Nigerian families struggle to survive as food prices soar

With inflation rising around the world as the global economy recovers from the coronavirus pandemic, soaring prices are having dramatic consequences in countries like Nigeria.

The number of people living in poverty in Nigeria – Africa’s most populous nation with 210 million inhabitants – was already among the highest in the world.

But as Nigeria has been battered by the double economic effect of low global oil prices and the pandemic, the World Bank estimates the country’s soaring inflation and food prices pushed another seven million people into poverty in 2021.

Food prices have increased more than 22 percent since the start of the coronavirus crisis, according to official statistics.

For many people, feeding their family has become a daily challenge.

“Every day, during consultations, there are five or seven children that suffer from malnutrition,” says Emiolo Ogunsola, head of the nutrition department at Massey Street children’s hospital in a poor district in Lagos Island.

“I bet in a few months or a year, more children will be malnourished.”

Even before the pandemic and the surge in food costs, Nigeria’s nutrition figures were alarming: One in three Nigerian children suffered stunted growth due to a bad diet.

As a result, close to 17 million children in Nigeria are undernourished, giving the country the highest level of malnutrition in Africa and the second-highest in the world.

Al Jazeera

Nigerian Women Lead Reintegration of Ex-Boko Haram Militants

The Nigerian government's efforts to reintegrate former Boko Haram militants has seen hundreds of fighters go through rehabilitation. But it also gets pushback from the conflict's victims, who want the militants to be held accountable. At a conference in the capital, women from the conflict-affected areas are getting support to head up reconciliation between the former terrorists and their communities.

Some 45 women from Nigeria's northeastern states of Borno, Adamawa and Yobe file in for a two-day conference in Abuja.

They're here to discuss a sensitive subject - the reconciliation and reintegration of ex-Boko Haram fighters into their communities.

The conference is a joint initiative by the non-profit Center for Humanitarian Dialogue in Switzerland, U.N. Women and the International Organization for Migration (IOM). It’s designed to promote women-led community peacekeeping in the northeast, said Millicent Lewis-Ojumu, director at Center for Humanitarian Dialogue.

"We know and from experience have seen that when the women are involved in the conversations, peace building, in helping to resolve issues relating to how to reintegrate and rehabilitate former combatants or person's associated with Boko Haram, that they are very effective," said Lewis-Ojumu.

Since launching the safe exit program, “Operation Safe Corridor” for repentant fighters in 2016, authorities say the program has met with resistance from host communities.

The scheme was launched as part of a growing awareness for the use of amnesty to persuade terrorists to lay down their guns. Nearly 1,000 ex-fighters have been rehabilitated under the government's program.

But very few are successfully living in communities. Most of them eventually rejoin Boko Haram due to rejection.

Hamzatu Alamin is one of the participants at the conference. She started talking about reconciliation 10 years ago when her community was hit hard and young men were coerced into joining Boko Haram.

But she said her efforts attracted some unwanted attention.

"You can be arrested by state actors and accused of being an accomplice. And secondly, the boys (Boko Haram), if you make a mistake, you can be their target,” she said.

Women like Alamin here said they hope to improve their community's acceptance of former jihadists after the conference.

But attending the conference along with other women also lifts the burden of being negatively labeled with terrorists.

"I have been communicating with them. I am now able to say it freely because I know that even the government is communicating with them. The government and security forces are using many of the boys I communicate with as outlets to get the people they're rehabilitating,” she said.

Maria Quintero, program manager at IOM Nigeria, said women also need socioeconomic stability if the program is to succeed.

"The Nigerian women are very strong. What we have found as well is that they're very influential in the decision of the males. Women have a role to play especially when it comes to males coming back to the communities,” said Quintero.

More than 35,000 people have been killed and millions displaced since the start of the Boko Haram insurgency in 2009. Boko Haram, which opposes Western education, has frequently targeted schools.

By Timothy Obiezu 

VOA

Related story: Nigeria's military investigates reports of Boko Haram leader's death

 

Nigerian lawmakers pass historic oil overhaul bill

Both chambers of Nigeria's parliament have passed a bill that overhauls nearly every aspect of the country's oil and gas production, putting a project that has been in the works for two decades one step closer to presidential sign-off.

Legislators have been hashing out details of the bill since President Muhammadu Buhari presented an initial version in September last year, but an overhaul has been in the works for some 20 years.

The chambers had been expected to vote clause by clause on the more than 400-page long report, but instead quickly approved the full package.

Each chamber made changes before approving the package, and the senate lowered the share of money for oil-producing communities. The chambers will need to meet again to work out the details, but members were optimistic that they would come to an agreement next week, after which it could go for presidential sign-off.

Analysts say its approval is essential to attracting a shrinking pool of capital for fossil fuel development.

Earlier in the day, senators entered a closed-door session with the petroleum minister and the head of state oil company NNPC for a briefing on the technical terms and details.

The last key controversies related to the share of wealth for communities in areas where petroleum is produced, and those in the northern and central parts of Nigeria where there is exploration but no production yet.

The house bill signed off on an increase in the share of regional oil wealth generated from production that host communities can claim from 2.5% to 5%, but the senate approved 3%.Communities had pushed for a 10% share.

Sources said disagreements with northern leaders were managed separately following several hours-long sessions between them and federal government officials early this week.

The package also includes a string of changes sought by oil majors, including amended royalties and fiscal terms for oil and gas production, and the transfer of state oil company NNPC's assets and liabilities to a limited liability corporation created by the bill. It also divided the stakes in the new NNPC Limited evenly between the finance and petroleum ministries, but would not allow for public share sales without further government approval.

Leaders agreed earlier this year to sweeten the terms for oil companies in an effort to attract much-needed investment in an era of shrinking global cash for fossil fuel production.

By Libby George and Camillus Eboh

Reuters

Nigeria's senate to consider oil overhaul bill on Thursday

Nigeria's senate presented a long-awaited oil overhaul bill to the full chamber for passage on Tuesday and will consider it by the end of the week, according to an order paper and the senate president.

President Muhammadu Buhari sent the bill to the National Assembly in September last year. The senate package is the result of months of consultations between national assembly members and oil companies, local communities and other stakeholders.

Senate President Ahmad Lawan said the chamber would "commence passage" of the bill on Thursday.

"Every senator must have a copy today," Lawan said. "We would be considering the report on Thursday."

The bill aims to modernise Nigeria's petroleum industry and attract a shrinking pool of global fossil fuel investment dollars. Observers had hoped the political alignment of the presidency and the National Assembly would break a cycle of failure that has stalked overhaul efforts for 20 years.

But the House has not updated its timeline for considering the bill, and sources told Reuters the chamber could be a bigger obstacle to quick passage.

There are pending demands for big changes to the bill, including from community leaders seeking an increased share of revenue.

This week, national assembly leaders from northern Nigeria pressed for a greater share of oil revenue for "frontier" communities where there is petroleum exploration. Meetings with key leaders continued into Monday evening without resolution, and a failure to reach a deal with those leaders could scupper passage before the summer recess, pushing its earliest approval to September.

By Libby George

Reuters 

Biafra separatist leader arrested and extradited to Nigeria

The fugitive leader of a prominent Biafra secessionist group has been arrested and extradited to Nigeria to face trial, in a move likely to inflame separatist unrest in south-east Nigeria.

Nnamdi Kanu, a British national who has lived in south London, had been wanted by Nigerian authorities since 2015, when he was charged with terrorism offences and incitement, after broadcasts aired on Radio Biafra, a digital station he founded and ran from his home in Peckham.

Nigeria’s attorney general, Abubakar Malami, said on Tuesday that Kanu had been extradited to the capital Abuja, after cooperation between Nigerian intelligence services and Interpol.

“He has been brought back to Nigeria in order to continue facing trial after disappearing while on bail,” Malami said. He accused Kanu of “engaging in subversive activities” and also alleged that Kanu was responsible for armed attacks.

Malami did not say where Kanu was extradited from, although British government officials have said he was not arrested in the UK. British MPs have in the past raised concerns for Kanu’s wellbeing while held in detention in Nigeria.

A lawyer for Kanu confirmed the arrest. “He was brought before the Federal High Court … today on an 11 count charge, though without our knowledge,” Ifeanyi Ejiofor said in a statement.

Kanu is the leader of the Indigenous People of Biafra (Ipob), a secessionist group which has been proscribed as a terrorist organisation in Nigeria. In recent months, police have blamed Ipob for a series of arson attacks and killings targeting police units and civil authorities across southern Nigeria.

Kano was first arrested in Nigeria in 2015, and was granted bail on medical grounds in 2017 before fleeing the country.

His prominence in Nigeria has soared in recent years, as secessionist sentiment for an independent country of Biafra in south-east Nigeria has seen a marked rise.

Secessionist sentiment was inflamed by the 2015 election of President Muhamadu Buhari who was a brigade major during the Biafra civil war, one of the darkest chapters in Nigerian history where an attempt to form an independent Biafran state was quelled.

Millions of people in south-east Nigeria died, many from starvation after a government blockade of the region prevented food supplies and humanitarian support.

Earlier this month, Twitter deleted a post by Buhari for violating its rules on abuse, after he referred to the civil war in a threat against armed Biafran groups.

“Those of us in the fields for 30 months, who went through the war, will treat them in the language they understand,” the president said, drawing mass condemnation.

In retaliation for the deletion, the government soon after banned Twitter in Nigeria.

The legacy of the war is still bitter. Authorities censor cultural depictions of the conflict and the war is not taught in most schools.

Since 2015, secessionist protests have met a brutal response by Nigerian security forces. More than 150 people were killed at pro-Biafra rallies between August 2015 and August 2016 according to Amnesty International.

Security operations in south-east Nigeria, a largely ethnically Igbo region, have received allegations of rights abuses against civilians. Armed attacks blamed on pro-Biafran groups have soared this year.

Since fleeing Nigeria, Kanu had been sighted in different countries including Israel.

His fierce monologues on Radio Biafra, taunting President Buhari, targeting ethnic groups and calling for armed uprising have drawn an international following – and also the ire of Nigerian authorities.

The Guardian

By Emmanuel Akinwotu