With experts predicting a 500 percent growth in the country's sesame seed exports in the coming years, stakeholders want to make sure the sesame seed supply chain is properly managed.
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No fewer than 386 people, mostly women and children, have been rescued by the Army in Sambisa forest ten years after their abduction.
The acting GOC 7 Division, AGL Haruna, made this known while speaking to newsmen at the outskirts of Sambisa forest in Konduga LGA after welcoming the troops that conducted the 10-day operation.
Mr Haruna, a brigadier general, said the operation tagged “Operation Desert Sanity 111” was to clear Sambisa forest of the remnants of all categories of terrorists as well as provide some of them eager to surrender as observed the opportunity to do so.
“Our effort is to ensure that we clear remnants of terrorists in the Sambisa and give those willing to surrender the opportunity to surrender.
“With this operation, we envisage many of them will surrender as they have started.
“We also rescued some civilians; as of yesterday, we rescued 386 and I am sure the number will increase by today,” Haruna said.
The GOC, who addressed the troops on the message of Chief of Army Staff, lauded their performance and professionalism exhibited during the operation and urged them to sustain the tempo.
Some of those rescued from Sambisa forest, who spoke, said they were in captivity for 10 years.
The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that troops from 21 Special Armoured Brigade, 26 Task Force Brigade, and 199 Special Forces participated in the operation.
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14 kidnapped University students rescued
However, the Nigerian-based internet provider Spectranet leads with 113,869 active customers, followed by FiberOne with 27,000 active subscribers. In 2022, Starlink services were approved to provide high-speed, low-latency broadband internet in Nigeria, with a monthly subscription of USD 110 and USD 599 for the complete Starlink kit.
By Deborah Faboade, SPACE IN AFRICA
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Human rights activists in Nigeria have launched a petition to stop a plan to push 100 girls and young women into marriage in a mass ceremony, which has caused outrage in the west African country.
The plan, sponsored by Abdulmalik Sarkindaji, the speaker of the national assembly in the largely Muslim north-western state of Niger, were criticised by Nigeria’s women’s affairs minister, Uju Kennedy Ohanenye. She said she would seek a court injunction to stop the ceremony next week and establish if any of the girls were minors.
Sarkindaji said the girls and young women were orphans whose parents were killed in attacks by kidnapping gangs that roam northern Nigeria. He said he would pay dowries to the grooms.
A petition launched on Wednesday that has more than 8,000 signatures said the Niger state government should prioritise the education of the girls instead of forcing them into marriage.
“We demand immediate action to halt the proposed forced marriages and to instead implement measures that will empower these girls to lead dignified and fulfilling lives,” the activists said.
Critics have expressed concern that some girls may be underage or being forced to comply for financial gain.
Sarkindaji and the Imams Forum of Niger said the marriage ceremony would go ahead on 24 May and insisted the girls were not underage.
Child marriages are common in the mostly Muslim north, where poverty levels are higher than the largely Christian south. Although the legal age of marriage is 18 under federal law, Nigerian states can set their own age.
Niger’s legal marriage age is also 18, but Sarkindaji’s spokesperson said that under sharia law, which is practised in the state, a girl can be married when she reaches puberty.
After meeting on Wednesday, the imams forum said it would take legal action against Kennedy Ohanenye if she did not withdraw her statement suggesting the girls were minors, its secretary, Umar-Faruk Abdullahi, said on local TV.
“We have given the minister seven days to withdraw her statement she used against us, against our speaker, against the Muslim community … that we want to force them into marriage and the children are underage,” said Abdullahi.
Kennedy Ohanenye did not respond to requests for comment.
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According to rice millers, prices of paddy rice have dropped by almost a third since March as cross-border trade rises between Nigeria and Niger.
