Video - Nigerian parliament approves funds to revive Ajaokuta steel plant

After 38 years, Nigeria’s parliament has finally approved $1bn to revive one of Africa's biggest steel plants. The approval came after an exclusive Al Jazeera report on how corruption was blocking the company's revival.

Video - Nigeria, Cameroon kept apart in final draw of Under-17 AFCON

Rivals Nigeria and Cameroon found themselves at the opposite ends following the draw for the final tournament of the Under-17 Africa Cup of Nations Tanzania 2019.

Video - Can Nigeria’s next president revive the country’s economy?

A new report alleges that Nigeria has now replaced India as the country with the highest number of people living in extreme poverty. Nigeria has the highest GDP in Africa, but according to a study by Brookings earlier this year, a record 87 million people are living in poverty. Segun Sowunmi, spokesman for opposition candidate Atiku Abubakar, says that President Buhari is responsible for the country’s high unemployment and inflation. 

But President Muhammadu Buhari’s spokesman, Festus Keyamo, argues that the economic woes are “a direct consequence of the prior state of the economy they left that we’re trying to rebuild.” Now, he says, things “are on upward swing.” Atiku Abubakar has promised that if elected, he will lift at least 50 million people out of extreme poverty within the first two years of his presidency. “We are aware that there is a ticking time bomb for Africa, especially for Nigeria, with our young population, if we don’t deal with unemployment,” said Sowunmi. But is ending poverty for 50 million people that quickly, a feat that has never been achieved before, even possible?

In this UpFront web extra, we discuss the future of Africa’s biggest economy and debate who is the best candidate to lead it into the future.

Al Jazeera

Nigeria to host Egypt in football friendly on 26th of March 2019

The Egypt Football Association has announced that the Pharaohs will play Nigeria in a friendly on 26 March.

The match will be played in Nigeria during the international break in March.

Both nations have already qualified for the 2019 Africa Cup of Nations finals but will play their final qualifying games ahead of the friendly encounter.

Nigeria host Seychelles in Group E while Egypt travel to face Niger in Group J.

Egypt and Nigeria met in 2017 Nations Cup qualifying with The Pharaohs earning a 1-1 draw away from home before winning 1-0 in Alexandria to qualify for the finals ahead of the Super Eagles.

It will be the 18th meeting between the two sides with Nigeria holding the upper-hand having won seven times to Egypt's five with another five matches drawn.

BBC

Fear of Nigeria becoming a Narco State

In the early hours of a humid November morning, a 16-car convoy rolled into Obinugwu village in southeast Nigeria and stopped outside the iron gates of a non-descript house.

More than 50 drug enforcement officials crept through the compound and surrounded the methamphetamine lab hidden by overgrown jungle behind the property.

The bust happened just before daybreak. Dozens were arrested, including the suspected kingpin at his mansion in the nearby city of Owerri.

“It took one year of surveillance,” a National Drug Law Enforcement Agency (NDLEA) officer, who was involved in the raid, told AFP. “They were all sleeping. We took them by surprise.” Inside the lab there was 78 kilograms (171 pounds) of meth — a drug as notorious for its exhilarating highs as its life-destroying, addictive lows.

But the haul, worth tens of thousands of dollars, was not for domestic consumption. Instead, it was probably destined for South Africa and Asia, investigators said.

Drug trafficking is nothing new to Nigeria, which has long been a transit point for cocaine and heroin going to Europe and North America. The difference is that now Nigerians are producing the drugs.

With vast quantities of chemicals entering the country, porous borders and corrupt law enforcement, Nigeria is an ideal place to produce the drug.

Since the country’s first meth lab was discovered in 2011, authorities have found 14 more producing mass quantities of the stimulant, while seizures of the drug have jumped from 177 kilos in 2012 to 1,363 kilos in 2016.

“It (meth production) is on the increase, significantly on the increase. Meth today is a serious threat to Nigeria,” said Sunday Zirangey, NDLEA Special Enforcement Team commander.

“If this continues, Nigeria may turn into a narco-state.” Glen Prichard, Nigeria project coordinator with the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, agreed. “Nigeria is potentially following the same footsteps as Mexico that led to instability, organised crime and an infiltrated government,” he added.

Church massacre 

Reliable data on meth production in Nigeria is hard to come by and seizures are small compared with global giants Mexico and Myanmar.

But evidence on the ground points to a much larger industry. Nigeria‘s estimated need for the stimulant ephedrine, which is used as a medical decongestant, is 771 kilos, according to a US State Department report on international narcotics.

Yet Nigeria imports over eight tons a year, with the difference suspected of either being used to produce meth or trafficked elsewhere. Despite the risks of arrest and even execution for traffickers in Asia, the profits are irresistible in a country where the minimum wage is just 18,000 naira ($50, 44 euros) a month.

A kilo of meth sells for $3,500 on the streets of Lagos but by the time it reaches South Africa it is worth $12,000 and $150,000 in Japan — and the stakes are rising. Last year, the fight for control of the lucrative South African market more than 6,000 kilometres (3,700 miles) away came to St Philip’s Parish in Ozubulu, a village in the southeast Nigerian state of Anambra. Thirteen people were shot dead in an apparent reprisal attack between Nigerian drug barons operating in Johannesburg.

Piles of trash line the dirt road leading to Ozubulu, where an endless stream of people hawk everything from adulterated fuel to plastic flip-flops. But among the grinding poverty are huge villas with grand columns and intricate wrought iron gates — glaring anomalies in a region with epileptic power and disintegrating roads. In August last year, unknown gunmen interrupted the 6:00 am Sunday mass in Ozubulu, hoping to kill Aloysius Nnamdi Ikegwuonu, a Johannesburg drugs kingpin known as “The Bishop”.

He wasn’t there but his father and a one-year-old child were among the victims. Details of the shooting remain clouded in secrecy. “What we had is gunshots, sporadic and reckless shootings. That’s what I can say,” said parish priest Father Jude Onwuaso standing by the victims’ marble graves wearing a sky-blue cassock. Ozubulu has made headlines for drugs before. In 2015, the NDLEA busted a meth lab belonging to Ikejiaku Sylvester Chukwunwendu, also known as “Blessed Benita”. He was charged with meth production and trafficking in the village. “He’s one of the biggest kingpins we’ve got,” said state prosecutor Lambert Nor, who said some of Chukwunwendu’s couriers had been executed in China for drug trafficking.

Ideal conditions

As the popular US television series “Breaking Bad” showed, meth can be made by almost everyone in their own kitchen if they have the right ingredients and background knowledge in chemistry. Cocaine and heroin, on the other hand, are bigger-ticket enterprises. They require land dedicated to plantations and a specific climate to grow the crop. But Nigerians were paying thousands of dollars a week to Mexicans, Colombians and Bolivians to teach them a new form of production that pumps out bigger, purer batches of meth.

Two years ago, Nigerian authorities arrested four Mexicans from Sinaloa, the epicentre of one of the world’s biggest drug trafficking cartels and birthplace of the infamous drug lord Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman. “When you found labs before you always had Mexicans and Bolivians behind it but now the Nigerians are on their own and they do even better,” said Kayode Raji, NDLEA assistant commander in Imo State.

Experts fear that as production increases, meth will find a domestic market like in South Africa, where “tik” — as it’s known on the street — has been described as an “epidemic” and is the most abused drug in the Western Cape province. But there is no easy way to stop the rise of meth in Nigeria. “It will become uncontrollable unless decisive measures are taken,” said Nor, warning: “Otherwise what we have in Mexico will be a small thing compared to Nigeria.”

Vanguard