The North Africa Journal – 14 October 2018 – Security analyst firm MEA Risk LLC says that for the period of 8 to 14 October 2018, there were 41 critical incidents in Nigeria, resulting in at least 124 deaths and 113 arrests. Both the Social/Human and Economic categories accounted for nearly 27% each of the total incident pool of the week. At least eighteen soldiers were killed, eight battling to survive at the hospital after being critically wounded and about 157 feared missing when Boko Haram insurgents raided an outpost of 157 Battalion in the Borno state village of Metele. Multiple military sources have separately confirmed that the death toll was far greater in severity than the military publicly admitted. Some 157 soldiers are still missing. The army confirmed on Twitter that 76 insurgents were neutralized.
The political environment in Nigeria remained tense, despite the official end of the party primaries. At the federal level, the ruling APC party continued to look for ways to remove Senate President Bukola Saraki from his seat. Saraki defected recently from the APC party to joined the opposition PDP, angering APC’s leadership and senators affiliated to his former party. The latter held an emergency meeting this week on how to go about his removal. The meeting’s details have been kept confidential. But Saraki has also been active as an opposition figure. Following an alleged attempt to arrest them for staging a protest at the National Headquarters of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), several PDP officials, including Saraki, filed a lawsuit against the Inspector-General of Police, Ibrahim Idris.
