NAIJAFEED

Tuesday, April 9, 2024

Video - Stock Exchange of Nigeria acquires stake in Ethiopia Securities Exchange

NGX, based in Lagos, and other institutional investors poured large sums of cash into the Ethiopian exchange during its recent capital-raising endeavor. This strategic move aligns with NGX's objectives to expand capital market activities in East Africa and foster cross-border investment flows across the continent.

CGTN

Video - Growing calls for Nigeria government to enforce capital punishment on kidnappers

First Lady Senator Oluremi Tinubu is one of the voices demanding the government aggressively address kidnappings in Nigeria. The country has been plagued by a surge in kidnappings, leaving communities in fear and authorities struggling to contain the crisis.

CGTN

Video - Nigeria ramps up security following spate of kidnappings

Nigerian Troops Rescue 16 Abductees in Kaduna

Video - Families and victims in Nigeria reeling from impact of kidnappings

Video - Kaduna state abductions raise Nigeria's insecurity crisis

President Tinubu rules out ransoms for abducted students as observers urge dialogue

kidnappers say they will kill all 287 school if $622,000 ransom not paid

61 people kidnapped in Kaduna, Nigeria

Video - At least 15 students kidnapped in Nigeria - Third mass kidnapping since last week

Gunmen abduct 287 students in northwestern Nigeria in latest school attack

Suspected insurgents kidnap 50 people in northeast Nigeria

Nigerian govt unveils mobile app to track MDAs’ performance

The Federal Government of Nigeria has launched a mobile application that allows citizens to track the activities and performance of ministries and government agencies using their deliverables and key performance indicators.

The mobile application, which is tagged: “Citizens’ Delivery Tracker,” was unveiled by the office of the Special Adviser to the President on Policy and Coordination and Head of the Central Coordination Delivery Unit (CDCU), Hadiza Usman, at Transcorp Hilton, Abuja, on Monday, 8 April.

Ms Usman said the new application is an upgraded version of the previous Delivery Tracker, which would provide a strong feedback loop between the government and the people.

Ms Usman speaks

According to her, the CDCU aims to build public trust in the government and promote transparency and accountability at all levels with the delivery tracker.

“In arriving at the deliverables and key performance indicators, the CDCU, supported by development partners and consultants, held numerous bilateral meetings with all the Ministers, Permanent Secretaries, and their respective technical teams over six weeks.

“The bilateral sessions looked at the mandate of the respective ministries in line with the Presidential Priority Areas and arrived at the final deliverable and KPIs,” she said.

Ms Usman listed some of the areas of priority including reforming the economy to deliver sustained inclusive growth; strengthening national security for peace and prosperity; boosting agriculture to achieve food security, and unlocking energy and natural resources for sustainable development.

Others are to enhance infrastructure and transportation as growth enablers; focus on education, health, and social investment as essential pillars of development; accelerate diversification through industrialisation, digitisation, creative arts, manufacturing, and innovation, and improve governance for effective service delivery.

The presidential aide also noted that the CDCU would ensure that data and information released on the app to the public are accurate and credible.

She added: “We are working to ensure that people cannot decline, dodge, or dispute our data. So, we are looking to have data from the NBS and work in collaboration with MDAs to ensure accuracy.

“Part of citizen engagement is for citizens to point out our errors, allowing us to query our own data whether credible or not.

“We are trying to strengthen the NBS’ capacity to ensure credibility. So, that means anything outside of the approved government data will not be recognised. The government needs to invest in data, recognise the need for data integrity, and hold on to that”.

She said the platform is currently available as a web link on the CDCU website and will soon be available as an app for download.

By Beloved John, Premium Times

NNPC faces $3 billion backlog on petrol payments

Nigeria's state-oil company NNPC owes around $3 billion to fuel traders for imported petrol, three sources told Reuters, as the tumbling naira currency and rising global fuel prices have increased the effective subsidy it is paying.

The payment backlog is a blow to the government's efforts in Africa's largest economy to shore up its strained finances by curbing costly energy subsidies.

"They are paying, but it's slow," one of the sources with knowledge of the matter said. Five sources said that NNPC - the country's main importer of petrol - was taking more than 130 days to make the payments instead of within 90 days.

An NNPC spokesperson said the company was "not aware of any such debt nor any financial issues of such magnitude".

"Our focus remains on sustaining sufficiency in the supply of petroleum products in Nigeria," the spokesperson said.

NNPC's suppliers, including international traders like Vitol, Mercuria and Gunvor as well as Nigeria-based trading houses, are still supplying fuel, the sources said. They declined to be named because they are not authorised to speak to the media. The trading firms declined to comment.

But the payment delays underscore the creeping return of fuel subsidies - scrapped in May 2023 - that sap NNPC's cash for imports and what it can send to President Bola Tinubu's government.

Nigeria had subsidised fuel for years to keep pump prices affordable, but Tinubu removed them as part of wider reforms, allowing prices to triple. Petrol consumption fell by around 30% as higher prices curbed smuggling to neighbouring countries.

In June, the government capped pump prices at a nationwide average of 617 naira per litre as Nigerians grappled with punishing inflation.

"It's hard to overstate the significance of fuel subsidies for the administration," said Clementine Wallop, director for sub-Saharan Africa at political risk consultancy Horizon Engage.

"It was subsidy removal and exchange rate reform that had investors and lenders initially positive about his administration, and it was their removal Tinubu hoped would give his team the ability to spend in the many other areas that need funding."

Nigeria is almost wholly reliant on fuel imports due to years of mismanagement and under-investment at state-owned oil refineries.

QUEUES AND BACKLOG OF BILLS

Last week, motorists queued for petrol across Nigeria's commercial capital Lagos, due to a shortage of fuel from depots. Clement Isong, head of the Major Oil Marketers Association (MOMAN), said logistical issues over Easter caused the constraints, which would soon abate.

Oil industry sources said rising global gasoline prices and a weaker naira had also impacted NNPC's ability to import.

At their peak in February, market prices for petrol in West Africa were 1,229 naira per litre, 150% above the level the government capped prices in June, according to pricing data from Argus Media converted with tracking site Aboxifx naira rates. They have since fallen to around 912 naira per litre, still 295 naira above the capped price.

That left NNPC as the sole importer of the roughly 40 million litres per day the country consumes, as private importers cannot recoup their costs.

Since the naira has slid against the dollar and oil prices have risen, NNPC is losing money on every litre sold, traders said.

The International Monetary Fund recently warned that capping pump prices and electricity tariffs below cost recovery could shave up to 3% off GDP in 2024.

"The government still needs to begin formulating a plan to remove the fuel subsidy when conditions allow," Tellimer's Patrick Curran said in a note.

By Libby George and Julia Payne, Reuters

Kidnappings in Nigeria rise 10 years after Chibok girls abducted

BWARI, Nigeria — "They pointed their guns through the window of the children's room while they were sleeping," says the 49-year-old father of four sons, describing the beginning of a three-month ordeal that has overwhelmed his family. "Then they told them to open the door or they will shoot them."

In early January, around midnight, 20 men armed with AK-47s and machetes attacked his home in Bwari, a small town surrounded by outcrops of towering granite rocks and forest, on the hilly outskirts of Nigeria's capital Abuja.

The attackers dragged him and his four sons, ranging in age from 12 to 24 years old, outside. The armed men beat them with the back of their guns and the flat edge of their blades. They tied their wrists with rope and marched them barefoot into the surrounding forest, along with 17 other abducted victims. They walked for almost 10 hours, their feet bloodied by the time they reached a hideout in northwest Nigeria.

They were held within an expanse of forests that stretches over the border into Niger, an expanse that has become a haven for hundreds of heavily armed groups. Most of the groups, referred to locally as bandits, are behind an epidemic of mass kidnap-for-ransom attacks that have proliferated across Africa's most populous country, rising during one of the toughest economic periods in decades.

This is the tale of one family that has been left deeply traumatized by the kidnapping epidemic in Nigeria. NPR has followed their story for months, but is not using the family's names because they continue to live under the constant threat of the kidnappers, whose presence haunts their lives.

Kidnapping epidemic

Close to 1,000 people have been kidnapped in Nigeria in the first three months of 2024 alone, amid an epidemic of attacks that has become the country's most potent security threat.

Many of the kidnaps have been committed by groups called "bandits," of which 3,000 to 5,000 are believed to be active, operating from forests in north and central Nigeria, according to security analysts.

Many of the groups are made up of ethnic Fulani young men and boys, who've become heavily armed in the wake of a historic conflict over land between Fulani nomadic pastoralists and farmers.

The groups have exploited several systemic security failings in Nigeria, including the scarcity of rural police and alleged corruption preventing security forces from being adequately armed. In recent years, armed groups have operated closer and closer to Abuja. Bwari, a satellite town 37 miles from the capital, has been overwhelmed by kidnap attacks for the last year, a sign of the growing nature of the problem.

The rise in Nigeria of mass abductions of dozens to hundreds of people, especially children, is often traced to the kidnapping by Islamist militants Boko Haram of 276 schoolgirls from Chibok town in April 2014. Boko Haram began as a religious movement but quickly developed into a brutal jihadist organization. Loosely translated from the local language Hausa, Boko Haram means "Western education is forbidden."

The attack sparked a global campaign for their release. Many of the girls were freed in exchange for the release of Boko Haram suspects from prison. According to some reports, ransoms were also paid by the government but officials have strongly denied this. Ninety-six of the girls are still missing, presumed still captive.

The international attention the Boko Haram kidnapping attracted led prominent U.S. figures like Michelle Obama and Hillary Clinton, then the secretary of state, to call for their release. It put pressure on the Nigerian government to secure their freedom. But it also inspired several other mass abductions across northern Nigeria since then to the present day.

A life in exchange for bags of rice and beans

After the family in Bwari was kidnapped in January, the father was released in a matter of days. He was released on condition that he would raise the ransom of 5.3 million naira ($3,500), three times what the family earns in a year.

"They would beat the children and put them on the phone to talk to me and the children would be crying and begging me to bring the money quickly, that they're suffering," the father recalls.

He borrowed money and sold almost all of his possessions, his farm in Bwari, his tractor, and the bags of ginger root he'd harvested. Within a month, he'd raised the ransom for his four boys.

He delivered it in cash, stored in a hard plastic zipper bag. He handed the ransom over to armed men at a drop-off point just off an expressway in the northwestern state of Kaduna. They assured him that his boys would soon be sent back to him.

But the next day, only two of his sons were freed, leaving the eldest and youngest in captivity.

Then the kidnappers made new demands: two motorbikes, five walkie-talkies, bags of rice and beans, top-up cards for mobile data and airtime, and industrial glues, often inhaled and used as intoxicants. The items would cost a further $2,000.

"I said, how do you expect me to find the money when I've already sold everything?" the father recalls. "They said if I don't bring those items soon, they will kill the boys."

A town living under constant threat

Much of Bwari town is on edge. In the day, business continues as normal, but after sunset, the streets swiftly empty. A military tank is stationed near the main market, and police patrols wade through the town's streets.

"If you ask 10 people if they've been affected, maybe five will say yes," says 38-year-old Sanusi Musa, a truck driver in Bwari. His relatives were kidnapped late last year, then released a few months afterward when a ransom was paid by the father.

Many, like Musa, are fed up with the attacks and lament that insecurity is directly driven by a lack of development in poor, rural parts of the country. Musa's family was abducted alongside other victims from Kau, one of several villages within Bwari. A battered mud road runs six miles through remote countryside and forest, connecting the village to the nearest police and military post in the center of town. By car, the journey is a crawl that can take more than an hour, leaving the villages along it exposed.

"When the kidnappers came, we called the army," says Alhaji Yusuf, a community leader in Kau whose relatives were also abducted in December. "But they said it would take them too long to arrive because the road is bad. We're also begging the government to establish a police station in the village. We will even provide the land."

"Teach them a lesson"

A month after the father from Bwari received the kidnappers' new demands, the family managed to raise most of the additional $2,000 they needed. They pleaded with the kidnappers to accept what they'd managed to put together, including the two motorbikes and some of the food items, and the kidnappers agreed.

But they only released the eldest son. Then they made fresh demands, for $500 in cash and other items.

Weeks after the eldest son was freed and forced to leave his youngest brother behind, he sits at home wearing a beige caftan. Before he was released, he says, the kidnappers wanted to send his family a message.

He recalls the moment during his ordeal when he, his youngest brother and three other boys abducted alongside them were taken to a nearby river in the forest.

But when they arrived, they were lined up along the riverbank. One of the boys was pulled to the side.

"The leader said the boy's parents weren't taking them seriously," the eldest son recalls, "so he would teach them a lesson."

Then one of the kidnappers shot the boy.

The boy pleaded for his life. "The boy was telling him 'sorry, sorry, they will bring your money, they will bring your motorcycle and phones.'"

But they shot him again.

The kidnappers ordered the other boys to dig a grave in the sandy soil by the riverbank. The victim, drenched in blood, was still alive, barely moving.

They laid him in the shallow grave and covered him with sand. Then one of the kidnappers stood over him and delivered the final, fatal shot.

"They told me to tell my parents that if they didn't bring the items they told them, they would kill my brother too," the eldest son says.

Released but not free

In mid-March, 2 1/2 months after the family's abduction, the 12-year-old, the youngest son, finally came home. He and other hostages escaped after a Nigerian military patrol arrived near the kidnappers' hideout, sending the militants fleeing. During the confusion, the hostages made their escape.

They trekked for days until they reached a village.

"The people saw how he looked and took pity on him. They fed him, bathed him and paid for the transport that brought him back to us," the father says, describing the conflicting moments of joy and anguish when the last of his children returned.

The 12-year-old came home bruised across his body and far thinner than in January. Now he barely speaks or looks at anyone in the eye.

Freedom has come at immense cost for the entire family.

"I've sold everything I have," the father says. "I don't have any work, I can't pay my children's school fees. All I can do is pray and rely on Allah."

The attack has also made them retreat from their community in Bwari, unsure of whom to trust. During the abduction, one of the armed men covered his face, leading the family to believe he was someone they knew, as the kidnappers knew intimate details about their lives.

"It has reached a stage where you don't even know who to trust anymore, because you don't know who is your enemy and who is not," the father says.

And despite their freedom from captivity, the torment goes on. The youngest son's escape made the kidnappers angry, his eldest brother says. The kidnappers still call the family and demand the ransom they were denied, or else they will strike again.

"So I have been released," says the eldest son, "but I'm not really free."

By Emmanuel Akinwotu, npr