Nigeria is battling some of its worst floods in a decade. Heavy rains have affected the south for weeks. More than 300 people have died and many houses have been destroyed by flood, causing many to ask whether the flood disaster is natural or manmade. Al Jazeera’s Stefanie Dekker reports.
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In Nigeria's food basket state, floods wash away homes, crops and hope
Education experts in Nigeria are urging the government to address the problems of poverty, insecurity and other issues that have kept millions of girls out of school. Girls make up more than 60 percent of the nearly 20 million children who are not attending school. They have also called for Information and Communication Technology to be at the forefront of learning for girls so they can compete on a global stage.
Nigeria’s Information and Culture Minister Lai Mohammed, said Tuesday Nigeria has signed an agreement with Germany for the repatriation of over 1,130 looted Benin Bronze artifacts back to the country.
Mohammed disclosed this in an interview with the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) in Washington DC after three museums in the U.S. repatriated 31 Benin Bronze artifacts to Nigeria.
He commended the German government for that effort, adding that Nigeria is also getting positive response from France and Mexico to return some of its stolen artifacts.
In 1897 during a British raid on Benin, the royal palace was torched and looted, and the oba (ruler) was exiled.
The British confiscated all royal treasures, giving some to individual officers and taking most to auction in London.
The estimated 3,000 objects eventually made their way into museums and private collections around the world.
The minister said the world had seen that it was an ethical and moral issue to return the artifacts back to their owners, noting that it is not a matter of law as claimed by the British Government.
“This is important for the British Museum to understand and for the British Government to know, because I was also in the British Museum to ask them to return thousands of the artifacts in its custody.
“The standard response is that until the British Parliament changes the status, they are not in position to so do.
“The U.S. and Germany are now seeing that this matter is not of law but of morality, it is about doing the right thing. I hope that the British government will also learn from the two countries and do same,’’ he said.
According to him, Nigeria is planning to sign an agreement with the British government on November 28 to return about 86 other artifacts from various museums in UK.
The minister said the campaign of the current administration for the return of and restitution of Nigeria’s looted /smuggled artifacts from around the world, which was launched in November 2019, is yielding positive result.
He said in January, Nigeria and the U.S. signed the bilateral cultural property agreement to prevent illicit import into the U.S. of some categories of Nigerian artifacts.
“This agreement solidifies our shared commitment to combat looting and trafficking of precious cultural property while also establishing a process for the return of trafficked cultural objects, thus reducing the incentives to loot sites in Nigeria.’’
Oba of Benin hails US museums
In his remarks, the Oba of Benin, Ewuare II, commended three U.S. museums for the repatriation of 31 Benin Bronze artifacts, which were violently taken away from the Royal Palace of Benin by British forces in 1897.
Oba Ewuare II, who was represented by his brother, Aghatise Erediauwa, said the decision of the Smithsonian is now being emulated by numerous other Museums around the world who had continued to hold onto heritage art.
“The accepted narrative is that works which were looted or acquired in ethical ways should be returned to their places of origin,’’ he said.
By Emmanuel Elebeke
Vanguard
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Germany has agreed to return Nigeria’s looted treasure. Will other countries follow?
Oil major Shell's (SHEL.L) Nigerian subsidiary is investigating reports that an illegal oil tap ran for nine years on a pipeline it operates, a spokesperson said on Wednesday.
An NNPC spokesman said on Sunday the theft point extended from the Trans Escravos pipeline and that the Afremo platform, operated by the Shell Petroleum Development Company of Nigeria (SPDC), was the suspected exit point of the stolen crude.
"We are also conducting an investigation to establish where the theft lines end and whether there have been any breaches of the unmanned platform's security barriers (locks etc.) or any unauthorised use of the equipment on it," an SPDC spokesperson said in an email.
SPDC said it had detected illegal connections as part of regular surveillance and would launch a joint investigation with regulators to "establish the nature and condition" of the lines before removing them.
NNPC pointed to the theft line discovery as evidence that Nigeria's coordinated interventions, including contracts with companies owned by former militants, to crack down on theft were paying off.
Large-scale theft from Nigeria's pipelines has throttled exports, forced some companies to shut in production and crippled the country's finances.
By Libby George
Reuters
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Cameroon and Nigeria requested to join the Cote d’Ivoire-Ghana Cocoa Initiative (CIGCI), a joint body spearheading the interests of the two countries in the cocoa trade, the head of the initiative Alex Assanvo said on Wednesday.
The initiative was set up after a 2018 declaration by Ivory Coast and Ghana, the world’s first and second-largest cocoa producers, on willingness to define a common sustainable cocoa strategy that would raise prices paid to farmers.
It was created with the view of including other African countries.
Representatives from Cameroon and Nigeria were invited to a CIGCI meeting in Abidjan to begin the process of joining the initiative, Assanvo told reporters after the meeting.
“With Cameroon and Nigeria we are going to represent around two-thirds of global cocoa production,” Yves Brahima Kone, chief executive of the Ivory Coast Cocoa and Coffee Council, said at the meeting.
“This will allow us to have more leeway in discussions with the industry on imposing a decent price for our cocoa farmers.”
