Nigerian troops freed a kidnapped British national during a dawn raid on Friday in a village on the outskirts of the country’s oil industry hub of Port Harcourt, a military spokesperson said. Major Sagir Musa said oil worker David Ward was rescued by troops in Abaara Etche village, 30km west of Port Harcourt.
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/ 30 September 2007
A court case brought by Nigeria against Pfizer resumes on Tuesday with the United States drug maker saying it answered a call for help to save the lives of African children during a meningitis epidemic. Nigeria alleges Pfizer deceived patients and caused the death of 11 children in 1996 when it performed clinical trials for a new drug.
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/ 27 September 2007
Floods that have left hundreds of thousands of Africans homeless across vast swathes of the continent have claimed 64 lives in Nigeria and 33 in Burkina Faso, government and aid officials said on Thursday. Nigeria’s Red Cross said the death toll covered a period since mid-July, while 22 000 people have been displaced in 10 sometimes arid northern states.
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/ 24 September 2007
Western oil companies reinforced security in Nigeria on Monday after a rebel group threatened to resume attacks on Africa’s largest oil industry, but security sources played down the risk of a major disruption. The Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta threatened fresh attacks on oil facilities.
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/ 24 September 2007
A Nigerian militant group whose attacks have slashed crude production in Africa’s oil giant apparently announced an end to its voluntary ceasefire and vowed a fresh campaign of violence in the restive southern region.
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/ 20 September 2007
A Nigerian governor has sacked the entire 34 000-strong workforce in his state for refusing to heed a call to suspend their one-month-old strike over pay, a government spokesperson said Thursday. Public-sector workers in the south-western state of Oyo launched the industrial action last month.
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/ 18 September 2007
Aduke Komolafe, a 58-year-old Nigerian civil servant, put an end to her life by swallowing rat poison, mortified at the loss of her savings to a phoney investment fund. Lured by the promise of 100% returns in two weeks, the mother of five put 1,3-million naira ($10Â 000) into Pennywise, one of dozens of self-styled "wonder" investment firms.
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/ 14 September 2007
Nigerian troops on Friday raided a community in the restive Niger Delta in a bid to dislodge armed gangs who have been terrorising the local population there, a military spokesperson said. The operation "began at 10am [local time]. The objective is to hunt down the militants from the creeks," Major Musa Sagir said.
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/ 12 September 2007
A 32-year-old Nigerian man appeared in court on Tuesday on a charge of instructing his monkey to bite a teenager, the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reported. Prosecutor lawyer Thaddeus Joseph told an Abuja magistrate’s court that Sunday Adeyemi on September 2 instructed his monkey to bite 11-year-old Samson Sule.
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/ 12 September 2007
Eight inmates of a prison in south-west Nigeria were killed in an attempted jail break, the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reported on Tuesday. The NAN quoted Oyo state controller of prisons Mauren Omeli as saying 14 inmates and four wardens of Agodi prison in Ibadan were also seriously injured during the attempt.
Nigerian Justice Minister Michael Aondoakaa on Friday froze a plan announced last week by the central bank to re-denominate the naira currency, saying the bank had violated the law. Aondoakaa said Central Bank Governor Chukwuma Soludo should first have sought President Umaru Yar’Adua’s written approval.
Authorities in southern Nigeria on Thursday officially extended a dusk-to-dawn curfew on Port Harcourt, the region’s oil capital, for a further week. ”The curfew is being extended for a further one week,” the state executive council announced. The curfew was put in place last Friday after the military battled local gangs, leaving dozens of people dead.
Nigeria’s new Finance Minister Shamsuddeen Usman said on Thursday he would accelerate economic transformation and sustain macro-economic stability achieved under a reform programme launched in 2003. In his first news conference since taking office, Usman also said the government would amend the 2007 budget, mostly to fund a 15% public-sector pay rise.
South Africa’s Standard Bank has bought control of IBTC Chartered Bank, it’s adviser said on Tuesday, in the first foreign takeover of a Nigerian bank since a sector reform in 2005. Standard Bank had already secured a 33% stake in an agreed purchase last September and offered -million for a further 17% in a tender offer that closed on Monday night.
Many residents were too afraid to leave their homes in Port Harcourt, Nigeria’s main oil, on Friday and troops patrolled the streets after dozens were killed in gun battles. Up to 40 people died in street fighting between troops and heavily armed gangsters on Thursday, local newspapers reported, and the gunmen are widely expected to return.
Nigerian troops and gangsters fought gun battles in the oil city of Port Harcourt on Thursday, killing several people, army and private security sources said. The army launched a dawn raid on several criminal hide-outs after six days of street battles between rival gangs last week, and the gangs responded by staging an armed assault on the state government headquarters.
Conditions in Nigerian prisons are appalling with ”forgotten inmates” locked away for years without trial simply because their files have been lost, Amnesty International said on Wednesday. ”The circumstances under which the Nigerian government locks up its inmates are appalling,” the rights group said.
The Nigerian central bank said on Tuesday it will drop two zeros from Nits currency, the naira, to make money cheaper to produce and easier to handle. The reforms, which aim at working towards full convertibility and decreasing reliance on the United States dollar, will take effect August 1 2008, a statement from the bank said.
A foreign hostage has died of illness in the oil-producing Niger Delta in southern Nigeria, a source in the Bayelsa state government said on Sunday. The source had no details on the illness, the circumstances of the hostage’s death or his nationality, but said the body was at a hospital morgue in Yenagoa.
Gang fighting entered its sixth day in the anarchic oil city of Port Harcourt in southern Nigeria on Saturday with authorities acknowledging 11 deaths and residents and media putting the toll much higher. Residents and security sources gave conflicting reasons for the gang war that erupted on Monday and has spread all over the city.
Nigeria has the second highest maternal mortality rate in the world, in large part due to unsafe abortions carried out across the country, non-profit health organisation Ipas said on Friday. Between 10 000 and 15 000 deaths out of 100 000 births annually are from unsafe abortions in Nigeria, the group said.
Nigerian ransom-seekers kidnapped the 11-year-old son of a state legislator in the southern oil-producing Niger Delta, the third child abduction in just over a month, authorities said on Wednesday. Kidnappings for money have become increasingly common in the delta, although children were rarely targeted until recent weeks.
A corruption scandal is rattling Nigeria’s navy after officials revealed that two vice-admirals and eight officers now retired are suspected of having been involved in contraband petrol trafficking in the oil-rich Niger Delta. Contraband petrol represents a huge loss for Africa’s biggest oil-producing country.
Nigerian President Umaru Yar’Adua came to power under the shadow of disputed elections and an overbearing predecessor, but his first two months in office have shown evidence that he is quietly asserting his authority. The soft-spoken former state governor was plucked from obscurity by former president Olusegun Obasanjo to run for the top job.
Mobs burned down houses in Shi’ite neighbourhoods of Nigeria’s main Islamic city on Friday in apparent reprisal for the murder this week of a radical Sunni Muslim cleric, witnesses said. Hundreds of people stormed through Shi’ite neighbourhoods of the city ”and started burning down the houses in anger”, a witness told the media by phone.
Nigerian police intercepted a truck carrying 62 people, including babies and children, in a suspected case of mass human trafficking, the agency in charge of fighting such crimes said on Wednesday. ”We think it is possible that human traffickers recruited these people,” said the National Agency for the Prohibition of Traffic in Persons.
Three former state governors in Nigeria were charged in court on Friday with money laundering and stealing public funds. Prosecutors working for the Nigeria’s Economic and Financial Crimes Commission have pledged to bring to trial former governors accused of corruption who enjoyed constitutional immunity while in office.
A Nigerian three-year-old boy has been released by his kidnappers one day after he was snatched on his way to school in the lawless Niger Delta, the boy’s father said on Friday. The kidnappers had demanded 10-million naira ( 600) for the child, relatives of the toddler said earlier.
Nigerian kidnappers have demanded 10-million naira (Â 600) for a three-year-old boy they snatched on his way to school in the lawless Niger Delta, relatives of the toddler said on Friday. The boy’s abduction on Thursday came just four days after a British girl of the same age was released by her kidnappers in the same area.
Nigerian troops repelled an attack on a construction site run by Korean firm Daewoo in the Niger Delta in the early hours of Tuesday, killing some of the attackers. The attack took place at Mbiama, on the outskirts of the delta’s main city of Port Harcourt, where Daewoo are doing contract work for Italian oil firm Agip.
The main rebel group in Nigeria’s oil-producing Niger Delta said on Monday the abduction of a three-year-old British girl was unrelated to political violence and the armed struggle over oil revenues would continue. Margaret Hill was released on Sunday night after four days in the hands of unknown ransom seekers.
A three-year-old British girl was freed on Sunday four days after being kidnapped in Nigeria, and her mother said the toddler was in good health except for mosquito bites. Gunmen had snatched Margaret Hill from the car in which she was being driven to school while it was stuck in traffic on Thursday morning in Port Harcourt.