No image available
/ 21 December 2006
The largest oil operator in Nigeria, Royal Dutch Shell, began evacuating hundreds of expatriate staff dependants from the Niger Delta on Thursday after militants planted a car bomb in a residential compound. The withdrawal began hours after armed militants stormed an oil facility operated by France’s Total in the delta’s Rivers state, killing three people, police said.
No image available
/ 20 December 2006
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.
No image available
/ 18 December 2006
Two explosions hit Nigeria’s oil industry on Monday, industry sources said, moments after a militant group threatened to detonate three car bombs in the Niger Delta. There were no casualties reported in either explosion and no immediate impact on oil output from the world’s eighth largest exporter. The first explosion was from an apparent car bomb.
No image available
/ 17 December 2006
Nigeria’s ruling People’s Democratic Party on Sunday chose Umaru Yar’Adua, Governor of the northern Katsina state, as its candidate for the April 2007 presidential election. Yar’Adua (55) won hands down, garnering 3 024 votes out of a total of 4 007 valid votes cast.
No image available
/ 16 December 2006
About 10 000 security agents, including police officers, were deployed on Saturday to ensure the smooth running of presidential primaries of Nigeria’s ruling party, a police spokesperson said. About 5 000 delegates of the People’s Democratic Party were to converge in Abuja to choose their presidential candidate for 2007.
No image available
/ 16 December 2006
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.
No image available
/ 15 December 2006
The Organisation of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (Opec) decided on Thursday to enlarge its membership for the first time in 30 years by admitting African producer Angola, a decision aimed at reinforcing the cartel’s grip on world oil resources. Angola was one of three possible new members waiting to join Opec.
No image available
/ 14 December 2006
The Organisation of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (Opec) has agreed an oil-output cut of 500Â 000 barrels per day, or 2%, delayed until February 1 when the northern winter is ending, Qatar’s oil minister said on Thursday, sending oil prices more than a dollar higher.
No image available
/ 14 December 2006
The Organisation of the Petroleum Exporting Countries’ (Opec) president and oil powerhouse Saudi Arabia stepped back from direct calls to slash output on Wednesday, the eve of the group’s year-end meeting, in potential good news for consumers worldwide.
No image available
/ 13 December 2006
Saudi Arabian Oil Minister Ali al-Nuaimi said on Wednesday that the Organisation of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (Opec) had "a little more work to make the market even more stable", a hint the oil exporters’ group might cut its output at a ministerial meeting on Thursday.
No image available
/ 12 December 2006
Nigeria, which will on Thursday host its first-ever meeting of the Organisation of the Petroleum Exporting Countries, is a paradox: the country ranks sixth among the world’s oil producers and yet remains mired in poverty. Africa’s most populous nation, with its 130-million inhabitants, produces 2,6-million barrels of oil per day.
No image available
/ 10 December 2006
Nigerian police used teargas on Saturday to quell fighting between supporters of rival candidates for governor in Niger and Plateau states as the ruling party began gubernatorial primaries across the nation. In central Benue state, one policeman was killed by a mob protesting against the outcome of an earlier primary to pick members of the state house of assembly.
No image available
/ 8 December 2006
A Nigerian militant group, the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (Mend), has claimed responsibility for a raid on an oil-export terminal on Thursday in which four expatriate workers were kidnapped. Mend, which staged a series of attacks on the oil industry in February, threatened to launch more attacks within days.
No image available
/ 7 December 2006
Nigerian gunmen in about seven speedboats attacked an Agip oil export terminal in the Niger Delta early on Thursday, kidnapping three Italian workers and killing a local youth, authorities said. The gunmen tried to storm Agip’s Brass terminal, which exports about 200Â 000 barrels per day, at 5am local time.
No image available
/ 30 November 2006
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.
No image available
/ 30 November 2006
Whether one sees Abuja, Nigeria’s 30-year-old federal capital, as an urban paradise or a place where survival is a constant struggle depends largely on one’s income bracket. Set on the dry plateau in the centre of this West African country, Abuja is the Nigerian authorities’ attempt to build a world-class city from scratch, an urban centre far removed from the deafening, refuse-strewn chaos of the commercial capital, Lagos.
No image available
/ 29 November 2006
Gloria left Nigeria hoping to make enough money in Europe to lift her family out of poverty. Three years later, she came home a penniless ex-prostitute. The nightmare began when a family friend offered to help her get from Benin City to Italy.
No image available
/ 28 November 2006
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.
No image available
/ 23 November 2006
The death of a British hostage in Nigeria’s oil-producing south in a shootout between kidnappers and troops raises the stakes for oil workers but is unlikely to change much for the industry. Abductions of oil workers are frequent in the lawless delta but this was the first time a foreign hostage has died.
No image available
/ 23 November 2006
Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo on Wednesday blamed both local and international media for portraying Nigeria and the rest of Africa in a bad light. ”The world is being fed with images of Nigeria and indeed Africa as a bedrock of war, famine, disease, corruption, illiteracy and underdevelopment,” he said at the launch of the country’s national television station.
No image available
/ 20 November 2006
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.
No image available
/ 15 November 2006
A visitor to Ibadan University in pre-independence Nigeria more than 50 years ago was impressed by its modern structure and 100 000-book library. Since then, Nigeria’s premier university, which started in 1948 as a University of London college, has come down in the world.
No image available
/ 12 November 2006
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.
No image available
/ 10 November 2006
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.
No image available
/ 9 November 2006
”When I go home, I often notice that as soon as I come, all the towels, soaps and sponges that were in the bathroom will disappear,” says Isaiah Ojeabulu, who has leprosy. He chairs the Human Rights Association of Persons Affected by Leprosy, an organisation in Nigeria. Ojeabulu has similar tales from his earlier years. He says discrimination against him started from the moment that he contracted leprosy.
No image available
/ 6 November 2006
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.
No image available
/ 3 November 2006
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.
No image available
/ 3 November 2006
A new governor was sworn in on Friday in the south-eastern Nigerian state of Anambra as local lawmakers sought to cement an impeachment rejected as illegal by the targeted governor and civil rights groups. The controversial attempt to remove opposition Governor Peter Obi is the fifth impeachment process against a state governor in 12 months.
No image available
/ 31 October 2006
Nigeria and China on Monday signed a ,3-billion contract for the construction of a railway line from the nation’s economic capital Lagos to Kano, the largest commercial city in the north, the official News Agency of Nigeria reported. President Olusegun Obasanjo said the rail project was part of an integrated transportation system for the country covering land, air and maritime transport.
No image available
/ 31 October 2006
It’s certainly a logical suggestion: in an effort to make cocoa-producing countries in Africa less dependent on consumers abroad, why not increase domestic consumption of cocoa products? While Africa produces more than 75% of the world’s cocoa, according to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation, the continent consumes only about 2% of this produce.
No image available
/ 30 October 2006
The crash of a commercial airliner moments after take-off in Abuja left seven survivors and 98 people dead, including the spiritual leader of Nigeria’s Muslims, Nigerian newspapers reported on Monday. Flight 053 from Abuja to Sokoto on ADC airlines was carrying 100 passengers and five crew members on a Boeing 737 when it went down on Sunday in bad weather.
No image available
/ 22 October 2006
Militants in Nigeria have freed seven foreign oil workers seized during an attack earlier this month on an ExxonMobil compound, a spokesperson for the company said. The seven were taken hostage on October 3 during a raid on a residential compound housing ExxonMobil employees in the southern Niger Delta town of Eket.