Babies going missing in IDP camps 🚨
More kidnap victims released (no govt intervention), Monkeypox and COVID, More ways Nigeria is broke.
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We’re back from our break!
Since then, a lot has been happening. Mostly negative than positive. To start, let’s talk about how pressure mounts on the Akwa Ibom State Chief Judge, Justice Ekaette Obot, for the release of a jailed human rights lawyer, Barrister Inibehe Effiong.
Obot sentenced Effiong to 30 days in prison on July 27 for contempt of court. This resulted in protests on Thursday by the Coalition of Civil Society Organisation in Nigeria and Effiong’s friends.
Read more details here.
In today’s edition:
Someone is stealing babies from IDP camps.
More kidnap victims released (no govt intervention)
Monkeypox and COVID
More ways Nigeria is broke
Insecurity
Babies are being stolen from their mothers in the Northeast
Humangle reports that someone has been stealing babies from their displaced mothers in the Northeast.
The feature was centred on Amina Bukar and Yakura Gana in the IDP camp in Bama, Northeastern Nigeria. They are both widowed and displaced women who raised their babies independently.
Bukar left her sleeping one-year-old baby in her tent to fetch water. When she returned, her baby was gone. Her baby was returned days after reporting to the chiefs and many of her neighbours. Unfortunately, Bukar’s daughter passed 12 days after. Bukar is confident something was done to harm the baby.
Just 15 days after his birth, Gana’s baby was abducted. She had gone to bathe and left her baby in the tent. He was missing by the time she came back. She eventually caught an unfamiliar woman holding him in a sack, but by then, he was already dead.
These two women represent a frightening population of displaced women left endangered by the rise in Boko Haram and other terrorist insurgencies.
The women in the camp believe the culprit will strike again. They often leave babies unattended to watch from a distance to see who will come and try to take them away. No one has been found yet.
Kaduna-Abuja kidnap updates
Seven hostages from the Abuja-Kaduna train attack have been released. They include a family of six and an elderly woman - The Punch.
The family of six is made up of father, Abubakar Garba; mother, Maryam; and their children - Ibrahim (10); Fatima (7); Imran (5); and Zainab(1).
Garba is a staff member of the National Assembly Service Commission and son of a former Military Administrator in Kano and Benue.
60-year-old Aisha Hassan was also released. Her release is reported a result of life-threatening health challenges that recently deteriorated.
Meanwhile, the FG has once again promised to release the remaining 31 victims. Buhari said this when he met with representatives of families of the abducted people in Abuja. This was confirmed in a statement by his Senior Special Assistant on Media and Publicity, Garba Shehu.
However, he also explained that the government will not employ lethal force in freeing the remaining hostages.
Owo attack suspects arrested
The Defense Headquarters (DHQ) has said in a statement that they have arrested the mastermind behind the massacre at the St. Francis Catholic Church in Owo, Ondo state.
The DHQ’s statement was to clarify an earlier announcement by the Chief of Defence Staff, Lucky Irabor.
Two statements were released on Wednesday. The first, by Irabor, stated that only one of the four arrested was linked to the attack.
The second statement — by the DHQ— explained that four culprits were arrested. It clarified that although four of the arrested people took part in the attack, only one of them was the mastermind.
Mr Irabor said that the suspects would be paraded before the public in due course.
Barely a few hours after the DHQ’s announcement, two more people involved in the massacre were arrested.
Health
Nigerian doctor who discovered the origin of monkeypox
Dr Dimie Ogoina is a Nigerian doctor who discovered possibly one of the most important monkeypox patients in the modern world. He diagnosed a young boy with the disease in 2017 and tried to warn the world, but with all things, Nigerians did not take it seriously.
Dr Ogoina is an infectious disease specialist at the Niger Delta University in Nigeria. On September 22, 2017, an 11-year-old boy came to his clinic with a strange rash on his skin and sores inside his mouth.
After ruling out the possibility of chickenpox, he began to suspect monkeypox. He sent samples to Senegal and the U.S. to make a diagnosis which confirmed it.
Monkeypox usually affected mainly children and was not contagious, so it easily died out. However, soon after the boy’s case, Dr Ogoina noticed that the virus began to spread more rapidly.
Since May, the world has detected over 20,000 monkeypox cases, including more than 4,000 cases in the U.S. Last weekend, the World Health Organisation declared this outbreak a public health emergency.
Ogoina said he and his colleagues decided to “do a sexual history assessment of some of the cases". Their assessment found that many of the monkeypox patients they examined were sexually active people with records of multiple partners and sex with prostitutes - NPR
Ogoina mentioned the idea in a 2019 study: "Although the role of sexual transmission of human monkeypox is not established, sexual transmission is plausible in some of these patients through close, skin-to-skin contact during sexual intercourse or by transmission via genital secretions", Ogoina and his colleagues wrote in the journal PLOS One.
Although he tried to warn health officials, he was told not to mention that sexual transmission was possible.
"Yes, someone told me that I should not say it. [They said] that I should not say sexual transmission is possible."
There were reportedly about 200 cases of monkeypox in 2017, but the number drastically decreased in 2018 because health officials stopped investigating. This facilitated the outbreak to move underground for years until it became a global issue.
Although it has been prevalent in Nigeria, health officials only prioritised it when it began manifesting in Europe and North America.
There are vaccines available for monkeypox, but those supplies are strained. Many Americans and Europeans have received the vaccine while it remains unavailable to the average Nigerian.
New COVID cases
The Nigeria Centre for Disease Control (NCDC) confirmed 517 new COVID cases in the country between August 6 and August 11, 2022. The new cases have raised the total number of infections to 262,402. 293 were reported from Akwa Ibom, while Lagos recorded 101.
The FCT has 13 cases of the virus, Ekiti has 11, Delta and Kano report nine each, Bayelsa has seven and Kaduna records six cases. Others include Oyo (five), Abia (three), Kwara, Nasarawa, Plateau (two each).
Cross River, Ogun, Osun, Ondo and Sokoto reported no cases.
The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) said that 525 persons have been discharged in the last five days after recovering from the virus, thus bringing the total number of discharged patients to 256,006.
Finance
Buhari suspends $418m Paris club refund plan as ministers clash at FEC
Buhari has directed the Minister of Finance, Zainab Ahmed, to suspend plans to begin deducting a refund of the $418 million Paris Club refund allegedly owed to four contractors - Premium Times
Nigerian Governors under the umbrella of the Nigeria Governors’ Forum (NGF) submitted a letter to the federal government, through the Secretary to the Government of the Federation (SGF), Boss Mustapha, in opposition to the deduction plan.
They argued that an attempt to restart the deduction process would be unconstitutional as it has been challenged in court and the Supreme Court had made a pronouncement on the issue.
Before the FEC meeting on Wednesday, the governors had separately written to all ministers explaining their position and seeking their intervention to stop the planned deduction being vigorously pushed by the ministers of justice and finance.
FEC considers a new NITDA bill to tax tech companies
The National Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA) is again seeking to regulate the country’s tech ecosystem, this time with a bill that repeals its regulatory Act and enacts a new bill.
This week, the Federal Executive Council (FEC) considered the bill to repeal the National Information Technology Development Agency Act No. 28 of 2007 and enact a new National Information Technology Development Agency Act.
This comes almost a year after NITDA Director General Kashifu Inuwa Abdullahi’s first amendments to its regulatory Act
The amendments in General Kashifu’s proposal included:
Provisions for new license categorisations
Licensing fees
1% profit-before-tax levies for companies with revenues higher than ₦100 million ($243,831)
Prison sentences for defaulting parties.
The amendment reportedly faced opposition from stakeholders such as the Nigeria Bar Association Section on Business Law (NBA-SBL).
Now, the bill inches closer to becoming law as the Federal Executive Council (FEC) reviews it.
Highlights of the bill as reported by Premium Times:
Section 9 provides for the protection and rights of consumers of the tech space. It also states that NITDA will be saddled with creating incentives that promote the tech ecosystem like technology parks and start-up initiatives, a sure boost to Nigeria’s billion-dollar tech ecosystem. The bill also contains several questionable provisions:
Part VI, Section 16 of the bill provides for the creation of the NITDA Fund, which will be used for the “advancement of the digital economy and related purposes”. The problem is not with the purpose of the fund but with the constitution of the fund. In subsection (a), the bill states that all companies with annual turnovers over ₦100 million ($240,000) must pay an annual levy worth 1% of their profit before tax.
Part V, Section 15, authorises NITDA to provide permits and licenses for operators in Nigeria’s IT sector. The section is ambiguous as it doesn’t state the requirements for companies seeking to get this permit, the duration of the permit, or the permit fee. It’s also repetitive as most of the companies the bill seeks to regulate are already registered with other agencies. To operate in the country, tech companies must be licensed by the Corporate Affairs Commission (CAC), and fintechs must obtain CAC licenses and licenses from the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN).
Part VII, which lists offences and penalties, states that companies that operate without the aforementioned licenses are subject to a ₦30 million fine. Director or principals of such companies are also liable to ₦3 million in fines each, and/or 2 years in prison. Where an individual performs the same act, the individual will have to pay ₦3 million and/or spend at least 1 year in prison.
The bill’s largest red flag concerning penalties is in Section 25(1): It proposes penalising non-payment of levies for the NITDA Fund. Where companies fail to pay the 1% levy, the Agency will be empowered to serve them a notice with a fine constituting 2% of the unpaid levy. Where the company refuses to pay the levy within 2 months after the notice, the company will be liable to pay 0.5% of the payable amount per day.
The proposed taxes are also incompatible with the Startup Bill.
The NBS has provisions for tax breaks for startups but the NITDA bill is focused on taxing startups. The new bill implies that NITDA has moved from its original mandate to become a tax and levying agency.
Nigeria among top world debtors
As expected, Nigeria remains one of the top world debtors and has moved one spot up in the latest top 10 International Development Association (IDA) borrowers’ list - The Cable
According to the IDA’s recently released financial statements, Nigeria is the fourth most indebted country, with $13 billion in debt as of June 30, 2022.
Last year, the country was fifth and had $11.7 billion in debt stock. Since then, the country has amassed an additional $1.3 billion in debt.
The top ten countries on the IDA borrowers’ list are India, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Nigeria, Vietnam, Ethiopia, Kenya, Tanzania, Ghana and Uganda.
The Cable reports that the top five countries on the list reduced their debts within a year, except for Nigeria.
India reduced its debt from $22 billion in 2021 to $19.7 billion in 2022
Bangladesh reduced its debt from $18.1 billion to $18 billion
Pakistan reduced its debt from $16.4 billion to $15.8 billion
Vietnam’s debt reduced from $14.1 billion to $12.9 billion
Causing further distress, the World Bank says the current petrol subsidy regime poses an “existential threat” to Nigeria
Petrol subsidy claims amounted to 2.6 trillion Naira in the first half of 2022 — a figure above crude oil sale receipts from the Nigerian National Petroleum Company (NNPC) Limited and the federal government has projected to spend 6.7 trillion Naira on petrol subsidy payments in 2023.
Awasthi said Nigeria is in an unfavourable economic situation due to dwindling revenue, the continued payment of trillions of Naira on fuel subsidy by the government and the attendant economic challenges. He maintained that Nigeria would have no choice but to get rid of subsidy eventually.
Governance
Governors to Buhari: “take 33 steps to rescue the economy”
Nigerian governors advised Buhari and the FG to take urgent steps as part of coordinated efforts to prevent the nation from economic collapse.
The governors proposed this at a meeting with Buhari last month. They advised the FG to offer federal 50-year-old+ civil servants a one-off retirement package to exit the service.
They also urged the FG to end the CBN’s financing of the government’s budgetary expenditures and convert its N19 trillion debt into a 100-year bond.
The governors were concerned about the deteriorating state of the economy and the ripple effect on the nation ahead of the 2023 general elections.
Read the 33 measures as recommended by the governors here.
El rufai reports terrorists are becoming a parallel government in Kaduna
Terrorists are consolidating their grip on communities in Kaduna with a “parallel” government and “permanent operational base”, Kaduna state governor Nasir El-Rufai told Buhari.
The terrorists belong to Ansaru al-Musulmina fi Bilad al-Sudan (Ansaru). They are believed to have moved to Birnin Gwari in Kaduna State in 2012 when they broke away from Boko Haram.
The Ansaru terrorists are responsible for some of Boko Haram’s high-profile attacks, like the UN building bombing of August 2011 and the kidnap of some foreigners.
El-Rufai also told Buhari that the terrorists had declared a law banning residents from participating in the 2023 general elections.
‘’The insurgents enacted a law in the District, banning all forms of political activity or campaign ahead of the 2023 elections, especially in Madobiya and Kazage villages.’’
They even placed a fine of 1 million Naira on a Kuyello community resident for selling plots of land without the owners' consent.
Other news this week
LAWMA and PSP operators review waste management bill - The Guardian
Insecurity has overstretched Nigeria’s resources - The Nation
Fire at House of reps new building - The Nation
Nigeria’s 12 gold medals at the Commonwealth - Premium Times
EFCC indicts officials for taking bribes to “doctor” presidential pardon list - Premium Times
Sokoto’s multi-million skill centre still inaccessible after completion - Premium Times
‘’Thieves” steal N31m from Katsina state house - Premium Times