Nigeria

ABUJA, Feb 5 (NNN-AGENCIES) — While the whole world is sitting on tenterhooks with taking stringent measures to stay safe from the dreaded Coronavirus, some people thought it was funny to fake contracting it.

Five Abuja residents – four men and a woman – have been reportedly arrested and paraded by the police in the Federal Capital Territory for invading the Wuse General Hospital with false claims of having contracted Coronavirus.

ABUJA, Jan 27 (NNN-AGENCIES) — Nigeria’s President Muhammadu Buhari has ordered air strikes against bandits, kidnappers and cattle rustlers in Niger state.

On Saturday gunmen killed 11 people and kidnapped four women during door-to-door attacks, reported Sahara Reporters and The Daily Sun.

Buhari described the repeated attacks by the bandits “as a disaster”.

Buhari said the air raids “remain the best approach given the lack of motorised roads in the areas constantly under attack”.

ABUJA, Jan 8 (NNN-AGENCIES) — President Muhammadu Buhari charged Nigerians to be united in their resolve to fight terrorism and ensure peace reigns in the country.

The president also said that citizens must ensure they do not subscribe to the terrorists’ message of division, adding that doing the contrary would embolden what the terrorists wish, which is for “Nigerians to see their beliefs as a reason to turn against one another.”

LAGOS, Jan. 4 (Xinhua) -- Five people were killed and four others injured in a gas explosion in the city of Kaduna, northern Nigeria, on Saturday, local police told Xinhua.

Kaduna police spokesman Yakubu Sabo, who confirmed the casualty figures to Xinhua on the phone, said the explosion emanated from a roadside gas vending shop in the business area of the town of Sabon Tasha, affecting passersby and shop owners.

LAGOS, Nigeria (AP) — Nigeria’s government on Friday condemned extremists linked to the Islamic State group after a video circulated of 11 hostages, most of them Christians, being executed. They were thought to be killed on Christmas Day.

President Muhammadu Buhari said in a statement he was “profoundly saddened and shocked by the death of innocent hostages in the hands of remorseless, godless, callous gangs of mass murderers that have given Islam a bad name through their atrocities.”

NEW DELHI, Dec 5 (NNN-PTI) – Eighteen Indians on board a Hong Kong-flagged vessel have been kidnapped by pirates, near the Nigerian coast, local media reported, quoting ARX Maritime, a global agency tracking maritime developments in the region.

ARX Maritime, said that, the Hong Kong-flagged vessel, NAVE CONSTELLATION, was taken over by pirates on Tuesday evening, while transiting through Nigeria, and 19 crew members were kidnapped, out of which 18 were Indians and one Turkish national.

ABUJA, Dec 3 (NNN-AGENCIES) — The Federal Government has frowned on China’s domination of the Nigerian mining sector, noting that the development had not helped the country’s economy.

Chinese businessmen and firms, alongside other Asians, are the major players in the exploitation of solid minerals in the country, with Nigerian operators playing minor roles.

The Minister of Mines and Steel Development, Olamilekan Adegbite, made the observation during a workshop organised by the ministry in collaboration with the Lagos Business School, in Abuja.

DAURA (Nigeria), Dec 3 (NNN-NAN) — President Muhammadu Buhari says Nigeria’s domestic fuel consumption has dropped by more than 30 per cent, following the closure of land borders.

Buhari, who said this at his country home in Daura, while receiving a delegation of Katsina State Elders Forum, also said he had not given any date for the reopening of the land borders.

29 November 2019; AFP: John Eromosele records the coordinates of a bustling canal on his smartphone from aboard a dug-out canoe navigating the floating slum of Makoko in Nigerian megacity Lagos.

The waterway is "like a boulevard, there's always traffic here," the computer coding specialist laughed as other boats jostled for space between rows of wooden houses on stilts.

Officially Makoko does not exist.

ABUJA, Nov 26 (NNN-AGENCIES) — Nigeria launched its first national sexual offenders register, setting up a database of those convicted for sexual violence in a move seen as an important step towards clamping down on abuse.

The “Sexual Offender Register” will contain the names of all those prosecuted for sexual violence in Africa’s most populous nation since 2015.

The record will be available online to better help the public, state bodies and police conduct background checks and identify repeat offenders.