Kano, Nigeria | AFP | Islamist militants Boko Haram on Monday released a new video purporting to show at least 14 of the Chibok schoolgirls whose mass kidnapping nearly four years ago became a symbol of NIgeria’s brutal conflict. But despite a concerted global campaign for their release, and talks between …
Read More »IATA: African airlines see 7.9% rise in demand
Geneva – The International Air Transport Association (IATA) has announced global passenger traffic results for November 2017 showing continued robust demand, including in the African region. The outlook for 2018 also looks great, according to IATA’s Director General and CEO Alexandre de Juniac. “The airline industry is in a good place entering 2018. …
Read More »Cameroon separatists held ‘illegally’ in Nigeria: lawyer
Abuja, Nigeria | AFP | A human-rights lawyer representing English-speaking Cameroonian separatists said Thursday the group had been arrested by Nigeria’s secret service and were being held “illegally”, calling on the government to probe their disappearance. Femi Falana said Sisiku Ayuk Tabe, the president of the anglophone separatist movement in …
Read More »Nigeria, neighbours in joint op against Boko Haram leaders
Kano, Nigeria | AFP | Four west African states have launched a major offensive against the Boko Haram jihadist group in Nigeria, the military said on Tuesday. Soldiers from Nigeria and the neighbouring countries of Cameroon, Chad and Niger are targeting a Boko Haram faction led by Abubakar Shekau in the …
Read More »Boko Haram kills four loggers in NE Nigeria
Kano, Nigeria | AFP | Boko Haram fighters opened fire on a group of loggers in a remote village in northeast Nigeria on Saturday, killing four people, a survivor and a militia leader said. Gunmen on motorcycles attacked the loggers while they were loading firewood into pickup vans at Maiwa village, …
Read More »Nigeria petrol shortage bites at Christmas
Lagos, Nigeria | AFP | Long queues formed at petrol stations across Nigeria Tuesday, with motorists sometimes waiting up to 24 hours to fill up their tanks, as Africa’s number one oil producer faces a crippling fuel shortage. “I couldn’t travel. I would have loved to travel to Osun State …
Read More »Need for food, arms spurs Boko Haram attacks in Nigeria
Kano, Nigeria | AFP | A surge in Boko Haram attacks in Nigeria’s restive northeast despite a sustained military offensive against the jihadists is being driven by a need to replenish food and weapon supplies, security and local sources say. In recent months, fighters from two of the main factions …
Read More »Row over oil money to fight Boko Haram in Nigeria
Lagos, Nigeria | AFP | Nigeria’s opposition has rejected a plan to spend a billion dollars of oil money to fight the Boko Haram insurgency in the country’s volatile northeast. Last week, the governor of the southern state of Edo, Godwin Obaseki, told reporters the federal government had been given …
Read More »Nigeria turns the page on literary past
Lagos, Nigeria | AFP | Mention Nigerian literature and the first names likely to spring to mind are Chinua Achebe, the author of “Things Fall Apart”, or the venerable Nobel laureate Wole Soyinka. But Africa’s most populous nation has a new crop of writers whose work is a far cry from …
Read More »Nigerian soldier sentenced to death for killing civilians
Kano, NIGERIA | AFP | A Nigerian military court on Friday sentenced a soldier to death for killing five civilians rescued from Boko Haram. The soldier, Lance Corporal John Godwin, was convicted by the General Court Martial in Maiduguri, capital of Borno State for killing the civilians in Yamteke town. …
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