By Sam Olukoya
LAGOS, Oct 12 2023 (IPS-Partners)

Ijora Badia, a slum in Lagos, was swimming in plastic waste. Now children pay their school fees in plastic bottles, and these are used to build classrooms.

IPS UN Bureau

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By Sam Olukoya
BENIN CITY, Nigeria, Dec 17 2021 (IPS)

Miriam* hoped for a better life in Europe. Instead, her journey ended in Libya, where, double-crossed by traffickers she was raped and abused.  She has returned to Nigeria and shared her experiences with Sam Olukoya.

Miriam fell pregnant and gave birth to a son. In this short documentary, she tells of the growing love for her child, whom she describes as “a very cool guy”.
(*Not her real name)

This is part of a series of features from across the globe on human trafficking. IPS coverage is supported by the Airways Aviation Group.

The Global Sustainability Network ( GSN ) is pursuing the United Nations Sustainable Development Goal 8 with a special emphasis on Goal 8.7 which “takes immediate and effective measures to eradicate forced labour, end modern slavery and human trafficking and secure the prohibition and elimination of the worst forms of child labour, including recruitment and use of child soldiers, and by 2025 end child labour in all its forms”.

GSN originated in the Joint Declaration of Religious Leaders signed on December 2, 2014. Religious leaders of various faiths gathered to work together “to defend the dignity and freedom of the human being against the extreme forms of the globalization of indifference, such as exploitation, forced labour, prostitution, human trafficking”.

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By Sam Olukoya
LAGOS, Nigeria, May 12 2021 (IPS)

People affected by leprosy, also known as Hansen’s disease, are often stigmatised. In countries like Nigeria, many of them end up as beggars due to the psycho- and socio-economic problems they face. The COVID-19 pandemic has brought fresh challenges for them and life is getting increasingly difficult. Sam Olukoya in Lagos takes a look at how people affected by leprosy in Nigeria are faring in the face of the COVID-19 pandemic.

SCRIPT

SONG:

NARRATION: In Nigeria, many people affected by leprosy survive as beggars. They usually sing songs like this as they solicit for assistance. One of them, Musa Gambo, says life has changed for the worse for them since the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic.

GAMBO: We have been facing problems since the Corona pandemic started. The price of food has gone up, everything is expensive, yet we cannot do any job. The money people give us as alms now is much lower than what they used to give us in the past. Some people will give you nothing and just walk away because they are facing difficult times. Some people are even angry and irritated when you beg them for money because life is tough for them. They will ask why you are disturbing them for money as if you are not aware that there is corona.

SOUND OF BUCKETS

NARRATION: Musa Ibrahim arranges buckets which he uses to store water. Ibrahim who is affected by leprosy says as beggars they often face arrest.

IBRAHIM: The lockdown has been lifted and people can move about freely, but for us if we go out they will arrest us and they will not release us. They came even yesterday. It is difficult for us to go and beg for alms g because they will arrest us. Our crime is that we are begging, they said they don’t want beggars, for us that is the only way we can get money to sustain ourselves. If we cannot beg for money honestly it will be difficult to feed. They did not give us jobs yet they are stopping us from looking for money, that is not good.

NARRATION: Audu Garba says people like him who are affected by leprosy have to survive as beggars due to the discrimination they face.

GARBA: Because we have leprosy, people will not patronise us if we set up a business due to the stigma. Here in Lagos anyone with leprosy who set up a business is deceiving himself because the business will not succeed. If I have money my business idea will be breeding and selling livestocks. If I have the resources for this business I will cease to be a beggar.  But I don’t have the resources. I cannot farm, so if I don’t live as a beggar what else should I do? I cannot get loan from the bank, who will give me loan in the bank, when I don’t have a farm or a house that I can use as collateral to get a loan?

NARRATION: Garba says the pandemic has increased the stigma against people affected by leprosy as many Nigerians believe they are infected by the Corona virus.

GARBA: We have been facing discrimination in the past and it has continued. It is now double discrimination with corona, because now they see us as the people who actually have Corona. I swear. It saddens me when they say we have corona. Till now they go about with that impression that we have Corona. When some people even pity you and want to give you money, they will throw it at you from a distance. Yes, it is because of the stigma that we have Corona that is why they treat us this way. They discriminate against us because they don’t regard us as normal human beings.

NARRATION: Lagos based medical doctor, Kunle Ogunyemi, says once treated, people who had Hansen’s disease are not contagious and can live a fairly normal life. He said misconceptions about the disease make many people think they are still contagious.

OGUNYEMI: Ordinarily when they are fully cured, they are not infectious. Perception of the public or even some health care workers unfortunately does not accommodate them at all because knowledge about it, it is not a common disease at all and because not too many people know, the tendency is still to keep them at arms length.

SONG:

NARRATION: With songs like this, people affected by leprosy often appeal to society to respect the rights of vulnerable people like them. But Garba says so strong is the discrimination against them that he is not optimistic that they will get the COVID-19 vaccine which is supposed to be freely available to Nigerians.

GARBA: We are happy that there is vaccine, but it is not meant for us. If the populace are vaccinated we shall thank God, but for us, it is not a priority. If they look for us we shall take the vaccine since everyone ought to have it, but if they don’t look for us, we shall not force ourselves to get it, it will be difficult for us to get the vaccine. Take the newly introduced national identification card, I don’t have one, because they asked for money, I don’t have money. The situation with the vaccine will be similar, they will ask for money but we don’t have money.

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By Sam Olukoya
BENIN CITY, Nigeria, Apr 16 2021 (IPS)

Sandra* had a baby born of rape. The young Nigeria woman had plans of a better life in Europe, but when her ‘recruiters’ abandoned her in Libya she was sexually assaulted and abused. 

But after being deported back to Nigeria Sandra and her young son face daily discrimination and abuse about the boy’s parentage, even from her own mother and friends. She shares with IPS the effect this verbal abuse has had on her little boy and the impact on her mental health.

“I feel bad, I feel bad a lot. I feel very terrible for what my son is going through. He is not supposed to go through this kind of pain no matter what. It is not his fault, he is not the one who caused it,” she says.

*Not her real name.

This is part of a series of features from across the globe on human trafficking. IPS coverage is supported by the Airways Aviation Group.

The Global Sustainability Network ( GSN ) is pursuing the United Nations Sustainable Development Goal number 8 with a special emphasis on Goal 8.7 which ‘takes immediate and effective measures to eradicate forced labour, end modern slavery and human trafficking and secure the prohibition and elimination of the worst forms of child labour, including recruitment and use of child soldiers, and by 2025 end child labour in all its forms’.

The origins of the GSN come from the endeavours of the Joint Declaration of Religious Leaders signed on 2 December 2014. Religious leaders of various faiths, gathered to work together “to defend the dignity and freedom of the human being against the extreme forms of the globalisation of indifference, such us exploitation, forced labour, prostitution, human trafficking” and so forth.

Follow @IPSNewsUNBureau
  

Excerpt:

Nigerian migrants arrive in Lagos from Libya. Nigeria has, in the last two years, evacuated thousands of its citizens from Libya and Lebanon after they suffered several forms of abuses, including enslavement. Trafficking has resulted in at least 80,000 Nigerian women being held as sex slaves and forced labour in the Middle East. Credit: Sam Olukoya/IPS

By Sam Olukoya
LAGOS, Nigeria, Sep 14 2020 (IPS)

“I need help, right now I cannot walk properly,” trafficking victim Nkiru Obasi pleaded from her hospital bed in a video she posted online.

The young Nigerian woman had been injured in the Aug. 4 Beirut blast, which ripped through the Lebanese capital, killing 190 people injuring a further 6,500 and damaging 40 percent of the city. However, it’s not her injuries keeping her in Lebanon but a restrictive and abusive system of migrant laws.

Obasi is just one of thousands of young Nigerian women trafficked to Lebanon with false promises of a better life. The Lagos-based New Telegraph newspaper quoted a source in the Nigerian embassy in Lebanon as saying that some 4,541 Nigerian women were trafficked to the country last year. The chair of Nigerians in Diaspora Commission, Abike Dabiri-Erewa, described the rate at which Nigerian women are trafficked to Lebanon as “an epidemic”.

After sustaining injuries in the blast, Obasi tried to return to Nigeria but she and four others were stopped at the airport under the exploitative Kafala system.

The system, which is widely practiced in Lebanon and other parts of the Middle East, prohibits migrant workers from returning to their countries without the permission of their employer.

“Lebanon’s restrictive and exploitative kafala system traps tens of thousands of migrant domestic workers in potentially harmful situations by tying their legal status to their employer, enabling highly abusive conditions amounting at worst to modern-day slavery,” according to Aya Majzoub, Lebanon researcher at Human Rights Watch. The rights organisation called for a revised contract that recognises and protects workers’ internationally guaranteed rights.

In late May, Nigeria attempted to repatriate 60 trafficked women from Lebanon but only 50 could return home. Anti-trafficking activists in the Middle East said the remaining 10 women were held back in Lebanon under the Kafala system.

The Kafala system operates alongside a system that enslaves trafficked women. In April, a Lebanese man posted an advert under the “Buy and Sell in Lebanon” Facebook group. “Domestic worker from Nigeria for sale with new legal document, she is 30 years old, she is very active and very clean,” the advert said in Arabic. The price tag was $1,000.

An outcry from Nigeria forced Lebanese authorities to rescue the woman while a man thought to be responsible for the Facebook post was arrested. The Lebanese Ministry of Labour said the man would be tried in court for human trafficking.

But this is not an isolated case. Many Nigerian women trafficked to the Middle East have spoken out about being sold as slaves.

In January, 23-year-old Ajayi Omolola appeared in an online video saying she and a few other Nigerian women were being held under harsh conditions and that their lives were at risk.

“When we are ill, they don’t take us to the hospital, some of those I arrived in Lebanon with have died,” she said.

Omolola said on arrival in Lebanon, her passport was taken away and she was “sold”.

“I did not realise that they had sold me into slavery,” she said, adding that she only realised the gravity of her situation when her boss told her she could not return to Nigeria because he had “bought her”.

Kikelomo Olayide had a similar account. On arrival in Lebanon from Nigeria she was taken to a market. “In that market, they call us slaves,” she said.

Roland Nwoha, head of programmes/coordinator of migration and human trafficking at Idia Renaissance, a Nigerian organisation working to discourage irregular migration and human trafficking, told IPS that even though Europe is a major attraction for Nigerians in search of a better future abroad, the Middle East is proving an alternative for many.

Nwoha explained that unlike the journey to Europe, which involves a dangerous land journey through the desert and an equally dangerous crossing of the Mediterranean Sea, traffickers fly their victims to the Middle East after procuring visas for them with the promise of good jobs.

The chair of Nigeria’s House of Representatives Committee on Diaspora Affairs Tolulope Akande-Sadipe said 80,000 Nigerian women are being held as sex slaves,and forced labour in the Middle East, especially in Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Oman.

Nigerian women trafficked to the Middle East “almost always end in labour and sexual exploitation,” Daniel Atokolo Lagos commander of the National Agency for the Prohibition of Trafficking in Persons said.

Gloria Bright, a Nigerian teacher who was promised a teaching job with a monthly salary of $1,000 in Lebanon, was held captive and made to work as a domestic worker upon her arrival. She posted an online video in which she pleaded for help and to be rescued. She said besides being made to work under very harsh conditions, her boss sexually harassed her. “At times he will ask me to massage him, he will hug me, he will kiss me,” she said.

Bright was fortunate to be rescued by Nigerian authorities before the Aug. 4 Beirut blast.

Dabiri-Erewa said the trafficking of Nigerians to Lebanon “is becoming a big embarrassment and it has to be stopped”. In an effort to stop the crime, Nigerian authorities have arrested several people, including Lebanese residents in Nigeria. A Lebanese is being investigated in connection with the trafficking of 27 women to Lebanon, two of whom have been rescued.

The Lebanese ambassador to Nigeria, Houssam Diab, says his embassy is assisting the Nigerian government to stop the trafficking of women to his country. He said the issuance of work visas to Nigerians has been suspended following cases of the abuse of Nigerian women at the hands of their Lebanese employers.

The ambassador said the Lebanese Ministry of Labour will work out a “legal and systemic way to make domestic staff to come into Lebanon legally without the fear of inhuman treatment”.   

Nigerian activists, like Nwoha, who are working against human trafficking say the Nigerian government has to do more to curtailing the activities of the traffickers. They said the government should make conditions at home better to stop Nigerians desperately seeking a better life abroad.

This is part of a series of features from across the globe on human trafficking. IPS coverage is supported by the Airways Aviation Group.

The Global Sustainability Network ( GSN ) is pursuing the United Nations Sustainable Development Goal number 8 with a special emphasis on Goal 8.7 which ‘takes immediate and effective measures to eradicate forced labour, end modern slavery and human trafficking and secure the prohibition and elimination of the worst forms of child labour, including recruitment and use of child soldiers, and by 2025 end child labour in all its forms’.

The origins of the GSN come from the endeavours of the Joint Declaration of Religious Leaders signed on 2 December 2014. Religious leaders of various faiths, gathered to work together “to defend the dignity and freedom of the human being against the extreme forms of the globalisation of indifference, such us exploitation, forced labour, prostitution, human trafficking” and so forth.

A young girl whose family fled the Boko Haram insurgency stands in front of a tent in a camp for internally displaced persons in Maiduguri, Nigeria. Boko Haram has abducted thousands of girls and forced them into unwanted marriages and enslavement. Credit: Sam Olukoya/IPS

By Sam Olukoya
MAIDUGURI, Nigeria, Apr 25 2019 (IPS)

“They forcefully took us away and kept us like prisoners,” Lydia Musa, a former Boko Haram captive who was abducted at the age of 14 during an attack on her village in Gwoza, in Nigeria’s north eastern Borno State, tells IPS. Musa and two other underaged girls were captured and forced to marry Boko Haram fighters in spite of their protests that they were too young to marry.

“You must marry whether you like it or not they told us as they pointed guns at us,” the now 16-year-old girl recalls.

Boko Haram’s violation of the rights of women and children paints a larger picture of human trafficking, forced marriages and enslavement in Nigeria.

As the extremist group enters the 10th year of its insurgency, it remains formidable enough to abduct women and children at will, continuing “to prey on women and girls as spoils of war,” Anietie Ewang, Nigeria country researcher at Human Rights Watch, said in a statement.

This West African nation has the highest incidence of Africans being trafficked through the Sahara Desert and the Mediterranean Sea to Europe. The north and north eastern parts of the country, where Boko Haram is active, have high incidences of forced marriages, while across the country there are frequent cases of young girls being ‘traded’ as modern day slaves.

The group, whose name means ‘Western education is forbidden’, is reputed to be among the five-deadliest terror groups in the world. It has been involved in a violent campaign for strict Islamic rule in north east Nigeria and in parts of the neighbouring states of Cameroon, Chad and Niger. More than 20,000 people have been killed since the start of the insurgency in 2009.

Boko Haram is also involved in the kidnapping, trafficking and enslavement of children and women. Hundreds of women and children have been abducted since the group’s insurgency started. But Boko Haram’s most well-known abduction occurred in April 2014, when 276 female students were taken away from their dormitory at the Government Secondary School, Chibok, in Borno State.

The abduction started a global campaign #BringBackOurGirls.

A few months after the Chibok girls were abducted, Boko Haram’s leader, Abubakar Shekau, said he would sell them. “I am the one who captured all those girls and I will sell all of them,” he said in an online video in which he justified human slavery. “Slavery is allowed in my religion and I shall capture people and make them slaves.”

Consequently there have been other mass abductions of children in the region since the Chibok incident. In March 2015, Boko Haram fighters abducted more than 300 children from Zanna Mobarti Primary School in Damasak; while 116 female students from the Government Girls Science and Technical College, in Dapchi, Yobe State, were abducted in February 2018 during an attack on the school.

“The way Boko Haram hold women and children against their will is by itself a form of slavery,” Rotimi Olawale of the group Bring Back Our Girls (BBOG) tells IPS. The group is involved in a powerful campaign for the speedy and effective search and rescue of the Chibok girls and other abducted women and children.

Olawale says Boko Haram is also using captives, like the Chibok girls, as “valuable bargaining chips” to collect ransoms and secure the release of their members held in Nigerian prisons. While many of the Chibok girls are still missing five years after their abduction, others escaped or were released by Boko Haram in deals made with the Nigerian government. But 112 girls are reportedly still missing.

In an apparent reference to Boko Haram, the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) says that since 2012, non-state armed groups in north east Nigeria have recruited and used children as combatants and non-combatants, raped and forced girls to marry and committed other grave violations against children.

Accounts by others who escaped from Boko Haram’s captivity confirm this.

Ali Mohammed is also a former Boko Haram captive. He tells IPS that while in captivity he saw Boko Haram members using captive girls as sex slaves. “At night they freely go to where the girls are kept to pick them for sex,” he explains.

Another former Boko Haram captive who preferred to be called Halima says male children born through sexual slavery are being breed to be the new generation of Boko Haram fighters. Halima, who gave birth to twins (a boy and a girl), tells IPS how Boko Haram members always celebrate when a baby boy is born in their camps.

“Once they realise it is a male baby they will start shooting their guns into the air in happy mood saying that a new leader has been born,” she says.

“After I delivered the babies, they carried the male in jubilation and were chatting Allah Akbar, in contrast, they did not show any joy with the female, they did not even touch her.”

Boko Haram’s abduction of young persons are in part aimed at turning them into fighters. UNICEF says between 2013 and 2017 more than 3,500 children, most of whom were aged 13 to 17, were recruited by non-state armed groups who used them in the armed conflict in north east Nigeria. UNICEF says the true figures are likely to be higher because its figures are only of those cases that have been verified.

Musa confirms that while in captivity she saw abducted boys being trained to be Boko Haram fighters. “In the mornings, they normally teach them how to shoot guns and carry out attacks,” she says, adding that some of the boys were just 10 years old.

Boko Haram is also known to train children to become suicide bombers. A UNICEF report in 2017, says between January and August of that year, 83 children, mainly girls, were used by Boko Haram as suicide bombers. The UN’s children agency said this figure was four times higher than it was for 2016.

Attempts to use legislation to address such abuses as child marriage, sexual abuse, trafficking and abduction have failed in the past. In 2003, Nigeria adopted the Child Rights Act as a legal documentation to protect children from these abuses. Currently the country’s constitution does not have a minimum age of marriage. Though the Child Rights Act set the marriageable age as 18, it failed in part because a number of Nigeria’s 36 states refused to domesticate the law.

“It was also a failure in states where it was adopted because it only existed on paper and was not enforced,” Betty Abah, a women and children’s rights activist, tells IPS.

In 2016, Nigeria’s male-dominated senate voted against a Gender and Equal Opportunities Bill. The bill in part prohibits trafficking, sexual abuse and exploitation of women and children. The bill, which also prohibits forced marriage, set 18 as the minimum legal age for marriage.

According to UNICEF, 43 percent of girls in Nigeria are married off before they turn 18. Some of the lawmakers who voted against the bill cited such grounds as their religion which permitted underaged marriage.

“It sends a very bad signal that we have a long way to go if those who are supposed to make laws to protect women and children feel these laws are not necessary,” Abah says.

In the meantime, Musa, may have fled the captivity of Boko Haram but she is too terrified to return home. She now lives in Maiduguri, which is also in Borno State and about 130 kms from Gwoza.

She tells IPS she is home sick. “I am always praying for the crisis to end so that I can return home, for now I cant go back because I don’t want to risk being taken away by Boko Haram again.”

The origins of the GSN come from the endeavours of the Joint Declaration of Religious Leaders signed on 2 December 2014. Religious leaders of various faiths, gathered to work together “to defend the dignity and freedom of the human being against the extreme forms of the globalization of indifference, such us exploitation, forced labour, prostitution, human trafficking” and so forth.

Excerpt:

Professor Pius Adesanmi was on board the Ethiopian Airlines Flight ET302 that crashed on Sunday with no survivors.

By Sam Olukoya
LAGOS, Nigeria, Mar 11 2019 (IPS)

Nigeria is mourning along with the rest of the world after the downing of Ethiopian Airlines Flight, which claimed all of the 157 lives onboard. The fatalities included people from 35 countries, 19 United Nations officials and two Nigerians, one of whom was regarded as Africa’s leading academic and labelled a genius by many. 

Professor Pius Adesanmi and Abiodun Bashua, a retired career Ambassador, who was on contract with the United Nations Economic Commission of Africa (UNECA), are being mourned.

Adesanmi, at the time of his death, was a professor at the Institute of African Studies in Carleton University, Ottawa, Canada. He was on his way to a meeting of the African Union’s Economic, Social and Cultural Council in Nairobi.

The award-winning writer held dual Nigerian and Canadian citizenship and made his mark in both countries and beyond. This has been manifested in some of the tributes that have been paid to him.

“The contributions of Pius Adesanmi to Carleton are immeasurable,” Pauline Rankin, dean of the University’s Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, said in a statement.

“He worked tirelessly to build the Institute of African Studies, to share his boundless passion for African literature and to connect with and support students,” Ranking said, adding that: “He was a scholar and teacher of the highest calibre who leaves a deep imprint on Carleton.”

In Nigeria, tributes are pouring in for Adesanmi, acknowledging him for being a remarkable writer, literary critic, satirist, and columnist.

Bayo Oluwasanmi, a newspaper columnist described Adesanmi as “a flaming writer with a fiery message of rebuke for the oppressive and wicked governments in Nigeria.”

Oluwasanmi further described Adesanmi as a “watchman with bravura and strong moral fibre committed to a strong sense of right and wrong,” adding that he “writes with the supple grace of a swan and the boldness of a beaver.”

On Adesanmi’s Facebook page one user, Yemi Adeeko, said: “Tribute to a genius Nigerian I never met.”

Another user commented on the photo that Adesanmi posted just before boarding Ethiopian airlines flight along with this comment: “If I take the wings of the morning and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea, even there your hand shall lead me, and your right hand shall hold me – Psalm 139:9-10”

Atiba Oluwatosin said in response: “These last words depict your conscious awareness that your destination is a cross over to see your creator face to face. RIP Prof. Of Academics.”

Adesanmi’s genius and great mind was indeed manifest in his regular newspaper columns and in his works.

These include his book “Naija No Dey Carry Last.” The book which is a collection of satirical essays, portray the decay in the Nigerian system, including the persistent lack of a government in the country.

The book shows Adesanmi’s ability to present serious issues in a light-hearted manner that leaves his readers laughing while at the same time feeling sober.

The late academic was born in Isanlu, in Kogi State, Central Nigeria.

He studied for his Masters Degree in Nigeria before going to the University of British Columbia where he bagged a PhD in French Studies in 2002. He joined Carleton University in 2006.

Many who know him are not likely to forget in a hurry a man described as the first leading African academic to use social media as a classroom to test out his ideas and engage with Nigeria.

Many returned migrants in Nigeria are involved in an IOM sponsored initiative aimed at sensitising potential migrants about the dangers of irregular migration. Credit: Sam Olukoya/IPS   

By Sam Olukoya
BENIN CITY, Mar 4 2019 (IPS)

Nigeria accounts for some of the largest number of irregular migrants trying to reach Europe from Africa.

Since April 2017, the International Organisation for Migration (IOM) has assisted over 10,000 stranded migrants in Libya, Niger, Mali and other transit or destination countries to return to Nigeria. 

This is being done under the European Union (EU)-IOM Joint Initiative for Migrant Protection and Reintegration.

Some of the returned migrants have successfully settled down to a new life of business under the EU-IOM initiative. But beyond this, some of them are taking time off their business schedules to volunteer for an IOM-sponsored advocacy programme called Migrants as Messengers, which is aimed at sensitising potential migrants about the dangers of embarking on irregular migration.

International Migration Organisation Volunteer Field Officers campaign in public places in Nigeria’s Edo State against irregular migration. Credit: Sam Olukoya/IPS

By Sam Olukoya
BENIN CITY, Nigeria, Feb 1 2019 (IPS)

“Don’t assume if you attempt the journey your fortune will change for the better,” a woman says over the public address system in the crowded Uselu market in Benin City, the capital of Nigeria’s Edo State. “Many embarked on the journey and never made it. Many people are dying in the Sahara Desert.” 

She was speaking about a journey that many here in this West African nation have sought to go on in the hope of making a better life for themselves and their families. But it entails embarking on a route of irregular migration reportedly fraught with danger, trauma and abuse.

But in an ironic twist of fate, many young Nigerians who have attempted the irregular travel to Europe, through the Sahara Desert and across the Mediterranean sea, are back home and campaigning against the practice.

Using experience to teach about the dangers of irregular migration

Known as Volunteer Field Officers, VFOs, a group of 15 returnee migrants are working with the International Organization for Migration (IOM), under its Migrants as Messengers (MaM) Programme in Nigeria.

These VFOs were among the Nigerian migrants the IOM brought home from Libya and other transit countries under the European Union-IOM Joint Initiative For Migrant Protection and Reintegration. Since the beginning of the project in April 2017 more than 11,500 migrants have been returned home after their failed attempt to reach Europe.

Marshall Patsanza of the IOM  described it as a peer to peer advocacy programme under which “migrants who embarked on the journey to Europe through Libya are sharing their experiences, thus informing others of the dangers of the journey.”

It includes a series of messages and videos posted on social media, interviews on community radio stations, and community screenings of a movie on irregular migration.

The campaign has also taken place in the media, at schools and in public places like on busy highways and in marketplaces.

A dangerous journey and a sensitive subject

The Uselu campaign starts with the female VFO addressing traders and customers in the market over a public address system.

She tells her audience that irregular migration through the desert to Libya and then over the Mediterranean sea to Europe is highly dangerous and no one should undertake it, irrespective of the hardships they face at home.

But the market turns rowdy when she criticises the widespread practice in Edo State where poor mothers encourage their children to embark on the dangerous journey, hoping that they will earn large amounts of money abroad to lift their families out of poverty.

Edo is the Nigerian state with the highest incidence of irregular migration.
Data gathered from the IOM under the EU-IOM Joint Initiative, shows that since April 2017 about 50 percent of migrants returned from Libya under the initiative are from Edo State.

It is here that the VFOs are most active, many times going the extra mile to ensure a successful campaign. And it is what they do now in Uselu market.

“Many of our mothers here, some of them have sent their children to the Libyan route, it is bad, you should advise yourselves because there is nothing in the Libya route,” the female returnee migrant says.

Economic recession leads to support for irregular migration

But angry women shout her down and engage the VFO team in a war of words. They insist that irregular migration has become inevitable in the face of the economic situation in the country, which has left many families extremely poor. In 2017 the country began recovering from the worst economic recession in a quarter of a century. But rising inflation and a slowdown in the oil sector are among the contributors to a sluggish growth.

“Many of the good houses in Benin [City] were built with money sent home by those who went abroad through Libya,” one woman says. Another argues that it is unfair to ask people not to travel to Europe via the desert and the sea when they are not allowed to travel by air.

Such deep support for irregular migration from parents accounts for the widespread practice of it in Edo State.

This, and the long history of irregular migration in the state which started in the 1980s following a downturn in Nigeria’s economy, makes the work of the VFOs challenging at times.

Personal, traumatic stories and photographic evidence change minds

But the personal stories of the VFOs remain an effective tool in their campaigns. They are also armed with posters and handbills that illustrate their near-death experiences when they attempted the journey to Europe.

VFO Jude Ikuenobe says when confronted with a situation similar to the one faced at Uselu Market he always tells people about his imprisonment in Libya. He supports this by showing people photos, taken shortly after his return from Libya and his imprisonment there, of how emaciated he was.

He also tells people how his friends died while crossing the Sahara desert and the Mediterranean sea.

Because traditionally people from Edo State are buried near their loved ones, Ikuenobe often tells people how sad it is to die in a place like Libya or how tragic it is to have their bodies thrown away in the desert, rather than being buried by their loved ones at home. He says when people hear his first-hand experience and see his photographs they often become discouraged to attempt irregular migration.

The VFOs use their new communications skills with great effect at the Uselu market. And tensions soon calm down after people see the photographs, posters and handbills.

A safe space to share own stories of tragedy

Some people in the market even feel safe enough to share their own stories. One lady admits her young, beautiful friend drowned at sea as she attempted to cross from Libya to Europe.

One man, Chinedu Adimon, says two of his friends also drowned making the same crossing. “One of them had two young daughters,” he recalls.

Many in the market whose relatives have embarked on irregular migration, and whom they have not heard from since, are sobered by the reality of the dangers. They wonder what could have happened to their loved ones.

Pius Igede bursts into tears.

He says his daughter recently made the irregular journey to Europe and he does not know her whereabouts.

“She only made a phone call that she is out of the country. I don’t even know where she is now, whether it is Libya or any other place I don’t know,” he explains.

He adds that he suspects some of his other children are planning to travel to Europe as well.
And for him, the VFO’s posters and handbills may be the saving grace to convince them to remain at home.

“I want to collect the posters to show my children to discourage them from going to Libya,” he says. “I got scared when I saw the posters. I am frightened [that] my children will secretly travel without my knowledge.”

Closing a vital information gap

Osita Osemene of the Patriotic Citizen Initiatives, a non governmental organisation campaigning against irregular migration, says the VFOs were able to convince people in the market about the dangers of irregular migration because they have first-hand experience.

“It would have been very difficult to convince anyone in the market if the VFOs were just ordinary people who had no experience of irregular travels,” says Osemene, who is himself a returnee migrant.

He explains that the lack of information about the true impact of irregular migration is a serious problem as many people assume those who attempt the dangerous journey to Europe actually arrive there and attain success.

“They were surprised when we showed them some of the things people go through, how people cross the sea in boats that can easily sink,” he says.

Ikuenobe says as VFOs they are working to close a vital information gap.

“So many mothers are not educated, so many mothers are desperate to see their children succeed, but we have to make them understand that irregular migration would not bring success,” Ikuenobe says.

For Patsanza the performance of the VFOs at Uselu Market shows how effective they can be in the fight against irregular migration.

Ikuenobe says the campaign is being conducted continuously in order to educate as many people as possible.

“The message is that even if things are bad at home, that is no justification for people to go and commit suicide. It is like going to kill yourself when you attempt to travel to Europe through the desert and sea.”

Students of the Itohan Girls Secondary School in Benin City, Nigeria sing during their morning assembly. Courtesy: Sam Olukoya

By Sam Olukoya
BENIN CITY, Nigeria, Jan 17 2019 (IPS)

The International Organization For Migration (IOM) has taken its campaign against irregular migration to schools in Nigeria. The school campaigns are meant to educate children who are among victims of human traffickers. After being recruited, victims of traffickers are made to embark on dangerous irregular journeys through the desert and by sea in an attempt to reach Europe. Many children die in the course of these journeys while many others are enslaved. Some young girls end up in the sex trade.

Students of the Itohan Girls Secondary School in Benin City, Nigeria sing during their morning assembly. The students have been joined by a team from the IOM and a group of young Nigerians who returned home after their failed attempt to migrate to Europe. With young girls at great risk of being targeted by traffickers who need them for the sex trade, Marshall Patsanza of the IOM says a girls’ school like this is an ideal place for the organization to carry out its campaign.

Returnee migrants volunteering for the International Migration Organisation (IOM) are campaigning in Nigerian markets against irregular migration by sharing their own stories of strife. Credit: Sam Olukoya/IPS

By Sam Olukoya
BENIN CITY, Nigeria, Jan 8 2019 (IPS)

Thousands of migrants mainly from Sub-Saharan Africa have died or ended up in slavery as they attempt to travel to Europe irregularly through the desert and across the sea. Many were recruited by traffickers who deceived them into believing that the passage to Europe would be safe and easy.

The International Organization for Migration, IOM, has embarked on a peer-to-peer campaign aimed at letting vulnerable people know the real dangers.

Migrants who returned home after their failed attempt to reach Europe have been engaged volunteers to tell their harrowing stories in markets and other public places in Lagos, Nigeria’s commercial capital.

The voice from the Public Address system urges people to travel the right way and not to kill themselves with the dangerous journey through the desert and sea. Messages like this were spread within some Lagos markets by returning migrants.

Returnee migrants are telling their personal stories on radio as part of the IOM's Migrants as Messengers campaign against irregular migration. Courtesy: Sam Olukoya

By Sam Olukoya
BENIN CITY, Nigeria, Dec 21 2018 (IPS)

The International Organization for Migration has taken its campaign against irregular migration to the airwaves in Nigeria. Working in conjunction with some Nigerian radio stations, the United Nations Migration Agency has launched a radio series on safe migration.

The programme, which includes dramas, is made to entertain the audience while at the same time highlighting the dangers of irregular migration. Nigeria has a high incidence of irregular migration and many have died while undertaking dangerous journeys through the desert and sea trying to reach Europe.

By Sam Olukoya
NAIROBI, Dec 3 2018 (IPS)

The fashion industry is the second largest polluting industry in the world. Pesticides and insecticides used on crops grown for fabrics together with the chemicals used in the production of fabrics cause enormous damage to the environment.

Some of Africa’s leading fashion designers staged a fashion show at the Blue Economy Conference in Nairobi Kenya to unveil innovative creations made from natural materials sourced from seas, oceans and lakes. The aim was to showcase the use of environmentally friendly marine materials in the fashion industry. IPS was there.

By Sam Olukoya
NAIROBI, Nov 29 2018 (IPS)

Women make up about half of the over 120 million people whose livelihood depend on the blue economy. But women play only a marginal role in the blue economy with most of them earning subsistence income. Women are mainly excluded from more important aspects of the Blue Economy like shipping and large scale fishing.

The Canadian High Commission to Kenya and the Canadian government funded International Development Research Centre, IDRC, organized a side event at the first global Sustainable Blue Economy Conference in Nairobi, Kenya, with the aim of seeking ways of increasing women participation in the blue economy.

HIV has become the leading cause of death among adolescents in Africa. Credit: Sam Olukoya/IPS

By Sam Olukoya
LAGOS, Nigeria, Dec 15 2014 (IPS)

HIV among teenagers is devastating families in Nigeria and elsewhere in Africa, where AIDS has become the No. 1 killer of adolescents.

Africa accounts for more than 80 per cent of the 2.1 million adolescents living with HIV globally.

Drivers of HIV infection among adolescents include scarce information about sexual reproductive health and HIV, unprotected sex and sexual violence.

Between 2005 and 2012 the global AIDS death toll fell by 30 percent but increased by 50 percent among adolescents, according to the United Nations Joint Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS).

Late HIV diagnosis, fear of discrimination, low enrolment and adherence to antiretroviral treatment, and absence of specialized health services for HIV positive youths are some of the factors responsible for AIDS related deaths among adolescents in Africa.

“Nigeria is a perfect example of high level of economic growth co-existing with a high level of poverty and a very high level of inequality…the problem with the kind of growth that Nigeria has is that it tends to focus more on enabling the rich to become richer as opposed to finding a level ground to start ensuring that the wealth is trickling down to the extremely poor people,” says Development economist, Rebecca Roberts

By Sam Olukoya
LAGOS, Nigeria, Nov 26 2014 (IPS)

With a production capacity of over 3 million barrels of crude oil per day Nigeria is Africa’s top crude oil producer and the continent’s largest economy. But Nigeria’s wealth has only benefited a privileged few while majority of the citizens remain poor. Poverty and inequality in Nigeria have increased crime rate and heightened crisis including the insurgency of the terrorist group Boko Haram.

“Nigeria is a perfect example of high level of economic growth co-existing with a high level of poverty and a very high level of inequality…the problem with the kind of growth that Nigeria has is that it tends to focus more on enabling the rich to become richer as opposed to finding a level ground to start ensuring that the wealth is trickling down to the extremely poor people,” says Development economist, Rebecca Roberts.

Filmed and produced by Sam Olukoya in Lagos, Nigeria

As AIDS becomes the leading cause of death of adolescents in Africa, empowering youth – especially girls - to make safe life choices and avoid HIV is crucial. Credit: Mercedes Sayagues

By Sam Olukoya
LAGOS, Nigeria, Nov 21 2014 (IPS)

Two years ago, Shola* was kicked out of the family house in Abeokuta, in southwestern Nigeria, after testing HIV-positive at age 13. He was living with his father, his stepmother and their seven children.

“The stepmother insisted that Shola must go because he is likely to infect her children,” Tayo Akinpelu, programme director of Youth’s Future Savers Initiative, told IPS.

“Shola felt as an outcast,” says Akinpelu. Eventually, Shola’s grandparents took him in.

HIV among teenagers is devastating families in Nigeria and elsewhere in Africa, where AIDS has become the leading cause of death among adolescents.

“This is absolutely unacceptable,” says Craig McClure, chief of HIV programmes with the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), in New York. “What’s more, AIDS-related deaths are decreasing for all age groups except adolescents.”

The global AIDS death toll fell by 30 percent between 2005 and 2012 but increased by 50 percent among adolescents, says a UNICEF report.

Fear of seeking help

One reason for this shocking teen death toll, says Dr. Arjan de Wagt, chief of HIV/AIDS with UNICEF in Abuja, is the low number of adolescents on antiretroviral treatment (ART).

Of the 3.1 million Nigerians living with HIV, half are under 24 years. But only two out of ten HIV positive youth over 15 and just one out of ten under 15 received the lifesaving drugs in 2013, de Wagt told IPS.

Rejection by family and society, as happened to Shola, or fear of rejection, prevents adolescents from seeking help.

“Many HIV positive adolescents are dying in silence because they are too ashamed to access treatment,”’ Blessing Uju, a Lagos-based youth counsellor, told IPS.

“The shame is even bigger for the girls. In Nigeria, if you are HIV positive, the impression is that you are a commercial sex worker,” she says.

Sally* did not tell her parents or siblings when she tested HIV positive four years ago, at age 19.

“At the family level, there is a lot of stigma,” she told IPS.

Although aware of the danger of not taking her medication regularly, Sally often skipped it to avoid being seen with pills at home.

“As a young person, you need a confidant. If you are not strong, you might end up taking your life,” she says.

Teenagers need family help to stay on ART, says Akinpelu.

Shola’s grandparents would normally cook the first meal for the day in the afternoon until Akinpelu explained to them that the pills can cause nausea on an empty stomach and Shola needed a hearty meal earlier.

Uju says that treatment fatigue hits adolescents hard. “Some say they prefer to die than to continue taking their drugs,” she says.

High death toll

Of the 2.1 million adolescents living with HIV worldwide in 2012, more than 80 per cent are in sub-Saharan Africa, according to the United Nations Joint Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS).

Malawi, with 93,000 HIV positive teenagers, has 6,900 annual AIDS-related adolescent deaths.

The death toll is linked to late diagnosis and starting ART too late, explains Judith Sherman, of UNICEF in Lilongwe.

Malawi’s policy is that all children seen in health facilities should be offered an HIV test. “Unfortunately, this does not happen routinely,” she says.

Teenagers’ adherence to ART is lower than adults, says Sherman, “for a range of reasons like treatment fatigue, depression, fear of stigma, denial and unstable family relationships.”

Tanzania’s estimated 165,000 adolescents living with HIV face similar challenges as their peers in Nigeria and Malawi. (see sidebar)

Allison Jenkins, chief of HIV/AIDS with UNICEF in Tanzania, says that one effective way to help teenagers are clubs.

“Teen clubs improve adherence to treatment, especially among members who attend regularly,” she told IPS.

HIV among teen girls

Alarmingly, adolescent HIV prevalence is highly gendered, with teen girls showing infection rates that UNAIDS calls ”unacceptably high”.

Teen girls aged 15-19 in Mozambique have a prevalence of seven per cent, more than double the boys of the same age. Botswana presents a similar scenario.

Lucy Attah, of the Lagos-based Women and Children Living with HIV & AIDS, blames poverty.

“Girls have to trade sex for money to sustain themselves,” she says. “The pressure for money is higher in the cities where teenage girls compete to get the best mobile phones and clothes.”

Adolescents become sexually active, try drugs and alcohol, feel invulnerable, and experience the social and economic pressures of becoming an adult. HIV and the lack of youth-friendly health services compound the problem, says the UNICEF report.

 “We must do more and do it well, focusing on sub-Saharan Africa and on adolescent girls, where the heaviest burden lies,” says McClure.

*names changed to protect privacy

Edited by Mercedes Sayagues

Nigeria accounts for one third of all new infections among children in the 20 worst hit countries in sub-Saharan Africa. Credit: Sam Olukoya/IPS

By Sam Olukoya
LAGOS, Nigeria, Aug 4 2014 (IPS)

Tope Tayo’s marriage broke up 11 years ago after she tested positive for HIV. Her angry and embarrassed husband took away their only child. Three months later, when the one year old boy tested positive, the husband dumped him with Tayo and absconded.

 “He abandoned us as if we had committed a crime but I told him HIV is not a crime,” Tayo told IPS.

She was jobless and the husband paid no maintenance. “I walked the streets crying, I was living on charity,” Tayo recalls.

The runaway man who abandons his HIV positive wife and children is a common feature in Nigeria, says Rosemary Hua, coordinator of the First Step Action for Children, an organisation that advocates for child rights.

“Fathers withdraw their support because they feel there is no need to invest in a child that is likely to die young,” Hua told IPS.

Nigeria’s HIV infection rate of 3.2 percent appears low in comparison to southern Africa’s, but with a population of 173 million, it translates into huge numbers – 3.4 million Nigerians lived with HIV in 2013.

Source: Nigeria report to UNGASS 2014

Of these, 430,000 are children under 14, according to a recent report of the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS). Nigeria accounts for one third of all new infections among children in the 20 worst hit countries in sub-Saharan Africa.

The report says Nigeria faces “the triple threat of high HIV burden, low treatment coverage and no or little decline in new HIV infections.”

Moreover, the national HIV rate conceals sharp disparities among the 36 states: in four, prevalence ranges from eight to 15 percent.

Why women avoid testing

Tayo and her son have been taking antiretroviral drugs for the last 11 years. They are lucky. Fewer than 600,000 Nigerians are on treatment, or 20 percent of those who need it.

Low treatment coverage perpetuates misconceptions and stigma, as Tayo’s story show.

Abandonment usually translates into economic hardship. Half of women are unemployed in Nigeria.

“The desperation to take care of herself and her child could drive an HIV positive woman into sexual activities to raise money and this could further spread HIV,” says Lucy Attah, a gender activist who lives with HIV. She is executive director of Women and Children of Hope Foundation, which helps HIV positive women, and where IPS met Tayo.

Tayo told IPS she avoided testing for HIV while pregnant. Nigerian public hospitals do routine HIV testing of pregnant women but fear of discrimination if found positive led Tayo to a private hospital where testing was not required.

“It is the biggest regret of my life,” she told IPS.

One reason that pregnant women shun testing, says Hua, is health workers’  “lack of professionalism by not keeping HIV results confidential.”

“At times we had to transfer patients to other hospitals far from where they live because of the disclosure of their HIV status,” she told IPS.

Some health workers avoid any contact with HIV positive women because they mistakenly believe they can contract the virus by mere touching, says Attah.

“On the surface, it seems there is a lot of awareness among health workers but in reality there is a lot of stigma,” says Attah.

An anti-discrimination and confidentiality law has been approved by both houses and is waiting for President Goodluck Jonathan to sign it.

But Nigeria needs more than laws to address the epidemic.

In 2012, UNAIDS described the country’s response as “stagnant” and requiring “a massive effort.”

Nigeria accounts for 13 percent of all HIV positive people and 19 percent of all AIDS-related deaths in sub-Saharan Africa, according to UNAIDS.

Only Chad ranks lower than Nigeria in treatment coverage of HIV positive pregnant women. (see graph)

Source: UNAIDS Gap report 2014

Some good news

Since that damning description, the government has taken bold steps to reduce transmission from mothers to babies (PMTCT) among the 12-worst hit states.

PMTCT coverage went up to by 27 percent in 2013, a significant increase from 19 percent in 2012, according to the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF).

Some states doubled or tripled the number of clinics providing HIV services, bringing the number of PMTCT sites to 2,216 – still far from the 16,400 required for adequate coverage.

The annual number of new child infections went down from 60,000 in 2012 to 51,000 in 2013.

But, with two in three pregnant women shunning antenatal care, the challenge will be reaching them through improvement of services and outreach.

“We must go to them instead of waiting for them to come to the health facility,” Arjan de Wagt, chief for children and HIV with UNICEF in Nigeria, told IPS. “Otherwise, children will continue dying of AIDS unnecessarily.”

Edited by: Mercedes Sayagues

By Sam Olukoya
ABUJA, Jun 8 2014 (IPS)

Nigeria is one of Africa’s largest emitters of greenhouse gases. A significant percentage of this pollution takes place in the Niger Delta region thanks to the existence of multination oil companies and the activities of hundreds of illegal refineries where local people process stolen crude oil.

For a country that is at the receiving end of the environmental impact of climate change, there is a growing sense that this West African country should curb its emission of greenhouse gases. Private initiatives and effective legislation are likely to play crucial roles in Nigeria’s drive to curbing its emissions.

Time for Nigeria to Curb its Own Emissions from IPS News on Vimeo.

Boko Haram's latest bomb attack in Nigeria’s capital, Abuja, on Apr. 14, 2014, claimed 75 lives. Courtesy: Ayo Bello

By Sam Olukoya
LAGOS, Nigeria, Apr 22 2014 (IPS)

Nigerians are beginning to adjust to the sad reality that they live in a country where suicide bombers and terrorists could be lurking around the next corner thanks to a ready supply of advanced weapons smuggled through the country’s porous borders. 

Last week, Ngupar Kemzy’s cousin, Andy Nepli, told him that he planned to spend the Easter holidays with him.

But two days later, on Apr. 14, 32-year-old Nepli was one of the 75 people killed in two powerful explosions at a crowded bus station in Nyanya, a suburb in Nigeria’s capital, Abuja.“Those using these modern weapons have attained a boldness they never would have had if they were handling crude weapons.” -- Steve Obodokwe, of the Centre for Environment, Human Rights and Development

Many of the victims were so badly wounded that it was difficult to identify them.

“We only knew it was him after checking his clothes and seeing his identity card,” Kemzy, who rushed to the scene, told IPS. “Human body parts were littered all over the place,” he said.

On the same night, Nigeria was forced to contend with yet another horror when 129 schoolgirls were abducted from their hostel in Chibok, Borno State in the country’s northeast.

Boko Haram, a group waging a violent campaign for the imposition of Islamic rule in this West African nation, claimed responsibility for the bombing. The group is suspected to also be responsible for the abduction of the schoolgirls in Chibok.

Bombings, abductions and a scorched earth policy of burning down entire villages and killing the inhabitants are some of the violent techniques used by the extremist group.

Boko Haram, which is believed to have links with Al-Qaeda and its affiliates, like Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb and the Somali-based Al-Shabaab, is mainly active in northeastern Nigeria

Global human rights movement Amnesty International says 1,500 people were killed within the first three month of this year by Boko Haram and “uncontrolled reprisals by Nigeria’s security forces.”

A transformation to modern weaponry is said to have aided the escalation of the crisis in the country.

Besides Boko Haram, several other armed ethnic militia operate in Central Nigeria. And armed groups have moved from using crude weapons like sticks, machetes, cudgels, and dane guns to more lethal and advanced weapons like machine guns and rocket-propelled grenades.

“Those using these modern weapons have attained a boldness they never would have had if they were handling crude weapons,” Steve Obodokwe, of the Centre for Environment, Human Rights and Development, told IPS.

“With their modern weapons, armed groups have been able to gather the courage to attack even military barracks,” said Obodokwe.

There is a ready supply of weapons smuggled into Nigeria through its porous borders. Some weapons are believed to have entered the country following armed conflicts in countries like Libya and Mali.

Former Nigerian defence minister Olusola Obada says some of the smuggled weapons were those looted from Libyan armouries during the 2011 crisis to oust the late Libyan leader, Muammar Gaddafi (1942 – 2011).

It is also believed that some of the weapons, especially those being used by Boko Haram, entered Nigeria through Al-Qaeda’s network.

“It is not out of place to suggest that some of the weapons in Nigeria were supplied by Islamist groups in Somalia and Mali,” says Obodokwe.

With its links to Al-Qaeda and a good supply of arms, Boko Haram has successfully carried out several high-profile terrorist attacks in Nigeria. These include attacks on military bases and the 2011 bombing of both the national police and United Nations headquarters in Abuja.

“The consequences of these successful attacks is that Boko Haram has demystified Nigeria’s security agencies,” Ifeanyi Okechukwu, national coordinator of the West Africa Network for Peace Building, which works with international organisations to prevent armed conflict, told IPS.

He says the success of Boko Haram has encouraged other groups here to pick up arms against their opponents, knowing that security agencies are incapable of stopping them.

The great cost to Nigeria

The conflicts in Nigeria have come at great cost. The International Crisis Group, an independent organisation working to prevent deadly conflicts, says the Boko Haram’s insurgency alone has “displaced close to half a million people, destroyed hundreds of schools and government buildings and devastated an already ravaged economy in the northeast, one of Nigeria’s poorest regions.”

The organisation fears that with no end in sight, the insurgency could spill over “to other parts of the north and risks reaching Niger and Cameroon, weak countries poorly equipped to combat a radical Islamist armed group.”

Some Nigerians are beginning to lose faith in the ability of security agents to stop Boko Haram and other militant groups in the country. But the government has continued to assure the populace that it will win the war against terror.

“Terror will not stop Nigeria from moving. The terrorists and those who are sponsoring them will never stop this country from moving, we will continue to move from strength to strength,” President Goodluck Jonathan said at a political rally a day after the Abuja bus station bombings.

Nigeria is scheduled to hold general elections next year.

Here, the buildup to elections is usually characterised by politicians arming their supporters in their quest for power. But with so many armed groups and with so many illegal firearms already in circulation, the build-up to next year’s elections might just stretch Nigeria beyond its limits.

By Sam Olukoya
Ohono, Nigeria, Oct 29 2013 (IPS)

Nigeria experienced its worst flooding which left a trail of destruction in 2012. Meteorologists are forecasting more flooding this year but, beyond warning those who face flooding, the government has not done much to move them as it lacks the money to relocate them.

[podcast]http://traffic.libsyn.com/ipslatamradio07/flooding_amplified_new.mp3[/podcast]

By Sam Olukoya
LAGOS, Nigeria, Dec 15 2011 (IPS)

The women of Makoko, a low-lying slum close to the Lagos Lagoon along Nigeria’s Atlantic coast, always sleep with one eye open. Many live in fear that when they go to sleep at night they will wake to flooded homes and business.

In Ajegunle, a low-lying slum in Lagos, flooding is also disrupting the economic activities of women Credit: Sam Olukoya/IPS

“The other day, I slept and dreamt that a cold breeze was blowing on me. When I woke up I realised that I was actually sleeping in a flooded room,” Dupe Faseun, a single mother of five and self-employed canteen owner, told IPS.

“Flooding is a major problem here, the water takes over everything, even the cooking pots are filled with the dirty water,” Faseun said adding that the frequency of the flooding has increased in recent years. Low-lying urban slums spread across Lagos are suffering from the worst impact of flooding caused by climate change, according to Desmond Majekodunmi, an environmentalist with the Nigerian Conservation Foundation.

The United Nations Human Settlements Programme, UN-HABITAT, lists Lagos as among the major coastal African cities that could be severely affected by the impact of rising sea levels.

Lagos Lagoon, which is connected to the Atlantic Ocean, has seen an increase in water levels following a rise in the ocean’s level.

The Atlantic Ocean has been experiencing the fastest rise in water levels in history because of climate change, according to research published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences journal.

Rainfall in the region has also increased, according to a recent report by the Nigerian Institute of Social and Economic Research.

“The trend indicates that rainfall has been on the increase. Respondents reported that in the past 10 years in Lagos, there has been a rise in sea levels resulting in flooding in many parts of the state,” the report said. The organisation did not, however, indicate the frequency of flooding.

The Nigerian Meteorological Agency, NIMET, attributes the prolonged and increased rainfall in this region to climate change. Though the consequences of this has been devastating. In July more than 25 people died following torrential rains.

“The water level had risen incredibly and the channels that were meant to discharge water from the roads and drainages are completely blocked because of the high tide and because the Atlantic Ocean and Lagos Lagoon have risen more than usual,” Tunji Bello, Lagos State Commissioner for Environment, said shortly after the incident.

Majekodunmi said that the most disturbing aspect was the threat climate change posed to economic activities in these poor neighbourhoods. He added that Nigerian women were among the worst affected because many had to solely fend for their families.

“They are the ones who are directly responsible to feed their babies and to feed their children. And some of them have pretty large families because the culture in Nigeria is to proliferate and to have large families,” he said.

Faseun, who owns a small food canteen near her house, said the flooding poses the biggest threat to her business because she sometimes spends up to a week waiting for the floodwaters to recede before she resumes work again.

“Nobody wants to come and buy food while the dirty flood water is everywhere.

“I normally get very depressed whenever the flood prevents me from selling food, I will always wonder where I will get money to take care of my children,” she said.

In Ajegunle, another low-lying slum in Lagos, flooding is also disrupting the economic activities of women.

Most of the women here earn a living processing fresh fish, but this is difficult to do when the area is flooded.

“They are unable to work when the places they smoke their fish at are flooded. Because they don’t have access to cold rooms, most times the fish goes bad before the flood water recedes,” Fatai Ojulari, head of the fishermen’s union in Ajegunle, told IPS.

“The women are experiencing hard times and there is no financial assistance from anywhere,” he said.

The government, however, said it is addressing this challenge.

“We have a coastal defense strategy, which involves providing a sea defense wall to secure and protect Lagos from the threat of the Atlantic,” Lagos State Governor Babatunde Fashola told IPS.

Tunde Akingbade, an environmentalist who has attended many climate change conferences said that adaptation funding, like that committed to at the recently concluded 17th Conference of Parties in Durban, South Africa, could ultimately help vulnerable Africans like those living in Makoko and Ajegunle.

“It is, however, important to point out that the level of transparency and good governance in place is crucial to how the funding will meet the needs of the people,” he told IPS.

But until then, there is not much that Faseun and women like her can do about their situation.

“Even though the flooding is getting worse every year, I cannot leave because I don’t have the money to relocate to a better place.”

Excerpt:

By Sam Olukoya
Nov 28 2011 (IPS)

Women in West Africa have over the years relied on fishing and farming as their traditional source of income. But as Sam Olukoya reports from Lagos, changing weather patterns caused by climate change have put their livelihood under threat.

[podcast]http://traffic.libsyn.com/ipsaudio/20111128_genderclimate_olukoya.mp3[/podcast]

Olaniyi Emiola was sentenced to death for a crime another man with the same name had committed. Credit: Sam Olukoya/IPS

By Sam Olukoya and - -
LAGOS, Nov 21 2011 (IPS)

The worst day of Olaniyi Emiola’s life was Mar. 17, 1998. At least it was for Olaniyi Emiola, 22, the spare motor parts trader. For Olaniyi Emiola, the armed robber, it was a lucky escape as another man with the same name had been wrongly sentenced to death for a crime he committed.

That day, as Emiola stood in the dock of the now defunct Robbery and Firearms Tribunal in Nigeria’s southwestern city of Ibadan, Oyo State, he could not believe what was happening.

“Several members of my family … were all weeping. I was weeping too. The whole thing seemed like a nightmare to me,” the now 35-year-old Emiola told IPS.

His ordeal started three years earlier when police arrested him for armed robbery, an offence that carries the death penalty in Nigeria. This was despite the fact that his co-accused had repeatedly told police they had arrested the wrong man.

“But the police … said the robber was trying to cover up for me.”

In 2004, after spending six years on death row, Emiola came face to face with the robber whose sentence he was carrying out.

The man, who had been sentenced to death for another robbery, accepted responsibility for the crime the spare motor parts trader was accused of. Emiola wrote a letter to the Oyo state attorney general and the state governor calling for a review of his case, but there was no response.

If it had not been for Pastor Hezekiah Olujobi, head of the Ibadan-based Centre for Justice, Mercy and Reconciliation, which fights for the release of innocent prisoners, Emiola would probably still be on death row, or possibly dead.

Emiola’s case highlights the state of Nigeria’s criminal justice system as human rights groups say the system cannot guarantee a fair trial in capital cases.

“Over the years, we have seen that the Nigerian justice system is not reliable,” Princewill Akpakpan, head of penal reforms at the Lagos-based Civil Liberties Organisation, a leading human rights group in Nigeria, told IPS.

He said reasons for this include the fact that police make arbitrary arrests and force people to accept responsibility for crimes they have not committed. He added that police investigation of criminal matters is often poor.

“It is only when you correct these lapses that you can guarantee a transparent and dependable justice system,” Akpakpan said.

It took three years but eventually Emiola was released in January. “You can imagine what would have happened to this man if we had not intervened,” Olujobi said.

Olujobi said Emiola’s case is a reflection of how innocent people are sentenced to death in Nigeria.

“At the Abeokuta Federal Prison (one of the prisons where Emiola served time), we have identified six other people on death row who seem to have been wrongly convicted,” he said. “In one case, a man who fought with a policeman’s wife was arrested, charged with armed robbery and sentenced to death.” Looking back at his death sentence, Emiola said it is the worst form of injustice.

“The tribunal did not dispense any form of justice at all. It was like a pre-arranged thing, they just entered a guilty judgment against me,” he said. “This is a country where the criminal goes free while the innocent person is not only found guilty but is also sentenced to death.”

Emiola could not appeal his conviction because the Robbery and Firearms Tribunals, which were set up during years of military rule, had no appeal process.

Global rights watchdog Amnesty International said more than 2,600 death sentences were carried out under military rule between 1970 and 1999, with the Robbery and Firearms Tribunals passing most of the death sentences.

Even though the tribunals have since been abolished with the return to civilian rule in 1999 and the rights of appeal restored, Amnesty International said numerous people were executed without being informed of their right of appeal. The human rights group said many of the 700 prisoners currently on death row in Nigeria were convicted by the tribunals. “There is a strong link between poverty and these convictions. Most times the relatives of the accused persons have no money to pursue their cases,” Olujobi said.

In 2004, the National Study Group on the Death Penalty, which was set up by the Nigerian government, admitted that there are flaws in the country’s justice system.

“A system that would take a life must first give justice,” the group said in a report. It recommended a suspension of the death penalty until “the criminal justice system can ensure fundamental fairness and due process in capital cases and minimise the risk that innocent people will be executed.” Nigeria has observed an unofficial moratorium on executions since 1999. But Amnesty International said executions have been carried out in the country prior to this. The human rights group said it uncovered evidence of at least seven executions between 2009 and 2010. It said it feared more might have taken place.

Human rights lawyers like Akpakpan say that until the justice system is reviewed “there will always be a chance that innocent people will end up being executed for crimes they did not commit.”

Excerpt:

By Sam Olukoya
LAGOS, Sep 2 2011 (IPS)

Security experts say that unless something is done to regulate the high level of illicit transactions and proliferation of commercial explosives in Nigeria, scenes like the United Nations suicide bombing will become more frequent.

The bombing of the U.N. building in Nigeria's capital, Abuja, claimed 23 lives and wounded 81 people on Aug. 26. Credit: Chris Ewokor/IPS

“We have a total gap in our security system and some people have capitalised on this to continuously cause mayhem. We are not surprised by this bombing,” Okechukwu said. He added that unless the country found proactive ways to address its security problem, the violence would continue.

The bombing of the U.N. building in Nigeria’s capital, Abuja, claimed 23 lives and wounded 81 people on Aug. 26.

The Islamic militant group, Boko Haram, claimed responsibility for the attack. The extremist group said the bombing was in retaliation for the support the United States and the U.N. have given the Nigerian government in persecuting Muslims in the country.

Nigeria, with a population of 150 million people, is split between the Christian south and Muslim north. President Goodluck Jonathan is also Christian.

A spokesman for the group, Abu Kakah, told journalists in a telephonic interview that the attacks would continue.

Boko Haram, which is opposed to western education and a western way of life, wants an Islamic state in Nigeria.

In recent months the group has launched a series of bomb attacks on police stations, military barracks, churches and other public places. The group even bombed Nigeria’s police headquarters in Abuja in June.

Police say the bombs used in the attacks were assembled from commercial explosives used for quarrying, mining seismic exploration and road construction.

“Based on the way they are being proliferated, our security operatives have to be observant,” Okechukwu said.

He added that the country needed regulations that made it mandatory for anyone purchasing explosives, or shops selling them, to report the sale and purchase of these items to police.

However, Minister of Mines and Steel Development Musa Sada said that the products are regulated as dealers and importers of explosives are required to renew their licences every three years.

But Okechukwu said this needed to be enforced.

“The way you enforce the regulation to meet the security challenge is very important,” he added.

Deputy Secretary-General of the U.N. Asha-Rose Migiro told journalists that they were investigating how to strengthen their security.

“We are currently doing a thorough assessment of what happened, how it happened, and how we should strengthen whatever measure we have as a security option,” Migiro said after visiting the scene on Sunday.

“The problem is that essentially we need to spend more money on security, but every dollar that we spend on security is a dollar that we are not spending on medical care, or development or humanitarian affairs,” Gregory Starr, the U.N.’s Under-Secretary-General for Safety and Security, told the press in Abuja.

“So there is a very fine line that we have got to hit here,” Starr said.

Boko Haram warned Nigerians in June that it would wage war to make the country ungovernable.

“Very soon, we will wage jihad…We want to make it known that our jihadists have arrived in Nigeria from Somalia where they received real training on warfare from our brethren who made that country ungovernable,” the group said in a statement issued shortly after the June attack on the police headquarters. The group was referring to the Somali Islamic extremist group, Al-Shabaab, which controls large parts of Somalia.

“This time around, our attacks will be fiercer and (more widespread) than they have been.”

Okechukwu said that by being unable to prevent such attacks, the police and military have failed to live up to their security mandate.

“We should not wait for people to die. We should be able to put a mechanism in place where we will be able to effectively monitor security threats so people do not lose their lives,” he told IPS.

In June government set up a military task force, which was deployed to Boko Haram’s stronghold in Maiduguri, capital of the northeastern state of Borno.

But Okechukwu said that the deployment would not prevent further attacks as the country’s police do not have a sufficiently effective intelligence network.

“It is not just about carrying guns, because the police don’t know where to track the bombers,” he said, adding that police needed reliable intelligence.

But Nigeria’s State Security Service, SSS, says this is not true. In a statement issued on behalf of other security agencies in Nigeria, the SSS said they had an intelligence report on Aug. 18, that “some Boko Haram elements were on a mission to attack unspecified targets in Abuja.” The statement also said that on Aug. 21 “a joint operation by all security services led to the arrest of two notorious leaders of the Boko Haram sect.”

The SSS said that investigations have revealed that Mamman Nur, a Boko Haram member with Al-Qaeda links, masterminded the U.N. attack.

Just 10 days before the U.N. bombing General Carter Ham, Commander of the U.S. Africa Command, said during a visit to Nigeria that there are indications that Boko Haram is trying to form an alliance with Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (an armed Islamist resistance movement in Algeria), and with the Somali-based Al-Shabaab, which also has links to Al-Qaeda.

He said the objective of the three groups combining was to launch joint attacks in Nigeria. “I think it would be the most dangerous thing to happen, not only to Africans, but to us as well,” he said.  

Excerpt:

By Sam Olukoya
LAGOS, Aug 4 2011 (IPS)

“We are suffering in the midst of plenty.” That was how Nelson Ilemchi summed up his plight as he spent an entire day queuing to buy kerosene. Since January Africa’s largest producer of crude oil has been experiencing a protracted nationwide scarcity of the refined product.

“We produce this thing but we are suffering to get it,” he said as he stood in a long queue at one of the few filling stations in Lagos that actually had stock of kerosene.

Many in the queue arrived at the filling station as early as 4am and by nightfall they were still a long way from the kerosene-dispensing pump. It took so long because there was only one dispensing pump serving about five hundred people who each had numerous jerry cans to fill.

And there is no sign that the scarcity will end anytime soon with government and kerosene sellers, or marketers as they are called here, trading blame for the protracted shortage. The government imports kerosene, while private oil marketing companies sell it to the public. Nigeria is the world’s sixth-largest exporter of crude oil. According to the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries’ Annual Statistical Bulletin 2010/2011 published in July, Nigeria shipped 2.464 million barrels a day in 2010.

But in spite of its immense oil resources, it imports refined petroleum products like kerosene, gasoline and diesel because the country’s refineries are only able to work at very low capacity. This is because decades of corruption have left most public utilities in a state of disrepair.

Latest figures by the country’s Central Bank Monetary Policy Committee show that Nigeria spent 1.34 billion dollars importing petroleum between January and March 2011.

Nigeria’s Minister of Petroleum Diezani Allison-Madueke told parliament on Jul. 7 that even though Nigeria needs eight million litres of kerosene daily, her ministry is supplying 11 million litres a day in an effort to address the scarcity of the product.

Allison-Madueke, who did not say when the ministry increased the output, said the scarcity persists because the product is being sold elsewhere at higher prices.

“The kerosene is being hoarded and moved illegally into other countries,” she said, adding that some of the product is also being sold to airlines at higher prices.

But president of the Independent Petroleum Marketers Association of Nigeria, Abdulkadir Aminu, said the daily domestic demand for kerosene has grown beyond the eight million litres a day the minister quoted.

“What we are facing now is that supply is not meeting demand,” he said.

Ordinarily there should be kerosene at all petrol stations, but Aminu says this is not the case because kerosene marketers do not have an adequate supply.

The scarcity has led to a thriving black market where the product is being sold for three times the official price.

The fixed kerosene price is 50 naira (33 cents) per litre. But on the black market it sells for as much as 300 naira (about 1.98 dollars) per litre.

Nigerians believe that more kerosene is sold on the black market than on the legal market.

It is ironic that Africa’s top oil producer is experiencing a scarcity of the product. But, in fact, scarcity of petroleum is quite common in Nigeria.

The populace goes through unbearable hardship while the scarcity of any petroleum product persists. Motorists are known to sleep overnight at filling stations as they queue for fuel.

“In an oil-rich country, Nigerians should not suffer to get petroleum products,” Adetokunbo Mumuni from the Socio-Economic Rights and Accountability Project told IPS.

“Under normal circumstances the money used to import petroleum products could be used to manage Nigeria’s three refineries and even build new ones,” he said.

Mumuni, whose organisation seeks to promote transparency and accountability in the public and private sectors, said the refineries are not fully operational due to systemic corruption that has seen much of the country’s infrastructure fall into disrepair.

“This is why an oil-producing country has been reduced to (becoming) an importer of the same product it has in abundance.”

The current kerosene scarcity has affected a large segment of Nigeria’s population because most Nigerians cook with it.

“People find it difficult to eat because there is no kerosene with which to cook,” Umunna James, who also spent the entire day queuing to buy the product, told IPS.

Many Nigerians who cannot stand the pain of queuing endlessly for kerosene, or who are too poor to buy it on the black market, have to look for other means of cooking.

“Because kerosene is too expensive, the poor cannot afford it. That is why I now use firewood. I don’t know why the country degenerated to this level,” Happiness Udo, a Lagos housewife, told IPS.

“If you go to the filling station you will end up standing there until your legs start aching. As an elderly woman, I cannot stand for too long, that is another reason I chose to start using firewood,” she says.

Many other Nigerians have discarded kerosene for charcoal.

“Charcoal sales have gone up because of (the) kerosene scarcity,” Tola Taiwo, a charcoal seller, told IPS.

She says her sales have gone up by more than a 100 percent.  

Excerpt:

Bomb blasts hit a military base in the northern Nigerian city of Bauchi on Sunday, killing ten and injuring more than a dozen just hours after the swearing in ceremony of President Goodluck Jonathan in the capital, Abuja. News reports also said three others died in a bombing in Zuba, just outside the capital.

Jonathan will not have needed a violent reminder of widening insecurity in Africa’s most populous country. More than 800 people died in post-election clashes across northern Nigeria in April. The new president has appointed a panel to investigate, but observers are sceptical it will accomplish much.

Kafanchan, a town in the northern state of Kaduna, where there was strong support for both Jonathan and his main rival, retired general Muhmmadu Buhari, was one of the worst affected by the post election violence.

“In Kafanchan and neighbouring towns, people don’t sleep well because every day they are conscious of the fact that somebody might slit their throat. This is not right,” Pastor Emmanuel Nuhu Kure, head of the Christian group, Throneroom Ministry, told IPS from his town 200 kms from the capital, Abuja.

Post-election violence

Buhari’s party, the Congress for Progressive Change, has filed a petition before the Court of Appeal Tribunal in the capital Abuja asking for the nullification of the presidential election results in 24 of Nigeria’s 36 states due to alleged electoral malpractice. The party says it has clear evidence that Jonathan did not win the election.

“There is no economic activity in Kafanchan now: houses were brought down, the market was burnt down and flattened. Most of the Christian houses are burnt, the whole economy was washed down, and they will need to restart from scratch.”

Speaking from the other side of the town’s religious divide, Alhaji Saleh Jema’a, secretary of the group Jama’a Indigenous Muslim Ummah, said it was Christians who went on the rampage. “Muslims were randomly attacked and massacred and their property vandalized,” he told a press conference.

Both sides accuse the police of failing to intervene quickly to end violence that included the use of high calibre weapons.

Kure, who has witnessed several rounds of violence between Christians and Muslims in the town he was born in, says the cause has remained the same through the years.

“Religion and politics are over mixed. The crisis is a reflection of religion and politics. On the one hand you hear the people saying they are fighting for religious leverage, on the other hand in the same voice they say they are fighting for political power, so you see the interplay there of religion and politics.”

Managing competing claims in this diverse country will be among President Jonathan’s biggest challenges over the next four years.

Nigeria is almost evenly split between a predominantly Christian south and a predominantly Muslim north, with both sides struggling for political power at the national level. The contest for control at the local level is equally fierce, in north central cities like Kafanchan and Jos, where there are large populations of both Christians and Muslims. All too often this rivalry ends up in sectarian clashes.

Deepening enmity

Kure lost two of his church members during the post-election violence in April. He says he has grown tired of praying for families that have lost loved ones. “Can my people trust the government to protect them or should they begin to prepare for the worst? And preparing for the worst means they need to begin to get their own arms, and fight back,” he said.

This same feeling is being expressed in other parts of the country – especially among southerners who are beginning to threaten reprisal attacks on northerners living in the south.

Restoring Nigerians’ confidence that they are free to live anywhere in the country without fearing for their lives, will be one of President Jonathan’s top priorities. The president has set up a panel to investigate the most recent violence, including identifying the source of the weapons used. The panel is also tasked with making recommendations on how to prevent future violence.

But some groups, like the Nigerian Coalition for the International Criminal Court, have described the government’s action as an exercise in futility. “Legally the panel does not have the power to compel people to come and testify, which means they have set it up to give the false impression that something is being done,” Chino Obiagwu chairman of the Coalition told IPS.

The panel is not the first one set up to investigate sectarian or political clashes. “It is the usual government response of giving the world the impression that we are doing something when they are not, it is a way of sweeping things under the carpet, especially when it is clear that the rioters were incited by prominent people,” said Obiagwu.

Many Nigerians believe that the government has failed to take action against those behind violence in the past because it was cautious about hurting the powerful people behind them. This, Obiagwu says, has only encouraged them to instigate more violence.

“Once conflict is not resolved and people punished, there is always a circle of violence,” he says. “We need to show seriousness in investigating these crimes otherwise it will continue because people know they can get away with it especially the political class.”

By Sam Olukoya
LAGOS, May 20 2011 (IPS)

In an open space near her home in Makoko, a crowded suburb of the sprawling city of Lagos, Latifat Agboola sits in the midst of bags of charcoal, attending to her customers. Some of them call her “the charcoal woman with the dirty job, but she sees herself as a businesswoman on the rise.

Makoko, Lagos: Microcredit is helping women take advantage of entrepreneurial opportunities. Credit: Sarah Simpson/IRIN

“It was a bad start because very little money was left for the actual business after I used the bulk of the money to register as a member of the charcoal sellers’ association,” she told IPS. “I was only able to buy one bag of charcoal at a time and I resold it in little packs.”

Agboola made progress all the same and by January she had repaid the loan, and she was qualified for another 200 dollar (30,000 naira)  loan. “This second loan provided the additional funds needed to improve the business as it enabled me to buy charcoal in much larger quantity, so my profit went up,” she says.



Her profit from charcoal sales in a good week can go as high as 60 dollars (9,000 naira), equivalent to her monthly salary as a shop attendant. “With a better income, I no longer have to beg people for money, now I can buy what I want to buy, I can eat what I want to eat at anytime, but as a shop attendant, I had to wait until the end of the month before I could spend money.”


Mutual assistance

Agoola got the money from a local savings and loan cooperative. The Gumi cooperative pools money from its members to make loans on which it charges as little as 15 percent interest.

“The group is made up of small women who are into small-scale business, says Tosun Jimoh, head of the group. “We deal mainly in small loans of between 20,000 naira and 40,000 naira ($270) and members can pay within six months. Members don’t require require any collateral, so long as they can get a guarantor we can trust.”

Gender analyst Emem Okon, says Agboola’s rapid progress is exactly the kind of transformation microcredit can enable in the lives of poor women like Agboola.

“Where microcredit is properly managed, it helps to improve the income of poor women, whether they are involved in petty trading or farming it provides the money to acquire the much needed inputs,” says Okon, who is the head of the Kebetkache Women Development and Resource Centre, a non-governmental organisation based in southeastern city of Port Harcourt.

Agboola says her choice of what to invest the loan in was crucial to her success. “Charcoal business is a dirty job and that is why many people are reluctant to do it, but the secret is that it is a very lucrative business if you are determined.”

It is the right business to get into in Makoko, with its high poverty and dense population. “With the high price of kerosene, many of the residents here are too poor to cook with [other kinds of] stoves, thus charcoal is a very cheap alternative for them,” says Agboola. “There is a high demand for charcoal in this neighbourhood, but no one sells it. I am the only one currently selling it here.”

Agboola is looking forward to taking out another loan which she hopes to use to rent a shop and buy charcoal in very large quantities, so she can operate as a distributor rather than a retailer. She dreams of a business that will eventually provide funds with which she will buy land and build a house.

Vital to the informal economy

“Microcredit schemes are important in Nigeria because it takes care of the needs of the vast majority of the poor populace who have no access to formal banking,” former banker, Kwekwu Brown told IPS. “The poor end people who form the bulk of the population cannot meet strict bank requirements like collaterals and a history of a consistent cash flow so this informal system is the only option open for them when they need loan.”

Nigeria’s Central Bank recognises the important role microcredit plays in the country’s informal economy, the practice having a history dating back centuries in some places.

Only 35 percent of the economically active population has access to the formal financial system, according to the Central Bank, while the remaining 65 percent “are often served by the informal financial sector like microfinance institutions, money lenders, and credit unions.”

“Because of the limited opportunities they have, women form a large segment of the populace that has no access to the formal financial system,” says Okon. She adds that from her experience there is the added burden that these women face numerous problems in accessing loans from the informal sector.

“We restricted Gumi’s membership to women only so as to enhance their chances of getting small-scale loans,” says Jimoh.

Agboola, a mother of two in a polygamous household, says she spends a substantial part of her income on her family. But Okon says diversion of funds to maintain the household can be a potential problem for many women who take microcredit loans.

“Culture is one of the problems. Women are sometimes denied microcredit loans out of the cultural belief that they are less likely to be successful in whatever business they do, so they are seen as a high risk group,” Okon says.

The Central Bank says it has a policy to develop microfinance institutions in order “to cover the majority of the poor but economically active population by 2020 thereby creating millions of jobs and reducing poverty.”

Excerpt:

By Sam Olukoya
LAGOS, Apr 3 2011 (IPS)

Nigeria’s staggered general elections have been postponed after the Independent National Electoral Commission was unable to deliver voting materials to polling stations in time. Campaigning for the polls was overshadowed by pre-election violence including bombings and gun attacks on campaign rallies, politically-motivated assassinations and violent clashes between members of rival parties.

The Nigeria Elections Situation Room, a coalition of Nigerian civil society groups campaigning for credible elections, last week warned, “The on-going violence could hinder large voter turnout on election days, as genuine voters may be frightened away from polling unit out of fear of being attacked.”

But the first hurdle to clear proved to be distribution of materials, and deployment of electoral officers to all polling stations. A handful of people nationwide were able to vote before the exercise was postponed. Elections to the national assembly will now be held on April 9, presidential elections a week later, and voting for governors and members of state legislatures taking place on April 26.

The Media and Information Committee on Emergency Management, a group which comprises spokespersons of emergency agencies and security outfits in Nigeria, says 12 of Nigeria’s 36 states have witnessed violence during the campaign. “These states have attracted more headlines and public attention to acrimonious activities among the political actors and parties,” says the Director of Defence Information and MICEM Chair Colonel Mohammed Yerima.

Widespread violence

In the past two weeks, according to human rights group Amnesty International, at least 20 people have been killed in political clashes. Amnesty highlighted an incident on Mar. 22 that saw six people die in clashes between rival parties in the southern state of Akwa Ibom, and the burning down of a presidential campaign office in the state capital.

“The violence is causing immense damage to the country and its institutions,” said Amnesty Deputy Director for Africa Tawanda Hondora in a statement released Apr. 1. “Politicians need to immediately take responsibility for their actions and rein in their supporters before the elections dissolve into chaos.”

Amnesty says rights defenders face increasing threats of violence which will hamper their role as monitors will be crucial to the success of a series of elections for local, state and national office which begin on Apr. 2. The human rights organisation is also concerned by reports that security forces have carried out mass arrests and been issued with “shoot on sight” orders.

But few are surprised by the violent build-up to the elections.

“Power is sweet, and the truth is that the violence is all tied to the quest for power. That is why politicians are acting like wounded lions to get power at all cost,” Morris Alagoa of the Civil Liberties Organisation told IPS.

Election to public office promises control of billions of dollars of oil revenue.

Presidency the plum prize

The most intense struggle for position is at the centre, where power and access to billions of dollars of oil money is concentrated.

The incumbent, Goodluck Jonathan, who hails from the oil producing southeast of the country, is facing off against three candidates from the country’s north in the presidential election which will take place on Apr. 9.

The challengers include a former military ruler, Muhammadu Buhari of the Congress for Progressive Change, as well as the former head of Nigeria’s anti-corruption agency, Nuhu Ribadu, representing the Action Congress of Nigeria.

Several interest groups in the north are aggrieved that President Jonathan is contesting the election at all, which in their view is in breach of an arrangement within the ruling People’s Democratic Party, that the presidency should rotate between north and south.

But Jonathan initially served as vice president under a northerner, Umaru Yar’adua, only assuming the presidency in May 2010, after Yar’adua’s death from illness. Nonetheless, the Northern Political Leaders Forum, a group made up of northern Muslim leaders, is trying to persuade two of the northern candidates to step down, to clear the way for a single candidate to unseat Jonathan.

“It will surely be a difficult election for President Jonathan if he goes into a straight contest against only one of the northern candidates,” Tunde Akanni, a lecturer at the Lagos State University told IPS.

Renewing old quarrels

The argument over Jonathan’s candidacy opens a familiar fault-line in Nigerian politics, where political rivalry between the south and north – invariably regarded as Christian and Muslim respectively – has repeatedly led to violent clashes.

The Brussels-based International Crisis Group says more than 14,000 people died in ethnic and religious clashes in the West African nation between 1999 and 2009.

The government has ordered a countrywide deployment of soldiers and other security personnel in an effort to stop violence. On its part, the Independent National Electoral Commission says it will simply cancel the polls wherever there is violence, but there are fears that this will only encourage attacks.

“My concern is that people may cause violence in areas where they feel they are likely to lose so as to get the results cancelled,” Patterson Ogon, an opposition candidate contesting for a parliamentary seat in Bayelsa State in the Niger Delta told IPS. “The electoral body should investigate all violence before any result is cancelled.”

Not all observers are pessimistic. Former Botswanan president Festus Mogae, who is leading a Commonwealth Observer Group monitoring the elections, says violence may not be as widespread as is feared. “I am concerned. I am apprehensive, but I choose to believe that the level of violence will not affect the overall result of the elections,” he said.

Should elections run smoothly, security will be one of the first issues a newly-elected president will have to address. Key areas include the Niger Delta region, where an amnesty programme has failed to end attacks on the country’s oil industry. In and around the city of Jos, in central Nigeria, a cycle of revenge attacks between Christians and Muslims has claimed scores of lives since last year and in the northeast of the country, an insurgency by the Islamist group Boko Haram presents yet another major challenge for law and order.

(*Adds information about postponement of elections. Story first moved Apr. 1, 2011)

Excerpt:

By Sam Olukoya
LAGOS, Apr 1 2011 (IPS)

As Nigerians go to the polls on Apr. 2, pre-election violence has raised fears the elections will not be free and fair. The campaign period has featured bombings and gun attacks on campaign rallies, politically-motivated assassinations and violent clashes between members of rival parties.

Campaign billboards in Kano. Credit: Aminu Abubakar/IRIN

The Media and Information Committee on Emergency Management, a group which comprises spokespersons of emergency agencies and security outfits in Nigeria, says 12 of Nigeria’s 36 states have witnessed violence during the campaign. “These states have attracted more headlines and public attention to acrimonious activities among the political actors and parties,” says the Director of Defence Information and MICEM Chair Colonel Mohammed Yerima.

Widespread violence

In the past two weeks, according to human rights group Amnesty International, at least 20 people have been killed in political clashes. Amnesty highlighted an incident on Mar. 22 that saw six people die in clashes between rival parties in the southern state of Akwa Ibom, and the burning down of a presidential campaign office in the state capital.

“The violence is causing immense damage to the country and its institutions,” said Amnesty Deputy Director for Africa Tawanda Hondora in a statement released Apr. 1. “Politicians need to immediately take responsibility for their actions and rein in their supporters before the elections dissolve into chaos.”

Amnesty says rights defenders face increasing threats of violence which will hamper their role as monitors will be crucial to the success of a series of elections for local, state and national office which begin on Apr. 2. The human rights organisation is also concerned by reports that security forces have carried out mass arrests and been issued with “shoot on sight” orders.

But few are surprised by the violent build-up to the elections.

“Power is sweet, and the truth is that the violence is all tied to the quest for power. That is why politicians are acting like wounded lions to get power at all cost,” Morris Alagoa of the Civil Liberties Organisation told IPS.

Election to public office promises control of billions of dollars of oil revenue.

Presidency the plum prize

The most intense struggle for position is at the centre, where power and access to billions of dollars of oil money is concentrated.

The incumbent, Goodluck Jonathan, who hails from the oil producing southeast of the country, is facing off against three candidates from the country’s north in the presidential election which will take place on Apr. 9.

The challengers include a former military ruler, Muhammadu Buhari of the Congress for Progressive Change, as well as the former head of Nigeria’s anti-corruption agency, Nuhu Ribadu, representing the Action Congress of Nigeria.

Several interest groups in the north are aggrieved that President Jonathan is contesting the election at all, which in their view is in breach of an arrangement within the ruling People’s Democratic Party, that the presidency should rotate between north and south.

But Jonathan initially served as vice president under a northerner, Umaru Yar’adua, only assuming the presidency in May 2010, after Yar’adua’s death from illness. Nonetheless, the Northern Political Leaders Forum, a group made up of northern Muslim leaders, is trying to persuade two of the northern candidates to step down, to clear the way for a single candidate to unseat Jonathan.

“It will surely be a difficult election for President Jonathan if he goes into a straight contest against only one of the northern candidates,” Tunde Akanni, a lecturer at the Lagos State University told IPS.

Renewing old quarrels

The argument over Jonathan’s candidacy opens a familiar fault-line in Nigerian politics, where political rivalry between the south and north – invariably regarded as Christian and Muslim respectively – has repeatedly led to violent clashes.

The Brussels-based International Crisis Group says more than 14,000 people died in ethnic and religious clashes in the West African nation between 1999 and 2009.

The government has ordered a countrywide deployment of soldiers and other security personnel in an effort to stop violence. On its part, the Independent National Electoral Commission says it will simply cancel the polls wherever there is violence, but there are fears that this will only encourage attacks.

“My concern is that people may cause violence in areas where they feel they are likely to lose so as to get the results cancelled,” Patterson Ogon, an opposition candidate contesting for a parliamentary seat in Bayelsa State in the Niger Delta told IPS. “The electoral body should investigate all violence before any result is cancelled.”

Not all observers are pessimistic. Former Botswanan president Festus Mogae, who is leading a Commonwealth Observer Group monitoring the elections, says violence may not be as widespread as is feared. “I am concerned. I am apprehensive, but I choose to believe that the level of violence will not affect the overall result of the elections,” he said.

Should elections run smoothly, security will be one of the first issues a newly-elected president will have to address. Key areas include the Niger Delta region, where an amnesty programme has failed to end attacks on the country’s oil industry. In and around the city of Jos, in central Nigeria, a cycle of revenge attacks between Christians and Muslims has claimed scores of lives since last year and in the northeast of the country, an insurgency by the Islamist group Boko Haram presents yet another major challenge for law and order.

Excerpt:

By Sam Olukoya and Ebrima Sillah
DAKAR and LAGOS, Feb 11 2011 (IPS)

Nigerian environmental rights groups have been making the case for the expulsion of oil companies from the Niger Delta in the southeastern part of the country at the World Social Forum in Dakar.

An armed Ijaw militant in Tombia, near Port Harcourt the Niger Delta's principal city. Credit: George Osodi/IRIN

“We feel that the oil companies should leave the shores of the Niger Delta. There have to be fresh negotiations if there has to be oil extraction and communities should be at the dialogue to represent themselves in the negotiations,” said Dorgu.

Dorgu was speaking at a Feb. 9 session at the World Social Forum in Dakar, organised by Nigerian environmental justice activists, mostly women from the oil-rich Niger Delta. Other speakers outlined how the oil industry has provoked violence in the Delta, with women bearing the brunt of the assault.

Emem Okon, the head of the Women’s Development and Resource Centre in the city of Port Harcourt, alleged that the oil companies’ own security personnel have been involved in attacks on women. She also said the Nigerian army had committed grave violations of human rights.

“There are specific cases in Akwa-Ibom State, where Shell brought in a Shell crew and they attacked women. A pregnant woman was shot dead. There are also cases in Ogoniland where the government set up Rivers State Internal Security Task Force, and what these soldiers did was to use women as a weapon of war,” said Okon.

“A lot of women were raped, a lot of young girls were taken into sexual slavery.”

Sow the wind, reap the whirlwind

The Nigerian army’s operations in Ogoni peaked in the mid-1990s, in a brutal response to powerful mobilisation of people which had attracted international attention. Hundreds were killed and tens of thousands displaced; charismatic Ogoni leader Ken Saro-Wiwa and eight others were arrested and later executed by the government. The army carried out similar attacks elsewhere in the oil-rich southeast of the country.

The military campaign shattered non-violent resistance, but gave rise to armed groups whose activities – a mixture of progressive demands and profiteering from kidnapping oil workers and the sale of stolen crude – badly disrupted the country’s oil output.

Speaking to TerraViva from her home in Port Harcourt, Debbie Effiong of the NGO Gender and Development Action, said environmental degradation, poverty, activism and violence are intertwined.

“The environment is part of the livelihood of women; the land sustains them as farmers. Their farmlands are destroyed through oil pollution. So the violence by the military to suppress the people’s cause for environmental justice has prompted a lot of awareness among the women.”

She said that women are keen to take part in the struggle for environmental justice. But the growing role played by armed groups in the Niger Delta complicates matters.

“The violence by militants [the armed groups] affected women’s participation in the struggle for environmental justice at the stage when criminality took over the activities of the militants. The criminal aspect of it did not favour the struggle of women. Some of them lost their husbands, some lost their children, and it affected them emotionally in their quest to continue the struggle.”

The Nigerian government offered a peace deal and amnesty to Delta militants in 2009; most groups accepted. Despite complaints that the government has not held up its end of the bargain – militants again carried out several attacks on oil installations at the end of 2010 – nearly 27,000 young men are now undergoing skills acquisition courses and transformational training on non-violence.

Activists undaunted

It’s too soon to assess the long-term effects of ten years of anarchic violence in the Niger Delta; the call for oil companies to leave indicates that the population has not been intimidated. Effiong says that women too are ready to reclaim a place region’s political life.

“With an increase in the number of women aspiring for political positions – if women are given that chance in the coming elections, I believe there will be a major change positively in the way leadership is run in this country,” she said. “If women are given the opportunity to occupy elected positions, it will definitely enhance the struggle.”

In Dakar, Nnimmo Bassey, the head of Friends of the Earth International, told WSF participants that the struggle for environmental justice in the Niger Delta will be a long one.

“We are doing a lot of grassroots training and mobilisation and there are a lot of new groups coming up,” said Bassey, who is himself from the Niger Delta.

“The regime of responsibility has been so well entrenched and there’s the military backing for what the oil companies are doing, the govenment is behind them.”

Bassey says there are many restrictions. “A lot more work is still going to be done, but one day, when nobody expects it… the people will prevail.”

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By Sam Olukoya
LAGOS, Jan 15 2011 (IPS)

Despite some progress, Nigeria is lagging behind its peers in reducing deaths among children under five. The mortality rate remains worryingly high for newborn infants – 700 children less than 28 days old die in the country every day.

Nigeria has made progress in reducing deaths among children under five. Though there is still a long way to go to meet Millennium Development Goal targets, the mortality rate for this age group has fallen by about a fifth since 1990.

A new report published by Nigeria’s Ministry of Health however acknowledges that the mortality rate for children has fallen by about a fifth since 1990, but this progress has been unevenly spread – with important implications for health policy.

Saving newborn lives

The report, titled “Saving Newborn Lives in Nigeria”, finds that each year, 241,000 babies die within a month of being born.

“Several factors are responsible for this,” says Dr Abimbola Williams of international NGO Save The Children, which was a partner in the research. “Poverty has a big role to play. Many families cannot afford the services at the health facilities which are sometimes not even there, and where you find them, the quality of service is so low.”

A first edition of the study was published in 2009; the latest report significantly updates the findings with new nation-wide data that shows a wide variation in mortality rates between urban and rural areas.

Dr Azebi Korikiye, who has spent several years working as a doctor in rural areas, says pregnant women outside urban centres face major disadvantages.

“People in the rural areas are far away from health facilities, unlike those in urban areas. Pregnant women in rural areas are less likely to attend antenatal clinics and they are more likely to end up in the hands of untrained traditional birth attendants.”

More than one-half of the 700 newborns who die each day in Nigeria, do so at home. Nearly two-thirds of women give birth at home in Nigeria, according to the country’s 2008 demographic and health survey.

Despite the known risks, there has not been a significant increase in the proportion of births which take place in health facilities.

Policy and practical changes needed

Save the Children’s Williams is optimistic that the newly-published report can help guide Nigeria towards achieving its goal of reducing child mortality.

“You need this kind of data to plan. You also need it to have a shift in policy. It will help us focus on the necessary interventions.”

Nigeria has under-performed compared to other countries in Africa. Despite per capita incomes of less than $500 – a third that of Nigeria – Burkina Faso, Uganda and Tanzania have newborn mortality rates of less than 35 per 1,000 live births. Nigeria’s under-five mortality rate is 157 per 1,000 live births.

The country’s rate of improvement also lags behind – the likes of Cameroon and Kenya Cameroon and Kenya have reduce newborn deaths by around 40 percent over the past decade; Nigeria’s rate has dropped too, but by only 15 percent.

Williams says the first edition influenced a major shift in health policy in 2009, steering government towards a renewed focus on newborns.

“The government developed the Integrated Maternal, Newborn, and Child Health strategy – it was the first time that the government singled out newborns as a critical area to focus on,” she said.

But Azebi says beyond formulating policies at the national level, the Nigerian government must ensure that state authorities implement them.

“Some of the hospitals run by the state governments are no better than mortuaries,” he says “The federal government should monitor them effectively so as to enforce standards,” he says.

Save the Children is calling on the government to meet its 2001 pledge to allocate 15 percent of the national budget to health. The organisation is also advocating the use of local data to guide decision-making, training to improve community practices around childbirth, the promotion of better management of newborn infections, and of interventions like kangaroo care – where low birth weight babies benefit from skin-to-skin contact with their mothers: especially useful where incubators and regular power supply are absent.

Representatives of professional associations of obstetricians, paediatricians and midwives have responded to the study with a stated commitment to improving communication and colalboration amongst themselves, and supporting advocacy, data collection and task-shifting to make best use of available personnel.

The country’s health ministry has pledged to create a specific budget line for newborn care. Newly-designated resources will go to support training at the community level, six regional centres to promote care of low-birth-weight infants, among other things. The ministry has also pledged to report on progress annually.

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