Armed groups in Nigeria’s oil-producing south are building up weapons and supplies for a major attack on an oil facility in the world’s eight largest exporter, militant and security sources said on Tuesday. The planned rebel offensive against Africa’s largest oil industry comes after the collapse of a government peace initiative.
At least 12 people were killed over New Year in Nigeria’s oil capital, Port Harcourt, when gunmen attacked two police stations and a hotel, a military officer in the city said on Wednesday. ”For now what we are looking at is between 12 and 16 dead in total,” the officer, who asked not to be named, said, adding that the total included both civilians and police.
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/ 26 December 2007
About 40 people have died in a fire at an oil pipeline after it was vandalised by looters in the southern Nigerian state of Lagos, a police spokesperson said on Wednesday. Thirty-four bodies had been recovered from the site of Tuesday’s explosion, said Lagos state police spokesperson Frank Mba.
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/ 26 December 2007
In the minds of its creators, the Tinapa resort in south-eastern Nigeria will rival Dubai or London as a shopping and trading paradise for rich and enterprising Nigerians. In reality, about -million has been spent since 2005, but 80 000 square metres of pristine retail space lie empty.
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/ 23 December 2007
Despite being the world’s eighth petroleum exporter and sitting on huge gas reserves, Nigeria will not have it easy over the next two years, between peristent unrest in the Niger Delta and strained relations with oil companies. This absence of security means that Nigeria, which ranks fifth among suppliers of crude oil to the United States, lost one quarter of its production in 2006 and 2007.
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/ 21 December 2007
Banker Funso Afolabi has still not recovered from the day he went out for a drink with friends in Lagos after work only to be attacked by armed robbers on the lookout for cash, watches and cellphones. ”We thought it was a joke, until one of them fired some shots into the air. A stray bullet hit one of my friends and he has been unable to use his right leg ever since,” the 40-year-old laments.
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/ 13 December 2007
Nigerian President Umaru Yar’Adua was to have his first meeting with United States President George Bush in Washington on Thursday, after US criticism of his election but admissions that Nigeria’s oil is important. They ”will discuss electoral reform and related issues, energy and the situation in the Niger Delta,” Bush’s spokesperson said.
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/ 10 December 2007
A protest outside an oil company compound, a high-profile kidnapping and a troop incursion into a militant stronghold on Monday were all signs of the renewed tension in Nigeria’s oil delta. Violence had subsided for a few months in the impoverished Niger Delta as rebel groups held talks with the government about their demands.
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/ 9 December 2007
Umaru Yar’Adua has been in charge of Nigeria, Africa’s most populous nation and biggest oil producer, for six months and is already struggling against endemic corruption and political infighting. Most observers agree that Yar’Adua is well-intentioned and more sincere than his predecessor, Olusegun Obasanjo.
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/ 23 November 2007
Central Abuja looks like a modern capital with wide streets and a spectacular skyline. But four years after a massive urban demolition programme began, little progress has been made in resettling the roughly 800 000 people that the Geneva-based Centre on Housing Rights and Evictions estimates have been displaced.
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/ 21 November 2007
Umaru Yar’Adua looks serene in the official portrait hanging in a courtroom where lawyers in black robes are trying to unseat him as president of Nigeria. But his position may be less secure than the photograph. The presidential tribunal is a special electoral court empowered to hear petitions against his victory in April by losing candidates.
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/ 15 November 2007
Unknown attackers blew up a Nigerian crude oil pipeline on Thursday, extending a month-old resurgence of violence against Africa’s top oil producer and dashing hopes for a government peace drive. The pipeline attack at Royal Dutch Shell’s Forcados oil terminal was a setback to the company’s efforts to restore output from the Niger Delta.
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/ 15 November 2007
Nigerian police have killed 785 suspected armed robbers in the past three months and lost 62 of their own men, the national chief of police was reported as saying on Thursday. Human rights groups and United Nations experts have accused Nigerian police of killing robbery suspects instead of arresting them.
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/ 13 November 2007
Without its highway bridges spanning the lagoon, Lagos, the commercial capital of Nigeria, would be paralysed. Every day, well before dawn, tens of millions of vehicles set out to cross bridges that were once the envy of the African continent. Deprived of maintenance, they are now showing signs of wear and tear.
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/ 13 November 2007
Without its immense motorway bridges spanning the lagoon, Lagos, the tentacular commercial capital of Nigeria, would be paralysed. Every day, well before dawn, tens of millions of vehicles set out to cross bridges that were the envy of the African continent back in the Seventies. Deprived of maintenance ever since, they are now showing signs of wear and tear.
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/ 12 November 2007
Nigeria’s secret police have arrested several people suspected of having links to the al-Qaeda network in three of the country’s predominantly Muslim states, a spokesperson said on Monday. ”Our operatives arrested the suspects in Kano, Kaduna and Yobe states,” State Security Service spokesperson Ado Muazu said.
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/ 11 November 2007
There is no fundamental justification for oil at a barrel and Organisation of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (Opec) member Nigeria is assuming that prices will not last at this level, Oil Minister Odein Ajumogobia said on Saturday. He said that no one in Opec would be surprised if the price fell to in the next few weeks.
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/ 9 November 2007
Nigeria’s federal government plans to increase spending by 7% to 2,47-trillion naira (-billion) in 2008 from 2,3-trillion naira the previous year, President Umaru Yar’Adua said on Thursday. The amount allocated to spending on security nationwide and on security and development in the volatile oil-rich Niger Delta will go up by 7%.
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/ 8 November 2007
Nigeria’s President Umaru Yar’Adua has ratified revocation of Abuja plots allocated to him and other top citizens by former president Olusegun Obasanjo’s administration, newspapers said here on Thursday. The country’s highest ruling body cited ”overriding public interests” for the revocation of the choice plots in the federal capital city.
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/ 2 November 2007
Two prominent rebels fighting for autonomy in Nigeria’s oil-producing Niger Delta have traded insults in a public dispute that has exposed deep divisions before peace talks with the government. The row between the two militia leaders is apparently over money, weapons and strategy, but analysts say it is a power struggle that will strengthen the government’s hand.
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/ 30 October 2007
Nigerian kidnappers have released six hostages seized on October 26 from an Italian offshore oil production facility. Rebel group the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (Mend) had claimed responsibility for the attack on the Mystras vessel, located 85km offshore.
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/ 29 October 2007
At least 30 people were burnt to death when a fully laden road tanker overturned and caught fire on a busy highway, Nigerian police said on Monday. The truck was conveying fuel from the commercial capital, Lagos, to the northern part of Africa’s most populous nation when it crashed and spilled its contents in the south-western Ogun state late on Sunday.
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/ 29 October 2007
Environment ministers from 38 African countries met in Abuja, Nigeria, on Monday to discuss climate change and prepare for the United Nations global climate conference to be held on the island of Bali, Indonesia, in December. The Bali meeting is expected to produce a new global climate deal to curb carbon emissions.
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/ 26 October 2007
Armed militants attacked an offshore oil platform operated by Italy’s ENI in south Nigeria early on Friday and seized seven foreign workers and one Nigerian, industrial and diplomatic sources said. The ENI group that owns the facility of its Agip subsidiary earlier stated that six workers had been seized in the attack.
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/ 26 October 2007
Gunmen attacked a support vessel to an Italian-operated oil-production facility off the coast of Nigeria on Friday, industry and security sources said. The attackers overpowered the vessel shortly before dawn and used it to attempt to board the Mystras production facility, operated by Saipem and SBM Offshore, forcing the facility to halt production.
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/ 24 October 2007
Nigeria’s House of Representatives adjourned for another week on Tuesday as warring sides prolonged a crisis over alleged corruption. Nigeria’s lower chamber has been paralysed since speaker Patricia Etteh was found to have broken rules in awarding contracts worth -million to renovate two official houses and buy 10 cars.
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/ 21 October 2007
Mubarak Muhammad Abdullahi, a 24-year-old physics undergraduate in northern Nigeria, takes old cars and motorbikes to pieces in the back yard at home and builds his own helicopters from the parts. ”It took me eight months to build this one,” he said, sweat pouring from his forehead.
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/ 19 October 2007
Anglo-Dutch oil giant Shell has reopened a gas plant of 300-million standard cubit feet in southern Nigeria that was shut down last week because of a fire on its supply pipeline. ”Utorogu gas plant, which was shut in a bit to starve the fire, has reopened and gas supply is ramping up,” the company said in a statement late on Thursday.
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/ 12 October 2007
Sixty-nine children in northern Nigeria contracted polio following a vaccination against the disease, a World Health Organisation (WHO) official in Nigeria said on Thursday. ”They were vulnerable [to this type of virus against] which they hadn’t been vaccinated enough. These are extremely rare cases, however,” the representative said.
Politics in Nigeria remains mired in violence and corruption eight years after the end of military rule, says Human Rights Watch in a report released on Tuesday. In some states of the federation, unelected but immensely powerful ”godfathers” dominate the political scene, having gained control over politicians, the report says.
Guns, machetes and looted public funds are the real instruments of power in Nigeria, where politicians backed by unelected ”godfathers” use hired thugs to win office, Human Rights Watch said on Tuesday. Nigeria returned to civilian rule in 1999 after three decades of almost continuous army dictatorship, but civilian governments have routinely abused basic human rights.
At least 30 people drowned in a river in the remote north-western Nigerian state of Kebbi after two dug-out boats they were travelling in collided head-on, the Red Cross said on Friday. One of the boats was laden with petroleum products when it collided with the other boat, which was carrying traders.