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Nigeria clips nurses’ wings to prevent brain drain

Nigeria clips nurses’ wings to prevent brain drain

NIGERIAN nurse Temitope Ogundare has laid out a fastidious, one-year plan to get himself a well-paid nursing gig in Britain. Saving half his monthly salary of 45,000 naira ($29) - hard-earned in a private clinic - he successfully financed the key English language test needed to bolster his credentials.  Then nailed the required score to get to the next stage of his job hunt. But now the 25-year-old nurse says his plans are stuck in limbo due to strict, new rules brought in by the Nigeria Nursing and Midwifery Council to ensure home-grown talent stays home.  Like many African, Caribbean and Asian…
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Nigeria to free 313 suspected Boko Haram insurgents for lack of evidence

Nigeria to free 313 suspected Boko Haram insurgents for lack of evidence

NIGERIA'S military will free more than 300 people suspected of being part of the Boko Haram Islamist insurgency after a court ruled there was no evidence they committed any crimes, a defence spokesperson said. In 2009 jihadist group Boko Haram launched an insurgency seeking to overthrow the government and establish an Islamic state. The insurgency has killed tens of thousands and forced more than 2 million people to flee their homes, spawning one of the world's worst humanitarian crises. The 313 people, who had been suspected of being members of Boko Haram, will be released after a ruling by a…
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Detained Binance executives sue Nigeria’s security adviser, anti-graft agency

Detained Binance executives sue Nigeria’s security adviser, anti-graft agency

TWO executives from Binance, the world's largest cryptocurrency exchange, have sued Nigeria's national security adviser's office and the anti-graft agency for violating their fundamental rights and asked the court to set them free. Tigran Gambaryan, a U.S. citizen and Binance's head of financial crime compliance, and Nadeem Anjarwalla, a British-Kenyan who is Binance's regional manager for Africa, flew to Nigeria following the country's decision to ban several cryptocurrency trading websites and were detained on arrival on February 26. Anjarwalla fled the country last week and now faces the prospect of an international arrest warrant. On Thursday, Gambaryan appeared in a Federal High…
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Nigeria unveils revamped economic management structure amid rising hardship

Nigeria unveils revamped economic management structure amid rising hardship

PRESIDENT Bola Tinubu announced an overhaul of Nigeria's economic governance intended to ease financial hardship and boost productivity, establishing a multi-layered framework to bolster coordination, planning and implementation. Tinubu, who took office last year, inherited an economy struggling with record debt, high unemployment, low oil output, and power shortages that have crimped growth. But reforms he has implemented since then, chiefly ending a costly petrol subsidy and twice devaluing the naira currency within a year, have spurred price pressures and sparked the worst cost-of-living crisis in decades in Africa's largest economy. Central to the economic management structure is the creation…
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Nigeria’s Dangote oil refinery could accelerate European sector’s decline

Nigeria’s Dangote oil refinery could accelerate European sector’s decline

NIGERIA'S giant Dangote oil refinery could bring to an end a decades-long gasoline trade from Europe to Africa worth $17 billion a year, heaping pressure on European refineries already at risk of closure from heightened competition, analysts and traders said. The refinery started production in January and cost $20 billion to build. It can refine up to 650,000 barrels per day (bpd) and will be the largest in Africa and Europe when it reaches full capacity this or next year. It has long been touted as the turning point for Nigeria's quest for energy independence. Nigeria is Africa's most populous nation and…
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Nigeria’s fuel subsidy removal was too sudden: why a gradual approach would have been better

Nigeria’s fuel subsidy removal was too sudden: why a gradual approach would have been better

NIGERIA removed fuel subsidies entirely in May 2023. This came as a surprise because of the political risks associated with subsidy removal. Previous administrations were reluctant to jettison the subsidies. The subsidies had been in place since the 1970s, when the government sold petrol to Nigerians at a price below cost – though most consumers weren’t aware of this. The 1977 Price Control Act made it illegal for some products (including petrol) to be sold above the regulated price. The Olusegun Obasanjo regime introduced this law to cushion the effects of inflation, caused by a worldwide increase in energy prices.…
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Detained Binance executive escapes custody in Nigeria

Detained Binance executive escapes custody in Nigeria

A Binance executive who had been detained in Nigeria has escaped custody, the president's adviser on national security said. Nadeem Anjarwalla, a British-Kenyan who is Binance's regional manager for Africa, a suspect in the ongoing criminal probe into the activities of Binance in Nigeria escaped from lawful custody on Friday, the security adviser's office said in a statement. It added that Nigeria's security agencies are working with Interpol for an international arrest warrant on Anjarwalla. Binance said earlier that it was aware that Anjarwalla, who is the company's regional manager for Africa, was no longer under Nigerian custody and that…
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Nigerian rights body ends probe into abortion allegations against military

Nigerian rights body ends probe into abortion allegations against military

NIGERIA'S human rights commission said on Tuesday it had concluded hearings into an investigation of a Reuters report that the military ran a secret abortion programme in its fight against Islamist insurgents in the northeast. The Nigerian military has previously said that the report was not true. The National Human Rights Commission (NHRC), which is appointed by the government, established a special panel in February 2023 to investigate the allegations and has been conducting hearings in the capital Abuja and in northeastern Borno state. NHRC said the hearings had ended, with Borno's attorney general and the military addressing the panel on Tuesday. The commission…
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Gunmen in Nigeria kidnap about 100 in weekend attacks

Gunmen in Nigeria kidnap about 100 in weekend attacks

GUNMEN in Nigeria kidnapped around 100 people, including women and children, in two weekend attacks in Kaduna state, residents and police said. Kidnappings by criminal gangs demanding ransoms have become an almost daily occurrence in Nigeria, especially in the north, with authorities seemingly powerless to stop them. Kaduna police spokesperson Mansur Hassan confirmed the incident in Kajuru Station village on Sunday night but could not give a figure on those missing. He said security agents had been deployed to rescue the villagers. Tanko Wada Sarkin, a village head, said 87 people were taken. "We have so far recorded the return…
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Nigeria risks losing all its forest elephants – what we found when we went looking for them

Nigeria risks losing all its forest elephants – what we found when we went looking for them

NIGERIA is one of 37 African countries where elephants are found in the wild. Savannah elephants (Loxodonta africana) can be found in the north and forest elephants (Loxodonta cyclotis) in the south. It’s not clear how many elephants there are in Nigeria. Eighteen years ago, the African Elephant Study Report estimated that there were just 94 elephants left in the country. In 2021, it was estimated that there could be about 400 elephants in areas not systematically surveyed. What we do know, however, is that the numbers and ranges of elephants in Nigeria have declined greatly over time. The main…
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