LAGOS

Nigeria has approved a national building code to stem a spate of building collapses that have claimed dozens of lives in recent months, officials said on Thursday. The code was approved on Wednesday during a Cabinet meeting presided over by President Olusegun Obasanjo, Information Minister Frank Nweke said.

The brutal murder of a top Nigerian politician has raised the spectre of a bloody election campaign in the run-up to presidential and gubernatorial polls in 2007, politicians and observers said on Friday. Funsho Williams, a leading Lagos politician and gubernatorial hopeful, was found murdered at his Lagos home on Thursday.

Twenty-four people are now known to have died in the collapse of a four-storey residential building in the Nigerian commercial capital, Lagos, the Nigeria Red Cross said on Thursday. ”Three bodies were pulled out today [Thursday], while one injured person died in the hospital last night [Wednesday],” said Red Cross disaster officer Umar Maigira.

Nigerian rescuers battled with shovels and picks to save people trapped for a second day beneath the rubble of a collapsed building in Lagos on Thursday as the Red Cross said the death toll stands at 24. Hopes were fading that anyone could survive another night trapped in the debris as rains fell on the area and shortages of equipment hampered diggers.

The entourage of Nigerian Vice-President Abubakar Atiku has alleged there is a plot to bar him from contesting next year’s presidential election by trying to implicate him in a corruption probe involving a prominent telecoms businessman who is being investigated by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission.

At least eight people were killed and several injured following renewed clashes between security forces and outlawed groups in the south-eastern Nigerian market town of Onitsha, residents said on Tuesday. Fighting erupted on Monday when a joint patrol team of police and army attempted to dislodge the groups from the town.

A team of experts from West African regional economic grouping the Economic Community of West African States (Ecowas), said on Tuesday Liberia would need about -billion to rehabilitate its power sector, ravaged by long years of civil war. ”Resuscitation of Liberia’s power system requires a lot of funding,” said a seven-member team.

Nigerian leader Olusegun Obasanjo once had a notice posted at the gate of his farm and presidential retreat: ”No dogs and journalists allowed.” Obasanjo saw it as a joking reference to what he considered unfair criticism from the press. The sign is gone, but tensions between the president and the press linger.

Torrential rain brought Nigeria’s main city of Lagos virtually to a standstill on Friday as streets, flooded with more than 50cm of water in places, blocked traffic. A cloudburst over the commercial capital of 16-million people was followed by ceaseless rain, inundating residential and business districts alike, notably Victoria Island, which lies below sea level.

Uneasy calm returned to the Nigerian market city of Onitsha on Thursday after almost a week of violence that claimed at least seven lives and left more than 200 prisoners freed, police said. ”Our men are on top of the situation. There is calm everywhere now. But the curfew imposed … is still in force,” state police spokesperson Fidelis Agbo told Agence France-Presse.

Several people were feared dead after an oil tanker exploded while discharging fuel at Nigeria’s main seaport in Lagos on Wednesday. ”It is still difficult to [tell] the exact number of dead, but there were indications that could have been several human and material casualties,” Christopher Borha, public relations manager of the Nigerian Ports Authority said.

Nigerian police intensified efforts on Wednesday to seek the release of two Filipino oil workers a day after they were kidnapped near the oil city of Port Harcourt, a spokesperson said. "We are making frantic efforts to effect their release," Rivers state police spokesperson Ireju Barasua told Agence France-Presse.

Five South Koreans taken hostage by Nigerian militants were freed on Thursday, said the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (Mend), which had been holding them. "In fulfilment of our earlier pledge, all five Korean prisoners captured by our unit in the attack on the Daewoo camp were released at 4pm [local time] today, Thursday June 8 2006," Mend said.

Nigerian separatist group Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (Mend) claimed responsibility on Wednesday for the kidnapping of five South Korean oil workers and offered to exchange them for the group’s jailed leader. Mend said the raid was a response to a court decision Tuesday to deny bail to the Niger Delta’s best-known guerrilla leader, Mujahid Dokubo Asari.

Two of eight Western oil workers abducted by armed militants off a drilling platform in southern Nigeria were freed early on Sunday, but the other six are still being held, the president’s office said. ”Only two have been released so far according to the negotiation team,” presidential spokesperson Remi Oyo said.

Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo on Monday urged Nigerians never to compromise on good governance and to shun corruption, in a speech to the nation marking the return of democracy seven years earlier. "We must never compromise on the need for good governance. It is the key to democratic sustainability and consolidation," Obasanjo said.

Ridding the oil-rich Gulf of Guinea of pirates is likely to top the agenda at a three-day conference on African maritime security starting on Monday in the Nigerian capital, Abuja. Two hundred delegates representing 47 countries and 13 international organisations are expected at the second Sea Power for Africa Symposium.

Nigeria’s Central Bank opened a media campaign on Monday to try to discourage people from defacing or abusing the naira currency or hiding it in their underwear. In adverts on television, radio and in the press, the Central Bank said the naira should be handled with care and not defaced, squeezed, stained, torn or written on.

Up to 200 people died on Friday when an oil pipeline blew up at a beach village near the Nigerian economic capital, Lagos, a police officer at the scene said. An Agence France-Presse correspondent at the scene reported seeing scores of carbonised, disfigured corpses floating on the water.

Pressure built on Wednesday on Nigeria over attempts to give President Olusegun Obasanjo a third term in office by changing the Constitution, with United Nations chief Kofi Annan and the Economic Community of West African States weighing into the debate. African leaders should "play by the rules", the UN secretary general said in an interview.

Nigeria’s President Olusegun Obasanjo dropped his clearest hint yet that he hopes to stay on if Parliament approves a contested proposition to change term limits, he said in an interview published on Monday. ”The reforms that we are putting in place have to be anchored, anchored in legislation, anchored in institutions,” Obasanjo told the United States newspaper, Washington Post.

The top 16 floors of a 24-storey office block collapsed in central Lagos on Wednesday, blocking the main commercial street through one of Africa’s biggest cities and leaving at least one dead and 24 injured. The building had been weakened by a fire that swept the structure earlier in the week.