News

Adams Oshiomhole, the chairman of the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC), has called for the nationalization of South Africa-owned companies operating in Nigeria. Among the South African companies Oshiomhole wants the federal government to immediately nationalise are MTN, a multinational mobile telecommunications company operating in many African, European and Asian countries, Stanbic Bank and the direct broadcast satellite service DStv. …

Zimbabwe’s ex-president, Robert Mugabe, has died after battling ill health for years, his family has announced. The former leader, who  is believed to have died in the early hours of Friday,  had been in hospital in Singapore since April. Mugabe governed his country from its independence in 1980 until he was ousted in a military coup in November 2017, ending …

A Nigerian airline has offered to evacuate Nigerians wishing to leave South Africa as the country’s diplomatic missions shut down in Nigeria. Raphael Adenaike reports. Air Peace, Nigeria’s biggest airline by fleet size, has offered to bring Nigerians living in South Africa back home. The airline announced the offer on Wednesday as a fallout of xenophobic attacks on foreign nationals …

A day after Nigeria’s foreign minister, Geoffrey Onyeama, summoned Bobby Moroe, the South Africa High Commissioner to Nigeria, to his office following xenophobic attacks on foreign nationals in South Africa, Africa’s most populous country has now withdrawn its ambassador, Alhaji Kabiru Bala, to Pretoria. The latest diplomatic action was taken amidst attacks on South African-owned businesses operating in Nigeria. Abuja …

Twenty Nigerians were deported to their home country on 19 August. Our correspondent Raphael Adenaike was at the Lagos airport when the deportees arrived and they narrated their personal ordeals and experiences with the German police, immigration officials and medical doctors as well as the Nigerian Embassy to Raphael (read article here). Raphael also spoke with pro-refugee activists in Lagos …

As British politics grapples with how to handle Brexit, Nobel laureate Wole Soyinka has warned Prime Minister Boris Johnson against going ahead with his decision to suspend – or prorogue – parliament. Going forward with the controversial plan, an attempt to stop MPs from preventing the UK from leaving the European Union without a deal, would be setting a bad …

The Federal Government of Nigeria has summoned Bobby Moroe, the South Africa High Commissioner to Nigeria, following the latest xenophobic attacks on foreign nationals, including, Nigerians living in South Africa. Moroe was summoned by Geoffrey Onyeama, Nigeria’s Minister of Foreign Affairs, to his office in Abuja on Tuesday. The action, in diplomatic practice, is a form of expression of displeasure …

Some Nigerians in Germany have faulted the method employed by Omoyele Sowore, a human rights activist, in his call for a revolution against the Nigerian government. Speaking in a video interview with Samson Itondo of Afrobizgermany, the commentators said Sowore’s revolution call could have a partisan political undertone, having lost his bid to become the country’s president at the 2019 …

A former Nigerian minister and presidential contestant at the country’s last general election has been awarded a resident fellowship at one of Germany’s most prestigious academies. A prominent Nigerian, Dr Obiageli Ezekwesili, has been awarded a Richard von Weizsäcker Fellowship at the Robert Bosch Academy in Berlin for the period from from September 2019 to February 2020. Others who bagged the …

The authorities in the southern German state of Bavaria have announced that a Nigerian who went on a rampage recently at an Anchor Centre (Ankerzentrum), a big holding camp for refugees, has been deported to Nigeria. The news was broken on Thursday to the Bayerischer Rundfunk by the Bavarian State Office for Asylum and Repatriation (Bayerische Landesamt für Asyl und …

A week after 20 Nigerians were deported to their home country, refugee support groups in Germany have raised alarm that at least 2,400 Gambian refugees in the country were slated deportation. The groups, Flüchtlingsrat Baden-Württemberg (Refugee Council Baden-Württemberg), a non-profit organization that advises refugees and advocates for their rights, and the Gambia Helfernetz (Gambia Helpers Network), have written to Gambian …

The continuing education program Digital Media for Media Practitioners with Refugee  History (Digitale Medien für Medienschaffende mit Fluchtgeschichte or DMF) of the Hamburg Media School is entering its eighth round this autumn. The Hamburg Media School offers these media practitioners – regardless of their residency status – a six-month free modular course program followed by an internship in a Hamburg-based …

Sir Dawda Kairaba Jawara, Gambia’s first post-independence president who led the small West African country for 24 years before being deposed in a 1994 coup, has died at the age of 95, the Gambian presidency said on Tuesday. The office of President Adama Barrow, whose election in 2016 brought an end to the rule of the army officer who toppled …

Aminata Touré was on Wednesday (28 August) elected the new Vice-President of the state parliament (Landtag) of Schleswig-Holstein. She received 46 of the 69 valid votes cast. Schleswig-Holstein is one of the 16 states of Germany and its capital city is Kiel. The 26-year-old Green party member, who is the second youngest member of parliament, said she was “fully relieved …

Professor Jason Osai* of the Rivers State University, Port Harcourt, Nigeria, writes on man, religion and soul and how to achieve the eternally sought-after global peace devoid of want and war. Institutional religion has divided the world along a multiplicity of jaded philosophical and theological lines thereby creating socio-cultural and economic hedgerows that have pitched husband against wife, mother against …

Our Correspondent in Nigeria, Raphael Adenaike, was at the Lagos airport when Nigerian deportees, including a single mother of one, arrived from Germany on Monday 19 August. The deportees, whose asylum applications had been rejected, narrated their personal ordeals and experiences with the German police, immigration officials and medical doctors as well as the Nigerian Embassy to Raphael. With little …

The physical assault on Senator Ike Ekweremadu on 17 August in Nuremberg while the Nigerian frontline politician was attending the 2nd Annual Igbo Cultural Day continues to generate controversy in Nigeria. Kinsmen of Senator Ike Ekweremadu, for example, have called for the thorough investigation, arrest and prosecution of the people, alleged to be members of the separatist Indigenous People of …

Resident foreigners convicted by German courts are increasingly being expelled from the country irrespective of their residency status. This was revealed in the response of the federal government to a parliamentary enquiry of the Linke party in the Bundestag, the news agency epd has reported. According to the report, 7,408 deportation orders were issued last year. In 2017, there were …

Nigeria has again faulted claims that there were 30,000 of its citizens who are irregular migrants in Germany awaiting repatriation. The Nigerian Ambassador to Germany, Alhaji Yusuf Maitama Tuggar, said the figure was unrealistic against the background that there’re only 32,000 Nigerians legally resident in the country. “So how could there be 30,000 Nigerians irregularly living in the country?” he …

The so-called ‘Orderly Return Law’ (das Geordnete-Rückkehr-Gesetz) was approved in June. It went into force on Wednesday (21 August). It gives authorities and police more powers to enforce deportation orders. Critics fear more refugees could now be legally detained. The tightening of rules governing the deportation of rejected asylum-seekers took effect on Wednesday. Federal Interior Minister Horst Seehofer (CSU) said …