With the passage of the Climate Change Act, and to help meet its net zero obligations by 2060, Nigeria must transition from its dependence on fossil fuel energy sources to renewable energy. This will involve the procurement of large amounts of renewable energy by the government. In the past, procurement of power from the government-owned bulk trader has been chaotic, with no discernible strategy, and it is doubtful whether the government or Nigeria's citizens have derived value for money from the process. This article suggests a transition from the current, mostly unsolicited, proposal system to energy auctions, as the authors believe that this will help the country achieve low prices for renewable energy. The article also examines polices that have been implemented in other countries to drive energy auctions, with a view to applying relatable practices to the Nigerian exercise.

This article sets out to explain why Nigeria was unable to prevent the loss of heritage objects in the 1960s and 1970s. Obvious answers to this question would include the limited enforcement capacity of the African state and the complacency of European and North American art dealers. “How Our Heritage Is Looted” argues, however, that a colonial legal category, namely “antiquity,” played a key role in creating an ineffective enforcement regime for cultural property theft. The mismatch between the ordinary meaning of the term “antiquity,” denoting a remnant of an ancient civilization, and the kinds of modern crafts that the state wanted to protect ultimately resulted in the inability of Nigeria’s colonial preservation statute to convey clear rules to customs officers and museum curators about what exporters could take out of the country. Nigeria’s heritage law thus constituted a project of legal meaning-making whose failure facilitated illicit commerce.

Investing in the sexual and reproductive health of young adults can directly and indirectly contribute to accelerated economic growth. Looking beyond individual determinants of sexual behaviours and focusing on cultural factors such as ethnic affiliation are crucial for interventions and programme planning, particularly in a context like Nigeria. Using a concurrent triangulation mixed-methods design, this article explores the associations between ethnic affiliations and protective sexual behaviours of young adults in Nigeria. The quantitative data was derived from a representative sample of 1,393 male and female youth aged 16–24 years in three states purposively selected from three regions in Nigeria, while qualitative data was based on 18 focus groups and 36 in-depth interviews. The quantitative data was analysed using frequency distributions and regressions, while content analysis was employed to analyse qualitative data. Descriptive results showed that abstinence was higher for Hausa (80%) young adults compared with Yoruba (72%) and Igbo (68%) young adults. Condom use was lowest for Hausa (56%) young adults compared with Igbo (80%) and Yoruba (81%) young adults. The effect of education on abstinence differed by ethnicity and living with two parents was associated with a higher likelihood of abstinence among youth in all ethnic groups. Fear of early fatherhood and unplanned pregnancy was a prominent reason for protective sexual behaviour among Yoruba, Igbo, and Hausa young adults. The findings from this study show that young adults who engage in protective sexual behaviours may identify different rationales for this behaviour based on their ethnic background. Programme planners interested in promoting and encouraging protective sexual behaviours should recognize these multiple reasons across different ethnic affiliations to scale up and sustain existing interventions.

This study was conducted to provide empirical evidence of geographical variations of neonatal mortality and its associated social determinants with a view to improving neonatal survival at the subnational level in Nigeria. With a combination of spatial analysis and artificial intelligence techniques, this study analysed data from the 2016/2017 Nigeria Multiple Indicator Cluster Survey. The analysis focused on the neonatal period of a weighted national representative population of 30,924 live births delivered five years before the survey commencement. Global Moran’s I index and local indicator of spatial autocorrelation cluster maps were used to determine hot and cold spots. A multilayer perceptron neural network was used to identify the key determinants of neonatal mortality across the states and geopolitical zones in Nigeria. The overall neonatal mortality rate was 38 deaths per 1000 live births. There is evidence of geographic clustering of neonatal mortality across Nigeria (worse in the North-Central and North-West zones), majorly driven by poor maternal access to mass media (which plays a critical role in promoting positive health behaviours), short birth interval, a higher position in a family birth order, and young maternal age at child’s birth. This study highlights the need for a policy shift towards implementing state and region-specific strategies in Nigeria. Gender-responsive, culturally, and regionally appropriate reproductive, maternal, and child health-targeted interventions may address geographical inequity in neonatal survival.

In this systematic review, we scrutinise adolescent nutrition in Nigeria, focusing on dietary patterns, intake, and nutritional status. Through a systematic examination of observational studies across three major databases, we analysed data from 67,844 adolescents. Our exploration revealed 102 studies, predominantly cross-sectional, addressing various nutritional dimensions. However, only 13% of these studies demonstrated low risk of bias, with none offering national representation and most concentrated in specific, school-based regions. The findings underscore a complex nutritional landscape with widespread malnutrition and highlight the critical need for high-quality, comprehensive data. The dominance of cross-sectional designs and regional biases in existing research calls for cautious interpretation and suggests a pressing need for more robust, nationally representative studies to guide future nutritional interventions and policy-making in Nigeria.

During the Nigerian Civil War, France became the main supplier of military assistance to the secessionist Biafra. In a neo-imperial pursuit to weaken the potential regional hegemon Nigeria, it secretly provided arms and ammunition to the Biafrans in collusion with Côte d'Ivoire and Gabon. Yet the driving force behind this Franco-African arms triangle was not the Elysée, but the Ivorian president Félix Houphouët-Boigny. Newly unearthed documentary evidence from French archives enables this article to break new historiographical ground: firstly, to show the Elysée's sheer reluctance to militarily assist Biafra and lack of a coherent policy in doing so; secondly, to confirm Houphouët-Boigny as the “mastermind” behind the arming of Biafra, as well as to identify his Cold War motivations; thirdly, to uncover Gabonese president Omar Bongo's increasing agency and influence in the scheme; fourthly, to demonstrate that it was the Ivorian and Gabonese presidents who transformed the arms triangle into a square by bringing the Rhodesians and, especially, the South Africans in; and, finally, to retrace the emergence and functioning of the “African-French” military assistance to Biafra at the policy level not only from Paris's, but also Abidjan's and Libreville's perspectives.

Iron deficiency anaemia (IDA) in pregnancy is a significant public health problem worldwide, but little is known about factors associated with dietary iron intake among pregnant women especially from low- and middle-income countries(3). This study assessed factors associated with dietary iron intake among pregnant women attending primary health centres in Ifako-Ijaiye Lagos, Nigeria. Sociodemographic information and dietary intakes were elicited from 432 apparently healthy singleton pregnant women using a pre-tested questionnaire and 24 hour- dietary recall, respectively. Dietary iron intakes was estimated from foods and drinks reported using the West African Food Composition Table and adjusted for energy intakes using the residual method(1). Chi-square test and one-way ANOVA was used to compare categorical and continuous variables respectively by tertiles of energy-adjusted dietary iron intakes at a two-sided P<0.05(2).Mean age and dietary iron intake was 28.5 ± 4.6years and 20.3 ± 3.3mg/day, respectively for all respondents. Energy-adjusted iron intakes by tertiles of energy-adjusted dietary intakes were; 16.6 ± 1.4mg/day for the first tertile, 19.7± 1.0mg/day for the second tertile and 23.7 ± 2.0mg/day for the third tertile. Age, gestational age, parity, education, marital status, and income differed insignificantly by tertiles of energy-adjusted dietary iron intakes. Current evidence suggests a statistically insignificant association between sociodemographic factors and dietary iron intakes in this sample, but further studies are vital for designing culturally relevant interventions to promote the consumption of iron-rich foods among women in this population.

Much of West Africa (and particularly the Sahel) may be once falling again under military government. This essay asks what, if anything, historians of Africa can contribute to an understanding of this phenomenon. I argue that writing the history and understanding the memory of military government will entail a renewed approach to political history and social theory. It will also entail confronting — just as so many citizens are currently doing — the peculiar failures of democracy in Africa's neoliberal era.

Article 2 of the 1984 Convention against Torture and other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (UNCAT) obligates states to take measures to prevent torture. While many states have provisions that prohibit torture, in most cases these do not align with the jurisprudential anti-torture framework required by UNCAT. Before the advent of the Anti-Torture Act, the Nigerian 1999 Constitution prohibited torture, but it was not a crime per se. Any act or omission that constituted torture usually fell under the heading of a civil claim and could also be prosecuted under the criminal or the penal code. However, most cases were prosecuted as grievous bodily harm, attempted murder, assault or murder. The 1999 Constitution failed to detail what constituted torture; in fact, the use of torture did not diminish under the Constitution. To fully apprehend the present situation in Nigeria, it is important to understand the legislative framework and its compatibility with international standards.

Nigeria is home to a significant and growing “youth” population, over a third of it below 24 years of age. The demographic potential for productivity and growth this group represents occurs alongside large-scale unemployment among young people of working age. The “unemployment crisis” has deep historical roots and exists within a wider context of poor governance, insecurity, conflict, and poverty. Policy norms and practices to address youth unemployment in Nigeria largely centre on skill development and job creation, with complementary schemes selectively targeted to specific groups of vulnerable and poor individuals. Measures are typically ad hoc, detached from a coherent programme of sustainable reform. Pre-existing structural factors and capacity constraints also shape the effectiveness of these programmes. While a productivist focus within current policy is potentially empowering in giving young Nigerians “worker” status, it also detracts from attending to deep-rooted structural problems seen to affect young people in disproportionate ways. Securing meaningful choices and lives for Nigerian youth requires reframing youth unemployment beyond labour markets alone, and embedded in ideas of equality and collective action.