Nigeria

Political change can drive out Boko Haram

The impressive “Bring Our Girls Home” social media campaign has succeeded in drawing attention to the audacious and cruel abduction of 276 schoolgirls by the Nigerian Islamist sect Boko Haram. The actions of the nihilistic group, who view the girls’ lives as more-or-less expendable (no more than their value in ransom), have rightly been condemned. But we need to discuss the political conditions in which such an organisation takes root. Some on the socialist left have been more concerned to expose the (undoubted) hypocrisy of the west’s offers of help to find the girls (e.g. Green Left Weekly )...

Solidarity with LGBT struggles worldwide!

In many countries across the world, lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) people are recurrently subjected to targeted killings, violent assaults, torture, and sexual violence.

Shockingly, in 2014, homosexuality is illegal in 76 countries around the world, and in 10 of these punishable by...

Solidarity with LGBT people in Nigeria!

On 7 January 2014, Nigerian President Goodluck Jonathan signed a law that makes gay marriage in Nigeria punishable by up to 14 years in prison. Already, LGBT rights activists are reporting mass arrests and beatings of gay people, and people perceived to be gay, all over Nigeria. Dorothy Aken’Ova, executive director of Nigeria’s International Centre for Reproductive Health and Sexual Rights, gave the BBC a detailed account of how police seized and held four gay men over Christmas and beat them until they named people allegedly belonging to LGBT organisations. Dozens of gay men have already been...

Solidarity with Ifa Muaza!

Ifa Muaza, a refugee from Nigeria, has been on hunger strike for over 80 days after his request for asylum was rejected by the Home Office. Muaza is being held at Harmondsworth immigration removal centre, near Heathrow. His lawyer argues that keeping him in detention amounts to a death sentence, and staff at the centre have been warned to expect a detainee to die. Muaza says he came to Britain after being threatened by the Islamist militia, Boko Haram, in Nigeria. He says that he was pressured to join the jihadist organisation, and that if he refused, he would be killed. Boko Haram have an...

The tragedy of the Biafran War

The Biafran war began in July 1967 and ended with the surrender of Biafra in January 1970. The Biafrans, in south east Nigeria, were fighting for independence; the Nigerian army was fighting to keep the state intact. Perhaps two million people died as a result of the war, the majority from malnutrition or disease. Mark Osborn looks at the events. I was born in 1961. And, like me, many people my age have two sets of black and white TV images in their heads. The first is of the US moon landing: “One small step for a man,” and Buzz Aldrin bouncing about. That was intensely exciting and impressive...

The True Prison

Ken Saro-Wiwa was a writer and activist. He was one of the leaders of the Movement for the Survival of the Ogoni People, a community-rights and environmental movement which challenged the power of oil companies and the Nigerian government. In 1994, the Nigerian government launched a concerted offensive against the Ogoni people to make the region safe for oil multinationals. 3,000 people were killed. In 1995, Ken Saro-Wiwa was executed by the Nigerian government. His poem The True Prison bases itself on a recurring and striking anti-capitalist trope —that actual prisons are merely reflections...

A long way to go on gay rights

According to the International Lesbian and Gay Association (ILGA) seven majority Muslim countries still maintain the death penalty for homosexual activity. They are Afghanistan, Iran, Mauritania, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, and Yemen. In northern Nigeria, where some states use Sharia law, homosexuality is also punishable by death. In Iran gay men are normally arrested under other trumped up charges. But in September 2011 three men were executed for homosexuality. And when execution is not used other brutality can be. In 2010 a Saudi man was sentenced to 500 lashes and five years in jail for...

Nigerian workers rise up

Protests in Nigeria over the removal of the fuel subsidy have spread throughout the country with labour unions starting to make a strong presence on the streets. The Nigerian Labour Congress (NLC) represents over 8 million workers and launched an indefinite general strike on Monday 9 January. An articulate movement has started to evolve on the streets of the main cities of Nigeria, yet police violence is already making the development of the movement very difficult. It is also yet to be seen whether traditional forms of workers’ organisation can complement the Federation of Informal Workers of...

Stop the killings in the Niger Delta! Solidarity with the tube cleaners!

The Nigerian military has launched a massive assault on the Niger Delta, perhaps 1,000 people have died in the past two weeks. The government has sent in the Joint Military Task Force (JTF) which has used helicopters and ground forces to conduct a massacre of civilians. This is the latest chapter in an ongoing use by successive regimes of naked state violence to protect the interest of western multinationals, particularly Shell. The Nigeria Delta Solidarity Campaign, a small group based in the Nigerian community in London held an emergency protest outside Downing Street yesterday which I...

Save Naomi and Jemima from deportation and mutilation!

Naomi Izevbekhai, aged seven, and her sister Jemima, aged six, are at threat of being deported from Ireland to Nigeria, where their mother Pamela says that her busband's family is likely to force them to submit to genital mutilation. Pamela Izevbekhai has said she left Nigeria in January 2005 due to her husband's family's practice of genital mutilation. The High Court in Dublin is due to give a decision on her appeal on Tuesday 18 November. Her first daughter Elizabeth died at 17 months from blood loss, which the attending doctor described as being possibly the result of female circumcision...

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