Ope Adetayo

Au­thor­i­ties in Zam­fara is­sued the call for self-de­fence as ban­dits con­tin­ue to un­leash ter­ror across north­ern Nige­ria.

But se­cu­ri­ty ex­perts say the armed group ISWAP might not be be­hind the Owo killings de­spite the gov­ern­ment’s ac­cu­sa­tion.

Since Au­gust 2020, it has pro­vid­ed ac­com­mo­da­tion to 153 women in­clud­ing mi­nors but now needs more space to do more.

Lo­cals blame no­madic herders, while ex­perts say it could be Boko Haram off­shoots ex­pand­ing their sphere of in­flu­ence.

Glob­al­ly, Nige­ria has the high­est rate of out-of-school chil­dren. A vol­un­teer is work­ing to re­duce the num­bers.

Helped by pro-bono lawyers, the show Silent Voic­es ex­pos­es per­pe­tra­tors and helps sup­port women and child vic­tims.

Nige­ri­ans fear the bil­lion­aire Twit­ter own­er’s phi­los­o­phy of free speech ab­so­lutism could af­fect their free­dom of speech

Rel­a­tives of the ab­duct­ed pas­sen­gers say gov­ern­ment in­ef­fi­cien­cy led to the at­tack and is de­lay­ing res­cue ef­forts.

Across Africa, an in­creas­ing num­ber of gov­ern­ments are dis­con­nect­ing phone lines in mass, cit­ing do­mes­tic se­cu­ri­ty.

The law­mak­ers’ de­ci­sion on In­ter­na­tion­al Women’s Day came hours af­ter si­mul­ta­ne­ous protests by women in four states.