News stories by Sam Olukoya, page 2

BENIN CITY, Nigeria, Dec 20 (IPS) - Hundreds of desperate young Nigerians die yearly in the Sahara Desert or at sea while making irregular journeys to Europe. The desperation to reach Europe at all cost, irrespective of the risks, is a major social problem in Africa's most populous country.

NAIROBI, Dec 03 (IPS) - The fashion industry is the second largest polluting industry in the world. Pesticides and insecticides used on crops grown for fabrics together with the chemicals used in the production of fabrics cause enormous damage to the environment.

NAIROBI, Nov 29 (IPS) - Women make up about half of the over 120 million people whose livelihood depend on the blue economy. But women play only a marginal role in the blue economy with most of them earning subsistence income. Women are mainly excluded from more important aspects of the Blue Economy like shipping and large scale fishing.

, Dic 15 (IPS) - HIV among teenagers is devastating families in Nigeria and elsewhere in Africa, where AIDS has become the No. 1 killer of adolescents.

LAGOS, Nigeria, Apr 22 (IPS) - Nigerians are beginning to adjust to the sad reality that they live in a country where suicide bombers and terrorists could be lurking around the next corner thanks to a ready supply of advanced weapons smuggled through the country's porous borders. 

The women of Makoko, a low-lying slum close to the Lagos Lagoon along Nigeria’s Atlantic coast, always sleep with one eye open. Many live in fear that when they go to sleep at night they will wake to flooded homes and business.

The worst day of Olaniyi Emiola’s life was Mar. 17, 1998. At least it was for Olaniyi Emiola, 22, the spare motor parts trader. For Olaniyi Emiola, the armed robber, it was a lucky escape as another man with the same name had been wrongly sentenced to death for a crime he committed.

Security experts say that unless something is done to regulate the high level of illicit transactions and proliferation of commercial explosives in Nigeria, scenes like the United Nations suicide bombing will become more frequent.

'We are suffering in the midst of plenty.' That was how Nelson Ilemchi summed up his plight as he spent an entire day queuing to buy kerosene. Since January Africa’s largest producer of crude oil has been experiencing a protracted nationwide scarcity of the refined product.

In an open space near her home in Makoko, a crowded suburb of the sprawling city of Lagos, Latifat Agboola sits in the midst of bags of charcoal, attending to her customers. Some of them call her 'the charcoal woman with the dirty job, but she sees herself as a businesswoman on the rise.