NAIJAFEED

Monday, May 17, 2021

1,603 killed, 1,774 abducted in violent attacks across Nigeria in three months

At least 1,603 people were killed in violent attacks across Nigeria between January and March 2021, a report by a non-governmental organisation, Nigeria Mourns, has shown.

The report titled “Violent Incidents Report: January – March 2021″ was published on Sunday.

The group said it gathered its figures through the use of newspaper reports and family sources to track violent killings.

The report also showed that 1,774 people were abducted within the three months under review.

“In the Q1 of 2021, Nigeria continued to experience inordinately high incidents of armed violence with very high body counts. Our tracking shows that at least 1603 persons lost their lives in the country from January – March 2021,” the group said on Twitter.

On the aspect of the perpetrators of the violence, the report revealed that 921 people were killed by suspected bandits, 207 people killed by persons suspected to be members of Boko Haram or its breakaway faction, ISWAP, 205 killed in isolated attacks and 106 lives were claimed by cult clashes.

Also, 79 people died through extra-judicial killings, communal crises led to the death of 53 people and 32 people killed by herdsmen.

A member of the Nigeria Mourns Coalition, Ier Jonathan, said the figures are worrying “but not meant to criticise the government.”

Rising insecurity

Nigeria has been battling with various forms of insecurity for years. This led to agitation by many citizens for state police.

As part of efforts to curb the challenges, South-west governors last year created a regional paramilitary outfit, Amotekun.

Also, the governors of the South-east states resolved to maintain a joint security outfit to be called Ebube Agu in April.

Aside from ordinary citizens, different state governors – Samuel Ortom of Benue State, Babagana Zulum of Borno, and Hope Uzodinma of Imo, among others, have been victims of violence as they or their properties were attacked.

Mr Ortom recently knocked the federal government for being complacent in the face of insecurity.

Governor Abubakar Bello of Niger State in early May told journalists that Boko Haram terrorists have been occupying some communities in the state.

He claimed the terrorists have displaced over 3,000 residents of the affected communities.

Governors want Buhari to address nation

The 17 governors in southern states of Nigeria, on Tuesday, asked the federal government to “convoke a national dialogue as a matter of urgency.”

They called on President Muhammadu Buhari to “address Nigerians on the challenges of insecurity.”

The National Assembly had also called for a national security summit with the House of Representatives already announcing modalities for one of such.

President Muhammadu Buhari has never shown support for such calls. He also did not endorse the establishment of state police.

Buhari’s aide blames ‘evil forces’

Amidst the security challenges, President Buhari’s media aide, Femi Adesina, blamed ‘evil forces’ popularly referred to as ‘Aiye’ in Yoruba as the reason for insecurity in Nigeria.

“…Just as some forces knew the record that was to be achieved by Muhammadu Buhari as Nigerian President, and which he had begun to show since 2015 when he got into office, they positioned themselves against the government

“The lesson? When you are high-flying, the centrifugal forces will come against you, and it would only take the grace of God for you to attain.

“Yoruba people call those forces Aiye. When Aiye is on your case, as it was against Man City, and it is against the Buhari government, you need God, and God alone. Aiye (meaning ‘the world,’ if freely translated) is the negative part of mankind. The pernicious, baleful, sly and scheming part of humanity. If Aiye gets on your matter, you need God and God alone,” his article published on Thursday partly read.

He, however, expressed optimism that Mr Buhari will conquer.

“Who says Nigeria will not rise from its current travails? Who says Aiye will always win? Not where God is involved. And God is involved with Nigeria, our own dear na Under President Buhari, peace and security would be restored. The economy would rebound. Life would be abundant for the people, and Aiye would be left standing small, holding the rump of the flag of a country it thought had gone into oblivion,” he wrote.

By Adejumo Kabir

Premium Times

Wednesday, May 12, 2021

Video - Nigeria's booming investment in cryptocurrency continues despite ban

Global cryptocurrency trading platform Paxful recently announced that Nigeria had become the biggest market for bitcoin and cryptocurrency on its exchange despite the imposition of restrictions on trading in cryptocurrencies by the Central Bank of Nigeria. Kunle Lawal says he has made a fortune from the trade encouraging him to educate and train people in his community about how to go about it. He, however, cautions people to make informed decisions before getting involved in the trade, in addition to not committing all their money into one pot.

Starlink in advanced talks for Nigerian operating licence

Elon Musk’s satellite broadband constellation Starlink is currently in advanced talks with the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) in order to attain the licences needed to offer internet services

In the past few months, Elon Musk’s Space X has reportedly been in discussions with the NCC in order to obtain operating licences for its low Earth orbit (LEO) satellite constellation Starlink.
Discussions appear to have progressed significantly, with SpaceX’s Starlink Market Access Director for Africa, Ryan Goodnight, meeting NCC representatives in person on Friday to discuss the matter further.

“As the regulator of a highly dynamic sector in Nigeria, the commission is conscious of the need to ensure that our regulatory actions are anchored on national interest,” said Executive Commissioner, Technical Services, NCC, Ubale Maska. “We have listened to your presentation and we will review it vis-à-vis our regulatory direction of ensuring effective and a sustainable telecoms ecosystem where a licensee’s operational model does not dampen healthy competition among other licensees.”

SpaceX has been launching LEO Starlink satellites at an impressive pace in recent months, with over 1,400 currently in orbit. However, this is just a fraction of the company’s ultimate goal, with Musk targetting around 30,000 satellites to make coverage available worldwide.

For Starlink, Nigeria has been cited as a key emerging market. Back in March, Starlink was reported as aiming to launch services in Nigeria in late 2021, expanding the service across the rest of Africa in 2022.

Currently, Nigeria’s internet penetration is around 50%, but the government has stated that it wants to increase this figure to 90% of the country online by 2025. Starlink could potentially play a key role in meeting this goal, with Starlink’s broadband service theoretically available to anyone simply by setting up a small amount of related hardware: a small satellite dish, a router, power supply, and mounting tripod.

This ease of access could make Starlink popular in Nigeria, particularly for rural communities with limited access to connectivity. In the past, Musk has said that Starlink poses no threat to traditional operators, instead only seeking to offer services to areas where deploying conventional connectivity is too expensive.

However, despite its broad accessibility, the cost of Starlink broadband will be prohibitive – at least for now.

Currently, the Starlink’s beta service costs $99 a month, with a one off payment of $499 for the requisite hardware. Such a high price tag could see many Nigerians, and indeed most Africans, excluded from accessing the service.

Nonetheless, we should remember that this is still very early days for Starlink, and regional price plans may be announced at a later date.

In the meantime, the additional satellites being launched are seeing Starlink’s coverage and quality of service improve, with Musk himself noting that available speeds will double to around 300mbps and latency will fall to around 20ms later this year.

By Harry Baldock

Total Telecom

Meet Hugo Obi: Nigerian Entrepreneur Changing The Video Gaming Landscape In Africa

Monday, May 10, 2021

At least 28 dead following boat mishap in north-central Nigeria

At least 28 people were confirmed dead while seven others were declared missing following a boat mishap in Nigeria's central-north state of Niger, said local authorities on Sunday.

Ahmed Inga, the director-general of the State Emergency Management Agency(SEMA) in Niger, said the accident happened at about 6 p.m. local time on Saturday when a wooden boat carrying 100 people hit a stump of a tree and broke in a river in Shiroro local government area of the state.

Inga said the boat sink about 50 metres to its destination.

He said so far 65 people have been rescued and 28 corpses recovered by local divers, while seven people are still missing.

A rescue operation was still ongoing to recover the missing persons, Inga said.

Xinhua

Germany has agreed to return Nigeria’s looted treasure. Will other countries follow?

The bronze plaques from his birthplace looked strange at the British Museum.

Enotie Ogbebor, a visiting artist, knew they were cultural treasures. West African sculptors had crafted them over six centuries to tell the history of Benin, a kingdom that stood in what is now southern Nigeria until British troops invaded in 1897.

But on display in London, he recalled, they carried the aura of war trophies.

Colonial soldiers had plundered his ancestors’ land, seizing what became collectively known as the Benin bronzes. Thousands of plaques, masks and figures wrought from largely metal, ivory and wood landed in museums across Europe and the United States.

“They look so out of place, out of context,” said Ogbebor, 52. “To see them in isolation, far away from home, kept for onlookers to gawk at without any real understanding of what happened — it’s like being a witness to your family story told wrongly.”

Some of the bronzes are now set to come home: Last week, Germany became the first country to announce plans to send hundreds of pieces back to Nigeria, starting next year.

The German restitution pledge, the largest thus far, has injected momentum into the push for other governments to do the same as nations worldwide grapple with histories of racial injustice. Protest movements have placed a fresh spotlight on old atrocities, toppled statues and called for the recovery of items stolen — often violently — during colonial rule.

“To hold onto the works is to add salt to an open wound,” said Ogbebor, a member of the Legacy Restoration Trust, which represents Nigeria’s government and regional leaders.

Germany’s culture minister said the shift stemmed from “moral responsibility,” and a handful of museums elsewhere have launched their own efforts as curators reexamine the bloody origins of prized artifacts.

Benin bronzes can be found at 161 museums around the world, according to research by Dan Hicks, a curator at the Pitt Rivers Museum at the University of Oxford and the author of “The Brutish Museums.” Thirty-eight are in the United States. Only nine of the institutions are in Nigeria.

Many institutions remain hesitant to relinquish the work.

The British Museum — owner of the world’s biggest collection, at roughly 900 pieces — is legally prohibited from releasing the Benin bronzes because Parliament regulates its inventory.

The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, which has said it acquired Benin works from donors, has revealed no plans to return them. (The Met did not respond to requests for comment.)

Pressure has swelled over the last year, however, as protesters flooded cities, reinvigorating dialogue around painful memories. Atop the African Union’s agenda this year: fighting the coronavirus — and recovering stolen heritage.

“In the present moment, we are seeing a reckoning with institutional racism, which starts with the observation that institutional racism has a history,” said Hicks, the Oxford curator.

The Horniman Museum in London, a registered charity that holds 15 of the bronzes, announced in March that it would explore “the possible return” of anything plundered. Days later, the University of Aberdeen in Scotland said it would send back the bust of a Benin ruler. And last month, the National Museum of Ireland pledged to release 21 works to Nigeria.

Returned art will be installed at the forthcoming Edo Museum of West African Art in Benin City, which Ghanaian British architect David Adjaye has signed on to design. (Though the doors aren’t slated to open until 2025, organizers say secure storage is likely to be ready by the end of next year.)

Little remained after Benin fell.

The kingdom, which dated back to the 11th century, had been one of West Africa’s great powers. Historians say its earthen walls rivaled the Great Wall of China.

Then came the British, who by the mid-1800s were exerting control over the surrounding areas. Benin enjoyed trade influence that irked colonial leaders, researchers say. The breaking point came when West African forces ambushed a British expedition that had not received permission to enter the kingdom, killing dozens.

Britain responded with 1,200 troops, warships and 3 million bullets, according to Hicks’s research. Benin burned to the ground. Official documents offer no casualty number, but researchers estimate widespread death.

The British military called the destruction “punitive.”

Soldiers went on to loot the kingdom’s riches, telling British authorities that the ivory alone would cover the cost of the mission. Some kept the bronzes for themselves, making them family heirlooms. European art scholars lavished praise on the works, and they were quickly auctioned off.

The spoils of Benin sat on display in England just six months later.

Nigeria has been calling for their return since it gained independence in 1960. The theft stripped away centuries of knowledge, said Victor Ehikhamenor, an artist from Benin City. Generations lost the opportunity to build on the work of their forebears.

“I grew up with the leftovers,” he said.

And the narrative of white dominance lives on in revered places. Schoolchildren see the “punitive” language next to popular exhibits. Google “Benin bronzes,” and the search engine delivers a harmful euphemism: “Discovered by: British forces.”

“These works were not legally acquired,” said Ehikhamenor, a member of Nigeria’s restoration effort. “Museums are oversaturated with colonial conquests.”

Today, he said, the people and institutions that benefited from Benin’s collapse have a chance to make amends.

Museums can put the Benin bronzes in the mail or transfer ownership to Nigeria. Leaders in Benin City have embraced the idea of loaning them out to museums across the globe, just as Spain might let France borrow a Picasso painting — on fair terms, as equals.

By Danielle Paquette

The Washington Post

Nigeria to build new museum for looted art