Gunmen have taken students from Kaduna college in Nigeria.
Related stories: Video - 279 kidnapped Zamfara schoolgirls releasedThe United Kingdom and Nigeria have signed a deal to return to the latter 4.2 million pounds ($5.84m) recovered from a former state governor who was jailed in London for money laundering.
James Ibori, who was the governor of southern Nigeria’s oil-producing Delta state from 1999 to 2007, pleaded guilty at London’s Southwark Crown Court in 2012 to 10 counts of fraud and money-laundering.
He received a 13-year jail sentence and spent four years behind bars for using public funds to buy luxury homes, top-of-the-range cars and a private jet.
“This is the first time that money recovered from criminals will be returned to Nigeria [from the UK] since an agreement was signed in 2016 to recover and return the proceeds of bribery or corruption in a responsible and transparent way,” the UK’s home and foreign office said in a statement.
Abubakar Malami, Nigeria’s attorney general, said the funds will be used to help complete a number of infrastructure projects, including a road connecting the capital, Abuja, and the northern commercial hub Kano.
“I am confident that both the Nigerian and British governments remain committed to all affirmative actions to combat corruption … [and] illicit financial flows,” Malami said at a ceremony at which officials from the two countries signed an agreement on the return of the funds.
The UK’s Home Office Minister Baroness Williams described the deal as “a significant moment”, saying it sent a clear message “to criminals that we will relentlessly pursue them, their assets and their money”, while Minister for Africa James Duddridge said the two countries “will continue to work together to tackle crime and corruption”.
Ibori was at some point one of Nigeria’s richest and most powerful men.
Anti-corruption campaigners had hailed the case as a milestone for Nigeria, where no one of his stature had been successfully prosecuted, and for its former colonial ruler Britain, long seen as too complacent about the proceeds of Nigerian corruption being laundered in the UK.
Related story: James Ibori denied appeal for jail term reduction
Back in 2017, the idea of Bitcoin in Nigeria was an interesting one that generally got the attention of two main categories of people: the early adopters with an interest in emerging technologies and the “hustlers” that are always on the lookout for new ways to make money. The latter category consisted of the same people that turned to the Mavrodi Mundial Movement (MMM), one of the world’s largest Ponzi scheme, when it became popular in 2016.
Unfortunately, the average Nigerian has struggled greatly in the country’s current economy, and many have been forced to seek out alternatives that offered tangible opportunities to make money. When cryptocurrency exchanges started to show up in Nigeria, they made buying and selling bitcoin more convenient for these categories of people, because the alternative was to buy bitcoin from a stranger with no assurance of getting what you paid for. And, as a result, the country’s cryptocurrency community began to grow.
BITCOIN’S RISE IN NIGERIA
The booming cryptocurrency market in Nigeria today has come a long way from those early days as the adoption rate in Nigeria, Africa’s largest economy, keeps growing year after year. A major reason for the exponential growth of the Nigerian cryptocurrency community can be linked to the country’s predominantly young population — it is significantly more tech-savvy than its parents, and it has taken to the internet in hopes of finding jobs and income that often prove fleeting at home.
Understandably, the young population went digital in its pursuit of a better life. Many younger Nigerians became freelancers in their chosen fields and started offering their services to the international community where their work is valued. But, once again, the challenge of getting paid for their work because of their location was difficult. In the same vein, Nigerians in the diaspora also experienced a similar challenge when sending money back home, as exorbitant charges from foreign banks and money transfer companies discouraged many from doing so.
Meanwhile, things kept getting worse for the average Nigerian, with the naira experiencing incessant inflation, making the country’s fiat a poor store of value; traditional banks charging ridiculous fees for simple transactions; and a rise in the unemployment rate. In the midst of all of these issues, the gospel of Bitcoin kept spreading as the foremost cryptocurrency’s major features made it look like it was specifically designed to save Nigerians.
WHY BITCOIN IS SUCCESSFUL IN NIGERIA
Bitcoin’s decentralized features, its ability to furnish cheaper and faster transactions and its rising value ultimately turned the attention of many Nigerians to it, so that in a 2020 COVID-19 halted world, Bitcoin had finally found a home in Nigeria. And this reflected in the numbers, as our cryptocurrency exchange, Yellow Card, processed over $200 million in cryptocurrency volume in 2020, with most of that volume coming from Nigeria. Blockchain.com also reported that there was an increase from Nigeria in the number of new Bitcoin wallets created on its platform.
Bitcoin offered the glimmer of hope that many Nigerians desperately needed as they could finally see the chance of attaining financial freedom to be more likely than ever. And, in the following ways, Bitcoin has become successful in Nigeria:
1. As a store of value: The naira’s continuous inflation has made many lose confidence in keeping their hard-earned money in fiat. Bitcoin offers a better alternative as its adoption across the world increases, thus driving up its demand and, consequently, its price.
2. As a better investment alternative: Many Nigerians have turned to trading and investing in bitcoin as a form of passive income and, despite the cryptocurrency’s volatile nature, the returns over time have seen many become millionaires.
3. As an enabler of easy transactions: The sending and receiving of money across the border for the payment of goods and services, or to loved ones, has never been easier with bitcoin, thanks to its cheaper network rate and faster transfer time than traditional remittance systems.
While a recent directive from the nation’s apex bank reiterating that regulated financial institutions are not authorized to offer services to cryptocurrency exchanges, the interest in Bitcoin has only continued to grow in the country as, coincidentally, institutional investments have propelled the price of bitcoin past $57,000, as of the third week of February.
It is, therefore, no longer a matter of if Bitcoin will continue to bloom in Nigeria, but a matter of how long before it reaches everyone in the country. The Central Bank of Nigeria’s directive may take some exchanges in the country offline for the time being, but peer-to-peer transactions, which have always been an extremely popular and active trading method in Nigeria, will only grow more quickly.
By Joel Ogunjimi and Chris Maurice
Related stories: Bitcoin: Nigeria bites back against cryptocurrency tradingAt least one person has been shot dead and two others injured as hundreds of kidnapped Nigerian schoolgirls who had been released were reunited with their parents, eyewitnesses told CNN.
The girls were abducted on Friday by armed men who raided their state-run school in Nigeria's northwest Zamfara State, police said. A spokesman for the area's regional governor Bello Matawalle said Tuesday that all 279 girls had been safely returned and accounted for.
But violence broke out as the schoolgirls were reunited with their parents in Jangebe on Wednesday, eyewitnesses told CNN.
Witnesses said parents who wanted to take their children home grew impatient with government officials who were making speeches. The officials also told parents they planned to keep the girls at the school overnight before sending them home, observers said.
Video obtained by journalists on the ground showed the relatives yelling and storming into the hall where the girls and officials were. Youths who came in with the adults started throwing rocks at government officials, parents said. Soldiers then opened fire, which led to further chaos with parents scrambling to grab their daughters.
One parent, Safiyanu Jangebe, told CNN: "We got tired of waiting. The government officials were talking and talking while we were just waiting to take our kids. They started saying that they would hand over the girls to us tomorrow (Thursday). We couldn't take that ... some angry youths started throwing stones at the soldiers. They started firing and shot three kids. One is dead. Why is the government treating us without human feelings?"
Abubakar Shittu's son was one of the teenagers shot. Video provided to CNN from journalists at the hospital showed the boy laying in a bed with a bloody leg.
"After they abducted our daughters look how soldiers came and shot our kids. Now which of these pains are we going to deal [with]," Abubakar said in the video, as he is standing over his unconscious son, who is lying on a hospital bed.
Zamfara Police Commissioner, Abutu Yaro, denied that his men shot at parents and children, calling the reports "fake news."
"I think the parents hurriedly carried their children because they think they come from very far villages, that was what happened," he said. "As for the shooting that is a fake report, I do not have that report on my table."
Immediately after the incident, the local government imposed a dusk-to-dawn curfew on Jangebe, it announced in a statement on Wednesday. "This is to prevent any further breach of peace," read the statement, which did not refer to the shooting.
The girls' abduction is the latest in a string of kidnapping cases. At least 42 people were abducted from a state-run school last month and later released, and more than 300 schoolboys were taken and later freed in December.
Kidnapping for ransom is rife in parts of Nigeria and has become a major security challenge. State governors regularly pay ransoms to secure the safety of victims but rarely admit to doing so.
By Isaac Abrak
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