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President Muhammadu Buhari has expressed deep grief at the news of the death of one of Nigeria’s renowned poets and winner of the 2017 NLNG-sponsored Nigerian Prize for Literature, Ikeogu Oke. Mr Oke died at the National Hospital Abuja on Saturday. “On behalf of the Federal Government, President Buhari extends heartfelt condolences to Oke’s family, the literary and creative community on the painful demise of the award-winning poet,” his spokesperson, Femi Adesina, said in a statement on Monday. “The President affirms that as an author, journalist and poet, Oke exuded vibrancy, intelligence and innovation in his works as a social commentator, constantly in search of plausible answers and solutions to contemporary issues bedevilling his society. “Through his poetry, the President believes that Oke enriched Nigeria’s literary genre and his legacy will live on in his works, which he was incredibly proud of and committed to, as he wrote in his epic Epitaph: ‘‘Here lies a man wh...

Shell’s geoscientists have put a figure on the company’s recent gas and condensate discoveries, made in the course of a drilling campaign onshore Eastern Nigeria. The company encountered 1.5Trillion cubic feet of gas and 42 Million barrels of condensate, in shallow and deep reservoirs. The revelation came in the course of several technical sessions at the just concluded annual conference and exhibition of the Nigerian Association of Petroleum Explorationists (NAPE). The four well campaign, which utilised the High Temperature/High Pressure rig Hilong 27, was aimed at deep, High Pressure gas targets in the Gbaran -Kolo Creek -Epu field areas, in what is classified as Central Swamp Depobelt of the Niger Delta Basin, to unlock all the reserves that are located deeper than normal hydrostatic pressure on these fields. It ran between 2014 and late September 2018, when the rig was released to the Nigerian Agip Oil Company, a local subsidiary of the Italian giant ENI. The new dis...

Suspected Boko Haram gunmen kidnapped 15 girls overnight in a village near Toumour, southeastern Niger, the local mayor said on Sa turday. According to the News Agency of Nigeria, NAN, Boukar Mani Orthe, the mayor of the town in Niger’s Diffa region near the border with Nigeria, said about 50 unidentified armed men seized the girls in a village about nine kilometres from the town centre. On Thursday suspected Boko Haram fighters killed eight people working at French drilling company, Foraco’s water well site in Toumour. Boko Haram has been waging an insurrection since 2009 aimed at establishing an Islamic state in northeast Nigeria. It has launched repeated attacks into neighbouring Niger, Chad and Cameroon. The violence has killed thousands of civilians and forced millions to flee their homes in the large Lake Chad basin region. Kidnapping of schoolgirls has been a Boko Haram horror mark, since its fighters in 2014 kidnapped more than 200 schoolgirls in Chibok, Borno State, ...

The governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), Godwin Emefiele, on Thursday gave reasons why it took the apex financial industry regulator almost nine years to uncover alleged systematic repatriation out of Nigeria of over $8.134bn profits by MTN Nigeria. Mr Emefiele, who spoke on Thursday at the end of the monetary policy committee (MPC) meeting in Abuja, rejected accusations the CBN neglected its monitoring and regulatory role and allowed the illegal transfers by the South African telecoms firm to fester. Last August, Mr Emefiele announced  CBN’s decision to impose various sanctions totalling about N5.87 billion against four banks  accused of “flagrant violation” of foreign exchange regulations. The banks, namely, Standard Chartered, Stanbic-IBTC, Citi and Diamond, were alleged to have facilitated remittances of foreign exchange using irregular Certificates of Capital Importation (CCIs) issued on behalf of some offshore investors of MTN Nigeria Communicatio...

An attack by the terrorist group on an army base last Sunday led to as many as 100 soldiers being killed, Reuters reports. The attack has been attributed to Islamic State West Africa (ISWAP), a breakout faction of Boko Haram that’s affiliated with the Islamic State terror group.  The attack is one of the deadliest by Boko Haram since president Muhammadu Buhari took office in 2015. The brazenness of the attack on a military base raises questions on the lack of equipment for Nigeria’s soldiers in the front-lines—a recurring theme since the Boko Haram insurgency began in 2009. Several reports have previously suggested Nigeria’s army lacked the necessary gear to combat the terrorists. Last year, Nigeria purchased arms valued at  nearly $600 million   from the US to boost its army. The timing of the attack is also crucial given Nigeria’s upcoming elections in February. Insecurity was a prominent factor in the last elections as president Muhammadu Buhari strong...