Nigeria’s regulatory authorities have long persisted in painting a rosy picture of the country’s banks despite the global financial meltdown.
Nigerian militants have blown up a key oil-supply pipeline operated by Chevron, in the latest attack targeting the country’s oil industry.
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/ 21 December 2007
Banker Funso Afolabi has still not recovered from the day he went out for a drink with friends in Lagos after work only to be attacked by armed robbers on the lookout for cash, watches and cellphones. ”We thought it was a joke, until one of them fired some shots into the air. A stray bullet hit one of my friends and he has been unable to use his right leg ever since,” the 40-year-old laments.
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/ 18 September 2007
Aduke Komolafe, a 58-year-old Nigerian civil servant, put an end to her life by swallowing rat poison, mortified at the loss of her savings to a phoney investment fund. Lured by the promise of 100% returns in two weeks, the mother of five put 1,3-million naira ($10 000) into Pennywise, one of dozens of self-styled "wonder" investment firms.
Nigeria’s literary giant and 1986 Nobel Prize-winner Wole Soyinka has joined widespread calls for the cancellation of the country’s disputed general elections. The governorship, legislative and presidential polls held on April 14 and 21 have been roundly condemned by foreign and local observers.
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/ 10 January 2007
Militants kidnapped nine South Korean oil workers and one local worker in southern Nigeria in the latest in a string of attacks on foreign oil installations, officials said on Wednesday. The militants stormed a Daewoo oil platform in Bayelsa state that was being guarded by about 50 soldiers during the night and took the men hostage.
At least 11 people were killed when militants engaged Nigerian troops in a fierce gun battle in the restive Niger Delta, police and military officials said on Tuesday. The incident occurred on Sunday night around Brass creek at Ekeremor in southern Bayelsa State when members of the Joint Task Force accompanying a Shell boat was attacked by the militants, they said.
The sudden resignation of campaigning Nigerian minister Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala last week is a blow to the credibility of the government and places a question mark over future economic reforms, Nigerian economists and analysts say. She quit last Thursday, 44 days after she was moved from the influential finance ministry to foreign affairs.
At least four people were killed and dozens trapped when a four-storey residential building collapsed in Lagos, Nigeria’s commercial city, witnesses said on Wednesday. The building, consisting of 36 flats, a penthouse and some shops, collapsed at around 7.30pm local time on Tuesday, trapping dozens of people.
Since 1956, when Shell first struck oil in Nigeria, the Anglo-Dutch oil giant has never been under fire like it has since the beginning of the year, analysts said on Wednesday. Shell’s foray into Nigeria’s lucrative oil industry began with the historic feat of striking the first oil well in Oloibiri in present-day southern Bayelsa state.