Nigeria's President Bola Tinubu has sent 19 additional names to the Senate to be approved for cabinet positions, a week after submitting 28 names for confirmation, according to a letter read out by the Senate President.
Tinubu is under pressure to quickly revive Africa's largest economy, which is facing a high debt burden, double-digit inflation and widespread insecurity.
His cabinet nominations come nearly two months after he was sworn into office. Tinubu and his ministers have their work cut out for them, including dealing with the fall-out from scrapping a popular fuel subsidy that benefited the rich but cost the government $10 billion last year alone.
The new nominees included former governors and political associates and technocrats. Given Tinubu's party majority in the Senate, his cabinet picks are expected to be confirmed.
On Wednesday, hundreds marched through major Nigerian cities to protest at the removal of the subsidy and demand a new minimum wage after Tinubu axed it in the country's boldest reforms in decades, aiming to help the economy out of slow growth.
Tinubu has sent a total of 47 names to the Senate for approval. Under the constitution, the president must include a member from each of the country's 36 states in his cabinet which includes ministers, ministers of state (junior ministers) and ministers in the presidency.
Nigeria has cut its electricity supply to Niger, AFP learned on Wednesday from a source close to the management of the Nigerien Electricity Company (Nigelec), in line with the sanctions decided by the West African neighbors of Niger destabilized by a coup.
"Nigeria disconnected since yesterday (Tuesday) the high voltage line that carries electricity to Niger," the source said. A Nigelec agent for his part indicated that the capital, Niamey, was "supplied thanks to local production".
On Sunday, the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), led by Nigerian President Bola Tinubu, decided on sanctions against the putschists who toppled President-elect Mohamed Bazoum a week ago.
In addition to a one-week ultimatum to restore constitutional order and the suspension of financial transactions with Niger, ECOWAS decreed the freezing of "all service transactions, including energy transactions".
According to a report by Nigelec - the country's sole supplier -, in 2022, 70% of Niger's share of electricity came from purchases from the Nigerian company Mainstream. Electricity is produced by the Kainji dam (western Nigeria).
Many neighborhoods in the city of Niamey are normally subject to power cuts and Nigeria's decision will aggravate this situation.
To free itself from its strong energy dependence on neighboring Nigeria, Niger is working to complete its first dam by 2025, on the river of the same name. Some 180 km upstream from Niamey, the Kandadji dam should generate 629 gigawatt hours (GWh) annually.
Niger, one of the poorest countries in the world, is dependent on its foreign partners in many areas. "The sanctions will hurt our country very badly," Nigerian Prime Minister Ouhoumoudou Mahamadou said on France 24 on Sunday, as sanctions are increasing internationally.
Africa's most populous nation has been under intense food insecurity exacerbated by growing inflation. The funds are expected to boost agricultural production in the West African nation.
On their 10th day at sea, four Nigerian stowaways crossing the Atlantic in a tiny space above the rudder of a cargo ship ran out of food and drink.
They survived another four days, according to their account, by drinking the seawater crashing just metres below them, before being rescued by the Brazilian federal police in the southeastern port of Vitoria.
Their remarkable, death-defying journey across some 5,600km (3,500 miles) of ocean underlines the risks some migrants are prepared to take for a shot at a better life.
“It was a terrible experience for me,” said 38-year-old Thankgod Opemipo Matthew Yeye, one of the four Nigerians, in an interview at a Sao Paulo church shelter. “On board, it is not easy. I was shaking, so scared. But I’m here.”
Their relief at being rescued soon gave way to surprise.
The four men said they had hoped to reach Europe and were shocked to learn they had in fact landed on the other side of the Atlantic, in Brazil. Two of the men have since been returned to Nigeria upon their request, while Yeye and Roman Ebimene Friday, a 35-year-old from Bayelsa state, has applied for asylum in Brazil.
“I pray the government of Brazil will have pity on me,” said Friday, who had already attempted to flee Nigeria by ship once before but was arrested by authorities there.
Both men said economic hardship, political instability and crime had left them with little option but to abandon their native Nigeria. Africa’s most populous country has longstanding issues of violence and poverty, and kidnappings are endemic.
Yeye, a Pentecostal minister from Lagos State, said his peanut and palm oil farm was destroyed by floods this year, leaving him and his family homeless. He hopes they can now join him in Brazil.
Friday said his journey to Brazil began on June 27, when a fisherman friend rowed him up to the stern of the Liberian-flagged Ken Wave, docked in Lagos, and left him by the rudder.
To his surprise, he found three men already there, waiting for the ship to depart. Friday said he was terrified. He had never met his new shipmates and feared they could toss him into the sea at any moment.
Once the ship was moving, Friday said the four men made every effort not to be discovered by the ship’s crew, who they also worried might offer them a watery grave.
“Maybe if they catch you they will throw you in the water,” he said. “So we taught ourselves never to make a noise.”
Spending two weeks within spitting distance of the Atlantic Ocean was perilous.
To prevent themselves from falling into the water, Friday said the men rigged up a net around the rudder and tied themselves to it with a rope. When he looked down, he said, he could see “big fish like whales and sharks”. Due to the cramped conditions and the noise of the engine, sleep was rare and risky. “I was very happy when we got rescued,” he said.
Father Paolo Parise, a priest at the Sao Paulo shelter, said he had come across other cases of stowaways, but never one so dangerous. Their journey paid testament to the lengths people go in search of a new start, he said. “People do unimaginable and deeply dangerous things.”
Labor unions marched across Nigeria on Wednesday to protest the soaring cost of living under the West African nation’s new president, with calls for the government to improve social welfare interventions to reduce hardship.
The unions, made up of government workers, said the economic incentives announced this week by Nigerian President Bola Tinubu to ease hardship were not enough. They also accused him of failing to act quickly to cushion the effect of some of his policies, including the suspension of decadeslong, costly subsidies that have more than doubled the price of gas, causing a spike in prices for food and most other commodities.
Tinubu on May 29 scrapped the subsidy that cost the government 4.39 trillion naira ($5.07 billion) while new leadership of the country’s central bank ended the yearslong policy of multiple exchange rates for the local naira currency, allowing the rate to be determined by market forces.
Both moves aimed to boost government finances and woo investors, authorities said. But they have had an immediate impact of further squeezing millions in Nigeria who were already battling surging inflation, which stood at 22.7% in June, and a 63% rate of multidimensional poverty.
“Since the subsidy removal, you can’t move from one place to another,” said Joe Ajaero, president of the Nigerian Labor Congress, the umbrella body of the unions. He was referring to the cost of transportation that has more than doubled in many cities, forcing a growing number of people to walk to work.
Ajaero said the labor unions have proposed an upward review of salaries but “the federal government has refused to inaugurate the committee on the proposal.“
“Mr. President can’t join the league of lamentations; he should come out openly and let us know those people who have cornered our commonwealth … and not to lament that some people have stolen our money,” said Ajaero, adding that the protest could continue for a long time.
One of the protesters, Usman Abdullahi Shagari, said he has been struggling to provide for his family, which includes five children, after the price of food items more than doubled.
“Feeding today is the most important thing,” said Shagari, 45. “Everything has increased, so that has affected the feeding of my family and my salary cannot withstand it.”
