Video - Fire breaks out in lagos market

Nigerian firefighters battled a large fire that broke out of a five-story building surrounding a popular market in Central Lagos on Tuesday. Thick black smoke filled the air as residents threw what belongings they could from the building, while some stood on the rooftops using small buckets of water in an attempt to stop the spread. The fire started in the morning and became a major blaze by midday. Officials have not yet said if any people were injured in the fire or commented on the cause of the blaze.

Nollywood movie Lionheart disqualified from Oscars

 The organisers of the Oscars have disqualified Nigeria's first-ever entry for consideration in the International Feature Film category because it has too much dialogue in English, according to reports.

The disqualification of Lionheart - directed by and starring Genevieve Nnaji, one of the biggest stars in the Nigerian film industry widely known as Nollywood - was conveyed in an email to voters for the category, The Wrap reported on Monday.

According to the rules by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, "an international film is defined as a feature-length motion picture (defined as over 40 minutes) produced outside the United States of America with a predominantly non-English dialogue track."

Lionheart has just under 12 minutes of dialogue that is in the Igbo language, while the rest of the 95-minute feature is in English, according to Hollywood Reporter.

The movie was scheduled to be screened to voters for the category, formerly known as best foreign language film, on Wednesday.
'Proudly Nigerian'

Lionheart, in which Nnaji plays Adaeze, a woman who tries to keep her family's transportation business afloat after her father suffers a heart attack, is currently streaming on Netflix.

Nnaji took to Twitter to express her disapproval of the Academy's decision.

Filmmaker Ava Durnay also criticised the Academy in a Twitter post.

"You disqualified Nigeria's first-ever submission for Best International Feature because its in English. But English is the official language of Nigeria. Are you barring this country from ever competing for an Oscar in its official language?"

Many others also took to social media to comment on the Academy's move.

Al Jazeera

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Nigeria border closure extended to end of January 2020

Nigeria will keep its land borders closed to trade until at least January 31, 2020, the customs spokesman told Reuters on Sunday.

Nigeria launched a partial border closure in August to tackle smuggling of rice and other goods. Last month the head of customs confirmed that all trade via land borders was halted indefinitely.

Joseph Attah, spokesman for the Nigerian customs service said the “present phase” of the closure would end on January 31, 2020, and that would not be the end of the closure.

“The operation is in phases, it will continue until the set objective is attained,” Attah told Reuters by phone.

A private memo sent by the customs service comptroller for enforcement, Victor Dimka, to colleagues called the closure operation an “overwhelming success”, but said there were some strategic objectives yet to be achieved.

The memo did not outline which objectives these were.

Reuters

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