Armed men attacked an oil-rig security vessel at a facility of a multinational oil company in Nigeria’s southern oil-rich state of Bayelsa, officials said on Friday. Unconfirmed industry sources said six people were thought to have been wounded in the attack late on Thursday, while three could have been kidnapped during the attack.
Troops have intercepted a truck-load of already completed ballots the day before Nigeria’s presidential election, the opposition said on Friday, heightening fears the vote will be rigged. The accusation followed widespread abuses and violence in regional elections last week.
Nigeria holds a presidential election on Saturday that is widely seen as a democratic watershed for this country and the whole of Africa. But two days before the vote there are serious doubts over whether it will be seen as a valid, democratic election.
No matter how many times Olusegun Obasanjo speaks of his plans to retire to his chicken farm after stepping down as president of Nigeria, millions still wonder whether he really means to relinquish power. Many Nigerians suspect the 70-year-old retired general intends to continue dominating the affairs of Africa’s most populous nation and biggest oil exporter.
An opposition boycott threat and bloody clashes with Islamic militants on Wednesday raised tensions ahead of Nigeria’s presidential election — the most closely watched poll since independence. A group of 18 opposition parties said the national election commission should be disbanded and Saturday’s presidential ballot postponed.
Nigerian troops killed many Islamic militants in a three-hour battle in the northern city of Kano on Wednesday, an army commander said. Troops surrounded the militants in the Panshekara district of the city early on Wednesday after they had burned a police station and killed 13 officers.
Nigeria’s government on Wednesday rejected an opposition call to postpone next Saturday’s presidential election following widespread abuses in state polls last weekend. Information Minister Frank Nweke told Reuters. Election observers said the results announced in 10 of 36 states did not reflect the will of the people.
A dusk-to-dawn curfew was imposed on Monday on Muslim-dominated northern Nigeria’s largest state of Kano as protests greeted a delay in the results of weekend polls. Meanwhile, the Nigerian Supreme Court on Monday reversed an Inec ruling that disqualified a top opposition politician from the weekend’s presidential poll.
Opposition supporters burned buildings, blocked roads and barricaded election offices in Nigeria on Sunday as partial results from flawed state elections showed a big victory for the ruling party. Local newspapers estimated about 50 people were killed in fighting linked to rigging in Saturday’s elections for 36 state governors/
Nigeria’s national police chief called for calm on Sunday as he announced that preliminary figures showed 21 people were killed in violence during state elections meant to boost civilian rule and stability. Nigeria’s private daily newspapers reported much higher death tolls.
Election irregularities sparked pockets of violence across Nigeria on Saturday in a vote which should lead to the first fully democratic transition of power in Africa’s most populous nation. Saturday’s election of state governors and legislators was a test of the strength of the ruling People’s Democratic Party (PDP) and should give Nigerians an idea of what to expect from presidential polls in a week’s time.
Nigerians go to the polls on Saturday to choose state governors and legislators in the first of two elections which, if successful, will give a big boost to democracy across Africa. The conduct and results of the state level vote will provide an indication of what to expect from presidential polls in Africa’s most populous nation and top oil producer a week later.
Gunmen shot dead a radical Muslim cleric in his mosque and fired on the congregation, killing two more people, in the northern Nigerian city of Kano on Friday, witnesses said. Followers of Jaafar Adam, a Wahhabi cleric, said the attack was political, ahead of the weekend elections for governors and legislators for the country’s 36 states.
President Olusegun Obasanjo told Nigerians on Friday to limit their travel during election days and stay home at night to curb violence. Obasanjo accused ”highly placed individuals” of fomenting trouble ahead of the vote, and an opposition party said several of its candidates and thousands of supporters had been detained.
Gunmen in Nigeria’s southern Bayelsa State on Monday kidnapped two Lebanese nationals, two days after a British oil worker was seized from an offshore rig, national police spokesperson Haz Iwendi said. ”It is true that the two Lebanese nationals were kidnapped this morning in Bayelsa State,” Iwendi said, without giving details.
A Nigerian presidential candidate died on Thursday, local radio and television stations reported, casting doubt over whether landmark elections will be held as scheduled next month. Adebayo Adefarati (76), candidate of the opposition Alliance for Democracy, died in the south-western state of Ondo, private radio Ray Power FM reported.
More than 70 people were burned to death in northern Nigeria when a tanker lorry caught fire as they were scooping fuel from it, police said on Wednesday. The accident happened in Kaduna State on Monday evening, the police spokesperson for Kaduna, Saad Yahaya, said. ”More than 70 people have been confirmed dead,” he said.
The young Nigerian rebels smoked marijuana, drank gin and shot into the night sky as they escorted two Italian hostages on speed boats back towards freedom. They steered defiantly past a brightly lit oil-production plant on the banks of the Cawthorne Channel, one of a maze of creeks in the Niger Delta, oblivious to the troops stationed there to protect Africa’s biggest oil industry from attack.
Gunmen kidnapped three foreign workers in two separate incidents in Nigeria’s oil-producing delta on Friday, authorities said. Expatriate abductions have become an almost weekly occurrence this year in the world’s eighth largest oil exporter, and thousands have fled the Niger Delta since violence surged last year.
An angry mob of Muslim students in northern Nigeria beat their teacher to death on Wednesday for allegedly desecrating the Qur’an, police and witnesses said. Her attackers accused her of tearing a portion of the Qur’an she seized from a female student during an examination.
Stepping into a contentious election-year issue, a Nigerian Senate panel said on Wednesday that President Olusegun Obasanjo and his deputy-turned-political-foe both illegally used funds from the country’s massive oil industry. Both officials are currently immune from prosecution.
Telkom is in the final stages of talks with Nigeria’s Multilinks to acquire a 75% stake in the company for -million, Nigeria’s ThisDay newspaper reported on Wednesday. Multilinks director Ezekiel Fatoye was quoted as saying that the regulator Nigerian Communications Commission had given ”anticipatory approval” for the acquisition.
About 600 people are now crammed into Nigeria’s disease-infested death rows and the number is certain to rise with a justice system that critics say has been resisting reform since the end of military rule in 1999. The situation was highlighted dramatically this month when the United Nations’s special rapporteur on torture, Manfred Nowak, ended a week-long visit to Lagos on March 10.
Nigerian troops raided several villages on the outskirts of the country’s main oil-industry centre of Port Harcourt in search of gunmen said to be responsible for a spate of hostage-takings targeting foreign oil workers, a military spokesperson said. Several arrests were made and illegal weapons recovered on Saturday.
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/ 23 February 2007
Unidentified gunmen opened fire on Friday on two Lebanese workers in southern Nigeria’s Rivers State, killing one, police and industry sources said. "The men were shot early this morning. We believe they were on their way to the airport when they were attacked. One died immediately while the other was seriously injured," a senior police officer said, refusing to be identified.
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/ 20 February 2007
Gunmen kidnapped two Croatian and one Montenegrin oil worker from a bar in Nigeria’s oil city Port Harcourt, authorities said on Monday. The abduction in the city’s Iwofe district on Sunday night was the latest in a series of attacks against foreign workers in the world’s eighth largest oil exporter.
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/ 19 February 2007
A short drive away from Nigeria’s capital Abuja, with its air-conditioned villas and ministers in luxury cars, life for many in the town of Maraba is a daily struggle to eat. On streets lined with rotting garbage and ramshackle stalls, Aminu Ladan polishes shoes to scrape out a living.
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/ 19 February 2007
Three Croatians have become the latest foreigners to be kidnapped at gunpoint in Nigeria’s oil capital of Port Harcourt, industry sources said on Monday. Gunmen abducted the three late on Sunday, reportedly as they were out drinking in the city now notorious for the dozens of foreigners who have been seized in recent months.
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/ 13 February 2007
Nigerian kidnappers have released all 24 Filipino seamen they had been holding captive in the creeks of the oil-producing Niger Delta since January 20, the men’s employer, German shipping firm Baco-Liner, said on Tuesday. The kidnappers said they had freed the men ”on humanitarian grounds” without receiving any ransom.
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/ 10 February 2007
Bird flu has reappeared, after an eight-month lull, on poultry farms in a fourth state in northern Nigeria, officials said on Friday. ”In the past one week we culled 5 000 chickens following laboratory confirmation of the existence of the avian flu virus in samples of dead chickens,” said a state agriculture commissioner.
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/ 8 February 2007
Gunmen kidnapped a Filipino woman in Port Harcourt in Nigeria’s oil-producing Niger Delta, the first known abduction of a woman in the anarchic region, and a Frenchman was seized in a separate incident. Police said gunmen snatched the woman on Wednesday afternoon in a busy street as she was walking between a bank and her car.
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/ 6 February 2007
Lolo Oluchi has painted over the bullet holes in the ceiling of her karaoke bar in Port Harcourt, where gunmen seized seven foreign oil workers last August, but the regulars haven’t come back. Thousands of foreign workers and their families have left Africa’s top oil producer since a faceless new militant group launched unprecedented attacks about a year ago.