Canada working with U.S. in Nigeria to reduce issuing visas for asylum seekers

Canada has officials working with U.S. visa officers in Lagos, Nigeria, as Ottawa leans on its neighbor to stop issuing so many visas to Nigerians who then make refugee claims in Canada.

The Canadian government is trying to stem the flow of asylum seekers illegally walking across the U.S. border even as their ranks grow: About 2,500 asylum seekers crossed into Canada to file refugee claims in April, according to estimates from the federal immigration and refugee department — the highest level since August and almost triple last April’s figure.

More than 26,000 people illegally crossed the Canada-U.S. border in the past 15 months to file refugee claims.

The Canadian government says many of the more recent arrivals are Nigerians who arrived bearing valid U.S. visas after having spent very little time in the United States.

“It is apparent that they obtained those visas with the express intent to actually go to Canada. ... We’ve been sharing that information with the United States with the view of preventing the abuse of U.S. visas,” a Canadian immigration department spokeswoman told Reuters in an email.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and his ministers faced pointed questions this week after Reuters reported that Canada wants U.S. help turning back thousands of asylum seekers.

A Canadian official familiar with the matter told Reuters that Canada wants to amend a bilateral agreement to allow it to block border-crossing refugee claimants.

Canada has asked for this change “at least a dozen” times since September, the official said.

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security has said it is reviewing Canada’s proposal but has not made a decision.

Two Canadian officials have been sent to Lagos to work directly with their counterparts in the U.S. visa office, a spokeswoman for Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada said in an email on Wednesday.

The officials are “meeting regularly to exchange information on migration movements” with the aim of lowering the number of people who go through the United States to Canada using a U.S. visa.

Since June, Canadian police have intercepted more than 7,600 Nigerian asylum seekers, 81 percent of whom had a valid U.S. non-immigrant visa, the spokeswoman added.

A spokeswoman for the U.S. State Department wrote that “consular officers in the field often coordinate with our close partners from other countries to discuss matters of shared concern.” She did not elaborate on the role the Canadian officials are playing.

Trudeau’s government is under pressure to appear in control of the country’s border and refugee system while obeying Canadian law and maintaining its image as compassionate and welcoming of newcomers.

Reuters

Nigerian internet scammers targeting corporate email accounts

West Africa’s infamous internet scammers have evolved, dropping their impersonations of online love interests, princes and U.S. soldiers in favor of hijacking corporate emails, costing businesses hundreds of millions of dollars a year.

It is a much more lucrative venture that works by gaining access to corporate email login details or passing off almost-identical addresses as the real deal, a scam known as Business Email Compromise (BEC), according to a report by cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike issued on Thursday.

These Nigerian rackets now dwarf other types of online criminal theft, amounting to at least $5.3 billion of losses between October 2013 and the end of 2016, said CrowdStrike and the U.S. FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3).

“There’s a disproportionate amount of criminal gains they get from it,” Adam Meyers, vice president of intelligence at California-based CrowdStrike, told Reuters. “The lion’s share of ill-gotten, fraudulent money is around these business email compromise attacks. It’s a huge problem for our customer set.”

Nigeria has become one of the hubs of BEC. Nigerian online fraudsters, known as “Yahoo boys”, became notorious for trying to pass themselves off as people in financial need or Nigerian princes offering an outstanding return on an investment.

The capers became known as “419 scams” after the section of the national penal code that dealt - ineffectively - with fraud.

Yahoo boys even impersonated a U.S. forces commander in Afghanistan to defraud people by asking for help in recovering the assets of deceased soldiers. It forced the commander to issue a Facebook statement saying he would never try to contact anyone asking for financial help.

Now the scammers have bigger fish to fry, with the potential gains amounting to hundreds of millions of dollars a year, according to CrowdStrike.

Behind the fraudsters is an organized crime network with its hands in human trafficking, drugs, prostitution, money laundering and email fraud and cybercrime, the CrowdStrike report said. “The magnitude of this criminal threat has only recently begun to be understood,” it said.

The Black Axe gang sprang from Nigerian universities and now extends from Africa to North America, Europe and Asia. Its targets have ranged from semiconductor makers to schools in U.S. states including Connecticut and Minnesota, passing themselves off as executives and lawyers to trick employees into wiring sometimes millions of dollars a day into bank accounts.

From there, the money is quickly laundered through a series of bank accounts that can be traced to Hong Kong and China, where the trail often goes cold because diverging regulations foil monitoring, CrowdStrike’s Meyers said.

With that money, the Nigerian scammers are often enjoying the high life, said Meyers, noting social media accounts filled with pictures of them posing with luxury Mercedes cars, gold watches, jewellery and champagne.

“It’s really hard to stop; you can’t stop it with anti-virus or any kind of software, it’s really kind of a human problem.”

Reuters

Video - Trump calls on Nigeria to remove trade barriers

Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari has become the first sub-Saharan African leader to meet US President Donald Trump at the White House. On the agenda was security, trade and the economy - but one infamous topic was not discussed.

Nigeria turns to renewable energy as population grows

Faced with a population boom that has sent carbon emissions soaring and stretched power supplies to breaking point, oil-rich Nigeria is turning to renewable energy in a big way.

Africa’s most populous country needs more than 10 times its current electricity output to guarantee supply for its 198 million people - nearly half of whom have no access at all, according to power minister Babatunde Fashola.

Campaigners welcome the shift to renewables as an efficient way to bring power to rural communities and help clean up a country with some of the world’s worst urban pollution rates.

“Ready access to electricity will reduce youth unemployment and increase productivity,” Ifeoma Malo, Nigeria country director at the global campaign group Power For All, told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

“It will contribute greatly to reducing the carbon footprint of a growing energy demand by the urban population.”

Nigeria has set a target of expanding electricity access to 75 percent of the population by 2020 and 90 percent by 2030.

It aims to generate 30 percent of its total energy from renewable sources by 2030, Fashola said in a recent speech in London, a major commitment for an economy that depends heavily on fossil fuels.

Oil and gas production account for around 35 percent of Nigeria’s gross domestic product and about 90 percent of total exports revenue, according to the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC).

Over the past year, the country has invested more than $20 billion in solar power projects, seeking to boost the capacity of the national grid and reduce reliance on it by building mini-grids in rural areas without mains electricity.

Just one in four people in rural Nigeria is connected to the national grid, adding to a trend of outward migration that is piling pressure on Nigeria’s already overburdened cities.

POWER CUTS

Power demand in Nigeria’s largest city Lagos vastly outstrips supply, meaning its 25 million residents must either go without, or rely on expensive, fume-belching generators.

In January the country suffered six power outages in just eight days as the national grid repeatedly collapsed under the strain, plunging most of the country into darkness.

Urbanization and rapid population growth will only add to the problem - Nigeria’s population is projected to swell from 198 to 411 million by 2050, and more and more people are moving to its cities.

By the start of 2020, demand for energy is forecast to be more than double its early 2018 levels.

Nigeria currently has the capacity to produce an estimated 7,000 megawatts (MW) of power, but due to weak infrastructure, gas supply problems and water shortages only about 4,000 MW reaches the national grid, according to Fashola.

The government is investing in hydropower, with several projects close to completion.

The largest is the Mambilla Power Station in central Nigeria, a $5.79 billion project due to be completed in 2024 with most of the financing coming from Chinese lenders.


It will be able to generate 3,050 MW of renewable energy in the rural region, and is scheduled to be completed in 2024.

Given the country’s climate though, most of the focus is on generating solar power.

A $350 million World Bank loan will be used to build 10,000 solar-powered mini-grids by 2023 in rural areas, bringing power to hospitals, schools and households, said Damilola Ogunbiyi, managing director of the Rural Electrification Agency.

RURAL AREAS

One of these projects, Sabon Gari, aims to generate between 1-4 MW of solar energy for 12,000 small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in Nigeria’s second largest city, Kano, by the end of the year.

The chief executive of the energy company behind the project, Rensource, said companies’ energy costs had fallen at least 30 percent since they started using the solar grids.

“Up until now, the entire market has been powered by a network of small-scale, dirty, unhealthy generators that are also quite expensive,” Ademola Adesina told the Thomson Reuters Foundation in a telephone interview.

“We are replacing those generators with a network of solar hybrid systems that are powering the entire market.”

Rensource hopes to expand to rural areas, where the World Bank estimates 80 million Nigerians live without electricity.

Power For All’s Malo said small-scale projects such as these offered the best chance of bringing power to remote areas.

“The Rural Electrification Agency realizes that the traditional, public-sector-led grid extension system will not meet the demands of the growing population,” he said.

Reuters

Nigeria Super Eagle and Arsenal player says Wenger exit sad and exciting

Nigeria and Arsenal's, Alex Iwobi, says Arsene Wenger's impending departure from the north London club after 22 years is both "sad" and "exciting".

Iwobi told BBC Sport that Wenger has been the cornerstone of his career.

"It's sad for me. He has been inspirational," the 22-year-old said.

"He has done a lot for me in a short time in my career so it's a bit sad but it is also exciting times. We don't know who is going to come in, we are just waiting."

Wenger announced last month that he will leave Arsenal at the end of the season.

Iwobi was speaking ahead of his team's Europa League second leg semi-final tie against Atletico Madrid in Spain, on Thursday.

He said he and his teammates would like to give Wenger a fitting send-off by winning the cup.

"He deserves the right send-off so we should end the season as strong as we can for him," he added.

"What he wants is for us to finish the season strong and try and win the Europa League. That's the best present we can try and give him."

The Gunners and Atletico Madrid played a 1-1 draw in the first leg at Emirates.

The final of the Europa League will be played in Lyon on May 16.

BBC