LAGOS

Hundreds of people were burned alive on Tuesday when fuel spilling from a vandalised pipeline exploded in Nigeria’s largest city, Lagos, emergency workers said. Crowds of local residents went to scoop up the petrol in plastic containers after an armed gang punctured the underground pipeline overnight to siphon fuel into road tankers.

An armed separatist group in southern Nigeria that is holding four foreign oil workers hostage said on Sunday that it will not be swayed by their pleas for release and indicted Italian oil firm Agip for allegedly attempting to pay a ransom. The hostages have called on their respective home governments to help in securing their release.

The Nigerian army has enlisted 500 recruits from the volatile oil-rich Niger Delta as part of measures to douse restiveness in the region, state-run media said on Wednesday. The News Agency of Nigeria quoted Minister of State for Defence Thomas Aguiyi-Ironsi as saying that the recruitment was a response to growing unemployment in the region.

Armed men have attacked an oil installation belonging to the Royal Dutch Shell company in Nigeria’s volatile southern Niger Delta region, industry sources said on Friday. They said there were no casualties in the attack late on Thursday afternoon, but a number of oil workers were being held at the facility, in the southern Bayelsa state.

Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo has enrolled as a student of a university in the nation’s capital, Abuja, his office said on Thursday. The 69-year-old retired general, who will step down in May 2007 having served the limit of two four-year terms, matriculated as a distance-learning student of the National Open University of Nigeria on Wednesday.

Rights group Amnesty International on Tuesday issued a scathing report on Nigeria, calling the rape of women by its security forces ”endemic” while the government fails to bring the attackers to justice. ”Rape by police and security forces is endemic,” Amnesty officials said in presenting the 40-page report, entitled Nigeria: Rape — the silent weapon.

Militants have left an oil pumping station operated by the Italian oil giant Agip after a two-week siege, freeing about 30 workers and soldiers. ”The armed men left the facility in the early hours of yesterday [Sunday] after a truce was brokered by the Bayesla state government,” said the governor’s spokesperson Welson Ekiyor.

General Ibrahim Badamasi Babangida, the former military dictator better known as ”IBB” who ruled Nigeria with a rod of iron for eight years and who once dubbed himself ”the evil genius”, is determined to contest the 2007 elections and to win back the presidential seat he occupied from 1985 to 1993.

Eight Nigerian hostages escaped and five others were released from an oil facility where they had been held since armed men raided the Italian-run pumping station earlier this week. Forty-eight Nigerian employees of Agip had been held in the south of the country since armed protesters overran and shut down Agip’s Tebidaba oil pumping station on Monday.

Output of 55 000 barrels per day of oil was cut in Nigeria when armed protesters on Monday forced the closure of a flow station belonging to Italy’s Agip company in the Niger Delta, an Agip official said. ”There were 48 persons — all local staff — on the flow station when it was invaded by the protesters,” said the official.

Militants in Nigeria are planning a major new wave of attacks and kidnappings in the next few days that could include up to 20 simultaneous bombings across the country’s oil-rich delta region, United States diplomats warned on Friday. The warning came in an e-mailed statement sent from the US consulate in Nigeria’s main city, Lagos.

Armed youths on Tuesday seized a Shell flow station and took 60 workers hostage in Nigeria’s restive Niger Delta, the company said. "After firing some warning shots, the attackers took hold of the security post where they are holding about 60 SPDC [Shell Petroleum Development Company] and contractor staff," Shell said in a statement.

Niger Delta militants on Wednesday released 16 remaining oil employees of a sub-contractor to Anglo-Dutch oil giant Shell two days after kidnapping a group of workers, an industry spokesperson said. ”I can confirm that the remaining hostages were released this morning. They were 24 or so in number. Nine were released yesterday [Tuesday],” the spokesperson said.

Five foreigners working for United States oil company Exxon Mobil have been kidnapped and two Nigerians killed in an attack in the volatile Niger Delta region, an industry source said on Wednesday. The five, whose nationalities were unknown, were seized late on Tuesday by armed men who attacked an oil installation at Eket, in the southern state of Akwa Ibom.

At least 40 people were killed when a reservoir dam burst in Nigeria’s northern city of Gusau, washing away more than 100 houses, local media reported on Sunday. Heavy rainfall swelled the reservoir to critical levels forcing the dam to collapse and sending a barrage of water through villages in the northern state of Zamfara on Saturday. The reservoir was the main source of drinking water for Gusau.

Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo has categorically denied persecuting his deputy, Atiku Abubakar, who is under investigation on charges of alleged corruption. ”Vice-President Atiku Abubakar has alleged political persecution and all sorts of things. That is far-fetched by all standards,” the Presidency said in Obasanjo’s first official statement on the issue late on Tuesday.

Nigerian authorities on Friday reported a sharp rise in the number of polio cases in Africa’s most populous country over recent months, despite a government immunisation drive. A total of 784 cases of the disease were registered in 17 states at the end of July, the National Programme on Immunisation said.

Nigeria’s state security service arrested 15 persons suspected of terrorising the oil-rich but volatile Niger Delta region, the News Agency of Nigeria reported on Wednesday. State Security Service spokesperson Ado Mu’azu was quoted as saying the suspects were arrested following President Olusegun Obasanjo’s directive to hunt down militants.

Nigeria’s National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) on Wednesday condemned high-profile killings in the country, saying it could lead to political instability. Several prominent politicians, including two governorship candidates, have been killed by unknown gunmen in the past weeks in Africa’s most-populous country ahead of general elections next year.

Detained Niger Delta warlord Mujahid Dokubo Asari on Wednesday demanded the immediate release of a German oil worker taken prisoner last week by militants, an associate said in a statement. Didone Shephard, an employee of oil service firm Bilfinger and Berger, was kidnapped along with his driver in the southern oil city of Port Harcourt last Thursday.