Thursday, September 1, 2022
Video - Security beefed up in public spaces amid terror threats in Nigeria
The Nigerian government says it's deploying more security personnel to protect schools, hospitals, and infrastructure across the country. This follows a recent threat by terrorists to attack national assets and infrastructure. But experts want the government to go beyond increased deployment of troops and use other means to address the threat of terror.
Dubai's Emirates to resume Lagos flights after Nigeria releases funds
Emirates will resume some flights to Nigeria this month after the Central Bank of Nigeria released a portion funds the Dubai airline had earned in the country but had not been able to repatriate.
An airline spokesperson said flights to Lagos will resume from Sept. 11, though it is not possible to resume flights to Abuja in September because resources had already been stood down.
"We continue to engage with the Nigerian authorities to ensure the repatriation of our outstanding and future funds may continue without hindrance," the spokesperson said, welcoming what it said was the central bank's move to release a portion of its blocked funds.
The airline did not say how much money had been released or how much remained blocked.
The state-owned carrier last month announced it was suspending all flights to Nigeria from Sept. 1 after it said it had made no progress with local authorities to access its funds.
Nigeria's Central Bank later said it had released $265 million to airlines to settle outstanding ticket sales.
The International Air Transport Association (IATA), the largest airline group, had said that by July Nigeria was blocking airlines from repatriating $464 million in revenue.
By Alexander Cornwell
Related story: Emirates suspends Nigeria passenger flights until further notice
Nigeria displaces South Africa as Korea’s biggest African trade partner
Nigeria has displaced South Africa as the major trading partner of the Republic of Korea on the African continent, Director, Korea-Africa Foundation, Lyeo Woon-ki has said.
Lyeo, who disclosed this in Abuja at a media parley, explained that trade between Nigeria and Korea was two billion dollars in 2021 but that the present figures indicate that the trade volume for 2022 has reached over $1.5 billion as of June this year which surpasses the trade volume between Korea and South Africa.
“The trade volume between Nigeria and Korea is bigger than between Korea and South Africa. In 2021, the figure was around $2 billion and by the half of this year, the figure has gone beyond $1.5 billion. All of these happened despite the COVID-19 pandemic and limited trading. We are sure it will be about two billion dollars by the end of the current year. The balance of trade between both countries is almost equal,” he stated. He added that the Korea-Africa Foundation was established to foster business and cultural cooperation between Korea and the continent.
Lyeo lamented that while Koreans are eager to come to Nigeria for business and cultural activities, the news about the country that is available to the Korean public is unpalatable.
He said: “Unfortunately, the news out there about Nigeria portrays the country as a dangerous place to live. However, my experience is completely different from what I read before coming. I have met a lot of Nigerians these last few days since I came into the country and I can say they are warm and receptive people. Nigeria needs to do a lot more to portray the image of Nigeria abroad.”
Lyeo disclosed that the Foundation will collaborate with the Nigeria Chamber of Commerce and Industry with a view to deepening trade cooperation between the two countries. On his part, the Ambassador of Korea to Nigeria, Kim Young-Chae, described Nigerian youths as vibrant and technology savvy.
“Last year, the embassy here in Abuja sponsored some children to Lagos to interact with Korean companies such as LG and Samsung to see first-hand what they do. We want Nigerian youths to understand our culture while their counterparts also understand the culture of Nigeria. This will foster understanding and cooperation between the people of both countries. We are going to replace that this year as part of efforts to showcase what the embassy of Korea is doing here in Nigeria,” he said.
Young-chae revealed that Nigeria and the Korean Republic are working on signing a military pact to boost the security of Nigeria. He said: “Korea has emerged as one of the strongest military formations in the world. The feat was achieved basically as a survival strategy because of the nature of our existence. I think it will be good if Nigeria and the Korean Republic strike an agreement on military cooperation. Indeed, the Nigerian Minister of Defence had paid a visit to Seoul recently in that regard. I hope this is done very soon as Nigeria continues to battle Boko Haram and banditry.”
By Collins Olayinka
At least 1 dead, many feared trapped, after multi-story building collapses in Nigeria's Kano State
At least one person was killed after a multiple-story building collapsed in the northwestern Nigerian city of Kano Tuesday, which left "many" others feared trapped inside, according to the local fire service.
Eight people had been rescued from the rubble so far, including a person who was declared dead at a local hospital, Nura Abdullahi, the local coordinator for the country's National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA), said Tuesday.
One person was critically injured, he said. Six others were taken to hospital and then released.
"The building was under construction but the ground floor was occupied," Abdullahi told CNN, adding that it is believed that people were shopping there when the building collapsed.
The building is located at the Beirut GSM market, popular for shops selling mobile phones and related accessories.
Three excavators were at the scene assisting with the rescue operation, Abdullahi said. It was unclear how many people are feared to be trapped inside the rubble, he added.
Building collapses are a worryingly common occurrence in the country.
Last November, at least 5 people were killed after a multi-story building collapsed in the capital, Lagos.
And in 2019, the collapse of two separate buildings in Lagos, including one housing a school, left dozens of people dead.
An expert told CNN at the time that more than 1,000 buildings were at risk of collapsing in the capital.
By Sugam Pokharel
Related stories: Video - At least 8 killed in Nigeria school building collapse
Building in Nigeria's commercial hub collapses; 5 dead
Tuesday, August 30, 2022
No church in the wild: Armed groups on Nigerian clergy abduction spree
On July 15, Reverend Fathers Donatus Cleophas and Mark Cheitnum were in the empty rectory of Christ the King parish in Yadin Garu, a town in the Southern Kaduna area of northwest Nigeria when five armed men walked in.
Two were wielding an AK-47 rifle, another had a machete and the other two held sticks, Cleophas said.
The gunmen confiscated the phones of both priests, who had stayed to celebrate mass after an ordination service in that diocese, and led them into the muddy grounds of a maize farm near the parish.
There, Cheitnum was shot dead and his body was left in the rain, while his colleague was taken away.
“We did not have any scuffle, nothing,” Cleophas, who has since regained his freedom, told Al Jazeera. “All I can think of is because maybe Father [Mark] was wearing canvas [shoes] and he could not keep up with the pace at which we were moving.”
Their ordeal was one of the most recent in a growing trend of attacks targeted against Christians in Nigeria in recent years, according to data and experts.
According to the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project (ACLED), violence against Christians targeted on the basis of their religious identity has spiked, just as political violence against civilians has generally been on the rise too.
Its data shows that attacks on Christians in the country increased by 21 percent in 2021 compared with 2020. On average, monthly attacks have also risen by over 25 percent in the last year.
In June, gunmen killed dozens at a Catholic church in Ondo, spotlighting a possibly religious undertone to the country’s insecurity. The state government blamed the ISIL-linked ISWAP (Islamic State in West Africa Province) for the incident, but the group is yet to claim responsibility.
Experts say attacks against the church are also increasingly targeting Christian leaders, as operations of armed groups nationwide assume dangerous dimensions.
A number of clergymen who survived abductions refused to talk to Al Jazeera about their ordeals. One said it would be a direct threat to his life if he spoke about his experience to the media and another declined to speak after initially agreeing to an interview for fear of safety.
‘Endangered species’
This August, a vehicle carrying four nuns from the southeast state of Imo to the neighbouring Rivers state in the Niger Delta, was ambushed. The police claimed to have rescued the nuns within days of their abduction but did not comment on whether ransoms had been paid.
Indeed, between January 2020 and July 2022, there were 99 independent attacks against Nigerian clergy, ranging from abductions to outright murder, according to ACLED’s database which compiled records from local media reports.
“The data is a very vivid reflection of what is going on in our society [with regards to] the economic hardship and the booming kidnapping for ransom industry that we see today,” said Olajumoke Ayandele, a former ACLED researcher and currently a postdoctoral research fellow at New York University’s The Centre for the Study of Africa and the African Diaspora.
A breakdown of the attacks shows that 34 happened in 2020, 36 in 2021 and 29 in the first seven months of 2022, a sharp increase compared with the previous decade when similar incidents were rare.
And experts say these figures may not even represent the full picture.
“I think the numbers are way higher,” Ayandele told Al Jazeera. “A lot of what filters into the media are the high profile cases. We are under-reporting the numbers.”
With Nigeria facing multifaceted security issues, multiple non-state actors including armed groups motivated by religious reasons, bandits and unidentified armed groups have been credited for the rising attacks.
Since 2020, six of the attacks have been credited to groups like Boko Haram and its offshoots ISWAP and Ansaru; 30 others have been carried out by armed bandits and 61 more by unidentified gunmen.
The attacks have also been spread across the country’s six geopolitical zones.
In the North Central region, 32 attacks were recorded, making it the deadliest region for Christian clerics in Nigeria since 2020. The North East and North West recorded 9 and 17 cases respectively.
The South West, often considered Nigeria’s safest region saw 11 attacks while there were 15 apiece in the South East and South South regions.
“It is an unfortunate situation that priests and pastors are becoming endangered species in this country,” Reverend Father Polycarp Lubo, the Plateau state chairman of the Christian Association of Nigeria told Al Jazeera. “The priests are not rich themselves, so we don’t know why they have resulted in the killing and abduction of priests and pastors. CAN is not happy about the whole thing and we are condemning it totally.”
‘High-value targets’
Between 2014 and 2020, there was a slew of school abductions in Nigeria, including the high-profile abduction of the Chibok schoolgirls which made global headlines.
Security experts say there has been a change in focus for perpetrators from schoolchildren to professional groups, to gain attention and legitimacy as armed groups.
Schools being closed in parts of states in the northwest for security concerns, as well as in parts of central Nigeria for academic reasons, may have also led to the change in tactics.
“Regarding the priests, the possible explanation is simply that the abductors are after money and the priests represent high value in terms of ransom payments,” Malik Samuel, Abuja-based researcher at the Institute of Security Studies, said. “Nothing stops them from moving on to other people if measures are put in place to protect the priests.”
“When you kidnap or kill a Christian priest, you get local and as well international attention and that brings legitimacy to your ransom demand saying: ‘We are very serious,’” Ayandele said. “And the fact that the government is under pressure and Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN) is under pressure to give in to their ransom… it is very targeted.”
‘My experience…was hell’
The Catholic Church has been the hardest-hit denomination, with data showing that half of all 120 clergy members abducted or killed within this period – including seminarians and nuns – were within its fold.
The church has not officially commented on paying ransoms to free abducted clergy but is believed to be paying nonetheless.
‘’We [speaking for all churches] have been paying ransoms because life is more important than money,” Lubo said. “And they have been having negative serious impacts on Christians, most of all on the families of the priests. The ransoms are very huge on the church and devastating on the families. People have been going beyond their means to save lives.”
The chairman called the attacks “persecution of Christians in Nigeria”, echoing what some Christian leaders have said about the attacks.
But security researchers told Al Jazeera that the abductions are driven by the church’s capacity to make ransom payments, not religious factors, except in the cases credited to Boko Haram and its affiliates.
“When there are unaddressed conflicts, there are other actors who take advantage,” Samuel said. “It tends to breed more insecurity. These abductions we have seen is not entirely a jihadist issue.”
But the situation is “driving towards a confrontation between Muslims and Christians,” he added.
Four days after the abduction, Cleophas escaped. His captors were out receiving a ransom payment of 3.6 million naira ($8,443) for Cheitnum – even though they had killed him – and the member of the group they left on guard duty had nodded off.
It is an experience the priest still remembers vividly.
“My experience in those four days was hell,” he told Al Jazeera. “At a point, I even desired death than even being with them because it was dehumanising and animalistic. They told me they were going to kill me.”
By Ope Adetayo
Related stories: Gunmen in Nigeria kidnap four Catholic nuns on highway
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