Children happy to be home again. Nigeria has brought back around 12,000 of its citizens who fled raids by criminal gangs in the northwest of the country earlier this year.
The authorities in Shimfida village located in Katsina state near the Nigerien border said improved security prompted the voluntary returns since Sunday.
Returnees like Audu Musa, pray for safety: "We are praying to God that all our predicaments come to an end and may we see an end to such predicaments and may God shield us with all his shields of protection."
Outside a makeshift camp at a public school in the Nigerian town of Jibia, thousands boarded buses to go home on Monday. Jibia's political administrator said he expected many more to arrive.
"There are those who are taking refuge in Jibia and those who are in Niger Republic, Bashir Sabi'u starts. Approximately 6,000 refuges are estimated to be in the Niger republic, in Jibia maybe even more, from about 6000 and those people in Niger Republic are on their way back, we are expecting their arrival to send them onto Shimfida."
Despite military operations, reports that criminal gangs known locally as bandits are still active in the wider region of northern Nigeria continue to emerge.
Insecurity has disrupted agriculture and food supplies in Katsina state and around, deepening malnutrition. Rural northwest Nigeria has been ravaged by gangs of bandit militias who raid villages, loot cattle and kidnap people.
Over the past two years, violence has displaced almost one million people in northwest and central Nigeria, while an additional 80,000 have fled across the border to Niger.
Thursday, August 11, 2022
Nigeria resettles some 12,000 displaced people in instable northwest
Wednesday, August 10, 2022
The Most Curious Nation About Crypto Is Nigeria, Study Shows
Africa’s most-populous nation showed more interest in cryptocurrencies than any other country since the digital assets began to decline in April, according to a study by price tracker CoinGecko.
Nigeria scored 371 in the study that looked at Google Trends data for six searches such as “buy crypto” or “invest in crypto” that were then combined to give each English-speaking nation a total search ranking. The West African country was followed by the United Arab Emirates and Singapore.
“This study provides interesting insight into which countries remain most interested in cryptocurrency in spite of market pullbacks,” CoinGecko’s co-founder Bobby Ong said in an emailed statement. “The countries at the top of this list appear to be keenest to buy the dip, and highlight their long-term outlook for cryptocurrencies.”
The Nigerian stock exchange said in June it planned to start a blockchain-enabled platform next year to deepen trade and lure young investors to the market. That came after its central bank in early 2021 ordered commercial lenders to stop transactions or operations in cryptocurrencies, citing a threat to the financial system.
Singapore had the most searches on Ethereum, while Georgia sought information on Solana, according to CoinGecko.
By Helen Nyambura
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Five suspects arrested in Nigeria Catholic church massacre
Nigeria has arrested five suspects in an Islamist militant attack in a Catholic church that killed 40 people in early June, Chief of Defence Staff General Leo Irabor said on Tuesday.
Nigerian authorities have said they suspect insurgent group Islamic State West Africa Province (ISWAP) carried out the massacre of members of a congregation inside the St Francis Catholic Church in Ondo state on June 5.
ISWAP is waging an insurgency in the northeast but claims that it carried out the attack far away from its enclave have raised concern that the group is expanding its footprint in Nigeria.
Irabor said in a statement in Abuja that the attackers were arrested during joint operations involving the armed forces, the Department of Security Services and police. He did not say where and when the arrests were made.
He said he could not parade the suspects due to ongoing investigations.
"I will like to say that in due course, the world will see them and others who are behind other daring attacks in the country," Irabor said.
Arakunrin Akeredolu, the governor for Ondo state, said a person who had provided accommodation to the suspects before the attack was also arrested.
ISWAP has claimed responsibility for a string of low level attacks as well as daring jail break in Abuja in early July that freed more than 400 inmates.
By Camillus Eboh
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Tuesday, August 9, 2022
Nigeria loses 400,000 barrels of crude oil per day to theft, says FG
The Federal Government has decried huge crude oil theft resulting in substantial loss in production.
Minister of State for Petroleum Resources, Timipre Sylva, who disclosed this, yesterday, when he visited the Imo State Governor, Hope Uzodimma, at the Government House, Owerri, lamented that hoodlums who perpetrate the act has caused the production level to reduce by 400,000 barrels per day (bpd), translating to a drop from 1.8 million to 1.4 million bpd.
Sylva, who was accompanied by a high powered team made up of the Minister of State for Education, Goodluck Opiah; the Chief of Defence Staff, Gen. Lucky Irabor; the Group Chief Executive Officer, the Nigeria National Petroleum Company Limited (NNPC), Alhaji Mele Kyari, said they came as part of industry-wide intervention mission to find a lasting solution to curb crude oil theft in Nigeria, noting that they were also in the state to get the buy-in and support of the state government on how to tackle the problem.
His words: “We’ve come here to engage the state government to get your buy-in and support.” Sylva disclosed that his delegation was in the state to seek the cooperation of the state government, adding that the oil host communities should play a collaborative effort to stop the alarming levels of crude oil theft, which has now become a national emergency.
Speaking, Uzodimma pledged the commitment of government to curb the menace in the state. He said: “We are committed; we are determined. The consequences of oil theft are alarming. Our economy is bleeding.”
Uzodimma regretted that the development has led to a drop in the earnings of government, creating environmental pollution and other health hazards.
He promised that the state government would do its best to support oil-producing companies, as well as collaborate with Federal Government to achieve the goal.
The governor thanked the NNPC Limited for the 200- bed hospital it is building at the Imo State University Teaching Hospital, Orlu.
By Charles Ogugbuaja
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Insecurity Grips Nigeria's Capital
A series of attacks and threats within close proximity of Nigeria’s seat of government in Abuja by Islamist and other armed groups are causing fear and apprehension among citizens in the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) and across the country, Human Rights Watch said today.
The Nigeria Police Force has assured citizens that it has scaled up security in the federal region, which includes Abuja, but these attacks and threats, even to kidnap the president, indicate an alarming deterioration of the nation’s security situation. The authorities need to ensure adequate security for all civilians while respecting human rights.
“The recent events unfolding in the capital confirms many Nigerians’ fears that the threat from Islamist insurgents and other armed groups are now national threats that have reached critical levels,” said Anietie Ewang, Nigeria researcher at Human Rights Watch. “The ability of the groups to expand outside their base even to the nation’s capital means that the authorities need to greatly expand their efforts to protect people.”
For over a decade, Nigeria has been embroiled in conflict in the Northeast region with Boko Haram, an Islamist insurgency group, and its breakaway factions including the Islamic State West Africa Province (ISWAP). These groups kill and kidnap people in their quest to topple the government and establish an Islamic state. In the Northwest, years of conflict between nomadic herders, mainly of Fulani ethnicity, and farming communities of Hausa ethnicity have given rise to a proliferation of powerful criminal gangs with sophisticated weaponry that terrorize communities and kill, pillage, and kidnap people, including schoolchildren, for ransom.
On July 5, armed men attacked a minimum security prison in Kuje, a community within the federal district, about 40 kilometers from Abuja. During the attack, for which the Islamic State West Africa Province claimed responsibility, about 900 inmates escaped, including more than 60 Boko Haram suspects. Security analysts have also highlighted the involvement of Ansaru, an Al Qaeda-backed splinter faction of Boko Haram, in the attack, though the extent of its involvement is unclear.
On July 25, unidentified assailants killed six officers of the presidential guard brigade, an elite force of the army responsible for protecting the president and the federal area, in Bwari, a community in the federal region where a campus of the Nigeria Law School is located. The officers were deployed to provide security after the management of the law school received a letter from unidentified sources threatening an imminent attack on the school.
In response, the Federal Education Ministry announced the immediate closure of all federal government colleges in the federal region to ensure students’ safety, affecting thousands of students.
On July 29, media reported that gunmen attacked a military checkpoint in the federal region along the Abuja-Kaduna Highway, which has become notorious in recent years for kidnappings and other attacks against citizens.
On July 24, a video surfaced on social media showing kidnapped victims of a March attack by suspected members of ISWAP on a train that left Abuja, heading for Kaduna state, being beaten by their captors. In the video, members of the armed group threatened to kill or sell off the victims as captives to others if the government did not adhere to their demands, including the release of some ISWAP members and payment for ransom. They also threatened to kidnap President Muhammadu Buhari and other government officials.
These incidents as well as other reports of kidnapping in the federal region have spread fear, panic, and apprehension among citizens.
A local taxi driver, who carries passengers from Abuja to Mararaba and Nyanya in neighboring Nasarawa state, told Human Rights Watch: “The kind of fear I am experiencing is overwhelming, as I am moving on the road. I don’t know where or how it [an attack] can happen, so I am always on high alert. I panic at every checkpoint because I don’t know if it is bandits or police there. Even the passengers are suspects because there is no way of knowing if I am carrying a bandit or a terrorist that can harm me.”
Another taxi driver plying the same route said: “The reports are so alarming and have made everyone very conscious of their safety. Before we could be on the road carrying passengers past 10 p.m., but now we try to wrap up and get home by 8 p.m. and this makes us lose up to 30 percent of our daily earnings.” The taxi driver said that he and many of his colleagues have also observed that there are not many passengers on the road anymore after 8 p.m., possibly because everyone is afraid.
A 45-year-old civil servant from Borno State, the center of the Boko Haram conflict, who moved his family out of the state in 2008, during the early stages of the crisis, said he is concerned with the insecurity playing out in the federal region because it looks a lot like the beginning of the crisis in Borno state, with worrying spates of attacks and threats: “If the government does not take necessary action, the FCT will boil over and everyone will run out like we ran from Borno state to find safety in other places.”
Confidence MacHarry, the Lead Security Analyst at SBM Intelligence, an organization that follows Nigeria’s security issues, said that the security situation in the federal region is worse than it has ever been, even in comparison to the earlier days of the Boko Haram conflict when places like the United Nations office in Abuja were attacked.
He said this is because there are now more groups apart from Boko Haram posing threats and the security forces are stretched thin in trying to respond. MacHarry also said that the authorities use words like “bandits” or “terrorists” to sweep various groups under the same cover, rather than specifically identifying groups so that they can formulate appropriate responses.
In response to the attacks and threats, Nigeria’s Police Chief has deployed more officers to the area, and the Federal Executive Council approved 2.6 billion naira (US$6.2 million) for vehicles and equipment for security agencies operating there.
Despite huge budgetary allocations to the country’s security sector in recent years, the security forces remain poorly equipped, while corruption scandals continue to emerge. The security forces have also been implicated in gross human rights abuses, including arbitrary detention and extrajudicial killings, while responding to security crises across the country, and have repeatedly failed to hold officers responsible for the abuses accountable through the justice system.
“The Nigerian authorities should ensure adequate security measures are in place to keep citizens safe, pursue the attackers, and bring those responsible to account in accordance with human rights laws,” Ewang said. “Anything short of this will spur more grievances against the government, which may worsen an already tense situation and fuel additional cycles of violence.”
Human Rights Watch
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