Gunmen kill 14 villagers in northcentral Nigeria

Gunmen attacked two communities in Nigeria’s north-central region, killing 14 people and injuring many others, authorities said Thursday.

The attackers stormed the communities in Logo council area of Benue state Wednesday night, opening “unprovoked” fire on residents, said Paul Hemba, the state’s top security official.

Police in Benue confirmed the attack. The assailants shot 12 people to death in one community then moved on to another where they killed two more villagers, Hemba said. He said 15 people were “seriously injured.”

He identified the attackers as “Fulani herdsmen,” a group of mostly young pastoralists from the Fulani tribe caught up in Nigeria’s conflict between host communities and herdsmen over limited access to water and land.

In Nigeria’s middle belt and central regions, deadly clashes between local communities and herdsmen continue in a cycle of violence that has defied government measures, although security forces have recently announced some arrests and seizure of arms.

A similar attack in another part of Benue targeted a convoy of soldiers of the Nigerian army, but they were able to repel the assailants, Hemba said.

Many of the attacks in rural areas are similar. Motorcycle-riding gunmen often arrive in the hundreds in areas where Nigeria’s security forces are outnumbered and outgunned.


Authorities have in the past admitted that the inadequate number of security personnel in many of the affected areas is one of the major reasons the attacks have continued.

Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari, who came into office in 2015 on a wave of goodwill after promising to end the nation’s protracted security crisis, leaves office in 2023. Those security challenges are back on the front burner as political campaigns for next year’s election begin.

By Chinedu Asadu

Toronto Star

 Related story: Video - Is Nigeria's security crisis out of control?

Nigeria's military warns residents of bombings targeting bandits

Nigeria's military is urging people in three northwestern states to leave forested areas ahead of a bombing campaign targeting bandits and terrorists, according to local broadcast stations and a military official.

An advertisement running on local television and radio stations warned people in Zamfara, Katsina and the Birnin Gwari area of Kaduna state to leave the forests in advance of a "heavy bombardment."

Murtala Alhasan Umaru, general manager at Zamfara state TV and radio, showed the advertisement to Reuters and said the military asked them to play it. There are versions in local pidgin English, Hausa, Kanuri and Fulani.

A military official reached by phone confirmed the advertisement's authenticity but declined to share his name or any further information.

Armed gangs of men, known locally as bandits, have killed and kidnapped hundreds across northwest Nigeria over the past two years, typically operating from remote forests. The country's thinly stretched armed forces have struggled to secure the large, remote regions.

The advertisement said the bombardment would "protect the life and property of Nigerians."

One man in Zamfara state, Abdullahi Abubakar, said he had heard the broadcast on the radio and had seen military fighter jets flying overhead.

Two other residents in Zamfara, one in Gumi and the other in Shinkafi, said there had been daily bombings since Saturday morning. The two asked Reuters not to identify them by name.

By Hamza Ibrahim 

Reuters

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Nigeria’s Buhari promises fairness in anticipated election

Nigeria’s president said Wednesday that the 18 candidates vying to become his successor will run in a “free and fair” election next year.

Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari told the U.N. General Assembly that his goal before leaving office is to entrench “a process of free, fair and transparent and credible elections through which Nigerians elect leaders of their choice.”

“Ours is a vast country strengthened by its diversity and its common values of hard work, enduring faith and a sense of community. We have invested heavily to strengthen our framework for free and fair elections,” Buhari said.

Only one woman is among the 18 presidential candidates listed by Nigeria’s Independent National Electoral Commission, or INEC, on Tuesday. Nigeria’s political world remains male-dominated, and women rarely make it into top positions.

Analysts had predicted the February 2023 election would be a two-man race between Bola Tinubu, 70, a former governor of Lagos from Buhari’s All Progressives Congress, and former Vice President Atiku Abubakar, 75, who placed second in the 2019 presidential election.

However, the growing popularity of Peter Obi, a former governor of southeast Nigeria’s Anambra state, has put him ahead of the other candidates, according to a recent poll.

The electoral commission projected that 95 million voters would participate in the February election. Security and economic crises have caused hardship for many of the more than 200 million citizens of Africa’s most populous country.

Despite being one of the continent’s top oil producers, Nigeria is grappling with a 33% unemployment rate and a 40% poverty rate, according to the latest government statistics. The country has also battled an insurgency by Islamic extremist rebels in the northeast, as well as armed violence now spreading across parts of the northwest and southeast regions.

Such challenges make the presidential election a “battle for the soul of the country,” Idayat Hassan, who leads the West Africa-focused Center for Democracy and Development, said. 

By Chinedu Asadu

AP

Bankers Are Fleeing Nigeria’s Stagnating Economy as “Japa” Beckons

Francis Eze spent nearly a decade at one of Nigeria’s biggest banks working for a salary far lower than the one he’d negotiated in his interview. As a bachelor and then as a newlywed, he found a way to manage on a tighter budget.

His wife, a nurse, had long told him about colleagues at her hospital who had been recruited to move abroad but Eze wasn’t interested. Then with private school fees for two children coming due this year, the pair joined the flood of skilled Nigerians leaving the country amid a plummeting naira and a stagnating economy.

“I realised how insufficient the money was to take care of a family of four,” Eze, 38, said by phone from Toronto, where his family relocated in January. “I told my wife we should do as others were doing.”


The widespread brain drain from Africa’s most populous country -- popularly known as “japa”, which means “to run swiftly out of a bad situation” in the Yoruba language -- is having a devastating effect on the financial sector. Banks, already suffering from rising interest rates, higher operating expenses and threats of a spike in non-performing loans, are being forced to increase spending on training and recruiting, and in many cases lower their standards for new hires.

“It is a reality and we are just ensuring that we are recruiting more than are leaving,” Roosevelt Ogbonna, chief executive officer of Access Bank Plc, Nigeria’s biggest bank by assets, said by phone, without saying how many employees had left.

Better schools, higher salaries and more fringe benefits abroad, combined with a lack of local job security, is pushing mid- and early-career employees abroad, according to a report released this month by the Chartered Institute of Bankers of Nigeria.
 

Struggling Economy


Africa’s biggest economy has suffered through two recessions in the last six years. Soaring inflation, which hit a 17-year high of 20.5% in August, has eroded household purchasing power and shrunk local currency salaries. So skilled workers are turning to big western economies, where other Nigerians have built successful lives, particularly Canada, the US and the UK.

The number of Nigerians who received UK work visas rose to 15,772 for the year through June, from 3,918 in the year through December 2019, the last full year prior to the pandemic, according to a report by the UK Home Office released last month.

Last week, Moody’s warned that higher inflation and interest rates could see non-performing loan rates at Nigerian lenders spike. But for the banks, the concern over asset quality is currently being overshadowed by employee flight.

In a bid to fill the gaps, bankers are spending more time “training the existing workforce and equipping new graduates,” which may entail lowering the entry standards at some point, said Abubakar Suleiman, chief executive at mid-size lender Sterling Bank Plc. “The opportunity is to hire smarter, train better and make banking more responsive to fill the vacancies.”

The bankers’ union recommended offering remote work and modeling “the work patterns and the work conditions of their staff against global practices.” Ogbonna said Access Bank is looking beyond salary to create an environment that is “inclusive and conducive” to retain its workers, without elaborating.

Eze, who works for a food company in Canada, said ultimately it will come down to money.

“Unless you have good work conditions, including salary that can cover your cost and you also make some savings, even if a little, you’ll be thinking of where to run to,” he said. 

By Emele Onu

Bloomberg

Hundreds of Schools Are Shut Down in Nigeria Due to Insecurity

The new school year started in Nigeria this month, but more than 600 schools are still closed due to a surge of kidnappings for ransom by armed gangs, according to authorities. Nigeria already has one of the world’s highest rates of out-of-school children and the U.N. says the problem has gotten worse. Timothy Obiezu reports from Kaduna State, Nigeria.

VOA 

Related story: Nigeria shuts schools in Abuja over fears of attack

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