Monday, September 20, 2021
Video - Nigeria approves 5G technology after 7 years
The Federal Executive Council (FEC) has approved the Fifth Generation Network, otherwise known as 5G for the nation.
Nigeria to incorporate state-oil firm NNPC, board appointed
Nigeria's President Muhammadu Buhari said on Sunday he had appointed a board for state-oil firm NNPC and directed that it should be incorporated within six months, a move that could allow it to sell shares in the future.
Buhari, who doubles as petroleum minister, signed an oil bill into law last month that has been in the works for nearly two decades, aiming to overhaul the sector and turn the state-owned oil company into a private firm. read more
The new oil law requires NNPC to be incorporated within six months, Buhari said in a statement, appointing Ifeanyi Ararume as NNPC chairman and its current Chief Executive Mele Kyari to lead the firm.
Kyari has said NNPC could consider an initial public offering (IPO) within three years. The incorporation could pave the way for NNPC to sell shares.
Buhari said last month that NNPC made its first profit in 44 years in 2020.
Gunmen release 10 Nigerian students after collecting ransom
Gunmen in northern Nigeria have released 10 more students after a ransom was paid, but 21 others remain in captivity despite a pledge to release them all, officials said Sunday.
The Rev. John Hayab, the chairman of the local Christian association, said the kidnappers had collected money three days ago. The 10 freed students were returned to their parents Saturday night, he said.
Assailants had stormed the Bethel Baptist High School on July 5, seizing at least 120 of the students from their hostels. Various batches of the students have been released since then and the last group was freed on Aug. 27.
"These bandits are torturing us emotionally, psychologically, physically, financially. They are putting us under serious pressure," he said of the gunmen. "The moment they release a number (of students), it is because they want to ask for fresh money."
About 1,400 children have been abducted from their schools over the last year and nearly 200 of them have yet to be released. Sixteen children have died in the attacks, UNICEF Nigeria Representative Peter Hawkins told The Associated Press.
As schools are set to reopen across Nigeria, UNICEF has also said at least 1 million children are afraid to return to their classrooms because of insecurity. That aggravates the education crisis in the West African country where more than 10 million children are already out of school.
Moreover, some of the freed captives have told the AP of how they continue to face trauma weeks after their freedom. Some of them have also said they won't return to school. Victory Sani, 20, who was abducted from the Federal College of Forestry Mechanization in Kaduna and later freed, said the gunmen "asked us not to go back to school, that they will make sure they shut down all the schools in Kaduna state."
By Chinedu Asadu
Related story: Video - Is Nigeria's kidnapping crisis out of control?
Friday, September 17, 2021
Nigeria’s air force admits to strike in area where civilians were reported killed
Nigeria’s air force confirmed that there was an airstrike targeting a branch of the Islamist group Boko Haram in the northeast part of the country where civilians were reported to have been killed, a spokesman said Thursday.
The incident comes amid debate about the Nigerian government’s counterterrorism tactics, which critics say too often claim the lives of innocent people. Separatists in Nigeria recently sued two top Biden administration officials for clearing the sale of warplanes to the country in a deal initially greenlighted by the Trump administration.
Edward Gabkwet, the air force spokesman, said in a brief interview that he had received many reports that civilians were killed but could not say definitively.
“We are investigating,” he said. “We have to be sure. That environment is highly infested with terrorists.”
Mohammed Goje, a doctor who is the executive secretary of the Yobe State Emergency Management Agency, said that nine civilians, including three children, were killed in the strike on a rural community near the border with Niger. He said the dead were in their homes when the strike occurred and came from multiple families.
Those killed and the 23 people injured were farmers or children, he said. The injured were taken to hospitals and are in stable condition, Goje said.
“For us as an emergency management agency, the life of civilians is a priority,” he said. “They were children, they were farmers, they are people, and we must give them the treatment they deserve free.”
The governor of Yobe instructed hospitals to provide free care to the injured and said his office would work with the military to determine what had gone wrong.
“Government will work closely with the security forces especially the Nigeria Air Force to establish what actually happened,” Gov. Mai Mala Buni said in a statement.
Gabkwet initially denied that the air force was involved. But on Thursday, after Buni called for an investigation, the spokesman released a statement saying one of the air force pilots fired shots after observing “suspicious movement consistent with Boko Haram terrorists behavior.”
“Unfortunately reports reaching Nigerian Air Force (NAF) Headquarters alleged that some civilians were erroneously killed while others were injured,” he said in the statement.
The Nigerian government has used airstrikes in the northeast to target Boko Haram and an offshoot loyal to the Islamic State. The two groups have killed more than 30,000 people in 12 years. In 2017, a Nigerian air force fighter jet mistakenly bombed a town crowded with people who had fled Islamist militants, killing more than 50 and injuring more than 100.
Matthew Page, an associate fellow with the Africa Program at Chatham House, said civilian casualties in the fight against Boko Haram are common but rarely acknowledged by the government. The combat aircraft that Nigeria and Niger are using to fight the group, Page said, are “not effective counterinsurgency tools.”
“You’re using a meat cleaver rather than a surgeon’s scalpel,” he said.
The Nigerian air force has said it will use A-29 Super Tucano planes from the United States to conduct some of those airstrikes. Six of the planes arrived in Nigeria in July, after the Trump administration’s controversial decision to clear the nearly $600 million Super Tucano deal, ending an Obama-era ban on selling weapons to Nigeria.
Asked Thursday whether Super Tucano planes were involved in this airstrike, Gabkwet said he did not believe so but added, “All of these things will come out when the investigation is done.”
Related story: Officers killed in attack on Nigeria’s elite military academy
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)