News Lelemuku

ABUJA, LELEMUKU.COM - Twenty people are confirmed dead in the school building that collapsed in Nigeria on Wednesday, and most of them are children, an official said Friday.

Forty-three other people were rescued, Lagos State Health Commissioner Jide Idris told The Associated Press. The disaster occurred in the heart of Nigeria's commercial capital.

Officials have said the three-story residential building had been marked for demolition and that the school was operating illegally on the top two floors. It is still not clear how many people were inside when it collapsed.

Rescue crews halted their search Thursday, saying they had reached the building's foundation without finding any other victims. Some anguished families protested and sifted through the rubble for any sign of their children.

Building collapses are all too common in the West African nation, where new construction often goes up without regulatory oversight. Official moved through the neighborhood on Thursday, marking other derelict buildings for demolition.

Adeyemo Sunday, the father of twins, mourned one of his sons. The other was pulled out alive, he said.

Sunday said his family lived on the building's second floor and he sent his boys to school there so they wouldn't have to travel far.

Another parent, Yewande Ogunsanwo, said her son remained in critical condition Thursday.

"Let's thank God for God, he's getting better but his condition is so critical," she said. "The pain is too much."

The collapse came as President Muhammadu Buhari, newly elected to a second term, tries to improve the distressed infrastructure in Africa's most populous nation. (VOA)

ABUJA, LELEMUKU.COM - The United Nations is launching a three-year Humanitarian Response Strategy together with the Nigeria Regional Refugee Response Plan. The $983 million appeal will assist millions of victims of Boko Haram attacks in northeastern Nigeria and hundreds of thousands of refugees who fled to neighboring countries.

The bulk of the appeal, $848 million, will assist 6.2 million vulnerable people in Nigeria's north-eastern Borno, Adamawa and Yobe states.They have been the hardest hit by the decade-long crisis between Boko Haram and Nigeria's government forces.

Boko Haram, which wants to set up its own Islamic State based on Shariah law, reportedly has killed more than 20,000 people and forced more than two million to flee their homes since the insurgency began in 2009.

Spokesman for the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, Jens Laerke, says a recent upsurge in violence has displaced more than 80,000 civilians who have sought refuge in crowded camps or in towns in Borno State.

"In total," added Laerke, "1.8 million people are internally displaced in the northeast due to this protracted crisis which is characterized by massive abuses against civilians including killings, rape, abduction, child recruitment and burning and pillaging of homes and entire villages."

Food aid accounts for nearly one third of the appeal.Money also will be used to provide special treatment for some 370,000 severely, acutely malnourished children, for nutrition, health, water and sanitation projects among others.

The U.N. refugee agency and U.N. Development Program are launching Nigeria's Refugee Response Plan.The agencies are appealing for $135 million to assist more than one-quarter million Nigerian refugees displaced by the worsening Boko Haram insurgency in the Lake Chad Basin region.

The appeal will assist Nigerian refugees in Cameroon, Chad and Niger.Beyond supporting those forced to flee, money also will help the communities hosting the refugees as they themselves are living below the poverty line and are in dire need of aid. (VOA)

ABUJA, LELEMUKU.COM - Nigeria’s leading female presidential candidate has withdrawn from the crowded field of candidates to help build a viable coalition to take on the country’s two main parties.

Oby Ezekwesili announced she was dropping out as a candidate of the Allied Congress Party of Nigeria in a series of tweets Thursday. The former government minister and former president of the World Bank said the need for an alternative to President Muhammadu Buhari’s All Progressives Congress and the main opposition People’s Democratic Party is “an urgent mission for and on behalf of the citizenry.”

Ezekwesili was one of 73 candidates running for the February 16 elections, but many believe the race is between President Buhari and Atiku Abubakar, the leader of the PDP. The PDP governed Nigeria from 1999, the year civilian rule was restored, and Buhari’s victory in 2015.

The 55-year-old Ezekwesili led the “Bring Back Our Girls” campaign that raised awareness of the 270 girls who were kidnapped from their school in the northwest town of Chibok in 2014 by the Boko Haram militant group. She is also a co-founder of the anti-corruption group Transparency International. (VOA)

ABUJA, LELEMUKU.COM - In Nigeria, over 27 million disabled people live in obscurity, treated like second-class citizens, without access to public facilities. The Nigerian Disability Bill is meant to address these shortcomings. But, nearly two decades after it was initiated, the law has yet to be enacted.

Musa Muazu, 31, became disabled as a teenager when he suffered a fall that left him paralyzed. He relies on a wheelchair to get around.

Muazu is one of 27 million disabled Nigerians trying to lead a normal life.
But a lack of handicapped facilities means disabled people like Muazu struggle for access.

"Public infrastructures in Nigeria is another... let me call it a hell to persons with disabilities ranging from the school, you can imagine as a person with disabilities you're going to lectures in a four-story building.. you can imagine you want to access probably a bank, hospital, places of worship, there's no provision for ramp for you to come in," he said.

According to Nigeria’s Center for Citizens with Disabilities, 98 percent of public structures and facilities are not handicapped accessible.

At a community for the disabled in Abuja, thousands of handicapped Nigerians live virtually segregated from the rest of society.

Since 1999, Nigeria’s disabled have been seeking a law ensuring access to public buildings, roads, and sidewalks and protection against discrimination.

But their efforts to push for the Disabled Bill have been met with resistance.

Nigeria’s disabled account for a third of the 87 million people living in extreme poverty. On the streets of Abuja, many are reduced to begging.

They accuse the government of willful neglect and exclusion - a charge authorities deny.

"The law of other people that are abled are being passed," notedMohammed Dantani, secretary of the Disabled People’s Community. "Are we not Nigerians? We're also citizens, our number 27 million reached the number that when we pass a motion, it's supposed to be listened to or heard."

In November, Nigeria’s disabled protested to the national assembly, demanding passage of the long-delayed bill.

Lawmakers responded in December by finally passing the bill - to President Muhammadu Buhari.

In 2014, then candidate Buhari promised to sign the bill if elected. But as Nigeria heads to elections once again in February, that promise has yet to be fulfilled. (VOA)

YAOUNDE, LELEMUKU.COM - The UN refugee agency says it is shocked by reports that Cameroonian authorities have forcibly returned some 9,000 Nigerian refugees who fled across the border earlier in the week in search of safety from militant attacks.

The sudden mass exodus of thousands of Nigerian refugees into Cameroon followed attacks by Boko Haram militants in the small border town of Rann in Nigeria's Borno State on Monday.

The militants reportedly targeted military installations, civilian and humanitarian facilities. The United Nations reports the market and shelters housing thousands of internally displaced people in Rann were burned down by the attackers. At least 14 people are reported killed.

UN refugee spokesman, Babar Baloch, tells VOA Cameroon's expulsion of the thousands of Nigerian refugees fleeing for their lives was totally unexpected and distressing.

"It is really alarming for us to see desperate people who have just arrived in Cameroon seeking safety in this remote part and then for them to be ending up back into a situation of danger is extremely worrying," said Baloch.

Baloch says the UNHCR and its partners were making preparations to provide humanitarian aid to the newly arriving refugees when they heard the refugees were being summarily expelled.

"It is unexpected because there were no indications. We were already in touch with the Cameroonian authorities in terms of how to take care of the newly arrived refugees and then we found out reports that they may have been sent back," said Baloch.

Baloch says there are concerns for the possibly precarious situation of another 6,000 Nigerian refugees who fled to Cameroon several weeks ago.

The U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees, Filippo Grandi is appealing to Cameroon to continue its open-door policy toward those seeking refuge. He is calling for an immediate halt to any more returns. He says Cameroon must ensure compliance with its obligations under national and international law to protect refugees in fear of their lives. (VOA)