Nigeria said on Friday it had indefinitely suspended Twitter’s activities, two days after the social media giant removed a post from President Muhammadu Buhari that threatened to punish regional secessionists.

Information Minister Lai Mohammed said the government had acted because of “the persistent use of the platform for activities that are capable of undermining Nigeria’s corporate existence”.

Mohammed did not spell out what form the suspension would take or give more details on the undermining activities. His ministry also announced Twitter’s suspension on Twitter.

When asked about the details of the suspension, a ministerial aide told Reuters: “Wait and see how things will turn out.”

As of the early hours of Saturday, Twitter’s website was inaccessible in Nigeria on some mobile carriers, while its app and website worked on others, according to Reuters tests in Lagos and Abuja.

Twitter is investigating its “deeply concerning” suspension of operations by the Nigerian government, and “will provide updates when we know more,” the company said in a statement.

On Wednesday, the U.S. tech firm said Buhari’s post threatening to punish groups blamed for attacks on government buildings had violated Twitter’s “abusive behaviour” policy.

In April, the information minister reacted angrily when Twitter chose neighbouring Ghana for its first African office. He said the company had been influenced by media misrepresentations of Nigeria, including reports of crackdowns on protests last year.

Demonstrators calling for police reform had used social media to organise, raise money and share alleged proof of police harassment. Twitter’s chief executive, Jack Dorsey, tweeted to encourage his followers to donate.

In the protests’ wake, Mohammed called for “some form of regulation” on social media to combat “fake news”.

A spokesperson for Airtel, one of Nigeria’s largest mobile carriers, on Friday declined to say whether the company had received any government directives about the suspension.

MTN, the largest mobile carrier, did not respond to calls and a message seeking comment.

Source: REUTERS

Gunmen on Sunday kidnapped scores of children from an Islamic seminary in central Nigeria’s Niger state, police and residents said.

Some 200 children were at the school at the time of the attack, the Niger state government said on Twitter, adding that “an unconfirmed number” were taken.

The abduction came a day after 14 students from a university in northwestern Nigeria were freed after 40 days in captivity.

Niger state police spokesman Wasiu Abiodun said the attackers arrived on motorbikes in Tegina town and started shooting indiscriminately, killing one resident and injuring another, before kidnapping the children from the Salihu Tanko Islamic school.

One of the school’s officials, who asked not to be named, said the attackers initially took more than 100 children “but later sent back those they considered too small for them, those between four and 12 years old”.

The state government, in a series of tweets, said the attackers had released 11 of the pupils who were “too small and couldn’t walk” very far.

Armed gangs are terrorising inhabitants in northwest and central Nigeria by looting villages, stealing cattle, and taking people hostage.

Such seizures have become a frequent way for criminals to collect ransoms.

Since December 2020, 730 children and students have been kidnapped, before the attack on Sunday.

On April 20, gunmen known locally as “bandits” stormed Greenfield University in northwestern Nigeria and kidnapped around 20 students, killing a member of the school’s staff in the process.

Five students were executed a few days later to force families and the government to pay a ransom. Fourteen of the students were released on Saturday.

Local press said that the families had paid a ransom totalling 180 million naira ($440,000) for their release.

The criminal gangs maintain camps in the Rugu forest which straddles Zamfara, Katsina, Kaduna and Niger states.

Their motives have been financial with no ideological leanings but there is growing concern they are being infiltrated by jihadists from the northeast waging a 12-year-old insurrection to establish an Islamic state.

Source: AFP

A somber day in Nigeria during the funeral of top-ranking army commander Lieutenant General Ibrahim Attahiru on Saturday.

The burial in Abuja comes a day after he and 10 other officers died when their plane crashed in bad weather.

It was the third military air disaster this year and the army posted videos on social networks of the service attended by political and military leaders at the national mosque.

“Yesterday, 21st day of May 2021, was a very sad day for the Armed Forces. One of our finest and best pilots was conveying him along with the entourage,” said Lucky Irabor, Nigeria Chief of Defense Staff.

“After landing at the Kaduna International airport, the cold hands of death which manifested in the stormy weather ended that journey. The war against insecurity must be won, truly must be won. All we ask of you is to keep praying for us.”

The aircraft went down trying to land at the Kaduna International Airport “due to inclement weather”, the armed forces said.

President Muhammadu Buhari did not attend the burial, which was crticised on social media.

Army chief of staff Attahiru was appointed by Buhari last January in a shakeup of the senior command to better fight surging violence and a more than decade-long jihadist insurgency.

Attahiru died as news emerged that Nigeria’s Boko Haram jihadist leader Abubakar Shekau had himself been seriously wounded or possibly killed after clashes with a rival Islamic State-allied faction.

Attahiru was in charge of leading the frontline offensive against Shekau in 2017.

Nigeria’s military has been battling an Islamist insurgency in the northeast since 2009, a conflict that has killed more than 40,000 and displaced around two million more.

Attahiru had once been in charge of leading the frontline offensive against Boko Haram’s commander Shekau in the northeast in 2017.

Source: Africa News

The son-in-law of Nigeria’s President Muhammadu Buhari is wanted as part of an investigation into an alleged $65 million property fraud, the country’s anti-corruption agency said Friday.

The Independent Corruption Prosecution Commission (ICPC) said in a statement Friday that Gimba Yau Kumo and two others are suspected of misappropriating funds earmarked for a national property development project.

Kumo, who in 2016 married Buhari’s daughter Fatima, was the managing director of a Nigerian mortgage bank. He is also under investigation for Tarry Rufus and Bola Ogunsola, whose positions have not been disclosed.

Buhari, a former general, was first elected in 2015 on a promise to clean up politics in Nigeria and make fighting corruption one of his main goals.

But critics have in the past accused his government and ruling elites of using the country’s anti-corruption agencies as political weapons to target their enemies.

“The persons whose photographs appear above, Tarry Ruffus, Mr Gimba Yau Kumo and Mr Bola Ogunsola, are hereby declared wanted… in connection with issues relating to the diversion of public funds for real estate to the tune of $65 million,” the commission wrote.

It added that anyone with information on their whereabouts should contact the police.

President Buhari’s spokesman, Garba Shehu, confirmed the ongoing investigation into the president’s son-in-law.

“This is an old case, it will take some time. He is the former managing director of the Federal Mortgage Bank,” Shehu told AFP.

Nigeria, Africa’s biggest oil producer, ranks 149th out of 180 countries in Transparency International’s index of global corruption.

When Buhari came to power he spoke of “staggering” theft by the previous government but the looting of public funds has been going on for decades.

Billions of dollars are alleged to have been stolen by former dictator Sani Abacha during his iron rule between 1993 and 1998.

Source: Africa News

Several protesters in Nigeria’s city of Lagos were arrested on Saturday after they tried to hold a peaceful rally against the reopening of the Lekki tollgate, where security forces shot at protesters in October, which became the epicentre of the #EndSARS movement.

“I’m not here with any weapon. I’m here for human rights. This is not done, everybody knows,” said arrested protester Jay D Boy, an artist who spoke from inside a police van.

“Even those police officers today, they know. They know that things are not going well in this country. Three of my friends were killed here last year. And we are not hearing anything about it, this is not a crime.”

Police bundled around 17 protesters into a black truck and some other people drove past shouting “End SARS”, referring to Nigeria’s police unit accused of committing the deadly abuses.

“Picked up because I was walking, in my country. Picked up because I was walking,” said Christopher Emmanuel Ogboji, another arrested protester,

#EndSARS

Many view the reopening of the tollgate as ill-timed and inconsiderate to victims of the Lekki shootings.

The huge highway tollgate became the centre of the protest movement against police brutality by the SARS unit, which has been disbanded.

The demonstrations ended abruptly after the shooting in Lagos and a wave of looting and unrest followed.

The government promised reforms in response.

An investigation into last year’s violence at Lekki has stalled with representatives of the armed forces failing to appear before the panel.

Security forces say they only used blank rounds to break up protesters who had defied a curfew, though Amnesty International said soldiers shot dead at least 10 people

Nigeria’s government this week had warned against holding new protests at Lekki, saying the rallies could descend into violence in the name of justice.

“We are calling on all Nigerian authorities to demonstrate commitment to protect the right to peaceful protest,” watchdog Amnesty International said on Twitter.

Source: Africa News

Security forces on Thursday rescued nearly 350 schoolboys who had been kidnapped by suspected Islamist gunmen in northern Nigeria and taken into a vast forest, the governor of Katsina state said.

The abduction last Friday night had been claimed by Islamist militant group Boko Haram in an unverified audio recording.

Gunmen raided the Government Science Secondary School in Kankara town, Katsina state, on motorbikes and carried off the boys in the biggest such incident in the lawless region in recent years.

Governor Aminu Bello Masari said in a televised interview with state channel NTA that a total of 344 boys held in the Rugu Forest in neighboring Zamfara state had been freed.

“We have recovered most of the boys. It’s not all of them,” he said.

In the rescue operation, security forces had cordoned off the area where the boys were being held and had been given instructions not to fire a fire a single shot.

“We had already established indirect contact to try to make sure that we secure the release of the children unharmed,” Masari said. “We thank God that they took our advice and not a single shot was fired.”

The boys were on their way back to Katsina state and would be medically examined and reunited with their families on Friday, Masari said.

The abduction gripped a nation already incensed by widespread insecurity, and evoked memories of Boko Haram’s 2014 kidnapping of more than 270 schoolgirls in the northeastern town of Chibok.

Abduction of schoolboys shows ‘a very dangerous trend’ toward radicalisation of crime groups in northwest Nigeria

News of the release came hours after a video started circulating online purportedly showing Boko Haram militants with some of the boys.

The video, which featured Boko Haram’s emblem, showed a group of boys in a wood pleading “Help us, help us.” Reuters was not able to immediately verify the authenticity of the footage, the boys, or who released it.

The father of one of the missing boys, who gave only his first name Umar, said his son, Shamsu Ibrahim, was one of the boys who is heard speaking in the video .

“All the armies that have come here to help us, please send them back. They can do nothing to help us,” the boy says.

Boko Haram has a history of turning captives into jihadist fighters. If its claims were true, its involvement in northwestern Nigeria marks a geographical expansion in its activities.

Earlier on Thursday, protesters marched in the northwestern city of Katsina under a banner reading #BringBackOurBoys as pressure mounted on the government to improve security.

“Northern Nigeria has been abandoned at the mercy of vicious insurgents, bandits, kidnappers, armed robbers, rapists and an assortment of hardened criminals,” said Balarabe Ruffin of the Coalition of Northern Groups (CNG), which focuses on the welfare of northern Nigerians.

Armed gangs that rob and kidnap for ransom, widely referred to as “bandits”, carry out attacks on communities across the northwest, making it hard for locals to farm, travel or tap rich mineral assets in some states such as gold.

Criminal gangs operating in the northwest have killed more than 1,100 people in the first half of 2020 alone, according to rights group Amnesty International.

In the northeast, Boko Haram and its offshoot, Islamic State West Africa Province, have waged a decade-long insurgency estimated to have displaced about 2 million people and killed more than 30,000. They want to create states based on their extreme interpretation of sharia law.

Buhari, who comes from Katsina, has repeatedly said that Boko Haram has been “technically defeated”.

A former military ruler, Buhari was elected in 2015 in large part due to his pledge to crush the insurgency. Under his predecessor, Goodluck Jonathan, Boko Haram grew in strength and controlled territory around the size of Belgium.

Source: REUTERS