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Nigeria: Police Officers Forced to Buy Their Own Uniforms
Posted: Thu, 15 Sep 2016 15:26:05 +0100
The force is failing to equip its ranks with even regulation materials.
Police officers in Nigeria say that they are being forced to buy uniforms and basic items of kit from uniforms to handcuffs out of their own salaries.
Although all policemen and women should receive at least two sets of uniform for free each year, interviews with serving officers across three districts revealed that not a single one had been given new kit since graduating from training college.
As well as uniforms, officers also have to buy accoutrements such as tear gas, torches, whistles, handcuffs and batons from official police stores or on the open market.
All officers interviewed stated that at least three sets of uniform were needed during the rainy season and during the harmattan, the period in which a hot dry wind blows across West Africa.
Nigeria police kit purchased in Gombe. (Photo: Nura Faggo)
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Nigeria: Prisoners Forced to Buy Their Freedom
Posted: Mon, 12 Sep 2016 12:23:02 +0100
Police forces arbitrarily arrest and extort money from ordinary citizens.
Namino Jonathan was woken one June night by a noise outside the house he shared with his parents and siblings.
Startled, the 16-year-old saw a group of armed men stationed around the building.
It was two am, and he was sure the family was about to be robbed. But the gang turned out to be a group of policemen.
"Where is your father?” one of them demanded.
“He is not around,” Jonathan replied.
The men immediately stormed into the house, woke everyone and turned the household upside down.
They then seized Jonathan and took him to the police station, where he was to spend the next ten days locked in a cell with criminals.
Osaze Asagbanya says he was badly beaten by police. (Photo: Chinedu Ekeja)
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Nigeria: Corruption Fuelling Drug Trade
Posted: Mon, 12 Sep 2016 12:04:33 +0100
State agencies accused of failing to fulfil their mandate.
Experts say that the fight against drugs in Nigeria is being hampered by corruption among the ranks of the National Drug and Law Enforcement Agency (NDLEA).
There is also growing alarm over rates of domestic usage of illicit substances in Nigeria, a country once seen primarily as a drug transit point.
Established in early 1990, critics say that the NDLEA has failed to live up to its mission statement, which is “the total eradication of illicit trafficking in narcotic drugs and psychotropic substances; suppression of demand for illicit drugs and other substances of abuse” as well as recovering drug money.
NDLEA spokesman Jarikre Ofoyeju said that the agency was “working to bring about a balance between supply and demand reduction.
NDLEA workers discover 165kg of narcotics hidden in food supplies. (Photo: NDLEA Nigeria)
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Nigeria: Soldiers Forced To Buy Their Own Uniforms
Posted: Thu, 08 Sep 2016 08:10:13 +0100
Corruption and mismanagement leaves army ranks woefully under-resourced.
Nigerian soldiers have to pay for essential items of kit out of their own money, an investigation has revealed.
Over the last five years, the Nigerian government has budgeted a total of N3.456 billion for equipping its soldiers.
However many soldiers, including those involved in the fight against the Boka Haram insurgency in the northeast, say that they have been forced to spend their own money on buying uniforms, boots and other items of equipment.
The scale of the problem became apparent during an investigation lasting several weeks that involved visits to army barracks across the country.
In Kaduna, Abuja and Lagos, IWPR witnessed first-hand how soldiers bought uniforms and boots both in the black market and in army-owned shops.
Nigerian soldiers. (Photo: Chris Hondros/Getty Images)
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Nigeria: When Aid Goes Missing
Posted: Mon, 05 Sep 2016 08:29:52 +0100
Government agencies accused of diverting supplies meant for the six northeastern states.
Internally displaced persons (IDPs) in Yobe state continue to suffer appalling poverty, despite the enormous resources invested in relief efforts by the Nigerian government and international organisations.
The Boko Haram insurgency has forced more than two million people to flee their homes in northeastern Nigeria and claimed the lives of over 20,000 others.
Yobe has been the second worst state affected by the violence with nine IDP camps across the state housing more than 130,000 people.
Many IDPs have found shelter in informal camps, while others have taken refuge with friends and relatives within Nigeria and across the border in neighboring Niger, Chad and Cameroun.
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Nigeria: Herders and Farmers Clash Over Land
Posted: Fri, 19 Aug 2016 14:43:07 +0100
Tensions are rising between Fulani pastoralists and villagers in the country’s southwest.
Mariam Popoola, a 65-year old farmer in the village of Ibeku in Ogun state’s Yewa North, wept as she described how attacks by Fulani herdsmen were making local peoples lives a misery.
Some 500 herdsmen were using the Agua border area in Ketu local government for grazing between December and April each year. Although they had been passing through for the last two decades, friction had been getting increasingly worse for the last ten years.
Popoola said that women found alone on their farms were raped and cattle left to foul drinking water supplies.
Rural dwellers in the town of Ayete, Ibarapa North, Oyo state. (Photo: Hannah Ojo)
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Sierra Leone: Prison Reforms Bring No Relief
Posted: Tue, 16 Aug 2016 10:40:38 +0100
Prisoners still suffer appalling conditions despite legislative changes
Recent reforms to Sierra Leone’s prison system have failed to bring much meaningful improvement, according to an IWPR investigation.
Official figures show that the current inmate population stands nationally at 3,184, even though the system only has capacity for 1,785.
New laws introduced by the correctional service in 2014 sought to provide an alternative to incarceration, a major reason for overcrowding.
An antiquated legal system with stiff custodial penalties for even minor offences and lengthy periods of remand had put enormous pressure on the country’s prisons.
Poor hygiene and malnutrition meant that disease was rife, with very little hope for rehabilitation and reintegration back into society.
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Sierra Leone: Pastors Face Abuse Allegations
Posted: Tue, 09 Aug 2016 14:10:26 +0100
With little oversight, some religious leaders said to exploit their positions.
Amie, 16, lives with her five-month old daughter, parents and siblings in a one-bedroom apartment in a hilltop slum in Freetown.
Her baby, she said, was the child of a local pastor who had repeatedly raped her since the age of 14.
Amie (not her real name) described how her family’s spiritual advisor, who ran an unregistered church in the New England-Dwarzak community, had made her suffer through years of abuse.
After the first assault, which took place on February 1, 2014, in a local graveyard, Amie discovered she was pregnant and confided in her mother who helped her secretly arrange an abortion.
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