Showing posts with label Nigeria. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Nigeria. Show all posts
Sunday, March 30, 2014
Monday, March 24, 2014
Nigeria Stampede in Abuja"s stadium kills jobseekers - 16 March 2014
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Nigeria Stampede in Abuja"s stadium kills jobseekers - 16 March 2014
Thursday, August 8, 2013
Analysis: Oil majors to stay onshore Nigeria despite grumbles
ABUJA (Reuters) – A wave of planned sales of onshore Nigerian assets by oil majors has prompted speculation that they are finally leaving the Niger Delta because of oil theft, gangsterism and political uncertainty.
Analysis: Oil majors to stay onshore Nigeria despite grumbles
Analysis: Oil majors to stay onshore Nigeria despite grumbles
Firefighters try to extinguish a fire after vandals dug holes on an oil pipeline to siphon fuel at Ilado village, on the outskirts of Nigeria’s commercial capital Lagos June 26, 2013.
Credit: Reuters/Akintunde Akinleye
ABUJA |
ABUJA (Reuters) – A wave of planned sales of onshore Nigerian assets by oil majors has prompted speculation that they are finally leaving the Niger Delta because of oil theft, gangsterism and political uncertainty.
In reality, though, foreign firms such as Royal Dutch Shell, Chevron, Eni and Total are here to stay, industry sources say.
The majors are likely to sell only small blocks that are not worth their while — those assets worst affected by theft and sabotage or fields that risk expropriation in a government push to promote local ownership.
Meanwhile, the large oil producing blocks, huge gas deposits, key pipelines and the export terminals that control the passage of onshore oil to international markets will most likely stay in their hands — enabling them to retain infrastructure for which they can charge rent to other users.
Complaints by oil majors that Nigeria has done little to combat oil theft or end uncertainty over changes to the fiscal regime by passing the Petroleum Industry Bill (PIB) are genuine, but they won’t drive the firms away from the country.
“Nigeria’s ‘difficult’ operating environment, security concerns and the non-passage of the PIB all provide useful cover for what may essentially be a portfolio optimization process,” said Razia Khan, Head of Africa Research at Standard Chartered.
The global shale oil and gas boom means there are more exploration opportunities, so it makes financial sense to keep only the most profitable businesses in Nigeria, like gas for LNG export, and expand deep offshore where there is no oil theft.
If anything, they will use their grievances as leverage in negotiations with government over licenses and taxes.
OIL THEFT HEADACHES
Nigeria’s oil production, which fluctuates between 2-2.5 million barrels per day (bpd), is unlikely to be hugely affected by any oil block sales in the short-term and could get an uplift in the future if smaller local companies work harder to exploit reserves or can better stem insecurity with local communities.
Tycoons Tony Elumelu and Wale Tinubu, the Oando CEO, both of them negotiating to buy oil blocks off majors, told Reuters in recent interviews they thought it would be easier for Nigerian companies with a better understanding of local issues to manage often fraught community relations.
But ending oil theft — officially estimated at 250,000 bpd — is a massive undertaking. It is often associated with criminal gangs who tap crude from pipelines for local refining, but most stolen crude leaves the country in large tankers, which could not happen without the complicity of top officials.
Shell, the largest producer in Nigeria, said last week it took a $ 700 million hit from theft and other issues in Nigeria with its share of output falling to 158,000 bpd in the second quarter, down from 260,000 bpd in 2012.
Shell CEO Peter Voser nevertheless told Reuters this month the company was not seeking to leave Nigeria.
Eni said it had lost 30,000 bpd of output in the first half of the year due to theft and CEO Paolo Scaroni said the company was “reviewing its position” in Nigeria.
Total declined to comment on its plans.
Shell, which has already sold eight blocks in the Niger Delta for around $ 1.8 billion since 2010, announced it will sell more fields amounting to 80,000-100,000 bpd, although it is not clear if this level of output is yet being produced.
Chevron is also selling five shallow water blocks, but would not comment further on its plans for Nigeria, while fellow U.S. firm ConocoPhillips is selling its Nigerian businesses to Oando for about $ 1.79 billion.
POLITICAL UNCERTAINTY
Theft may not be the only reason for selling down.
The PIB, although still in a political deadlock that has lasted five years, could change the terms for foreign companies in Nigeria and will promote local ownership of onshore blocks.
Shell, Chevron, Eni and Total have been in failed negotiations with the Nigerian government for several years to renew expired licenses on many onshore and shallow water blocks.
“Perhaps they would rather sell licenses while they still can rather than having to relinquish them for nothing,” said Antony Goldman, head of Africa-focused PM Consulting.
Yet Shell recently announced it would spend $ 3.9 billion on a gas project and a reconstruction of a better protected Trans Niger pipeline, one of the country’s most important crude oil routes and often hit by outages caused by theft or sabotage. That suggests it still sees value working onshore in Nigeria.
Shell may even buy one of Chevron’s blocks, two sources told Reuters, which would provide the perfect route from one of Nigeria’s largest gas fields to its LNG export terminal.
Nigeria holds the world’s ninth largest gas reserves, most of which are untapped. Energy majors are increasingly moving towards gas production instead of oil in the Niger Delta.
Majors such as Shell will likely keep large pipelines and export terminals, so even if local firms are getting the oil out of the ground, where the risks of insecurity are highest, the majors can make a cut from taking oil to international markets.
“Oil majors want to keep control of this infrastructure as it means they will have a large degree of control of onshore assets and derive revenue from transportation,” said Kayode Akindele, partner at Lagos-based investment firm 46 Parallels.
There is no guarantee that deals on assets that majors do want to sell can be easily or quickly completed — Nigeria has one of the world’s slowest oil contract approval times, experts say.
Some of Shell’s previous divestments took years to negotiate. Buyers will also be wary of the state oil company’s production arm NPDC taking over the operating rights — as it has on previous Shell field sales where the private buyers were expecting to operate them.
Yet for the all the pitfalls, Nigeria will be keen to close the deals, which please the political elite and public alike.
“The divestment is a positive step for all the major players involved … (it) will have a positive knock-on impact on production longer-term,” said Martin Kelly, Wood Mackenzie’s Lead Analyst for Sub-Saharan Africa Upstream Research.
“But … in order to make a noticeable difference other challenges need to be addressed — like the PIB and security.”
($ 1 = 160.1000 Nigerian naira)
(Editing by Tim Cocks and Giles Elgood)
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Analysis: Oil majors to stay onshore Nigeria despite grumbles
Analysis: Oil majors to stay onshore Nigeria despite grumbles
ABUJA (Reuters) – A wave of planned sales of onshore Nigerian assets by oil majors has prompted speculation that they are finally leaving the Niger Delta because of oil theft, gangsterism and political uncertainty. 
Analysis: Oil majors to stay onshore Nigeria despite grumbles
Saturday, August 3, 2013
Nigeria: Doctors treat lead-poisoned children
FILE – A Thursday, June 10, 2010 photo from files showing local health workers removing earth contaminated by lead from a family compound in the village of Dareta in Gusau, Nigeria. The Nigerian village that suffered one of the worst recorded incidents of lead poisoning is now habitable and doctors can start treating more than 1,000 contaminated children, a doctor and a scientist from two international agencies said Friday. For some, it already is too late to reverse serious neurological damage, said Dr. Michelle Chouinard, Nigeria country director for Doctors Without Borders, told The Associated Press on Friday, Aug. 2, 2013. Some children are blind, others paralyzed, many will struggle at school with learning disabilities, she said. Doctors Without Borders uncovered the scandal in 2010 but nothing was done until this year about the worst-affected village, Bagega, because the federal government did not provide a promised $ 3 million, the group said. (AP Photo/Sunday Alamba, File)
FILE – A Thursday, June 10, 2010 photo from files showing local health workers removing earth contaminated by lead from a family compound in the village of Dareta in Gusau, Nigeria. The Nigerian village that suffered one of the worst recorded incidents of lead poisoning is now habitable and doctors can start treating more than 1,000 contaminated children, a doctor and a scientist from two international agencies said Friday. For some, it already is too late to reverse serious neurological damage, said Dr. Michelle Chouinard, Nigeria country director for Doctors Without Borders, told The Associated Press on Friday, Aug. 2, 2013. Some children are blind, others paralyzed, many will struggle at school with learning disabilities, she said. Doctors Without Borders uncovered the scandal in 2010 but nothing was done until this year about the worst-affected village, Bagega, because the federal government did not provide a promised $ 3 million, the group said. (AP Photo/Sunday Alamba, File)
FILE – In this Wednesday, June 9, 2010 file photo, men walk amongst the graves of children killed by lead poisoining, in Yangalma village, in Gusau, Nigeria. The Nigerian village that suffered one of the worst recorded incidents of lead poisoning is now habitable and doctors can start treating more than 1,000 contaminated children, a doctor and a scientist from two international agencies said Friday. For some, it already is too late to reverse serious neurological damage, said Dr. Michelle Chouinard, Nigeria country director for Doctors Without Borders, told The Associated Press on Friday, Aug. 2, 2013. Some children are blind, others paralyzed, many will struggle at school with learning disabilities, she said. Doctors Without Borders uncovered the scandal in 2010 but nothing was done until this year about the worst-affected village, Bagega, because the federal government did not provide a promised $ 3 million, the group said. (AP Photo/Sunday Alamba, File)
FILE – A Thursday, June 10, 2010 photo from files showing local health workers removing earth contaminated by lead from a family compound in the village of Dareta in Gusau, Nigeria. The Nigerian village that suffered one of the worst recorded incidents of lead poisoning is now habitable and doctors can start treating more than 1,000 contaminated children, a doctor and a scientist from two international agencies said Friday. For some, it already is too late to reverse serious neurological damage, said Dr. Michelle Chouinard, Nigeria country director for Doctors Without Borders, told The Associated Press on Friday, Aug. 2, 2013. Some children are blind, others paralyzed, many will struggle at school with learning disabilities, she said. Doctors Without Borders uncovered the scandal in 2010 but nothing was done until this year about the worst-affected village, Bagega, because the federal government did not provide a promised $ 3 million, the group said. (AP Photo/Sunday Alamba, File)
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LAGOS, Nigeria (AP) — The Nigerian village that suffered one of the world’s worst recorded incidents of lead poisoning is now habitable and doctors can start treating more than 1,000 contaminated children, a doctor and a scientist from two international agencies said Friday.
For some, it already is too late to reverse serious neurological damage, said Dr. Michelle Chouinard, Nigeria country director for Doctors Without Borders, told The Associated Press on Friday.
Some children are blind, others paralyzed and many will struggle at school with learning disabilities, she said.
Doctors Without Borders uncovered the scandal in 2010 but nothing was done until this year about the worst-affected village, Bagega, because the federal government did not provide a promised $ 3 million, the group said.
The poisoning caused by artisanal mining from a gold rush killed at least 400 children, yet villagers still say they would rather die of lead poisoning than poverty, environmental scientist Simba Tirima told the Associated Press Friday. Villagers make 10 times as much money mining as they do from farming in an area suffering erratic rainfall because of climate change, he said.
Managing five landfills with some 13,000 cubic meters (nearly 460,000 cubic feet) of highly contaminated soil, and teaching villagers how to mine safely are major challenges to prevent new contamination, he said.
“That’s a big, big worry. But I am joyful that for the kids who will be born in Bagega, we have at least removed one of the major strikes against them because they have so many strikes against them — nutritional problems, diseases …” said Tirima, who is the field operations director in Nigeria for TerraGraphics International Foundation.
The Moscow, Idaho-based foundation advised Nigeria’s northern Zamfara state government and oversaw the 5 ½-month cleanup, or remediation, of Bagega that ended two weeks ago.
There, people were exposed to mindboggling rates of lead contamination: Some residential soil with up to 35,000 parts per million of lead and the processing area with over 100,000 parts per million, Tirima said. The United States considers 400 parts per million safe for residential soil.
At the peak of the gold rush, Tirima said, more than 1,000 itinerant miners and followers were camped around the village — deep in the countryside, beyond the reach of paved roads and electricity and quite cut off in the rainy season when dirt roads become impassable.
Despite its remote location, the booming economy attracted people from Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger to Bagega, which also drew many locals as a regional commercial center with a primary and high school, a hospital and weekly market. In addition, cattle herders and nomads came here to water their animals at a reservoir so dangerously contaminated it killed goats and cows.
The entire human population of 6,000 to 9,000 was exposed, including some 1,500 children under the age of 5. Human Rights Watch said the death toll of 400 was only an estimate as villagers initially tried to hide the deaths, fearing the government would stop their illegal mining. The group said it was the worst epidemic of its kind in modern history.
The government released money for the cleanup in February, Doctors Without Borders began prescreening in March and found that nearly every one of 1,010 children tested need therapy, Chouinard said. Of them, 267 are severely contaminated and will get chelation — where medication binds the lead to a child’s blood and helps them to eliminate it faster from their system.
All the children had more than the international standard maximum of 10 micrograms per deciliter of lead in their blood. Some had as much as 700 micrograms per deciliter, she said. The children will have to be treated for one to two years, she said.
The more basic methods used to get at gold helped cause the poisoning. Some women used hammers to beat open rock ore. Others used some of the 60 grinding mills at a processing area adjacent to the village and water reservoir, Tirima said.
Many took the rocks that carried high concentrations of lead into their homes for processing. The poisoning was facilitated because the particular lead compounds are very toxic and easily absorbed into the body, unlike other forms of lead, Tirima explained.
His TerraGraphics Foundation has trained dozens of Nigerians to clean up any future contamination.
Government officials initially reacted by trying to enforce a ban on illegal mining. When that did not work, they promised to find other sources of income for villagers, but nothing has happened in a country where corruption is endemic.
Tirima pointed to mounting evidence linking lead poisoning to crime waves and said he fears for the community when their poisoned children grow up.
Nigeria: Doctors treat lead-poisoned children
Thursday, August 1, 2013
Rising costs, Nigeria troubles blot Shell profits
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A Shell logo is seen at a petrol station in London January 31, 2013.
Credit: Reuters/Luke MacGregor
LONDON |
LONDON (Reuters) – Rising costs, a surge in oil thefts and disruption in Nigeria and other negative factors hit profits at Royal Dutch Shell (RDSa.L) on Thursday, leading outgoing chief executive Peter Voser to call the second quarter result “disappointing”.
Shell said it took a $ 700 million hit for a combination of Nigeria and for the tax impact of a weakening Australian dollar, and warned that Nigeria itself faces a $ 12 billion annual bill for the disruption. Shell recently put more of its Niger Delta activities up for sale.
Adjusted second quarter net earnings on a current cost of supply basis came in at $ 4.6 billion, down from $ 5.7 billion a year ago and below analysts’ expectations of a result that would have been little changed on last year.
“Higher costs, exploration charges, adverse currency exchange rate effects and challenges in Nigeria have hit our bottom line,” said Voser, who is due to step down at the end of this year. “These results were undermined by a number of factors – but they were clearly disappointing for Shell.”
Shell (RDSa.L) vies with U.S.-based Chevron (CVX.N) for the world number two spot among investor-controlled oil companies behind Exxon Mobil (XOM.N). Exxon is due to report results later on Thursday.
(Reporting by Andrew Callus; Editing by Paul Sandle)
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Rising costs, Nigeria troubles blot Shell profits
Sunday, July 14, 2013
Insight: Nigeria Islamists hit schools to destroy Western ideas
MAMUDO, Nigeria (Reuters) – They crept up to the school under cover of darkness, armed with petrol and automatic weapons.
Insight: Nigeria Islamists hit schools to destroy Western ideas
Insight: Nigeria Islamists hit schools to destroy Western ideas
A teacher conducts a lesson under a makeshift classroom at a relief centre for flood victims at St. Boniface primary school in Idah in Nigeria’s central state of Kogi October 3, 2012.
Credit: Reuters/Afolabi Sotunde
MAMUDO, Nigeria |
MAMUDO, Nigeria (Reuters) – They crept up to the school under cover of darkness, armed with petrol and automatic weapons.
Most of the teachers and pupils had fled, but some students, one teacher and headmaster Adanu Haruna were still in the compound, one of many rural boarding schools in Nigeria surrounded by forest and farmland.
“They made the students line up and strip naked, then they made the ones with pubic hair lie face down on the ground,” Haruna said, eyes wide with horror at describing the attack on the iron-roofed school built by British colonizers in the 1950s.
“They shot them point blank then set the bodies on fire.”
The Mamudo government school, charred and smelling of scorched blood after 22 students and a teacher were killed there in the July 6 attack near Potiskum in Nigeria’s northeast, was the fourth to be targeted by suspected Boko Haram militants in less than a month.
The attacks reveal much about the rebels who are fighting to revive a medieval Islamic caliphate in northern Nigeria, the type of state they are seeking to establish and the impact of their efforts to do so on the African economic powerhouse.
In a video uploaded to the Internet on Saturday, Boko Haram’s purported leader Abubakar Shekau denied ordering the latest killings, saying Boko Haram does not itself kill small children, but he praised attacks on Western schools.
“We fully support the attack on school in Mamudo, as well as on other schools,” he said. “Western education schools are against Islam … We will kill their teachers.”
Boko Haram, a nickname which translates roughly as “Western education is sinful”, formed around a decade ago as a clerical movement opposed to Western influence, which the sect’s founder, Mohammed Yusuf, said was poisoning young minds against Islam.
Yet security forces and politicians were the main targets of the armed revolt it started after Yusuf’s killing in a 2009 military crackdown that left 800 people dead.
Since those days Boko Haram has splintered into several factions, including some with ties to al Qaeda’s Saharan wing, which analysts say operate more or less independently, despite Shekau’s loose claim to authority over them.
Before June, there had been only a handful of attacks on the Western-style schools it so despises.
An offensive against the insurgents since President Goodluck Jonathan declared a state of emergency in three remote northern states in May, wresting control of the far northeast from Boko Haram and pushing its fighters into hiding, has changed that.
Across northeastern Nigeria, schools are emptying out, threatening further radicalization and economic decline in a region left behind by the country’s oil-rich Christian south.
Nassir Salaudeen, a teacher whose son was killed in a strike on Damaturu government school on June 16, the first of the wave of recent attacks, said he had put all his efforts into his boy’s education in the hope he would get a good job.
“They killed him in cold blood, just because he was a student and his father a teacher,” a tearful Salaudeen said. “I regret ever being educated.”
“SOFT TARGETS”
For some, the school attacks are a sign the offensive has weakened the Islamist group, which is still seen as the main security threat to Africa’s leading oil and gas producer.
“Given the security clampdown, many of the places like police stations or the military are getting harder for Boko Haram to hit,” said Kole Shettima, chairman of the Centre for Democracy and Development. “Schools are soft targets.”
But the attacks also reflect a radical ideology that resents modernity and yearns to wind back the clock to an era before West African lands were conquered by Europeans.
Centuries ago northern Nigeria, like much of West Africa, was ruled by Islamic empires feeding off trans-Saharan trade routes connecting Africa’s forested interior with its Mediterranean coast.
Boko Haram rarely gives statements to the media. But the little it has said suggests it wants to restore those glory days.
Last year, the sect said it wanted to revive the 19th century caliphate of Usman Dan Fodio, an Islamic scholar who threw off corrupt Hausa kings and established strict Sharia law.
When Britain established Nigeria as a territory, it agreed to spare the largely Muslim north’s leaders the activities of missionaries, who brought Christianity but also education and literacy that gave the south a head start over the north.
The north was able to retain its Islamic culture but at the cost of suffering economically; political and economic power has shifted to the south and the education gap has played a role in that growing discrepancy.
A lack of education and high youth unemployment has also helped Boko Haram’s Islamist ideology to thrive.
“Boko Haram think the secular school system has brainwashed Nigerians to accept the post-colonial Western order and forget the Islamic ways that existed before,” said Jacob Zenn, an expert on the sect at the Washington-based Jamestown Foundation.
The attacks, which the U.N. children’s fund (UNICEF) says have killed 48 students and seven teachers in the past month, aim to scare parents and their kids away from schools.
“It says: ‘either take your children out of school or put them into an Islamist school we approve of’,” Zenn said, one that teaches only in Arabic and omits courses like science.
He added that such schools need not necessarily be Boko Haram sponsored: there are conservative Islamic schools for children where they study under an Imam and the curriculum is all in Arabic and focused on the Koran. The sect accepts them.
“SCHOOLS DESERTED”
Many people are turning away from education altogether.
“The risk isn’t worth it. These guys are just mindless,” said Mike Ojo, a mechanic in the northeastern city of Maiduguri who is taking his three children out of school.
Even if they stayed, many teachers have left, said teacher Ali Umar from a Maiduguri secondary school, and in many schools there are often too few teachers for the pupils who stay put, leaving them with little choice but to leave.
“I am not prepared to die for teaching. Time to start looking for a new job,” he said, shrugging. “Most of our schools are deserted anyway.”
The spot where Halima Musa’s husband was shot dead at their home on June 16 — in front of her and the children — is still caked with his dried blood, the wall pocked with bullet holes.
They came at 3 a.m., guns blazing, demanding she open the door. She begged them to stop as they dragged the teacher out.
“They shot him three times in the head and told me that this should be a lesson not to marry a western educated person or any person that works for President Jonathan,” she said, choking back tears in front of three traumatized children.
Yobe state education commissioner Mohammed Lamin complained that the military had not done enough to protect schools from attack, even after they were targeted.
Before the murderous assault on the Maumdo school, there had been an earlier attack on May 8, in which some property was burnt. Headmaster Haruna said the security forces he called for help patrolled initially but stopped after a week.
The military was not immediately available to comment, but it has said in the past it is doing all possible to protect civilians while crushing the insurgents in its offensive.
Schools are a devastating target for an impoverished region suffering a high rate of illiteracy, but Lamin says he is determined that Yobe’s children get educated.
“These terrorists are trying to stop western education but we cannot allow them do that,” he said. “We must do everything to ensure children are safe in the school.”
(Writing and additional reporting by Tim Cocks in Abuja; editing by Philippa Fletcher)
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Insight: Nigeria Islamists hit schools to destroy Western ideas
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