Nigeria’s first national headcount in 15 years headed into a second day on Wednesday amid clashes between police and vigilantes, attacks on counters and protests by disgruntled census workers. Nigeria is recognised as Africa’s most populous country but has never conducted an uncontested census.
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/ 27 January 2006
Nigerian militants said on Friday they have pulled out of talks on the fate of four kidnapped Western oil workers, as officials released the first picture of the hostages. The dangerous crisis in Africa’s biggest oil-export industry continued to push world crude prices back towards their historic high.
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/ 10 December 2005
Nigerian police on Friday arrested the governor of an oil-rich state who has been charged with money-laundering by a British court, officials said. Governor Diepreye Alamieyeseigha skipped bail in London last month and escaped home to Bayelsa state in southern Nigeria’s unruly Niger Delta, where his arrival triggered a political crisis.
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/ 27 October 2005
Grieving relatives and solemn dignitaries gathered to mourn on Thursday at the site where a Nigerian airliner plunged to earth and killed all 177 people on board, as United States aviation experts arrived in to help investigate the crash. Nigerian agencies have yet to advance any theory as to why Bellview Airlines flight 210 lost contact with air traffic control three minutes after taking off Lagos’ Ikeja airport
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/ 24 October 2005
Nigeria will begin three days of national mourning on Monday after an unexplained plane crash killed 117 passengers and crew flying from Lagos to the capital Abuja, the federal government announced. South African television producer Adele Lorenzo was among the dead, media reports said on Monday.
Nigerian police and army officers blamed each other on Wednesday after a clash between their forces left three civilians dead and triggered an orgy of arson and looting. At least three civilians were killed in crossfire and a police headquarters was burned down on Tuesday after a dispute between police and soldiers erupted in street fighting.
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/ 14 September 2005
More than 20 000 Nigerians marched through their bustling economic capital, Lagos, on Wednesday in a noisy but trouble-free protest against rising fuel prices and President Olusegun Obasanjo’s increasingly unpopular economic policies. Nobel literature laureate Wole Soyinka was among well-known figures leading the march.
The African Union (AU) was on Monday pushing for progress to be made in ongoing talks to bring peace to western Sudan’s Darfur region as tension eased over Chad’s co-mediation role, an AU spokesperson said. The civil war in Darfur has drawn global attention to what has become one of the world’s worst humanitarian crises.
The coming of winter has brought brisk business for coal merchants in the South African township of Soweto as many residents rush to buy the commodity to keep themselves warm in the biting cold. When winter sets in between May and August, Sowetans look for other means apart from electricity to keep their homes warm, as temperatures can drop to freezing point at night.
Pope John Paul II’s funeral on Friday was marked in low-key fashion in Nigeria — the nation from which one possible successor has been tipped to come — but thousands turned out for Masses and held days of mourning in other parts of Africa. In South Africa’s largest township, Soweto, the Regina Mundi Catholic church held a special Mass.