Latest Updates: Nigeria RSS
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thabet
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thabet
‘500′ are reported to have been killed dead in the latest violence in Jos, Nigeria:
A resident in Plateau State, where the tragedy happened, said he had seen armored vehicles and military trucks arrive in the village along with patrolling troops.
The latest military move came after a Nigerian government official confirmed on Monday that at least 500 had been killed in a communal clash in Jos, which followed the crisis on Jan. 17 in the same region when some youths attacked worshippers at St. Michael’s Anglican Church in Nasawara Gwom.
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abunoor
AlJazeerah has video evidence of Nigerian police massacre of unarmed civilians in wake of Boko Haram clashes. Warning: extremely hard to watch:
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johnpi
Human rights group urges ICC to probe recent Muslim-Christian violence In Nigeria.
A Lagos-based human rights group has urged the International Criminal Court (ICC) in the Hague, Netherlands to probe the recent Muslim-Christian violence that left more than 300 people dead in the central Nigerian city of Jos, said officials and news reports on Monday.
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abunoor
AlJazeera reports recent Christian-Muslim violence in Nigeria seems to have been worse than originally feared.
Hundreds of people have died in violence between Muslims and Christians in northern Nigeria.
The clashes began on Sunday in the city of Jos, but later spread to the countryside.
Al Jazeera has obtained evidence that suggests the bloodshed from ethnic and religious violence could be greater than feared.
Our news team filmed bodies dumped in wells and saw the corpses of children.
Al Jazeera’s Andrew Simmons travelled to the village of Kuru Jantar, just outside of Jos, where locals told him about what they are calling a massacre.
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abunoor
New reports of sectarian violence in Jos, Nigeria.
Troops and riot police are patrolling the Nigerian city of Jos, after fighting between gangs of Muslim and Christian youths in the central city.
At least 12 people have reportedly died but the Plateau State authorities have yet to confirm a figure.
Houses, mosques and churches were set alight and a dusk-to-dawn curfew is now in force.
The city has a history of ethnic and religious tension – at least 200 people were killed in 2008 and 1,000 in 2001. -
johnpi
Nigerians: ‘Don’t blame Nigerian Islam, the problem is UK Islam.’
For residents in his home town, it was Umar Abdulmutallab’s foreign education, not his roots in Muslim northern Nigeria, that radicalized him and led him to try to blow up a U.S. passenger plane.
….If Abdulmutallab was radicalized outside Nigeria as many of his compatriots believe, his case would have precedents.
Ahmed Saeed Omar Sheikh, or Sheikh Omar, who was sentenced to death in Pakistan in 2002 for the killing of U.S. journalist Daniel Pearl and suspected of links to the September 11, 2001 attacks, came from a similarly privileged background.
Born in Britain in the early 1970s, Omar was the son of a wholesale clothes merchant from Wanstead in northeast London who went to an expensive school but dropped out of one of Britain’s top universities, the London School of Economics.
Young Muslims who grew up in Funtua insist it was Abdulmutallab’s life overseas, which they view as alien, not Nigerian Islam that gave rise to his extremist views.
“We the children of the masses in this country, we don’t know anything about terrorism because our parents are poor. They don’t have the money to take us abroad,” said 25-year old student and Funtua resident Usman Mati.
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johnpi
ABC News is reporting – surprise! surprise! – that the man who tried to blow up a US bound passenger jet today is an engineering student at University College of London. Please hold your ‘Muslim engineer’ jokes until the end of the blog post.
He also said he received the explosive device in Yemen, along with instructions on how to use it. The device was described as a packet of explosive powder strapped to his leg and a syringe of chemicals that would cause the explosion when mixed with the powder.
He was flying from Nigeria to the United States for a religious ceremony, according to his entry visa, which was issued June 16, 2008 and was good until June 12, 2010.
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johnpi
A Nigerian man attempted to blow up a Delta Airlines passenger jet today on its way to Detroit.
U.S. officials say a Northwest Airlines passenger from Nigeria said he was acting on behalf of al-Qaida when he tried to blow up a flight Friday as it landed in Detroit.
Rep. Peter King, R-N.Y., identified the suspect as Abdul Mudallad, a Nigerian. King said the flight began in Nigeria and went through Amsterdam en route to Detroit.
One of the U.S. intelligence officials said the explosive device was a mix of powder and liquid. It failed when the passenger tried to detonate it.
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johnpi
A decade of Sharia law in north Nigeria breeds frustration.
A decade after Nigeria’s predominantly Muslim north re-introduced strict Islamic Sharia law, the fervour has fizzled while disillusionment is becoming more strident about its patchy application.
Out of Nigeria’s 36 states, 12 re-adopted a strict version of Sharia in 1999 nearly a century after it had been abandoned.
But even one of the radical Muslim clerics who in 1999 actively lobbied for Sharia in Kano State, Abba Koki, conceded there were problems.
“People are disillusioned with the insincerity, deception and hypocrisy which characterise the implementation of Sharia,” Koki told AFP.
Some of the criticism directed at the government (apart from those listed in the previous excerpt) is that its punishments are too timid:
Kano State governor’s spokesman Sule Yau Sule countered critics as narrow-minded.
“Some people think Sharia is all about stoning to death and amputation, which is a narrow perception. Sharia is about human development, making a person a better being in all spheres and I believe this is what we are doing,” Sule said.
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plimfix
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thabet
Sierra Leone and Ghana may just become another two countries with a resource curse:
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Sierra Leone is one of the poorest states in the world and its neighbours to the south are not much better off. Oil production from Ghana’s Jubilee field is yet to ramp up, but the country is quite reasonably concerned that its oil wealth will turn it into yet another country ‘cursed’ by resources – it is not far away from Nigeria, after all, whose sizeable oil reserves have not exactly brought stability or prosperity for most of its people.
Speaking of West African nations ‘cursed’ with oil and mineral wealth:
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johnpi
First there was Hollywood, then there was Bollywood, now there is Nollywood in Nigeria.
According to a UNESCO Institute for Statistics survey, Bollywood—as the Mumbai-based film industry is known—produced 1,091 feature-length films in 2006. In comparison, Nigeria’s moviemakers came out with 872 productions—all in video format. The United States, on the other hand, produced 485 major films.
….According to the study, American movies continue to dominate in terms of cinema admissions around the world, and all of the top 10 films seen in Australia, Bulgaria, Canada, Costa Rica, Namibia, Romania and Slovenia were U.S.-made. Nigerian films, however, outsell Hollywood films in Nigeria and many other African countries, where Nigerian video movies are available in even the most remote areas. Nollywood films also enjoy immense popularity among the African Diaspora in both Europe and North America.
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thabet
Cameron Duodu notes that the Boko Haram, whose fighting with the Nigerian security forces has left around 600 dead, resembles the Maitatsine sect.
On the same story, human rights activists in Nigeria say the killing of the Boko Haram leader must be investigated.
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thabet
More violence in Nigeria:
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thabet
Shell has agreed to pay nearly £10m to settle a case accusing it of complicity in human rights abuses in Nigeria.
(Another reason why you shouldn’t let businesses do ‘whatever they want’.)
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thabet
Nigeria’s oil curse.
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thabet
Royal Dutch Shell faces trial New York over its role in its complicity in human rights abuses in Nigeria (another country which has suffered the oil curse).
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thabet
Four people are killed in Nigeria after a row between Muslims and Christians.
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thabet
Nigeria’s curse: oil.
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abunoor
AP is reporting a statement from the Imam of the largest mosque in Jos, Nigeria that over 300 bodies have been brought to the mosque on Saturday alone.
Inna lillaahi wa inna ‘ilayhi rajioon wa Allaahul-Musta’aan.
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thabet
The Nigerian man with 86 wives has agreed to divorce 82 of them.
He was sentenced to death by a group of Muslim scholars in Niger State. The sentence was later lifted.
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thabet
Nigeria’s Islamic authority has told the man who has 86 wives to choose only four and repent within three days or else he will be sentenced to death.
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aziz
move over, Jesus Tortilla – the Allah Meat is here.
