LAGOS

Nigeria’s army quelled a demonstration at one of the country’s main oil-export terminals on Friday, said the platform’s operator, ChevronTexaco, and activists claimed two protesters were shot dead. Soldiers in the Escravos terminal opened fire on the demonstrators, killing two, said Helen Joe, a militant leader.

The head of the United Nations atomic watchdog agency on Wednesday inspected a nuclear reactor in northern Nigeria that officials said was designed for research on peaceful uses of atomic energy. Foreign analysts have expressed concern that Nigeria, a nation of more than 126-million people, is angling to become the world’s latest nuclear power.

The Anglo-Dutch energy giant Shell has ended the latest crisis to disrupt oil production in Nigeria’s unruly Niger Delta, the firm said on Friday, reopening facilities closed down by community protests. At the height of the crisis, 114 000 barrels per day of Shell’s production were shut in.

Scheduled local and international flights to and from Nigerian airports were getting back to normal on Monday after five days of disruption caused by a thick cloud of dust, aviation officials said. No flights took off or landed at Lagos’s local and international airports between January 6 and 8, airport officials said.

At least 20 people were killed in an explosion as they stole fuel from a damaged pipeline in a fishing community near Nigeria’s economic capital, Lagos, police said on Thursday. Fire broke out on Tuesday night in the Ilado community on a pipeline operated by the state-run Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation.

As Nigeria expands its subsidised anti-retroviral (ARV) programme, concern is mounting about how funds are being spent. Two years ago, Nigeria launched what, at the time, was a ground-breaking initiative to provide ARV drugs to 15 000 people living with HIV at less than 10% of the market price. But a year later, the project ran into difficulties when depleted drug stocks were not replenished.

Nigerian villagers lifted their blockade of three oil pumping stations in the volatile Niger Delta on Tuesday after energy giants Shell and ChevronTexaco agreed to discuss funding local development projects. The three plants had been occupied since Sunday morning by protesters from the ethnic Ijaw fishing community of Kula.

Militant youths have seized control of two oil-pumping stations operated by the Anglo-Dutch energy giant Shell in southern Nigeria, trapping 75 workers in their quarters, the firm said on Monday. ”About 200 youths occupied two flow stations, Ekulama I and Ekulama II, some time yesterday [Sunday],” a Shell spokesperson said.

A Nigerian court has sentenced a man to death by hanging for conspiring with others to kill his wife as part of a money-making magic ritual, a court official said on Tuesday. The man was said to have conspired with ritualists who had promised him money to remove vital organs such as his wife’s right eye, right breast and genitals.

Nigerian police on Monday took over a popular bus station in the economic capital, Lagos, to forestall a repeat of last week’s clashes between commercial drivers and traffic officials that left two dead. Drivers clashed with officials of the Federal Road Maintenance Agency for several days last week over the control of the popular CMS bus station.

A Nigerian court has rejected a bid by a former security chief to stop his trial for the attempted murder of a newspaper publisher and former minister in 1996, court officials said on Thursday. The trial, which has been adjourned several times, has made little progress because of legal technicalities raised by the defence.

Nigerian doctors working in government hospitals on Monday began a two-day warning strike to press for the payment of salary arrears, officials said in a statement in Lagos. The National Association of Resident Doctors said the warning strike is aimed at reminding the federal government of the association’s pay demand.

The chairperson of the African Union, President Olusegun Obasanjo of Nigeria, is "very concerned" about an outbreak of fighting in Côte d’Ivoire and plans to host a crisis meeting of regional leaders on Saturday, his spokesperson said. "The president is very concerned about the situation," the spokesperson said.
<li><a class=’standardtextsmall’ href="http://www.mg.co.za/Content/l3.asp?cg=BreakingNews-Africa&ao=124978">Warplanes bomb Côte d’Ivoire city</a>

Sudanese government officials and rebel delegates have welcomed – some cautiously — proposals from African Union (AU) mediators on security in Darfur, which has long been a sticking point between the two sides at peace talks in the Nigerian capital.

Africa’s leading Anglican churchman, Nigeria’s Archbishop Peter Akinola, condemned the worldwide church’s response to the controversy over the ordination of an openly homosexual bishop as wholly inadequate and insulting, in a statement received in Lagos, Nigeria, on Thursday.

A pipeline carrying crude oil across the unruly Niger delta region to Nigeria’s main export terminal has burst and is on fire, the Anglo-Dutch oil giant Shell and a local leader said on Tuesday. Shell said it had already moved in to control the fire and the leak, but a local ethnic leader insisted that the firm’s engineers had not yet arrived.

Between 30 and 50 people were killed in an explosion at a fuel pipeline on the outskirts of the Nigerian commercial capital, Lagos, police said on Friday. ”People were stealing fuel from the pipeline when it caught fire and exploded,” said police spokesperson Emmanuel Ighodalo of Thursday’s blast in Amore.

Amnesty International claimed on Thursday that up to 500 people were killed in clashes between rival armed gangs in the Nigerian oil city of Port Harcourt in the past month. Port Harcourt is the hub of Nigeria’s oil industry. Several international oil giants and oilfield service companies have offices and workshops there.

Nigerian security services raided the offices of an independent weekly newspaper critical of the government, arresting one of its staff and seizing computers, its deputy editor said on Sunday. ”We have been exposing corruption in the government and they are not at all happy with us,” the paper’s deputy editor said.

Nigerian banks threatened with extinction following a recent government order on them to raise their capital base to about -million by the end of next year have resorted to seeking divine intervention, a banker said on Friday. More than a dozen bank directors and managers last Wednesday attended a special prayer session.