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/ 11 October 2006
Armed youths have released dozens of Nigerian employees of the oil company Shell and its subcontractors, but about 15 workers are still being held at a flow station in the restive Niger Delta, security sources said on Wednesday. About 60 workers were taken hostage on Tuesday morning when the armed youths seized the Shell flow station on the Nun river in Bayelsa State.
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/ 11 October 2006
A high court in northern Nigeria’s Adamawa state on Tuesday sentenced the leader of an unorthodox and militant Islamic sect on the run for 22 years to death by hanging, state-run Radio Nigeria Kaduna reported. Musa Ali Suleiman (51) was found guilty of three charges of murder, conspiracy and incitement of public disturbance.
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/ 10 October 2006
Armed youths on Tuesday seized a Shell flow station and took 60 workers hostage in Nigeria’s restive Niger Delta, the company said. "After firing some warning shots, the attackers took hold of the security post where they are holding about 60 SPDC [Shell Petroleum Development Company] and contractor staff," Shell said in a statement.
Militants in Nigeria’s oil heartland said on Thursday they had called off attacks on troops after two bloody gun battles and would fight only in response to actions by the military. The Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta said it had killed 17 soldiers in separate fire fights in the Niger Delta on Wednesday but would now hold back.
Militants freed about 25 kidnapped Nigerian oil workers on Wednesday but seven abducted expatriates were still missing in another part of the Niger Delta after an unprecedented attack on a residential compound. Heightening security concerns, the United States consulate in Nigeria warned that militants may target Bonny Island, a major oil and gas export hub in Africa’s top oil producer.
Niger Delta militants on Wednesday released 16 remaining oil employees of a sub-contractor to Anglo-Dutch oil giant Shell two days after kidnapping a group of workers, an industry spokesperson said. ”I can confirm that the remaining hostages were released this morning. They were 24 or so in number. Nine were released yesterday [Tuesday],” the spokesperson said.
Five foreigners working for United States oil company Exxon Mobil have been kidnapped and two Nigerians killed in an attack in the volatile Niger Delta region, an industry source said on Wednesday. The five, whose nationalities were unknown, were seized late on Tuesday by armed men who attacked an oil installation at Eket, in the southern state of Akwa Ibom.
Militants who led a deadly attack on a military convoy escorting oil workers in the restive south also abducted 25 Nigerian petroleum-industry employees, the leading oil firm in Africa’s biggest producer said on Tuesday. The hostage takers hadn’t made any ransom demands earlyon Tuesday after the attack and seizure a day earlier.
All but one of 40 people feared to have drowned in torrential flooding in northern Nigeria’s Zamfara state have been found alive and well, officials said on Monday. The local residents were declared missing presumed dead after torrential rains caused a dam to burst on Saturday on the outskirts of the state capital Gusau, sweeping away 500 houses.
At least 40 people were killed when a reservoir dam burst in Nigeria’s northern city of Gusau, washing away more than 100 houses, local media reported on Sunday. Heavy rainfall swelled the reservoir to critical levels forcing the dam to collapse and sending a barrage of water through villages in the northern state of Zamfara on Saturday. The reservoir was the main source of drinking water for Gusau.
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/ 18 September 2006
Twelve Nigerian military personnel, mostly high-ranking officers, were killed in a plane crash on Sunday while six survived, the Presidency said in a statement on Monday. President Olusegun Obasanjo rushed home early from an International Monetary Fund meeting in Singapore following the crash of an air force Dornier 228 aircraft.
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/ 15 September 2006
Locusts have invaded farms in Nigeria, destroying crops as farmers prepare for harvest, officials said on Friday. Diyos Auta, state agriculture commissioner for Taraba, in the centre of the country, said the locusts had destroyed 50 000ha of crops in the past week.
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/ 13 September 2006
Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo has categorically denied persecuting his deputy, Atiku Abubakar, who is under investigation on charges of alleged corruption. ”Vice-President Atiku Abubakar has alleged political persecution and all sorts of things. That is far-fetched by all standards,” the Presidency said in Obasanjo’s first official statement on the issue late on Tuesday.
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/ 1 September 2006
Nigerian authorities on Friday reported a sharp rise in the number of polio cases in Africa’s most populous country over recent months, despite a government immunisation drive. A total of 784 cases of the disease were registered in 17 states at the end of July, the National Programme on Immunisation said.
Nigeria’s state security service arrested 15 persons suspected of terrorising the oil-rich but volatile Niger Delta region, the News Agency of Nigeria reported on Wednesday. State Security Service spokesperson Ado Mu’azu was quoted as saying the suspects were arrested following President Olusegun Obasanjo’s directive to hunt down militants.
Nigeria announced on Tuesday that state and presidential polls ushering in a new government to succeed President Olusegun Obasanjo will be held in April next year. The former army general, who came to power in May 1999 to end more than 15 years of military rule, has vowed to organise credible, free and fair elections when his two terms expire in May 2007.
Six foreign oil workers, kidnapped from a nightclub in Nigeria, were released on Wednesday night after 10 days in captivity, authorities said. The six men — two Britons, an American, German, Irish and Pole — were abducted at gunpoint from a nightclub in the southern oil city of Port Harcourt on August 13.
Nigeria’s National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) on Wednesday condemned high-profile killings in the country, saying it could lead to political instability. Several prominent politicians, including two governorship candidates, have been killed by unknown gunmen in the past weeks in Africa’s most-populous country ahead of general elections next year.
At least 11 people were killed when militants engaged Nigerian troops in a fierce gun battle in the restive Niger Delta, police and military officials said on Tuesday. The incident occurred on Sunday night around Brass creek at Ekeremor in southern Bayelsa State when members of the Joint Task Force accompanying a Shell boat was attacked by the militants, they said.
Soldiers searched houses and fired in the air on Friday as the Nigerian military launched a crackdown on suspected militants in the country’s restive, petroleum-rich south, where more than a dozen foreign oil workers have been kidnapped. President Olusegun Obasanjo ordered the clampdown on Tuesday.
Armed men on Monday kidnapped four more foreign oil workers in Nigeria’s southern oil city of Port Harcourt but released three Filipinos abducted more than 10 days ago in the latest of a series of incidents in volatile Niger Delta. ”The situation is becoming worrisome,” a River state police spokesperson said.
Gun battles erupted in multiple locations in southern Nigeria’s oil hub of Port Harcourt on Sunday night, and witnesses said a group of foreigners was taken hostage from a nightclub amid the shooting. A witness said he saw more than 10 people go into the nightclub and drag a group of foreigners away while shooting into the air.
Nigeria has pulled thousands of troops out of the Bakassi peninsula ahead of a Monday deadline for a complete withdrawal, but many residents said they will resist a handover to Cameroon. The International Court of Justice ruled in 2002 that Nigeria should turn over Bakassi to its eastern neighbour after a decades-long dispute that nearly brought the two to war in 1981.
Detained Niger Delta warlord Mujahid Dokubo Asari on Wednesday demanded the immediate release of a German oil worker taken prisoner last week by militants, an associate said in a statement. Didone Shephard, an employee of oil service firm Bilfinger and Berger, was kidnapped along with his driver in the southern oil city of Port Harcourt last Thursday.
A previously unknown group has claimed responsibility for the kidnapping of a German contractor last week in Nigeria and demanded the release of two jailed leaders as a condition for his freedom. The group also demanded that the hostage’s employer, construction firm Bilfinger and Berger, provide more infrastructure and jobs to the communities where they work.
The sudden resignation of campaigning Nigerian minister Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala last week is a blow to the credibility of the government and places a question mark over future economic reforms, Nigerian economists and analysts say. She quit last Thursday, 44 days after she was moved from the influential finance ministry to foreign affairs.
The Nigerian government on Wednesday dismissed three senior officials at the Lagos University Teaching Hospital (Luth), where a baby was infected with HIV/Aids. Health Minister Eyitayo Lambo said Luth’s chief medical director, chief medical laboratory scientist and an official in haematology department of the hospital had all been sacked over the incident.
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.
Nigeria’s President Olusegun Obasanjo said in Abuja on Tuesday that the exploitation and slavery of Africans in past decades were directly linked to Africa’s present economic conditions. Obasanjo said that the distortions and underdevelopment that slavery entailed continued to complicate the processes of growth and development on the African continent.
Nigeria took another step towards acquiring nuclear technology for civilian use when it officially swore in the board of the National Atomic Energy Commission. The ceremony on Monday was presided over by Nigeria’s President Olusegun Obasanjo, who is also head of the body.
When Uzonna Tochi picked up the phone last week, he heard the most chilling words of his life. ”Please do something fast to save my life; they might execute me anytime now,” Uzonna’s older brother, Iwuchukwu Amara Tochi, pleaded from Singapore. Iwuchukwu Amara Tochi is sitting on death row in Singapore with Okele Nelson Malachy condemned in March after being found guilty of transporting heroin into Singapore.
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.