Tuesday, December 5, 2017

Fuel scarcity hits Nigeria again

In a bid to salvage the fuel supply and distribution challenges witnessed in some parts of the country due to panic buying from motorists, the Group Managing Director of the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC), Maikanti Baru, on Tuesday cut short his trip to London.

Mr. Baru, who was billed to receive the Forbes Oil & Gas Man of the Year Award 2017 in the British Capital on Tuesday, flew back home to attend to what he described as a “matter of urgent national importance.”

Speaking on the development shortly before his departure back to the country, Mr. Baru called on Nigerians to stop panic buying as the Corporation was doing everything within its reach to address the situation.

“For the umpteenth time, I wish to call on all Nigerians to stop panic buying. We have said times without number that NNPC has sufficient products to cater for the needs of all consumers,” Mr. Baru said.

Before leaving for London, the GMD had directed that more truckload of petroleum products be dispatched to various parts of the country to cushion the effects of excessive demand caused by panic buying.

Earlier on Monday, NNPC informed Nigerians that there was no plan whatsoever to increase the prices of petroleum products both at the ex-depot level and pump price ahead of the forthcoming yuletide.

The NNPC in a release said that the ex-depot petrol price of N133.38 per litre and the pump price of N143/N145 per litre have not changed noting that the Corporation has enough stock of fuel to ensure seamless supply and distribution of products across the country.

While assuring that the Corporation has the full commitment of all downstream stakeholders including petroleum marketers and industry unions to cooperate in achieving zero fuel scarcity this season and beyond, the NNPC enjoined motorists and other users of petroleum products to disregard trending rumours of an impending fuel price hike as reported in some news platforms.

The Corporation also noted that its downstream subsidiary companies namely the Petroleum Products Marketing Company (PPMC) and NNPC Retail Limited are fully geared up to ensure that motorists enjoy uninterrupted access to petrol throughout the nation during the yuletide period and beyond.

Monday, December 4, 2017

Video - Nigerian fans wary of their Group D opponents especially Argentina



Nigeria will be facing a familiar foe in the group stages of the 2018 World Cup in Russia. The Super Eagles have been paired against Argentina for the fifth time in its six World Cup appearances. Other teams in the group are Croatia and Iceland and indeed they are no pushovers. CGTN's Deji Badmus has been weighing the reactions of football fans on the streets of Lagos.

Nigerian narrates how he became a slave in Libya

The Edo State indigene, whose emotion-laden interview with CNN’s Nima Elbagir in a Libyan deportation camp, was viewed by millions worldwide, shared his life-experiences in T.B. Joshua’s church on Sunday.

The young barber explained that his father died when he was just 11, adding that he struggled to sponsor himself through school along with his five siblings.

“When I was cutting the hair of one of my customer’s, he advised me to go to Europe where he promised I could earn a lot of money,” Mr. Imasuen recounted.

“I asked the man how much it would cost me. He said N350,000 but I said I only had N140,000 with me,” he said.

Mr. Imasuen had been determinedly saving N10,000 monthly for over one year.

The man promised to ‘help’, not knowing that Mr. Imasuen was naively about to use his own hard-earned cash to sell himself into slavery.

Travelling by road on a tortuous journey through Niger, the young Nigerian explained how one of the vehicles in his convoy had a “terrible accident” in the Sahara Desert, killing 30 people instantly.

“Upon arriving in Libya, the driver said he had not been paid his money and we were sold into the slave trade in Sabha.”

Mr. Imasuen said he and ten other Nigerians were ‘sold’ and then “locked up in one small room.”

More than 200 slaves were kept inside that inhumane cell.

“They started beating me to call my mother to send money. That was when my mother learned I was not in Nigeria – because I did not tell her before I left,” he admitted.

The ransom they demanded – N200,000 – was simply too much for Mr. Imasuen’s poverty-stricken mother to raise.

“For months, I did not hear from her. They kept on beating me everyday and I fell sick. If I went to the toilet, I was shitting blood.”

Mr. Imasuen said he was beaten three times daily for eight gruelling months. That was his fate as a male.

For the ladies sold into slavery, “they would send them out to do prostitution before selling them to another person; I know of a girl there who was sold three times.”

According to him, most of the enslaved females fell pregnant “without even knowing the father of the child.”

When a picture of Mr. Imasuen’s emaciated condition was circulated in his local community, they managed to come together to raise the money to secure his freedom in March 2017.

After gaining his freedom, he attempted to travel to Tripoli, hoping to join the thousands of illegal migrants who would brave the sea to try and reach Italy by boat.

“I didn’t even get to Tripoli before I was caught and taken to prison. I met more than 10,000 Nigerians there. We only eat once a day there – one piece of bread. I would drink salt water.”

While suffering the horrific prison conditions, Mr. Imasuen hatched a plan to reach the deportation camp.

He slipped a note into the female section of the prison, pleading that any of the ladies who was being taken for deportation claim he was their husband.

The ruse worked and Mr. Imasuen was taken to Tripoli’s main deportation camp – one step closer to being repatriated to Nigeria.

It was there he granted an interview to CNN, he said.

“I decided to speak to them, hoping to get help but at the end, nothing came out of it,” he bemoaned.

Through the intervention of the International Organisation for Migration, IOM, Mr. Imasuen was finally deported to Nigeria – with nothing but the clothes on his back to show for his “journey through hell”.

“Upon getting to Nigeria, I decided to come to T.B. Joshua because even before I left, I heard of the help he renders to others. I need prayer.”

Osazee Aghimie, another deportee, equally shared his own sorrowful tale, explaining how over 100 migrants died in the boat he was in after it capsized en route to Italy. He narrowly survived only to be thrown into prison and eventually deported.

T.B. Joshua, who had just turned from the Dominican Republic, gave the two men each N200,000. Mr. Imasuen could not hold back tears as he received the gift.

Mr. Joshua’s support to the duo is not an isolated instance. This week alone, the cleric gave over N4.4 million to Nigerians returning from Libya, and well over N100 million ($277,000) has been provided to them by The SCOAN since 2016.

The illegal sex trafficking trail between Nigeria and Europe

Sandra knew there was always a chance that her clients would kill her.

For three years, she was forced to work as a prostitute on the streets of Moscow, repaying a $45,000 debt to the trafficker who brought her from Nigeria.
"There were five of them," she recalls of one occasion. "They were brutal, they beat me up, they brought out a knife and tried to stab me."

Instead, they pushed her out of the two-story window for not submitting.
Often times, there were more men -- 10, 15, 20 per call.

"They might even kill you if you try to defend yourself," she says. "That's the reason why it is very horrible. And in that process most Nigerian girls lose their life, because not every girl can withstand the pressure of 10 men."

Sandra, not her real name, is one of tens of thousands of Nigerian women who have been trafficked into Europe for sexual exploitation. And many of those women come from a single city.

For decades, Benin City, the capital of Edo State in southern Nigeria, has been tied to trafficking to Europe. Here, a potent mix of poverty and spiritualism drives thousands of young women to make the dangerous journey.

Along its often unpaved, mud-ridden streets there are houses with wide gates and high walls. These belong to the families with a relation who has "made it," says Roland Nwoha, a local NGO worker who has devoted his career to stopping the trade. "Almost every family has a contact in Europe."

Organizations like Nwoha's help educate people about the risks. But he says these few stories of success continue to be a powerful motivator in a city where so many live in desperate conditions.
And in Benin City, the push to leave comes from every direction.

Trapped by fear

Sandra says she was convinced to go by a man she met at church, who said he was an assistant pastor.

She says he told her he had a vision from God that she traveled overseas, that his sister in Russia could get a job in a hair salon. For added insurance, the man had given the items she left behind to a traditional priest.

"We always have had this belief that your future lies in the hand of God," says Nwoha. "Religious leaders, both the traditional and the Christian, are capitalizing on this."
Like so many, Sandra feared the juju -- traditional witchcraft -- as much as she trusted her friend.

Her trafficker took much more than just her passport. "My pants, my bra, the hair from my head, the armpit and my private parts," she says.

The items were for a juju oath, so powerful, a local priest said, that no one dares break it.
For Sandra, it bound her to her home thousands of miles away in Benin City, and the assistant pastor that convinced her to go.

"I saw it with my own eyes. It's like a danger to weak girls, especially when it has to do with sensitive parts of your body."
She believed that her passage to Europe would cost her no more than $2,000. She ended up owing her trafficker $45,000.

The average debt for girls trafficked from Nigeria is around $25,000, but it can be as much as $60,000. None of them have any idea that they will owe these extortionate amounts. The debt, and the fear of juju, keeps them trapped.

Sea of misery

Sandra's journey took her through Lagos and then an onward flight to Europe.

But increasingly the trafficking trade is flowing through the lawlessness of Libya and across the Mediterranean where, according to the UN's International Organization for Migration (IOM), over the past three years there has been a 600 percent rise in the number of potential sex trafficking victims arriving into Italy by sea.
The IOM estimates 80 percent are from Nigeria. The majority are from Benin City.

"When the Europeans started their search and rescue operations, many people in Benin said, 'the road has opened, once you get on the boats you will be rescued," says Nwoha.

But just last month, the bodies of 26 Nigerian women were recovered from the Mediterranean in a single day, bringing this year's total number of migrant deaths in that sea to at least 3,000.

Often, the journey ends in tragedy. More often, the tragedy happens in Libya.

Ede's story

Physically, 28-year-old Ede is finally free, but the pain of what she endured is still raw.

"He used to hurt me, apart from work," she says of the man who purchased her. She was sold into sexual slavery in Libya as she tried to make her way to Europe.
"That is how they do there," says Ede, "When you finish paying your money [to your captor], if you are staying with a wicked somebody, they will sell you to another people so you start all over again."
She was freed after a police raid and eventually deported to Nigeria.
Now, back in Benin City, she sits next to 18-year-old Jennifer, who is too traumatized to talk. They are recent rescues, kept in a safe house run by the National Agency for Prohibition of Trafficking in Persons (NAPTIP).
"Especially they hate us, we Nigerians ... they don't even want to hear anything concerning Nigerians," Ede remembers. "They treated us like a slave, as if we are nothing. So we went through a lot there."

Outside, the house is a non-descript, high walled compound, just like the others in the neighborhood.

Inside, the young women sit in a dark living room, where the hum of an overhead fan, and the Nigerian soap opera on TV are the few comforts in this temporary home as they wait for their cases to be investigated and to be reunited with their families.

Reducing demand
But few cases end up in court. Fewer still end in convictions.

According the US State Department's latest Trafficking In Persons report, last year NAPTIP reported 654 investigations, with 23 convictions for trafficking offenses.

"We're prosecuting the small fries in Nigeria," says Julie Okah-Donli, director general of NAPTIP. "Absolutely the number one problem is the inability of destination countries to clamp down on their own criminal networks.

"We've looked at the root causes in Nigeria without addressing the root causes in the destination countries," she says. "What is being done to reduce the demand for this crime?"

Sandra's case is one of the rare prosecutions. Her trafficker was arrested, as was his sister, who was Sandra's "madam" in Russia, pimping her out to clients. They are both awaiting trial.

"When I was in Russia I said to myself, if I get back to Nigeria alive I will expose her," says Sandra. "She is not going to go unpunished. The wicked don't have any place here, they have to face the law."

Her former church admits her trafficker was a member of the congregation but denies that he was an assistant pastor.
The betrayal that stretched across two continents is now even closer to Sandra.

"Even my own father he said I am not his daughter," she says.

The trafficking is not Nigeria's problem to solve alone, says Okah-Donli, but it is Nigeria's tragedy.

"It's our young boys and girls who are trafficked. Many are not making it back alive and the ones that do are battered and bruised."



Nigeria's international sex-trafficking ring

Friday, December 1, 2017

Video - Nigeria diversifying economy by promoting domestic tourism



Nigeria is now turning its attention to the tourism sector as a means of diversifying its economy away from oil. But what authorities are trying to promote is domestic tourism; getting Nigerians to travel within Nigeria. Tourism experts say that is the way to go and that Nigerians must be ready to embrace the idea for it to work.