The spread of the new coronavirus variant and the panic it has created have led to the emergence of a fresh wave of harmful conspiracy theories. And for the world to fully beat the pandemic, all hands must be on the deck to fight misinformation arising from them. Said to be as old as politics, …
Read more “Why Conspiracy Theories Can Be As Misleading As They Are Convincing”
Asides the loss of loved ones and properties that come with violent conflicts, there is also an undeniable mental toll it takes on the survivors. Because of its sheer scale, addressing the problem has been daunting in Nigeria’s northeast region, which has experienced a decade-long insurgency. But one non-governmental organisation has taken up the challenge. …
Read more “Traumatised Insurgency Victims In Northeast Nigeria Gradually Getting Help”
When she was only 14 years old, Aisha, a resident of Borno, a state in northeast Nigeria, was kidnapped by Boko Haram members and taken into the forest. She was beaten for trying to escape days into her capture and forcefully married off to one of the insurgents. “He forced himself into me almost on …
Read more “Sexual Violence Survivors In Borno Find Succour In ATJLF-Funded Project”
The Deradicalised is a five-part series. In 2016, the Nigerian government launched a multi-sectoral programme tagged “Operation Safe Corridor” to deradicalise and rehabilitate “low-risk” Boko Haram members and encourage insurgents to embrace peace. But years into its operation and after about a thousand people were graduated in different batches, extraordinarily little was really known about …
The deadly combination of a rigid lockdown, health workers’ industrial actions, and economic hardship occasioned by the pandemic led to a wave of unwanted pregnancies and unsafe abortions across Nigeria. Omolara* had an unsafe abortion this year and it nearly killed her. Since she gave birth to her first child last year, she has been …
Read more “How COVID-19 Upset Family Planning Services, Threatened Women’s Lives”
Behind the institution’s ranking as the best state polytechnic in Nigeria are a hardworking workforce and multiple stories of grief, depression, and regrets. Funmilayo* was 28 when she started working at The Polytechnic, Ibadan, as a youth corps member. In 2015, she was formally employed on a part-time basis as a teaching assistant. According to …
Read more “‘Slavery’ At The Polytechnic, Ibadan, Where Lecturers Are Paid N19,800 Monthly”
Have you been following the official Facebook page of that reputable media outlet or rather one of its many lookalikes? Telling the difference is increasingly getting difficult as scammers have now extended their duplication game beyond just the brand name and symbols. But while some of these pages share publications from the original news platforms, …
Read more “How Fake Facebook Pages Push Misinformation Using Famous News Brands”
Claim: A Facebook group shared 10 photographs, which it said were about the killing and brutalising of civilians in Obigbo, a community in Rivers State. Verdict: False. The claim is not true as the pictures have been traced to incidents in other states as well as in a different country. Full text Biafra Today, a group on …
Read more “10 Photos Used To Depict Obigbo Victims Are From Osun, Lagos, Others”
About three in 10 almajiri children in Nigeria are girls, but the world has hardly paid attention to how the controversial system of Islamic education affects them. In 2012, when she was only seven, Maymunah* left her home in Dandinshe, a small community in Kofar Ruwa, Kano State, for Makafin Dala. The only reason her …
Read more “The Almajiri Girl’s Long Distance Race To Relevance”
There are 33 million active monthly users of Facebook in Nigeria. There are also many millions of people exchanging information on Twitter, 280 characters at a time. But just like the country’s population of phone subscribers cannot be determined using only the number of SIM cards in circulation, it is also hard to say for sure because …
Read more “#EndSARS: The Trend And Threat Of Fake Social Media Accounts”