Nigerian government wants to meet with militants after ceasefire cancelled

The minister for Nigeria’s oil-producing Delta region said on Monday the government was ready to meet militants days after they called off a year-long ceasefire.

Usani Uguru Usani asked the Niger Delta Avengers to be patient and said the government was pushing through development schemes in the southern territory where rights groups have long complained about poverty and pollution.


The Avengers - whose attacks on energy facilities in the Niger Delta last year helped push Africa’s biggest economy into recession - called off the ceasefire on Friday.

The announcement threatened to push one of Nigeria’s economic heartlands further into turmoil and disrupt the country’s fragile recovery.

It also piled pressure onto President Muhammadu Buhari who is already facing the jihadist Boko Haram insurgency in the northeast and rising calls for secession in the southeast.

“If the Avengers wants to meet with us, we are ready to meet with them ... We are at all times ready to engage them and other groups and stakeholders,” Usani told reporters at the presidential villa in Abuja.

“My message to the Avengers is that they should be patient with the government. We have been doing what we can to ensure the development of the region. Everything has a phase of planning and a phase of execution so I will advise all stakeholders to remain calm,” he added.

The government has been in talks for more than a year to address grievances over poverty and oil pollution but local groups have complained that no progress has been made, despite Buhari receiving a list of demands at a meeting last November.

Attacks in 2016 cut oil production from a peak of 2.2 million barrels per day (mbpd) to near 1 mbpd, the lowest level in Africa’s top oil producer for at least 30 years.


The attacks, combined with low oil prices, caused the OPEC member’s first recession in 25 years. Crude sales make up two-thirds of government revenue and most of its foreign exchange.

Nigeria came out of recession in the second quarter of this year as prices strengthened, attacks ended and oil production rose.

Reuters

British hostage killed in Nigeria, three others freed

A British national kidnapped in Nigeria’s southern Delta state was killed and three others released, the BBC reported, citing the U.K.’s Foreign Office.

The four were reportedly abducted on October 13, according to the BBC. The state is part of the country’s oil-producing Niger River region, where armed militants have kidnapped foreigners and Nigerians in the past, demanding ransoms for their release.

The British High Commission and Nigerian authorities negotiated the release of the three hostages who survived and the kidnapping is being investigated, a spokesperson for the British Foreign Office, whose name was not given, was quoted as saying.

Bloomberg

Militant group Niger Delta Avengers to end ceasefire in Nigeria

Nigerian militant group Niger Delta Avengers said on Friday its ceasefire on attacks in the country’s southern oil-rich region was at an end.

“We can assure you that every oil installation in our region will feel the warmth of the wrath of the Niger Delta Avengers,” the group said in a statement on its website.

Attacks on oil facilities in the Niger Delta in 2016 cut Nigeria’s oil production to its lowest level in at least 30 years. 

Reuters

Nigerians in Chinese prisons request transfer to Nigerian prisons

Many prisoners have inundated Nigeria, asking to be transferred from Chinese prisons, but such transfers are impossible for now.

Transfer of prisoners from China to Nigeria can only be possible if there is a signed treaty to the effect by the two countries.

There is no treaty between the countries for prisoners’ transfer, when that exists the transfer of prisoners would be possible, the Senior Special Assistant to the President on Foreign Affairs and Diaspora, Mrs Abike Dabiri-Erewa, has said.

Dabiri-Erewa said at the seminar on Nigeria-China relations in Abuja on Thursday that, “We get a lot of appeals and some prisoners say they want to move from one prison there to another, it is not going to happen”.

“We have been talking to them but their law is their law. My appeal to Nigerians is to obey the laws of that country because it is getting tougher; they have sanctions and they follow through.”

She also said that Nigerian businesses were thriving in China.

Dabiri-Erewa urged Nigerian citizens in China to abide by the laws of that country.

She said that there were about 500 Nigerians in Chinese prisons for various offences.

She also refuted claims that there were thousands of Nigerians detained in Chinese prisons.

“You hear 2000 but that is exaggerated. I think we have less than 500 Nigerians in Chinese prisons.

She urged Nigerians to learn from the Chinese culture of discipline and persistence in promoting national development.

“Discipline and leadership are what we should learn from China; they have a plan for the next 20 years, even the young ones in schools are being groomed for that plan.

“They also have we can do spirit, it is working for them.

She also called for continuous support for the current administration’s effort in the fight against corruption.

PUNCH

Video - Nigeria child mortality due to pollution-related illnesses rises

The deaths of children in Nigeria from pollution-related illnesses are on the increasing.

And oil operations in the Niger Delta region are being blamed.

Researchers say 16,000 infants died in 2012 - but that figure continues to grow with greater contamination of food, air and water.