Europe Solidaire Sans Frontières
EMILIA MICUNOVIC INTER-VIEWED Rafiat Atanda and Zigwai Tagwai, who volunteer with ONE in Nigeria. They are professional women in their 20s. This article has been edited from a longer version. The editors, Against the Current
THIS MARCH MARKED the second anniversary of the World Health (...)
In October 2020, millions in Nigeria marched for two weeks in a revolt that shook the world. From Badagry to Yola, youth and workers rose in unity against the barbarism of police brutality and bad governance. Raising radical slogans and social media hashtags, and mobilizing spontaneous rallies, (...)
In early 2021, anti-extractivist struggles won two major legal victories against Shell Oil’s operations in Nigeria. These wins represent decades of community organizing on the part of Niger Delta activists and residents. ROAPE’s Lee Wengraf interviews the environmental activist, Nnimmo Bassey, (...)
The weakening of Nigeria’s oil trade unions has a devastating impact on workers. Now workers are paid by Shell and others to sabotage union strikes and actions.
In January 2020, I was speaking to a group of so-called “artisanal refiners” in Port Harcourt, Nigeria. “Yes, we are in the oil,” they (...)
A survivor warns against the harmful practices many are forced to undergo to try to change their sexuality or gender identity
When I was nine, my parents took me to a traditional healer. He used a razor to make three incisions on the insteps of my feet, my wrists, my elbows, my forehead and (...)
Despite criticism from rights groups, families of young rape victims in Kaduna state say they support the new law.
Content warning: This story contains graphic details of abuse that some readers may find disturbing. Names marked with asterisks have been changed to protect the identity of the (...)
The #EndSARS movement has convulsed Nigeria for weeks, demanding an end to police brutality. But the protesters have something else in their crosshairs: the unequal, austerity-ridden status quo and the political class that defends it.
In October, protests erupted in Nigeria calling for the (...)
Different activist communities came together to create one of the greatest social movements in Nigeria’s history.
When Adaeze Feyisayo, 24, joined the protests against police brutality in Nigeria on Friday, October 3, she had just returned from a trip to the southeastern city of Aba, where she (...)
A movement against police brutality has swept across Nigeria. Mass protests have brought out tens of thousands of people in cities across the country. At the center of the fury is SARS, a notoriously brutal special unit of the police. On October 11, the Nigerian Police Force announced it was (...)
Black Lives Matter (BLM) leaders from many organisations and alliances in the United States have expressed strong support for Nigerian students and working people in their #EndSARS protests against state violence.
More than 69 civilians were shot dead on October 20–21. Twelve people were (...)
Crackdown as rallies against police brutality continue in defiance of government curfew
Nigerian security forces have opened fire on hundreds of protesters in Lagos, as rallies against police brutality continued in defiance of a 24-hour curfew imposed by the government earlier in the day. (...)
Police violence prompted latest protests but anger at the government is growing
The signs held up by protesters have been clear. “We have no leaders,” said one. “The power of the youth is stronger than you that is in power,” ran another. A third read: “Nigeria bleeds.”
This last statement has (...)
SARS’s abuse reflects the moral bankruptcy of the system the corrupt Nigerian ruling elite has put in place.
Those in Nigeria’s halls of power must have been flummoxed when protests erupted in response to Inspector General of Police Mohammed Adamu’s October 11 announcement that the Special (...)
An unorthodox union and an unregulated transport system leave many Nigerian bus drivers vulnerable to poverty and abuse.
Lagos, Nigeria – It is 7pm on a Wednesday in late September. Afeez* has just left a bus park at Iyana Isolo, a small busy road near the popular Ojuwoye street market in the (...)
• Statement on death penalty pronounced in blasphemy cases in the State of Kano, Nigeria
• In support of Nigerian civil society initiatives against death penalty and blasphemy laws
Over spring and summer 2020, three cases drew attention to the blasphemy law under which religious courts (...)
Closure of Nigeria’s schools during lockdown has hit access to learning for poorer children
Like millions of other children in the sprawling Nigerian city of Lagos, 15-year-old Sharifa Umar switched from classroom learning to lessons over radio, TV and the internet when schools were closed in (...)
On the 50th anniversary of the end of the Biafran war, the world’s worst humanitarian crisis in the late 1960s, declassified British files show that Harold Wilson’s government secretly armed and backed Nigeria’s aggression against the secessionist region.
The then Labour government secretly (...)
All 47 men deny offence of same-sex displays of affection, which carries 10-year jail term
Forty-seven men went on trial in Nigeria on Wednesday for public displays of affection with members of the same sex, an offence that carries a 10-year jail term in the country.
The men were among 57 (...)
Organised labour unions on Thursday asked President Muhammadu Buhari to help resolve the dispute over the N30,000 new minimum wage.
The union and the federal government again failed to reach an agreement over the payment of the new minimum wage at a meeting in Abuja on Wednesday.
However, (...)
Daring to join the male-dominated world of Nigerian politics was a tough decision for Ladi Mamman Watila, particularly in the conservative north-eastern state of Borno. But in 2003, Watila ran for a seat in the House of Representatives (the lower house of the National Assembly of Nigeria) on (...)
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