More than 3 000 delegates from 193 nations will descend on the Ghana capital, Accra, on Sunday for five days of United Nations talks on globalisation — against a backdrop of rising food prices and an economic slowdown. The talks will be opened by UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, who will warn that not everyone benefits from globalisation.
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/ 23 December 2007
Despite being the world’s eighth petroleum exporter and sitting on huge gas reserves, Nigeria will not have it easy over the next two years, between peristent unrest in the Niger Delta and strained relations with oil companies. This absence of security means that Nigeria, which ranks fifth among suppliers of crude oil to the United States, lost one quarter of its production in 2006 and 2007.
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/ 9 December 2007
Umaru Yar’Adua has been in charge of Nigeria, Africa’s most populous nation and biggest oil producer, for six months and is already struggling against endemic corruption and political infighting. Most observers agree that Yar’Adua is well-intentioned and more sincere than his predecessor, Olusegun Obasanjo.
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/ 13 November 2007
Without its highway bridges spanning the lagoon, Lagos, the commercial capital of Nigeria, would be paralysed. Every day, well before dawn, tens of millions of vehicles set out to cross bridges that were once the envy of the African continent. Deprived of maintenance, they are now showing signs of wear and tear.
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/ 13 November 2007
Without its immense motorway bridges spanning the lagoon, Lagos, the tentacular commercial capital of Nigeria, would be paralysed. Every day, well before dawn, tens of millions of vehicles set out to cross bridges that were the envy of the African continent back in the Seventies. Deprived of maintenance ever since, they are now showing signs of wear and tear.
A corruption scandal is rattling Nigeria’s navy after officials revealed that two vice-admirals and eight officers now retired are suspected of having been involved in contraband petrol trafficking in the oil-rich Niger Delta. Contraband petrol represents a huge loss for Africa’s biggest oil-producing country.
”I did my best,” Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo said in an interview with the media as he looked back on eight years in office and rejected foreign and domestic criticism of the country’s flawed polls last weekend. ”The day I meet God I’ll tell him: not everything was perfect, but I did my best,” the president said in his office late on Wednesday.
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/ 12 December 2006
Nigeria, which will on Thursday host its first-ever meeting of the Organisation of the Petroleum Exporting Countries, is a paradox: the country ranks sixth among the world’s oil producers and yet remains mired in poverty. Africa’s most populous nation, with its 130-million inhabitants, produces 2,6-million barrels of oil per day.
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/ 11 October 2006
Armed youths have released dozens of Nigerian employees of the oil company Shell and its subcontractors, but about 15 workers are still being held at a flow station in the restive Niger Delta, security sources said on Wednesday. About 60 workers were taken hostage on Tuesday morning when the armed youths seized the Shell flow station on the Nun river in Bayelsa State.
Doubts are growing in the west African country of Togo that President Gnassingbe Eyadema, in power for 36 years, will actually respect a pledge to step down in 2003.