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/ 14 December 2004
African Union mediators worked on Tuesday to break a Sudan rebel boycott of Darfur peace talks, meeting separately with the warring parties at talks thrown into chaos by rebel allegations of a new government offensive. The rebels announced a boycott of peace talks on Monday, alleging a government offensive and saying a return to talks isn’t possible until the government promises to cease attacks.
Murders stop aid work in south Darfur
Govt seeks to extend emergency laws
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/ 13 December 2004
Ceasefire violations are on the rise in Sudan’s bloodied Darfur region and the fighting is poisoning peace talks where government and rebel negotiators met on Monday for the first time, officials said. ”We can’t have meaningful negotiations in this situation,” said Assane Ba, a spokesperson for the African Union mediating the talks.
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/ 10 December 2004
Nigerian authorities said on Friday they have shuttered two universities after the latest outbreak of Christian-Muslim fighting in restive northern Nigeria, hoping to calm tensions after a student religious debate turned violent. Fighting flared anew on Thursday when a student shared Christian texts downloaded from the internet with Muslim pupils.
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/ 7 December 2004
Nigerian villagers lifted their blockade of three oil pumping stations in the volatile Niger Delta on Tuesday after energy giants Shell and ChevronTexaco agreed to discuss funding local development projects. The three plants had been occupied since Sunday morning by protesters from the ethnic Ijaw fishing community of Kula.
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/ 6 December 2004
Militant youths have seized control of two oil-pumping stations operated by the Anglo-Dutch energy giant Shell in southern Nigeria, trapping 75 workers in their quarters, the firm said on Monday. ”About 200 youths occupied two flow stations, Ekulama I and Ekulama II, some time yesterday [Sunday],” a Shell spokesperson said.
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/ 16 November 2004
A Nigerian court has sentenced a man to death by hanging for conspiring with others to kill his wife as part of a money-making magic ritual, a court official said on Tuesday. The man was said to have conspired with ritualists who had promised him money to remove vital organs such as his wife’s right eye, right breast and genitals.
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/ 15 November 2004
Nigerian police on Monday took over a popular bus station in the economic capital, Lagos, to forestall a repeat of last week’s clashes between commercial drivers and traffic officials that left two dead. Drivers clashed with officials of the Federal Road Maintenance Agency for several days last week over the control of the popular CMS bus station.
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/ 11 November 2004
A Nigerian court on Thursday declared a planned general strike over fuel prices illegal, dramatically raising tensions less than a week before the nationwide protest is due to begin. ”We are not bothered by the court order. They cannot stop us. No court order can stop us,” said the national mobilisation officer of the Nigerian Labour Congress.
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/ 11 November 2004
A Nigerian court has rejected a bid by a former security chief to stop his trial for the attempted murder of a newspaper publisher and former minister in 1996, court officials said on Thursday. The trial, which has been adjourned several times, has made little progress because of legal technicalities raised by the defence.
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/ 8 November 2004
Nigerian doctors working in government hospitals on Monday began a two-day warning strike to press for the payment of salary arrears, officials said in a statement in Lagos. The National Association of Resident Doctors said the warning strike is aimed at reminding the federal government of the association’s pay demand.
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/ 5 November 2004
The chairperson of the African Union, President Olusegun Obasanjo of Nigeria, is "very concerned" about an outbreak of fighting in Côte d’Ivoire and plans to host a crisis meeting of regional leaders on Saturday, his spokesperson said. "The president is very concerned about the situation," the spokesperson said.
<li><a class=’standardtextsmall’ href="http://www.mg.co.za/Content/l3.asp?cg=BreakingNews-Africa&ao=124978">Warplanes bomb Côte d’Ivoire city</a>
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/ 3 November 2004
Sudanese government officials and rebel delegates have welcomed – some cautiously — proposals from African Union (AU) mediators on security in Darfur, which has long been a sticking point between the two sides at peace talks in the Nigerian capital.
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/ 27 October 2004
A coalition of trade unions and pro-democracy groups issued Nigeria’s President Olusegun Obasanjo with an ultimatum on Tuesday, warning him to cut fuel prices this week or face a renewed nationwide general strike. Obasanjo has defended the price increases as a necessary evil as Nigeria embarks on an ambitious series of economic reforms.
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/ 27 October 2004
A second day of peace talks on the crisis in Sudan’s Darfur region broke off early when rebels refused face-to-face talks with the government until the African Union meets separately with both sides to draft an agenda. Delegates said the African Union-brokered talks in Nigeria’s capital, Abuja, would resume on Wednesday.
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/ 26 October 2004
A second day of peace talks on the crisis in Sudan’s Darfur region broke off early on Tuesday, with rebels refusing face-to-face talks with the government until the African Union meets separately with both sides to draft an agenda. Delegates said the AU-brokered talks in Nigeria’s capital, Abuja, will resume on Wednesday.
<li><a class=’standardtextsmall’ href="http://www.mg.co.za/Content/l3.asp?cg=BreakingNews-Africa&ao=124429">UN Security Council to meet in Africa</a>
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/ 25 October 2004
Africa’s top Anglican bishops on Monday announced plans for a network of theological colleges to promote traditional beliefs after clashing with some Western churches over what one termed the ”abomination” of homosexuality. About 300 Anglican bishops from across Africa are gathering in the Nigerian city of Lagos.
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/ 25 October 2004
Sudanese government envoys and the leaders of a rebellion in the western province of Darfur opened formal peace negotiations on Monday at an African Union-sponsored conference in Abuja. AU special envoy Hamid Algabid welcomed the delegates to the conference venue in the Nigerian capital before the start of closed-door talks.
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/ 21 October 2004
Africa’s leading Anglican churchman, Nigeria’s Archbishop Peter Akinola, condemned the worldwide church’s response to the controversy over the ordination of an openly homosexual bishop as wholly inadequate and insulting, in a statement received in Lagos, Nigeria, on Thursday.
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/ 20 October 2004
Nigeria angrily rejected the results and methodology of the world’s best-known corruption study on Wednesday after being named the third most corrupt of the 145 countries surveyed. Nigeria has been anchored at or around the bottom of Transparency International’s annual corruption index since it was first published.
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/ 18 October 2004
A Nigerian police officer on Friday fired into a group of youths that had descended on government offices to demand Ramadan presents, killing two and injuring three more, a government spokesperson said on Monday. The clash erupted on the second day of the annual Muslim month of prayer and fasting.
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/ 15 October 2004
The nationwide strike that began in Nigeria on Monday over increased fuel prices was suspended on Friday. The suspension marks the end of the first stage of the strike, planned to be held in stages until the government reverses the September increase in prices of petroleum products.
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/ 14 October 2004
Trade unions in Nigeria on Wednesday threatened to extend a three-day general strike which has shut down much of the country and driven world oil prices to a record high. The stoppage was due to end on Thursday but labour leaders said it would continue if the government used heavy-handed tactics against strikers.
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/ 12 October 2004
A pipeline carrying crude oil across the unruly Niger delta region to Nigeria’s main export terminal has burst and is on fire, the Anglo-Dutch oil giant Shell and a local leader said on Tuesday. Shell said it had already moved in to control the fire and the leak, but a local ethnic leader insisted that the firm’s engineers had not yet arrived.
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/ 11 October 2004
Nigeria’s President Olusegun Obasanjo called a meeting with unions and fuel distributors on Monday on the first day of a general strike called over rising petrol prices, officials and labour leaders said. But the main leader of the strike told reporters at his headquarters that his way to the talks was blocked by police.
The leader of Nigeria’s National Labour Congress said on Friday a renewable nationwide general strike against rising fuel prices will start on Monday and last four days, after talks with authorities collapsed. The news of further unrest in Nigeria could push world oil prices still higher still next week.
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/ 22 September 2004
Nigeria expects about -billion (11,4-billion euros) of investments to be made in the country’s gas sector in the next six years, the head of state-run oil firm NNPC, Funso Kupolokun, said on Tuesday. Nigeria now has total gas reserves of 187-trillion cubic feet.
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/ 18 September 2004
Sudan has pledged to stick to the terms of an oft-violated ceasefire agreement for its civil-war wracked Darfur region and said it will allow humanitarian agencies unfettered access to the area where tens of thousands have died. African Union-hosted peace talks in Nigeria collapsed without agreement on Wednesday.
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/ 17 September 2004
Between 30 and 50 people were killed in an explosion at a fuel pipeline on the outskirts of the Nigerian commercial capital, Lagos, police said on Friday. ”People were stealing fuel from the pipeline when it caught fire and exploded,” said police spokesperson Emmanuel Ighodalo of Thursday’s blast in Amore.
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/ 16 September 2004
Amnesty International claimed on Thursday that up to 500 people were killed in clashes between rival armed gangs in the Nigerian oil city of Port Harcourt in the past month. Port Harcourt is the hub of Nigeria’s oil industry. Several international oil giants and oilfield service companies have offices and workshops there.
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/ 15 September 2004
One of two rebel movements engaged in peace talks with Sudan’s government, mediated by the African Union, said on Wednesday the negotiations over the Darfur region have collapsed and could be suspended for weeks. The AU-mediated talks in the Nigerian capital, Abuja, are a bid to end the conflict that erupted in west Sudan in 2003.
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/ 6 September 2004
Nigerian security services raided the offices of an independent weekly newspaper critical of the government, arresting one of its staff and seizing computers, its deputy editor said on Sunday. ”We have been exposing corruption in the government and they are not at all happy with us,” the paper’s deputy editor said.
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/ 6 September 2004
Peace talks between Darfur’s rebel groups and the Sudanese government were stalled on Monday over the issue of disarmament, as an African Union-brokered conference entered its third week, AU officials said. ”The two sides are sticking to their hardline positions,” said the commander of the AU ceasefire monitoring team in Darfur.