Nigeria

(Reuters) --- Nigerian telecoms firms blocked access to Twitter on Saturday following a regulatory directive aimed at suspending the U.S. social media giant indefinitely, a move criticised by rights campaigners and diplomats as a gag on free speech.

Nigeria's government said on Friday it had suspended Twitter's activities indefinitely, two days after the platform removed a tweet by President Muhammadu Buhari that threatened to punish regional secessionists in the West African country. 

(Reuters) --- Nigerian authorities said on Tuesday that about 200 children had been seized in the latest school kidnapping in its violent north but they ruled out securing their freedom by paying a ransom.

Police were trying to track the route the kidnappers had taken with the children, who were seized in a raid on an Islamic school in north-central Niger state on Sunday, a local government official told Reuters.

A warplane was also flying over the area to try to spot them, the official said.

KANO (Nigeria), May 27 (NNN-AGENCIES) — More than 150 people were feared drowned in northwest Nigeria on Wednesday after an overloaded boat ferrying passengers to a market sank in the Niger River, local officials said.

The boat was travelling between central Niger state and Wara in northwest Kebbi state when it sank, National Inland Waterways Authority local manager Yusuf Birma told reporters.

“The boat capacity was not up to the 180 passengers it carried,” Birma said.

ABUJA, May 16 (NNN-AGENCIES) — President Muhammadu Buhari is due to meet the President of France, Emmanuel Macron, on growing security concerns in the Sahel and Lake Chad regions.

The President, who will be departing Abuja on Sunday, May 16 will be attending a four-day African Finance Summit in the French capital, Paris, during which he is expected to meet with Macron on security matters.

ABUJA, May 2 (NNN-AGENCIES) — A notorious gang leader behind the abduction of more than 300 students in Nigeria in December has been killed by a rival gang, officials say.

Auwalu Daudawa was reportedly ambushed while attempting to steal a herd of cattle from an armed group in the north-western state of Zamfara.

Daudawa is said to have carried out December’s kidnapping in Katsina state.

He was given an amnesty as part of a peace deal in February but reportedly returned to his gang earlier this week.

(Reuters) --- Nigeria will ban travellers coming from India, Brazil and Turkey because of concerns about the rampant spread of coronavirus in those countries, a presidential committee said on Sunday.

"Non-Nigerian passport holders and non-residents who visited Brazil, India or Turkey within Fourteen (14) days preceding travel to Nigeria, shall be denied entry into Nigeria," Boss Mustapha, chairman of the presidential steering committee on COVID-19, said in a statement.

The ban will take effect from May 4, the statement said.

(Reuters) --- Kidnappers killed one person and took an unknown number of students from a university in northwest Nigeria's restive Kaduna state, police said on Wednesday, in the latest in a series of abductions at educational institutes.

Armed groups have repeatedly struck northern Nigerian schools and universities since December, abducting more than 700 students for ransom.

ABUJA, April 3 (NNN-Xinhua) — At least 14 persons were killed in a gunmen attack on a military base and some communities in Niger state, north-central Nigeria, an official said.

Six soldiers and one policeman were killed in an attack by unidentified gunmen “numbering about 200” on a military base at Allawa town of the Shiroro local government area of Niger state, Abubakar Sani Bello, the governor of the state, said in a statement.

ABUJA, March 16 (NNN-AGENCIES) — Gunmen on motorbikes stormed a primary school in the northwestern Nigerian state of Kaduna and kidnapped three teachers but no children, a state official said after the fifth school abduction in three months.

It was the first attack on an elementary school in a wave of such attacks in which more than 700 people have been abducted since December.

LAGOS, March 14 (Xinhua) -- Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari on Saturday issued a stern warning to "terrorists and bandits" targeting schools, saying the country will not allow the destruction of the school system.

The president gave the warning in a statement released by his spokesperson Garba Shehu in Abuja, reacting to the gunmen attack on the Federal College of Forestry Mechanization in the Afaka area of the northwest state of Kaduna on Thursday night.