Nigerians go to the polls on Saturday to choose state governors and legislators in the first of two elections which, if successful, will give a big boost to democracy across Africa. The conduct and results of the state level vote will provide an indication of what to expect from presidential polls in Africa’s most populous nation and top oil producer a week later.
The young Nigerian rebels smoked marijuana, drank gin and shot into the night sky as they escorted two Italian hostages on speed boats back towards freedom. They steered defiantly past a brightly lit oil-production plant on the banks of the Cawthorne Channel, one of a maze of creeks in the Niger Delta, oblivious to the troops stationed there to protect Africa’s biggest oil industry from attack.
No image available
/ 6 February 2007
Lolo Oluchi has painted over the bullet holes in the ceiling of her karaoke bar in Port Harcourt, where gunmen seized seven foreign oil workers last August, but the regulars haven’t come back. Thousands of foreign workers and their families have left Africa’s top oil producer since a faceless new militant group launched unprecedented attacks about a year ago.
No image available
/ 23 January 2007
Two foreign construction workers were kidnapped by gunmen on their way to work in Nigeria’s southern oil city Port Harcourt on Tuesday, police said. Rivers State police Commissioner Felix Ogbaudu said the two men were American nationals working for local construction firm Pivot, but oil industry security sources said one of the men was British.
No image available
/ 28 December 2006
Nigerians traded recriminations on Wednesday over who was to blame for the deaths of hundreds of people burned alive in a fuel explosion in the heart of Lagos, the country’s teeming economic capital. Many blamed the government for allowing poverty to reach such depths in Africa’s top oil producing nation that ordinary people were ready to risk their lives for a bucket of petrol.
No image available
/ 21 December 2006
The largest oil operator in Nigeria, Royal Dutch Shell, began evacuating hundreds of expatriate staff dependants from the Niger Delta on Thursday after militants planted a car bomb in a residential compound. The withdrawal began hours after armed militants stormed an oil facility operated by France’s Total in the delta’s Rivers state, killing three people, police said.