Source : Sahel weather September 2024 

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Such a long ordeal. For several years now, this has been the daily lot of people in the north of the country, where the terrorist group Boko Haram continues to wreak havoc. On the very first day of the month, 127 people were killed in an attack attributed to Boko Haram, according to Amnesty International. “ Around 150 assailants, armed with rifles and grenades, attacked the village of Mafa in Yobe State on motorcycles, setting fire to thatched houses and burning alive those hiding inside,” reports Agence France Presse (AFP). This bloody raid appears to be retaliation for the murder of two Boko Haram members by local vigilante groups. The latter are regularly accused of collaborating with the Nigerian army in its fight against terrorism. Since it began in 2009, the conflict spawned by the jihadist insurgency has already claimed more than 40,000 lives.

Already plagued by widespread insecurity, the northeastern state of Borno is now having to cope with terrible flooding. On September 10, torrential rains caused the Alau dam on the Ngadda River to burst, twenty kilometers south of Maiduguri, Borno's capital. The toll: at least 30 dead and more than a million people affected, including hundreds of thousands in camps for the displaced. According to the World Food Program (WFP), “ more than 55,000 hectares of farmland were flooded ” in 2024 across the country, especially in the northeast, already plagued by chronic food insecurity. These torrential downpours also caused the walls of the Maiduguri prison to collapse, resulting in the escape of 281 inmates, according to the Nigerian authorities.

Two days earlier, a tanker explosion killed at least 59 people in the northern state of Niger. According to a statement from the Niger State Emergency Management Agency (Nsema), “ the incident occurred when a tanker loaded with PMS (fuel) collided with a tractor-trailer loaded with passengers and cattle. ” In addition, 50 cattle were also burned alive by the explosion. Unfortunately, such explosions occur frequently. According to the FRSC (Creating Safe Road in Nigeria) - Nigeria's Federal Road Safety Corps - in 2020, 1,531 tanker accidents resulted in 535 deaths and 1,142 injuries.

In addition, some thirty people arrested during last month's demonstrations against poverty and bad governance have appeared in court. Trials are taking place in several cities, including Abuja, Kano, Kaduna and Gombe. Among the defendants, some leaders of the #Endbadgovernance (“Put an end to bad governance”) movement are being prosecuted for “ treason, incitement to violence and attempting to destabilize institutions ”, charges deemed excessive by Amnesty International. The organization believes that these trials are intended above all to dissuade any further mobilization. Subsequently, in a decision handed down on September 11, the Federal High Court in Abuja granted bail of 10 million naira for the ten accused of treason.

Finally, lawyers for Biafran separatist leader Nnamdi Kanu denounce “ the violation of his rights ”. On September 27, RFIreports, four members of the Biafran leader's defense team were denied access to their client, without explanation. As a reminder, Nnamdi Kanu has been accused of terrorist charges since 2015. Last August, the country's Supreme Court overturned the October 2022 judgment of an Abuja appeal court acquitting the leader of the IPOB (Indigenous People of Biafra) secessionist group. Nnamdi Kanu had already been imprisoned between 2015 and 2017, then spent two and a half years in detention, since June 2021.