The absolute beginners' guide to Pidgin

The launch of BBC Pidgin on the World Service is recognition that our English is not ‘broken’, but beautiful. Here’s what you need to know about it.

The launch of BBC Pidgin will come as a bit of a shock to many African parents and headmasters, and will leave many others confused as to why the world’s foremost exponent of the Queen’s English, the BBC World Service, is investing in what is often called “broken English”.

Lamido Sanusi, Kano's 'progressive fraud', takes aim at child marriage in Nigeria

Lamido Sanusi II, Nigeria’s second highest Islamic authority, is on a mission to end child marriage.

As the emir of Kano in northern Nigeria, one of 13 states where there is no minimum age for marriage, he is well placed to understand the issue. Yet Sanusi, a hugely symbolic religious figure, is at pains to point out that it is a social rather than scriptural problem.

“Every day you’re dealing with young girls who are withdrawn from school and are married, often into abusive or vulnerable situations, then divorced and left with nothing,” says Sanusi.

“There is an idea in the north [of Nigeria] that child marriage is Islamic, but it is not an article of faith, it is something societies decide for themselves.”

Although the legal age for marriage is 18, the Nigerian constitution allows states to set their own limits. This gives child marriage a legal and cultural foothold in regions across the country, including Kano and other areas of the largely Muslim north.

According to Girls Not Brides, a coalition of more than 700 organisations working to end early and forced marriage, 76% of girls in Nigeria’s north-west are married before they turn 18.

The juju curse that binds trafficked Nigerian women into sex slavery

Traditional west African ‘healers’ and Sicilian psychiatrists are struggling to help free Nigerian women forced into prostitution

Every night as dusk falls in Piazza Gastone in the Noce district of Palermo, a tall, imposing Ghanaian woman dressed in traditional west African robes stands before a small congregation sweating in rows of plastic chairs before her.

The Pentecostal Church of Odasani has been converted from an old garage in a backstreet into a place of worship, albeit one unrecognised by any formal faith group. But what many of the congregation – largely young Nigerian women – have come for tonight is more than prayer; it is freedom.

“Nigerian women come to me for help, they have bad spirits that have been put inside their bodies by people who want to make money from them,” says the self-proclaimed prophetess, as she prepares to start her service.

Strike: FG orders federal hospitals to recruit casual doctors

The Minister of Health, Prof. Isaac Adewole, has directed chief medical directors and medical directors of federal hospitals to immediately engage the services of locum doctors to augment the services of consultants, National Youth Service Corps doctors and  medical doctors on internship pending the resolution of the ongoing strike by the National Association of Resident Doctors.

The order was contained in a circular with Ref. No. C. 3132/Vol. V/116, addressed to all CMDs/MDs of federal tertiary health institutions across the country.

Adewole said the move became imperative in order to reduce the increased workload of consultants, NYSC doctors and house officers,  thereby preventing reduction in quality of service delivery to patients.

The minister had earlier approved the use of armed forces, police and the Federal Road Safety Corps in health facilities to ensure the continuous delivery of health care services across the country.