News

It started as a rumour, but it’s now official. There is a programme to transfer migrants stranded in Libya to Rwanda, the UN refugee agency (UNHCR) said on Tuesday in Geneva. The measure is part of an “emergency transit mechanism”, to evacuate people at risk of harm in detention centres inside the county. Babar Baloch, UNHCR spokesman, said the agreement …

The British Government has announced that international students will henceforth be able to stay and work in the UK after graduating. This is a huge boost to a policy that had previously restricted the period to four months. There will be no cap on the number of students who can apply, as those with student visa will be able to …

FOR THE RECORD!   Chief Mangosuthu Buthelezi (91), founder of the Inkatha Freedom Party, addressed the Zulu community in Johannesburg on Sunday (8 September 2019) to quell tensions in light of the xenophobic attacks on foreign nationals in the country.   The former interior minister addressed a lot of salient issues connected to the anti-foreigner riots, including irregular migration and …

Diplomatic actions taken by the Nigerian government against the incessant xenophobic attacks on her citizens and other foreign nationals living in South Africa may have been futile, as some protesters insisted all foreigners must leave the country. The crowd of protesters, on Sunday, disrupted a speech being delivered in Johannesburg by Mangosuthu Buthelezi, a Zulu chief and former leader of …

African leaders have been paying tribute to Robert Mugabe, who died in the early hours of Friday. His 37-year-rule in Zimbabwe made him one of the continent’s longest-serving leaders. Olusegun Obasanjo, a former president of Nigeria, on Friday, described the death of Mugabe as a “big loss”. Zimbabwe president, Emmerson Mnangagwa, had announced that Mugabe, 95, died in Singapore. He …

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 …