Recent attacks on oil facilities by militants in the delta region are pushing Nigeria's oil production to a near decade low. The attacks and continued threats by militant group Delta avengers, has forced several oil companies to shut operations.
Following the launch of Free Basics in Nigeria yesterday, Facebook founder and CEO, Mark Zuckerberg to his Facebook page to make the announcement.
In the post, he outlined the partnership with Airtel Africa to launch the Internet.org platform in Nigeria, adding that there is a lot of innovation across Africa right now.
The Facebook founder also touted Nigeria as being home to a lot of talented developers before going on to praise Olalekan Elude, Ayodeji Adewunmi, and Opeyemi Awoyemi - the three guys who founded jobs site, Jobberman in 2009 - for being innovation leaders in the Nigerian tech space.
According to Zuckerberg, Jobberman now get 5, 000 applications a day, with the platform being one of the top 100 websites in the country.
"Free Basics offers Nigerians, including 90 million people who are currently offline, the opportunity to access news, health information and services like Jobberman that were built by Nigerians and other developers across West Africa -- all without having to pay for data," said Zuckerberg in the post.
The Facebook CEO says Free Basics is now in more than 40 countries - half of which are in Africa. He also expressed hopes of connecting developers with people that can use their apps as well as partnering with local companies to bring Internet to the people who don't have access to it.
Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari is “embarrassed” by British Prime Minister David Cameron saying the country is one of the most corrupt in the world, according to his spokesman.
Cameron made the comments on Tuesday while being filmed at a Buckingham Palace reception for Queen Elizabeth II’s 90th birthday. Speaking ahead of an anti-corruption summit in London on Thursday—at which Buhari will speak—the prime minister told the Queen: “We’ve got some leaders of some fantastically corrupt countries coming to Britain.”
He went on to describe Nigeria and Afghanistan as “possibly the two most corrupt countries in the world,” before Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby interjected to defend Buhari, saying that “this particular president is not actually corrupt.”
“The prime minister must be looking at an old snapshot of Nigeria,” said Buhari’s spokesman Garba Shehu on Tuesday. The spokesman added that “the eyes of the world” were watching Buhari’s anti-corruption drive in Nigeria and that “things are changing with corruption and everything else” in the West African country.
The Nigerian president—who was elected on an anti-corruption ticket in March 2015—has himself lamented the country’s association with corruption and crime. Buhari told The Daily Telegraph in February that Nigerians’ reputation for criminality, especially drug and human trafficking, meant that Europe and the U.S. were reluctant to receive Nigerian migrants.
Buhari has also vowed, however, to uproot corruption from the country. He has requested greater cooperation from the international community in returning Nigerian public funds stolen by officials and hidden abroad, including more than $300 million stored in Switzerland by the late Nigerian military ruler Sani Abacha. The president has also ordered the arrest of a number of high-profile figures—including former national security advisor Sambo Dasuki—in connection with a $2 billion scandal in which state funds earmarked for procuring arms to fight Boko Haram were diverted elsewhere.
Nigeria was ranked 136th out of 168 countries in Transparency International’s Corruption Perceptions Index 2015, the same position it held in 2014. In a December 2015 report, Transparency found that 75 percent of Nigerians felt that corruption in the country had risen in the previous 12 months.
The Prime Minister will be hosting delegates from the two countries later this week, and the incident as he spoke with the Queen at an event to mark her 90th birthday will be a source of acute embarrassment.
During the summit, Nigeria's President Muhammadu Buhari is scheduled to deliver a keynote address entitled: "Why We Must Tackle Corruption Together".
Mr Cameron could be heard singling out the two states as “possibly the two most corrupt countries in the world”, in footage on ITV News showing him chatting in a group including the Archbishop of Canterbury and Commons Speaker John Bercow.
The Prime Minister told the Queen: “We had a very successful cabinet meeting this morning to talk about our anti-corruption summit, we’ve got the Nigerians… actually we’ve got the leaders of some fantastically corrupt countries coming to Britain.
“Nigeria and Afghanistan, possibly the two most corrupt countries in the world.”
The Archbishop - The Most Rev Justin Welby - is heard to intervene to make clear that "this particular president" is not himself corrupt.
It is not the first time a controversial comment has been overheard in a conversation involving Mr Cameron and the Queen.
In the aftermath of the Scottish independence referendum in 2014, the Prime Minister was heard saying the Queen “purred down the line” when he informed her of the result.
A spokesperson for Downing Street declined to comment directly on Tuesday's conversation, but did point out that the leaders of both Nigeria and Afghanistan have themselves spoken about the scale of their corruption problems.
Afghanistan's Ashraf Ghani and Nigeria's Mr Buhari have written essays for a book accompanying the summit.
Mr Ghani, Number 10 said, acknowledges in his piece that Afghanistan is “one of the most corrupt countries on earth” and Mr Buhari that corruption became a “way of life” in his country under “supposedly accountable democratic governments”.
Anti-corruption movement Transparency International ranked Afghanistan as 166th and Nigeria 136th out of 168 countries and territories in its Corruption Perceptions Index for 2015.
