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Nigerian courts convict 125 Boko Haram Islamist insurgents

28-07-2024

ABUJA: Nigerian courts convicted 125 Boko Haram Islamist militants and financiers of a series of terrorism-related offences in a mass trial this week, the attorney-general’s office said.

A Boko Haram insurgency has killed thousands of people and displaced millions since it began in 2009, creating a humanitarian crisis in northeastern Nigeria and putting pressure on the government to bring the conflict to an end.

Kamarudeen Ogundele, the spokesman of the Attorney-General’s office, said in a statement late on Friday that “they were convicted of charges bordering on terrorism, terrorism financing, rendering material support, and cases relating to International Criminal Courts (ICC) criminality”.

The last mass trials of Boko Haram suspects took place between 2017 and 2018, where 163 people were convicted and 887 set free.

Ogundele added that from the previous convictions, 400 defendants who had completed their sentences were moved to a rehabilitation centre known as Operation Safe Corridor in Gombe State, northeast Nigeria “for rehabilitation, de-radicalization and subsequent reintegration”. Boko Haram kidnapped more than 270 girls from a school in the northeastern town of Chibok in April 2014, an attack that sparked outrage and gave rise to the global “#Bring Back Our Girls” campaign, though more than half of the girls have returned, many as mothers of multiple children.

Days before a nationwide protest over bad governance and a high cost of living, Nigeria is offering its young people jobs in the state-oil company and billions of naira worth of grants among other incentives to discourage the action.

Nigerian activists have been looking to emulate youth-led protests elsewhere in Africa which have rocked the government in Kenya and prompted a tough security response in Uganda.

Nigeria’s state oil firm, which seven years ago warned job seekers against falling prey to fraudulent messages about job placements in the company, published on Friday nationwide job vacancies in a post on X for the first time in nearly a decade.

An NNPC Ltd spokesperson said a flood of applications crashed the company’s website. Nigeria’s ministry of youth development on Friday also relaunched a 110 billion naira ($70 million) youth investment fund that was started in 2020, aimed at providing grants to Nigeria’s youth to generate jobs.

The youth ministry had said in May said it would revive the program but little had been heard about it until Friday.

On Tuesday, Nigerian lawmakers passed a new minimum wage, more than doubling the amount the least paid worker will earn monthly.

Nigerians are organizing online for nationwide protests next week in response to a cost of living crisis that has seen inflation rise to a 28-year-high of 34.2% which followed President Bola Tinubu’s removal of fuel subsidies and a currency devaluation.

Religious clerics, traditional rulers and other prominent Nigerians have joined the government in discouraging young people from embarking on protests slated to begin from Aug. 1, fearing Kenya-style protests will wreak havoc on the economy.

The government has sought more time to end hardships and both the police and army leadership have warned against the protests, saying they could get out of control. Protesters have said they have a right to peaceful demonstrations, calling the government’s warnings of violence a smokescreen for a potential crackdown. (Int’l News Desk)

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