugala", who was involved in several kidnapping cases, will be brought to justice at the end of the investigation, Adejobi said.

In April 2021, gunmen stormed Greenfield University in Kaduna, abducting about 20 students and killing a staff member.

A few days after the attack, the kidnappers executed five hostages to force the families and the authorities to pay a ransom, which was later obtained.

The remaining 14 students were released after 40 days in captivity.

Heavily armed criminal gangs, known as "bandits", have been increasing their attacks in north-western and central Nigeria, looting, kidnapping and killing many villagers.

Last year, the "bandits" particularly targeted schools and universities to kidnap students en masse for ransom from their parents and the authorities.

In all, about 1,500 students were abducted in 2021 by armed men, according to Unicef. While most of the young hostages have since been released for ransom, some still remain in captivity in the forests, where armed groups hide

By Africanews

Relatives of Nigeria Train Attack Victims Oppose Resumption of Railway Service

Families of people kidnapped from a train in Nigeria's Kaduna state two months ago are protesting a decision by authorities to resume service on the railway next week.

Officials of the Nigerian Railway Corporation (NRC) said trains would begin running between the capital, Abuja, and Kaduna city again on Monday.

Relatives of kidnapped victims met Thursday morning to protest the planned resumption of train service on the Kaduna-Abuja line.

Authorities suspended service indefinitely on March 28, the day armed men blew up tracks in Kaduna and attacked a train. Nine people were killed during the attack and scores are still missing.

During Thursday's protest, the spokesperson of the group, Abdulfatai Jimoh, said at least 61 people were believed to be held captive, including Jimoh’s wife.

He said the government has been insensitive to the families’ plight.

"Our relatives kidnapped are still in captivity and we want them to be freed first before they can start thinking of that," he said. "We want the NRC management and the Ministry of Transportation to put adequate security measures in place to guarantee the safety of passengers before train services can resume. These are the minimum conditions we require from them."

Idahat Yusuf's two sisters, both in their 50s, are also among the abducted passengers. She does not understand why the NRC would restart train service.

"It's a national pain, it's not only the families' pain, so why would they choose to move on like that?” she asked.

The NRC said the decision to resume operations was not a sign of insensitivity to the situation and said efforts to have the captives released were continuing.

Security experts said negotiations have been deadlocked since the kidnappers demanded that authorities release members of their gang in exchange for the abductees.

Jimoh said the families have been given few details about the talks.

"We have information from government sources that discussions are ongoing with the abductors," he said. "We just don't know the extent or how far they have gone in these negotiations.”

The kidnappers have freed only three abductees, including a pregnant woman who told local news organizations that she was freed out of pity.

Northern Nigeria has seen a wave of kidnappings for ransom over the past 18 months.

This week, police arrested 31 people on charges of abducting students from a school in Kaduna state last year. Authorities also recovered 61 firearms, 376 rounds of ammunition, 22 cartridges and $5,000 cash.

By Timothy Obiezu

VOA