This week in Nigeria: 8 September 2018

In case you missed key developments in Nigeria this week, this is a rundown of the events that were covered by Reuters journalists reporting the goings-on in Africa’s most populous nation.
The week was dominated by South African telecoms giant MTN. The company is Africa’s biggest telecoms company and Nigeria is the firm’s biggest market. Late last week Nigeria’s central bank ordered MTN’s Lagos-based business to hand over $8.1 billion that the authorities said was illegally sent abroad, causing shares to plunge to a nine-year low.
There have been many more stories about MTN and Nigerian authorities since then:
- The development cast doubt over the company’s plans to list its Nigerian unit in an initial public offering this year.
- On Tuesday, it emerged that Nigeria’s attorney general had imposed a $2 billion tax bill on MTN.
- And, on Thursday, rating agency Moody’s said the company was under review for a possible credit rating downgrade because the mobile phone operator was being asked to pay a total of $10.1 billion by Nigerian authorities.
The plight of people in the restive Lake Chad region, which takes in parts of Nigeria, Niger, Chad and Cameroon, was reported. A famine was averted in the region last year largely thanks to international aid, but the UN says millions of people still need help.
Donor countries pledged $2.17 billion to the drought-stricken region at a conference in Berlin this week.
Highlighting the depth of the problems in the area, the Thomson Reuters Foundation, published a story that cited research conducted by Plan International.
The Foundation reported that many of the girls surveyed by Plan were forced into early marriages or transactional sex, and over a tenth had been pregnant.
In the latest bout of violence in the northeast, many people were feared dead after an Islamist militant attack on the northeastern town of Gudumbali on Saturday.
Nigeria’s government in June ordered thousands of people who fled the decade-long Boko Haram conflict to return to Gudumbali, one of the most dangerous areas in the northeast.
Finally, Reuters journalists in Nigeria’s capital, Abuja, expressed their support for colleagues who have been imprisoned for seven years in Myanmar for breaching the secrets act when they obtained confidential documents.
Reuters journalists around the world have stood in solidarity with our colleagues.
