NAIJAFEED

Friday, February 5, 2021

Nigeria strengthens efforts to ensure school safety

The Nigerian Police has launched the Safer School Initiative campaign to strengthen school safety across the country, a police officer said Thursday.

The campaign is initiated under the nation’s public security framework to build a safe, peaceful and secure society, Ebere Amaraizu, the national coordinator of Police Campaign Against Cultism and Other Vices (POCACOV), told reporters in the southeast Nigerian city of Enugu.

The center has printed information booklets for students nationwide, Amaraizu said, adding that the move will “help them not yield to pressures of manipulation of minds by their peers and any other person.”

Additionally, “POCACOV fan clubs” will be built in all schools nationwide to improve education on school safety, he said.

CGTN

Nigeria State Says 16 Kidnapped Boys Rescued by Security Agents

Boko Haram claims responsibility for kidnapping hundreds of boys in Nigeria

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Nigerian separatist Nnamdi Kanu's Facebook account removed for hate speech

Facebook says it removed the page of Nigerian separatist leader Nnamdi Kanu for violating its rules on harm and hate speech.

Mr Kanu's page was removed for repeated violation of its community rules, the social networking site told the BBC.

He had posted a video of a militia group attacking and killing cattle in a herders' settlement.

He also used the live broadcast to accuse herders of destroying farmlands in eastern Nigeria.

The conflict between herders and other groups is currently one of Nigeria's hottest political issues.

Mr Kanu leads the Indigenous People of Biafra (Ipob), which campaigns for independence for Nigeria's south-eastern region, where the ethnic Igbo people form the majority.

The herders are mostly from the northern Fulani community.

Mr Kanu, who also has British nationality, used his Facebook page as a key platform to communicate with his followers around the world.

The account was blocked on Tuesday.

'Suppressing the truth'

The militia carrying out the attack in the video he posted are suspected to be from the Eastern Security Network, which Mr Kanu set up.

A Facebook spokesperson told BBC Igbo: "In line with our rules, we removed Nnamdi Kanu's page for repeatedly posting content that break those Community Standards, including content that violated our rules on coordinating harm and hate speech."

Ipob says it will appeal against the ban, describing the action of Facebook "as not only baffling but too petty".

"We wonder why a global social media giant like Facebook would allow itself to be used by agents of oppression in Nigeria to suppress the truth," head of media Emma Powerful said.

Ipob is proscribed in Nigeria, which labelled it a terrorist organisation in 2017.

Nnamdi Kanu came to fame in 2009 when he started Radio Biafra and broadcast to Nigeria from London, using the platform to call for Biafran independence and urging his followers to take up arms against the Nigerian state.

Who are Ipob?

. Founded by Nnamdi Kanu in 2014

. Proscribed as a terrorist group by Nigeria in 2017

. The group wants states in south-east Nigeria, made up mainly of people from the Igbo ethnic group, to break away and form the independent nation of Biafra

. Mr Kanu was arrested in 2015 in Nigeria and spent more than a year-and-a-half in jail without trial on treason charges

. At least 150 Ipob members were killed by Nigerian security forces between August 2015 and August 2016, according to Amnesty International

. Mr Kanu, a British citizen, jumped bail and fled the country in 2017

BBC

The Biafra secessionist movement in Nigeria

Korean Ends WTO Bid, Clearing Path for Nigeria’s Okonjo-Iweala

South Korean Trade Minister Yoo Myung-hee withdrew her bid to lead the World Trade Organization, leaving former Nigerian Finance Minister Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala as the only remaining candidate for the job and setting up a key decision by WTO members to approve her appointment.

Yoo decided after discussions with the U.S. and other major nations, and took various issues into account including the need to revitalize the multilateral organization, according to a statement from Korea’s trade ministry on Friday.

“There was no consensus,” Yoo said. “So we needed enough time for in-depth consultations with important members, including the U.S.”

The withdrawal comes after dozens of former U.S. government officials urged President Joe Biden to endorse Okonjo-Iweala after the Trump administration blocked her selection in 2020, making the U.S. and Korea the only holdouts favoring Yoo. That opposition was enough to halt the selection process because WTO decisions are made on the basis of a consensus of its members.

By quitting the race, Yoo would appear to be clearing Okonjo-Iweala’s path to secure the leadership of the Geneva-based institution. But as the Biden administration forms its trade team, few clues have emerged publicly about whether it will lift U.S. opposition to Okonjo-Iweala’s candidacy. The U.S. mission at WTO headquarters didn’t immediately respond to Bloomberg’s request for comment.

First Woman

The 66-year-old Nigerian economist, who is also a U.S. citizen, emerged as the front-runner for the WTO director-general post last year. If the U.S., Korea and the WTO’s other 162 members join a consensus to appoint Okonjo-Iweala, the WTO can announce a meeting to confirm her appointment within a matter of days.

If confirmed, Okonjo-Iweala would be the first woman and the first African to lead the organization in its 25-year history.

The WTO has been leaderless since September, when the organization’s former Director-General Roberto Azevedo stepped down a year before his term was set to expire. Since then the WTO has been overseen by four unelected deputy directors general.

The appointment of a new WTO director-general will help the organization confront an array of internal crises that have ground its work to a near halt.

The trade forum is largely dysfunctional and all three pillars of its work are under threat. The WTO has struggled to produce meaningful multilateral trade agreements, its trade monitoring function consistently underperforms and former President Donald Trump neutralized its appellate body in 2019, which effectively sidelined the organization’s role as the global arbiter of international commerce.

Though the power of the WTO leader is limited by the directives of its members, the director-general can convene meetings, and offer suggestions and strategies for addressing conflicts in the global trading system.

Okonjo-Iweala has pledged to take a more active role as director-general and to act as a sounding board to try to find common ground among the trade body’s disparate membership.

By Sam Kim and Bryce Baschuk

Bloomberg

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Fortune magazine lists Okonjo-Iweala in top 50 greatest world leaders

Judge issues arrest warrant for ExxonMobil Nigeria chief

A federal court in Abuja has signed off on a warrant to arrest the head of oil major ExxonMobil in Nigeria to compel him to appear before anti-graft investigators, a statement for the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) said on Wednesday.

The EFCC said it sought the warrant after Richard Laing, managing director of ExxonMobil Nigeria, rebuffed three invitations to appear before investigators probing alleged procurement fraud involving a pipelines project.

Justice Okon Abang granted the EFCC’s bench warrant application on January 29, the EFCC said. It has not charged Exxon or others with wrongdoing, and its investigation is ongoing.

EFCC spokesman Wilson Uwujaren told Reuters news agency that the investigation is into the company, and not Laing personally.

“EFCC invited them in the course of the investigation but they have refused to honour the invitation, that is why we went to court to compel his appearance for investigation,” Uwujaren said.

A spokesman for Exxon declined to comment. Laing did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The EFCC said the investigation related to the alleged fraudulent creation of procurement orders worth more than $213m as part of a pipelines project.

Last year, Nigeria suspended EFCC head Ibrahim Magu after the attorney general accused the agency of diverting funds that had been recovered during investigations into corruption.

Al Jazeera

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Video - Four Nigerian farmers sued Shell for the oil pollution

Wednesday, February 3, 2021

Video - Nigeria spent $4.65 billion on food importation in 2020

Nigeria's government spent 4.65 billion dollars on food importation between January and September 2020. That's a 62 percent rise compared to the previous year. CGTN's Kelechi Emekalam reports that the increase in food costs was despite the West African nation imposing a land border closure aimed at boosting local production.