Nigeria’s successful $2.35 billion Eurobond issuance helped renew investor confidence in its economic reforms and leadership. The government aims to use the funds to bridge its fiscal deficit and support efforts to stabilize the economy.
Wednesday, November 12, 2025
Video - Nigeria’s return to global debt market signals confidence amid caution
Nigeria’s successful $2.35 billion Eurobond issuance helped renew investor confidence in its economic reforms and leadership. The government aims to use the funds to bridge its fiscal deficit and support efforts to stabilize the economy.
Nigeria boycott training before World Cup play-off
Nigeria players and technical staff boycotted training on Tuesday, just two days before their crucial 2026 Fifa World Cup play-off against Gabon in Morocco.
The protest relates to longstanding unpaid allowances and match bonuses, with some payments dating back to 2019.
The team, including stars like Victor Osimhen and Ademola Lookman, are demanding a resolution to the dispute with the Nigeria Football Federation (NFF).
The boycott has cast a shadow over preparations for their African play-off semi-final at the Moulay Hassan Stadium in Rabat on Thursday (16:00 GMT).
"Once resolution is found we will be the first to confirm," Super Eagles centre-back and captain William Troost-Ekong said in a post on X., external
"All we want and continue to do is focus on the big games ahead."
The NFF did not respond to requests from BBC Sport Africa for comment, but sources indicate urgent talks are ongoing.
The Super Eagles are expected to resume training on Wednesday, pending a resolution to the financial stand-off which reportedly includes allowances for the 2025 Africa Cup of Nations qualifiers and the current 2026 World Cup qualifying campaign.
The NFF has a history of delaying payments and this latest development has sparked widespread reaction from Nigerians, with many calling for the federation to resolve the issue swiftly.
Nigeria must beat Gabon to keep alive their hopes of reaching next year's World Cup in Canada, Mexico and the United States.
The winners will face either Cameroon or DR Congo in Sunday's African play-off final, which will decide which country progresses to an intercontinental qualifier to be held next March.
That six-team tournament will provide two qualifiers for the finals.
By Emmanuel Akindubuwa, BBC
The protest relates to longstanding unpaid allowances and match bonuses, with some payments dating back to 2019.
The team, including stars like Victor Osimhen and Ademola Lookman, are demanding a resolution to the dispute with the Nigeria Football Federation (NFF).
The boycott has cast a shadow over preparations for their African play-off semi-final at the Moulay Hassan Stadium in Rabat on Thursday (16:00 GMT).
"Once resolution is found we will be the first to confirm," Super Eagles centre-back and captain William Troost-Ekong said in a post on X., external
"All we want and continue to do is focus on the big games ahead."
The NFF did not respond to requests from BBC Sport Africa for comment, but sources indicate urgent talks are ongoing.
The Super Eagles are expected to resume training on Wednesday, pending a resolution to the financial stand-off which reportedly includes allowances for the 2025 Africa Cup of Nations qualifiers and the current 2026 World Cup qualifying campaign.
The NFF has a history of delaying payments and this latest development has sparked widespread reaction from Nigerians, with many calling for the federation to resolve the issue swiftly.
Nigeria must beat Gabon to keep alive their hopes of reaching next year's World Cup in Canada, Mexico and the United States.
The winners will face either Cameroon or DR Congo in Sunday's African play-off final, which will decide which country progresses to an intercontinental qualifier to be held next March.
That six-team tournament will provide two qualifiers for the finals.
Nigeria teams up with US and UK to investigate cocaine haul
Nigeria's National Drug Law Enforcement Agency (NDLEA) said Tuesday it is working with its US and British counterparts to investigate the origins of one of the country's largest drug hauls.
Authorities recovered a ton of cocaine from a container at Lagos' Tincan Island Port.
The shipment, worth more than 338 billion naira ($235 million, €232 million), was discovered during a joint inspection last weekend.
Officials described it as the largest single seizure of cocaine at Tincan Island Port.
Global investigation to find drug smugglers
NDLEA says officers from the US Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) and the UK's National Crime Agency (NCA) "have already joined the ongoing investigation to track the cartel behind the consignment."
"The essence of collaborating with our international partners on this case is to ensure no stone is left unturned and every gap is sufficiently covered so that ultimately we can get all the masterminds of this huge consignment brought to book wherever they are located across the globe," the NDLEA chair Mohamed Buba Marwa said.
Nigeria is a major transit hub for drugs in West Africa and is also becoming a key producer, according to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime.
By Louis Oelofse, DW
Authorities recovered a ton of cocaine from a container at Lagos' Tincan Island Port.
The shipment, worth more than 338 billion naira ($235 million, €232 million), was discovered during a joint inspection last weekend.
Officials described it as the largest single seizure of cocaine at Tincan Island Port.
Global investigation to find drug smugglers
NDLEA says officers from the US Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) and the UK's National Crime Agency (NCA) "have already joined the ongoing investigation to track the cartel behind the consignment."
"The essence of collaborating with our international partners on this case is to ensure no stone is left unturned and every gap is sufficiently covered so that ultimately we can get all the masterminds of this huge consignment brought to book wherever they are located across the globe," the NDLEA chair Mohamed Buba Marwa said.
Nigeria is a major transit hub for drugs in West Africa and is also becoming a key producer, according to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime.
By Louis Oelofse, DW
Friday, November 7, 2025
Video - Nigeria’s women-only ride app faces roadblocks
In Abuja, rising cases of “one chance” taxi crimes inspired Monsurah Oluwafuyi and her team to launch HerRyde in 2022. The women-only ride platform connects verified female drivers with female passengers. HerRyde completed over 2,000 trips and empowered women with financial independence. However, the platform suspended operations after a year due to financial constraints.
Central Nigerian town rebuilds religious trust in shadow of Trump's threat
Nigeria, a west African country of 230 million people, is roughly evenly split between a mostly Christian south and a Muslim-majority north. It is home to myriad conflicts, including jihadist insurgency, that experts say kill both Christians and Muslims, often without distinction.
But Trump has ordered a military intervention in Nigeria to halt what he says are killings of Christians "in very large numbers" by radical Islamists.
Mangu, a small rustic town in Nigeria's central Plateau state located 250 kilometres from the capital Abuja, was the scene of deadly clashes that targeted both Christians and Muslims last year.
Since then community leaders hold regular dialogues to forestall a recurrence.
For decades, Mangu mostly escaped the intercommunal violence that often erupts elsewhere in Nigeria's central "Middle Belt" farming region.
Many of the conflicts in the region have their roots in tensions over land between Muslim herders and mostly Christian farmers, as the impact of climate change threatens agricultural livelihoods.
Mangu's Muslims and Christians mostly belong to the Mwaghavul tribe, and have lived side by side for decades before the 2024 violence.
The town's central mosque was located in the Christian-dominated district, and the town's biggest church once stood in a Muslim-majority quarter.
Both yellow buildings were torched and destroyed when the farming town of around 300,000 people was ravaged as assailants raided rival districts with guns and machetes after a dispute over land, water and cattle grazing, in January last year.
Twenty-two months later, the charred walls of Umar bin Khatab Juma'at mosque and a roofless and windowless Cocin Kwhagas Lahir church -- still stand as a reminder of the day the town temporarily lost its peace.
"We thank God for the relative peace that has reigned in Mangu," said resident Muhammad Kamilu Aliu, 37, at a hardware market. "There is no more crisis here again".
District head Moses Dawop, underlines the "peace we have been crying for is gaining ground".
Across Mangu, Muslims and Christians are back to doing business together, with religious and community leaders intent on rebuilding trust in the community.
Mangu's main market is abuzz with sellers and buyers mingling while elsewhere on the town's dusty streets, children play, rolling disused motorcycle tyres.
But the local chairman of the Christian Association of Nigeria, Timothy Samson Dalang, and the town's main imam, Ibrahim Hudu Manomi, say that there is still much to be done.
"We've been working day and night to see how we can get ourselves back to the former self that we used to be, as peaceful as we used to be," Manomi said.
For Dalang, cooperation among the religious leaders has been instrumental in thwarting attempts by "hoodlums who are bent to sabotage the peace process" for "selfish reasons."
Rebuilding homes, places of worship and schools torched during the unrest is also taking time.
Leaders want to restore trust first among the followers of the two religions to pre-conflict levels before reconstruction can take place.
Nigerians are wary of Trump's threat to strike radical Islamists.
For many in this central state -- a hotbed of inter-communal violence -- religious persecution is an alien concept and they fear that the White House narrative could roll back years of peacebuilding.
Trump's allegations of Christian persecution will "take us back to square one," said Ghazali Isma'ila Adam, the chief imam of the Plateau state capital Jos.
Jihadists "attack everybody, be it Muslims, Christians, pagans," said Idris Suleiman Gimba, 54, a Muslim restaurateur in northeastern Borno State's capital city, Maiduguri, the epicentre of the 16-year-long jihadist insurgency.
Gimba lost 10 family members in a mosque bombing in neighbouring Yobe State in 2014, during the height of the conflict.
Saidu Sufi, a political science teacher in northwestern Kano state, said terrorists and bandits often hide under religion to carry out their criminal activities.
"We have seen in parts of the northwest where bandits use religious cover by starting their campaign of violence by quoting scripture," Sufi said. "But it is not religious."
For Adams Mamza, 28, a Christian Maiduguri resident working for a car rental firm, Trump's intervention is only welcome if "they can target it on these bandits, Boko Haram, the insurgents."
President Bola Tinubu told his ministers on Thursday as cabinet met for the first time since Trump's threats, that "we want our friends to help us as we step up our fight against terrorism, and we will eliminate it".
But Trump has ordered a military intervention in Nigeria to halt what he says are killings of Christians "in very large numbers" by radical Islamists.
Mangu, a small rustic town in Nigeria's central Plateau state located 250 kilometres from the capital Abuja, was the scene of deadly clashes that targeted both Christians and Muslims last year.
Since then community leaders hold regular dialogues to forestall a recurrence.
For decades, Mangu mostly escaped the intercommunal violence that often erupts elsewhere in Nigeria's central "Middle Belt" farming region.
Many of the conflicts in the region have their roots in tensions over land between Muslim herders and mostly Christian farmers, as the impact of climate change threatens agricultural livelihoods.
Mangu's Muslims and Christians mostly belong to the Mwaghavul tribe, and have lived side by side for decades before the 2024 violence.
The town's central mosque was located in the Christian-dominated district, and the town's biggest church once stood in a Muslim-majority quarter.
Both yellow buildings were torched and destroyed when the farming town of around 300,000 people was ravaged as assailants raided rival districts with guns and machetes after a dispute over land, water and cattle grazing, in January last year.
Twenty-two months later, the charred walls of Umar bin Khatab Juma'at mosque and a roofless and windowless Cocin Kwhagas Lahir church -- still stand as a reminder of the day the town temporarily lost its peace.
"We thank God for the relative peace that has reigned in Mangu," said resident Muhammad Kamilu Aliu, 37, at a hardware market. "There is no more crisis here again".
District head Moses Dawop, underlines the "peace we have been crying for is gaining ground".
Across Mangu, Muslims and Christians are back to doing business together, with religious and community leaders intent on rebuilding trust in the community.
Mangu's main market is abuzz with sellers and buyers mingling while elsewhere on the town's dusty streets, children play, rolling disused motorcycle tyres.
But the local chairman of the Christian Association of Nigeria, Timothy Samson Dalang, and the town's main imam, Ibrahim Hudu Manomi, say that there is still much to be done.
"We've been working day and night to see how we can get ourselves back to the former self that we used to be, as peaceful as we used to be," Manomi said.
For Dalang, cooperation among the religious leaders has been instrumental in thwarting attempts by "hoodlums who are bent to sabotage the peace process" for "selfish reasons."
Rebuilding homes, places of worship and schools torched during the unrest is also taking time.
Leaders want to restore trust first among the followers of the two religions to pre-conflict levels before reconstruction can take place.
Nigerians are wary of Trump's threat to strike radical Islamists.
For many in this central state -- a hotbed of inter-communal violence -- religious persecution is an alien concept and they fear that the White House narrative could roll back years of peacebuilding.
Trump's allegations of Christian persecution will "take us back to square one," said Ghazali Isma'ila Adam, the chief imam of the Plateau state capital Jos.
Jihadists "attack everybody, be it Muslims, Christians, pagans," said Idris Suleiman Gimba, 54, a Muslim restaurateur in northeastern Borno State's capital city, Maiduguri, the epicentre of the 16-year-long jihadist insurgency.
Gimba lost 10 family members in a mosque bombing in neighbouring Yobe State in 2014, during the height of the conflict.
Saidu Sufi, a political science teacher in northwestern Kano state, said terrorists and bandits often hide under religion to carry out their criminal activities.
"We have seen in parts of the northwest where bandits use religious cover by starting their campaign of violence by quoting scripture," Sufi said. "But it is not religious."
For Adams Mamza, 28, a Christian Maiduguri resident working for a car rental firm, Trump's intervention is only welcome if "they can target it on these bandits, Boko Haram, the insurgents."
President Bola Tinubu told his ministers on Thursday as cabinet met for the first time since Trump's threats, that "we want our friends to help us as we step up our fight against terrorism, and we will eliminate it".
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