Nigeria’s president Muhammadu Buhari says he is baffled by the resurgence of the terrorist group, Boko Haram who have recently carried out attacks against civilian and military establishments.

‘‘I was taken aback by what is happening in the north-west and other parts of the country. During our campaigns, we knew about the Boko Haram. What is coming now is surprising.,’‘ Buhari said, according to local media portal, Vanguard.

“It is not ethnicity or religion, rather it is one evil plan against the country.”

Buhari’s government has repeatedly claimed to have defeated Boko Haram, a key pledge that was made to the Nigerian people in the 2015 and 2019 elections.

“We have to be harder on them. One of the responsibilities of government is to provide security. If we don’t secure the country, we will not be able to manage the economy properly,” Buhari said.

Boko Harm has intensified attacks in the Northeast region, especially the Maiduguri – Damaturu that has been described as a death trap.

Source: Africa News

Four people have been killed and several shops and vehicles burnt after thieves breached a fuel pipeline in Lagos, Nigeria’s commercial hub, causing an explosion.

(Source: AFP)

About 20 soldiers were killed and nearly 1,000 people made homeless in a militant attack on a town in northeastern Nigeria, two residents and a military source said on Wednesday.

The militants entered Monguno in Borno state posing as a convoy of soldiers on Tuesday evening, the sources said. They then attacked troops inside the town, destroying at least 750 homes in the process.

Resident Gumati Sadu said people fled into the bush for safety during the fighting and that three civilians were killed by stray bullets.

A military spokesman declined to comment.

The West Africa Province (ISWAP) claimed responsibility for the attack on its Amaq news agency.

It said that one of its militants detonated a car bomb in the town, killing at least 8 soldiers and destroying 3 armored vehicles.

The group also said it had seized a vehicle, weapons and ammunition before leaving the town.

ISWAP split from the extremist group Boko Haram in 2016 and has since staged its own frequent attacks in the region.

Boko Haram’s decade-long insurgency campaign has killed thousands and displaced millions in northeastern Nigeria.

Thousands in Monguno had already been displaced from their homes elsewhere in Borno state by militants. Aid group Medecins Sans Frontieres warned last year that many thousands in Monguno lacked proper shelter, water, sanitation and food.

(Source: Reuters)

A video released by Islamic State on Dec. 26 which claims to show the killing of 11 Christian hostages in northern Nigeria threatens to spark religious tensions in the country and compounds the political problems of president Muhammadu Buhari.

The Islamic State sub-group called Islamic State West Africa Province (ISWAP) said the “beheading” of the hostages was part of its campaign to “avenge” the killing of IS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi in a US military raid in Syria last October.

ISWAP is a 2016 breakaway faction of the Nigeria-founded Boko Haram terrorist group. Until last year when more radical leaders took over, ISWAP was led by Abu Mus’ab al-Barnawi, the son of Boko Haram’s founder, Mohammed Yusuf. As well as Nigeria, it operates in Cameroon, Chad, Niger and Mali, all of which are Nigeria’s neighboring countries. In December, the group killed four aid workers from the NGO Action Against Hunger who they originally abducted in Damasak in Nigeria’s northeastern Borno state in July.

In a bid to ward off talk of religious disputes getting widespread, president Buhari said Nigerians shouldn’t allow terrorists split the populace along religious lines. “We should, under no circumstance, let the terrorists divide us by turning Christians against Muslims because these barbaric killers don’t represent Islam and millions of other law-abiding Muslims around the world,” he said in a statement.

Nigeria, whose 200 million-strong population is split almost evenly between Christians and Muslims, is particularly sensitive to the risks of religious tensions being ignited after decades of on-and-off conflict especially in the country’s middle belt region over the last couple of decades. Most recently the region has been subject to vicious clashes between migratory herdsmen and local farmers primarily over land use. As the herdsmen are often Muslim and landowners widely believed to be Christian, these clashes are regularly perceived as religious clashes.

Islamic State’s release of the video came days after the United States government accused Nigeria of not protecting religious freedom. The US State Department on Dec. 18 added Cuba, Nicaragua, Nigeria, and Sudan on a Special Watch List (SWL) of governments that “have engaged on or tolerated severe violations of religious freedom.”

Nigeria and the other three countries now join Comoros, Russia and Uzbekistan on the list. The designation was a triumph of American Christian right groups that have been lobbying the Trump’s administration to appease its evangelical base by taking up the fight of Christians across the globe.

Earlier, Nigeria’s information minister Lai Mohammed rejected Nigeria’s new designation and argued the Trump administration was acting on the basis of a discredited narrative from “failed politicians and disgruntled elements.”

“The deliberate effort to give religious colouration to the farmers-herders clashes and the Boko Haram insurgency, in particular, has undoubtedly helped to mislead the US into concluding that the government is doing little or nothing to guarantee religious freedom in the country,” said Mohammed.

The video of ISWAP killing of Christians says otherwise. In fact, it reinforced what some Nigerian Christian leaders have previously claimed—that the government of Buhari had not done enough to curtail the activities of various Islamic terrorist groups operating in Nigeria.

In his reaction to the US designation of Nigeria amongst countries on SWL, the president of the Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN), Samson Ayokunle warned “discrimination against Christians can result in another civil war which Nigeria may not survive.” Through a spokesman CAN’s president pointed to killings of Christians in states in the middle-belt region as atrocities that could not have gone unnoticed by the United States. The Christian group alleges that while Muslims have also been killed, the primary targets were Christians.

After initially receiving plaudits for pushing back against the peak of Boko Haram’s rise in Nigeria’s northeast, Buhari’s government, which came to office in 2015, has been more recently criticized over its weak handling of Islamic insurgency, broader conflict and rising insecurity across the country.

As a result of continuing insecurity in Nigeria’s northeast, conservative Christian groups including Washington DC-based Save the Persecuted Christians (STPC) have seized on the killings to urge the Trump administration to appoint a US special envoy to Nigeria and the Lake Chad region to monitor what it called “heightened violence against Christians.”

In conservative media across America, there are barrage of stories emerging about the persecution of Christians in Nigeria. The Christian Post reported Boko Haram and Fulani herdsmen have killed over 1,000 Christians in Nigeria in 2019 alone. A separate figure by put the estimated number of dead Nigerians in 10 years of the insurgency as 27,000.

The break away of ISWAP is widely believed to have brought about a change in direction for the Islamic insurgency. What started in 2009 as an indiscriminate campaign of terror against Muslims and Christians alike has in recent times seemed more targeted. From the 2018 kidnapping in Dapchi schoolgirls in Yobe state and the release of the girls with the exception of Leah Sharibu, a Christian, the insurgence seems to have taken a turn to primarily targeting Christians.

Source:  Quartz Africa

Nigeria’s ex-attorney general Mohammed Adoke has returned to the country to face corruption charges over his involvement in one of the oil industry’s biggest corruption scandals.

The country anti-graft body, the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, EFCC; confirmed his return stating that “The ex-AGF left Dubai following pressure from the EFCC.”

He was arrested by authorities in Dubai in November this year. Adoke’s lawyer, Mike Ozekhome whiles confirming the arrest told Reuters that the warrant used to arrest his client was expired.

Ozekhome said his client was arrested as he went to Dubai for medical appointment, adding that a Nigerian court had nullified the warrant in October because his client was not served with the charges before the warrant was issued.

The EFCC secured warrants in April for two former ministers including Adoke and an Eni manager over the $1.3 billion sale of a Nigerian offshore oilfield by Malabu Oil and Gas in 2011.

The deal has spawned legal cases spanning several countries, involving Nigerian government officials and senior executives from ENI and Royal Dutch Shell. Shell and Eni, and their executives, have denied any wrongdoing.

Source: Reuters

The Nigeria Immigration Service (NIS) said the Federal Government has approved that all Africans could come to Nigeria without Visa from January 2020.

The Comptroller General, NIS, Mr Muhammad Babandede, disclosed this at the inauguration of the Africa–Frontex Intelligence Community (AFIC) on Wednesday in Abuja.

News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that European border and Coast guard Agency also known as Frontex is an agency of European Union (EU) tasked with border control of the European Schengen Area, in coordination with border and coast guard of Schengen area member states.

“The announcement would be made soon by the President of the Federation.

”But we cannot succeed without a tool like AFIC. This tool is key if we want to implement an effective free movement across our border.

“The tool is actually coming at the right time. AFIC would help African countries especially Nigeria that want to open its border for all Africans to enter at will. And now that tool is available, it would make the work easier for us,” he said.

Babandede said that it was important to acknowledge the different forces in Nigeria curbing crime and insecurity.

“But our duty is unique and you may not see it as it is in Chad, Benin or Cameroon.

“The essence is that we are very keen and we have been working with EU for a long time. Frontex is in charge of border before they got another responsibility called coast guard which is also very keen to Africa especially checking member state of ECOWAS,” he said.

The CGI commended the EU and Frontex delegates for establishing the risk analysis centre, adding that analysis could not be done physically without analytical system.

“I was opportune to be at the Frontex headquarters, and I came with useful tools which are for border and control centre.

”This has brought about the building of border and control centre which will be inaugurated next year. So the analytical system from Frontex, border control system and even mobility would all be in one place,” he said.

Babandede assured the delegates that the service would maintain the equipments and called for more training of officers.

“We assure you of the site maintenance if we have a technical know how of maintaining this system. We have done that with IOM very well.

”All the equipments donated for e-Migrants registration are already been installed by all our trained officers,” he said.

Roman Fantini, the head of sector, Frontex, assured the immigration service of training the officers as requested to help maintain the system and usage.

Fantini said that AFIC was not a new development as it started nine years ago and had since grown to what it was today.

He commended the EU and NIS for collaborating to ensure the security of the country.

Ms Eleni Zerzelidou, EU head of delegates, appreciated the immigration service for beefing up the collaboration by taking a step further to ensure border opening for all Africans by 2020.

Zerzelidou added that the EU would continually support the service in delivering its mandate and ensuring the safety of the country.

She said that the long standing partnership with NIS resulted into border management such as NIS border management strategy, MIDAS, among others.

“But we believe Frontex would do more to compliment all we have done so far in assisting the service and the county at large,” she said.

Source: PMNEWSNigeria