Theme: Nigeria

The Niger State government said it is deploying resources to rescue 15 female Islamiya pupils abducted by bandits over the weekend, while the school’s proprietor insists that no concrete steps have been taken on the ground. Aminu Abubakar Bako said that no government official had visited the community and that the bandits had demanded a ransom of 100 million nairas. The bandits called on Monday, saying the pupils were still safe but warning that their safety could not be guaranteed if the payment was delayed.

The national president of the Nigeria Union of Mining Workers (NUMW), Musa Adamu Nasiru, told the inquiry commission that six of the miners who died in the custody of the Nigeria Security and Civil Defence Corps (NSCDC) were registered members of the union. The president of the Niger Miners Association, Abdulrazak Yusuf Mohammed, told the same commission that he was informed that 65 people were in detention, that only 17 survived and that forty-eight died in custody. In Niger State, thirty-seven people accused of illegal mining died in NSCDC custody, according to Nigerian authorities.

Aliko Dangote on Wednesday broke ground for a planned fuel storage site in Namibia, which will serve as a fuel distribution hub in southern Africa, in an OilPrice report based on Bloomberg’s reporting. The project, expected to cost $2.5 billion, includes a fuel depot outside the main port of Walvis Bay and a 1,700-kilometer pipeline to bring fuels to Botswana and South Africa, and potentially to other countries. “We want to heavily invest so that most of the landlocked countries will be able to access petroleum products at a cheaper price,” Dangote said at the event. The initial public offering of a minority stake in Dangote’s refinery could raise as much as $2.1 billion if the company exercises its greenshoe option.

Recent discoveries of methamphetamine laboratories in Nigeria, South Africa, Kenya and Mozambique have fueled concerns that Africa is becoming a significant production hub for synthetic drugs. In Nigeria, an operation in Ogun State led to the arrest of 10 suspects, including three Mexican nationals whom the National Drug Law Enforcement Agency (NDLEA) said had been brought into the country to help manufacture the drug. The agency’s chairman, Mohamed Buba Marwa, said officers seized more than 2.4 metric tons of methamphetamine, precursor chemicals and other materials with an estimated international market value of about $363 million.

Total oil and gas output at Nigeria's state company rose to 3.04 million barrels of oil equivalent per day in September, up from 3.01 million the previous month. Revenue came in at 3.4 billion dollars (4.608 trillion naira), in line with the months after March, when the Iran war and the Strait of Hormuz crisis hiked international oil prices. The state company attributed the increase to the restart of the Obodo oilfield in mining license OML 150, and said output remains constrained by equipment failures, subsurface issues, flowline leaks, community protests and storage and export infrastructure constraints.

Sheikh Yahaya Masussuka, an Islamic cleric respected in Katsina, was shot dead by two armed men on a motorcycle outside his home in Dutsin-Ma, northern Nigeria, last week. The group Ansaru claimed responsibility for the killing in a four-minute video obtained by Nigerian newspaper Premium Times, in a report republished by AllAfrica.

Health authorities in Nigeria confirmed on Monday that the two suspected Ebola cases investigated in the country’s northeast tested negative after two rounds of testing, with both people isolated while teams carried out contact identification and laboratory testing.

Health authorities in Nigeria are investigating two suspected Ebola cases in the country’s northeast, the Nigeria Centre for Disease Control and Prevention (NCDC) said on Saturday. The two individuals have been isolated while officials carry out contact identification, listing and laboratory testing, the agency said in a post on X.

Nigeria’s military said troops backed by air support repelled attacks by Islamist fighters on military positions in the northeastern Borno and Yobe states and killed 48 insurgents, according to Reuters. In the same military statement, one soldier was killed and two others wounded during the counteroffensive, and troops seized 52 firearms from the ISWAP fighters, according to Xinhua.

At least 62 people were killed in a gun attack attributed to armed criminals locally known as “bandits” in northeastern Nigeria, the country’s emergency agency said on Tuesday, according to the Times of India. According to the National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA), the gunmen attacked Binnari community in the Karim-Lamido local government area of Taraba State on October 24.

A Swiss woman being treated for Ebola in Nigeria was medically evacuated to Switzerland with her husband on Monday, according to the Associated Press (AP). According to AP, with the evacuation Nigeria currently has no Ebola cases, and the country will continue following 52 contacts while Switzerland takes over the patient’s care and monitors her husband.

Nigeria's minister of health and social welfare, Muhammad Pate, confirmed that the country's Ebola index patient has been evacuated to Switzerland, according to AllAfrica. The patient is a 42-year-old Ugandan-born woman who lives in Abuja and returned from Uganda on 3 October, in Nigeria's first Ebola case in more than a decade. The evacuation came six days after the country confirmed the case.

Nigeria’s Centre for Disease Control and Prevention placed 53 contacts under watch and approved an emergency payment of N100,000 per person weekly to support people placed in isolation or quarantine as part of efforts to contain the Ebola outbreak in the Federal Capital Territory.

Police in Taraba state said unknown gunmen raided the village of Binnari in northeast Nigeria on Friday, killing at least 10 people, looting shops and setting houses ablaze, the BBC reported. Police said they recovered 10 bodies with gunshot wounds and warned the death toll could still rise as officers kept searching the nearby bush. Survivors who spoke to Agence France-Presse (AFP) said they had counted at least 20 dead. Amnesty International's Nigeria director, Isa Sanusi, told the BBC that bereaved families the organisation spoke to said up to 50 people had died, and that the initial funeral had 37 people.

Nigerian police said on Saturday that 10 bodies had been recovered as of Friday evening after a large group of gunmen on motorcycles attacked Binnari village in Taraba State in eastern Nigeria. Survivors told the Agence France-Presse (AFP) news agency that at least 20 people were killed, and Amnesty International said in a statement on Saturday that the death toll was 40.

The Ebola patient in Nigeria is a Swiss woman, the wife of a Swiss diplomat, who has not travelled to the epicentre of the current outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and is believed to have contracted the virus while travelling with her husband in Uganda, the Swiss foreign ministry has said. The Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention is investigating whether the patient may have come into contact with an Ebola patient in Kenya, as both travelled from Uganda's Entebbe airport on October 3. The World Health Organization (WHO) said investigations were continuing to establish the likely source of infection for the Ebola patient in Nigeria.

The Swiss government said the Ebola patient in Nigeria, the Ugandan-born wife of a Swiss diplomat based in Abuja, did not travel to the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), contradicting accounts from Uganda, according to Reuters. Ugandan authorities have said the woman who fell ill in Nigeria had travelled to eastern Congo, where the outbreak was declared in mid-May and has since become the fastest-spreading on record.

The Ebola outbreak killed nearly 4,700 people and led Nigeria to record its first case in more than a decade, according to AllAfrica — a woman who returned to Abuja from Uganda on October 3, after staying in Kampala, without passing through the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). The World Health Organization (WHO) said 44 contacts had been identified and were being monitored.

The World Health Organization (WHO) classified the Ebola outbreak in Africa as complex after the disease spread to Nigeria, according to AFP. In its latest weekly bulletin, WHO Africa reported 9,637 confirmed cases and 4,646 deaths, a crude fatality ratio of 48.2% — an increase of 572 cases and 265 deaths since External Situation Report #22.

The director-general of the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (Africa CDC), Jean Kaseya, called on Nigeria’s first confirmed Ebola patient to disclose her complete travel history and possible contacts during a recent visit to Uganda, to help health authorities establish how she contracted the virus. According to Kaseya, the patient was born in Uganda and lives in Abuja, and was in her home country when her husband, a diplomat, travelled to join her. In an interview with the BBC, he said her first symptoms appeared on October 6, when she sought a private hospital believing she had malaria, and that she was admitted on October 11. Nigeria’s health minister, Muhammad Pate, confirmed that the 42-year-old woman spent two and a half weeks in Kampala before returning to Abuja through Ethiopia, with a two-hour stopover in Addis Ababa.

Nigeria confirmed one imported case of Ebola Bundibugyo virus disease in the Federal Capital Territory, becoming the fifth country to detect the virus since an outbreak was declared in the Democratic Republic of the Congo on May 15, 2026, the World Health Organization (WHO) said. According to the Federal Ministry of Health and Social Welfare, the patient is a woman with a recent travel history to Uganda. Her symptoms began on October 7, four days after her arrival in Nigeria; she sought care at a private health facility in Abuja on October 11, and a laboratory test confirmed the Bundibugyo virus on October 20. She is in isolation and receiving medical care. The ministry said 44 contacts had been identified and were being monitored.

Nigeria recorded its first Ebola case in about a decade, in a foreign woman living in Abuja who had arrived from Uganda, according to Reuters. Health officials say the case matches the strain of the Democratic Republic of Congo outbreak, according to Al Jazeera.

Nigeria has confirmed one imported case of Ebola Bundibugyo virus disease in the Federal Capital Territory, the World Health Organization (WHO) said. The patient is a woman with a recent travel history to Uganda, and her symptoms began on 7 October, four days after her arrival in the country. According to the WHO, 44 contacts have been identified and are being monitored as efforts are intensified to find other people who may have been exposed.

Nigeria confirmed on Tuesday an Ebola case in a woman who recently arrived in the country from Uganda and is in isolation receiving treatment, while Uganda asked for her itinerary and clinical history, noting that she transited through Uganda in early October without symptoms, according to AllAfrica.

Nigeria confirmed on Tuesday the first Ebola case of the current outbreak, a woman who arrived from Uganda, the Health Ministry said. The patient began showing symptoms on Oct. 7 and was admitted to a private hospital in Abuja on Oct. 11, where she was diagnosed with Ebola. Contact tracing has begun, with 44 close contacts identified and monitored, including healthcare workers, patients, caregivers and travel contacts, according to Africanews.

Nigeria's national grid crashed 81% to 675 megawatts (MW), with nine plants off, according to Vanguard, in a text republished by AllAfrica.