A senior Sudanese official has rejected any immediate wider role for African Union troops in its troubled Darfur region, saying security in the western region was the responsibility of Sudanese forces. Sudan’s Agriculture Minister Majzoub al-Khalifa Ahmad on Monday dismissed a proposal by the African Union to send nearly 2 000 peacekeepers to the area.
A people without hope in Sudan
Nigerian banks threatened with extinction following a recent government order on them to raise their capital base to about -million by the end of next year have resorted to seeking divine intervention, a banker said on Friday. More than a dozen bank directors and managers last Wednesday attended a special prayer session.
Nigeria’s oldest newspaper, the Daily Times, did not appear on Friday as more than 1 000 workers protested the non-payment of their salaries and allowances over the past 15 months, workers and unions said. Nigeria’s state-run privatisation agency recently sold off the newspaper group to a private firm.
Nigeria warned Sudan on Thursday that if it does not allow African Union peacekeepers and diplomats to resolve the Darfur crisis it will end up facing less friendly pressure from outside the continent. ”What has to be made clear is that if Sudan will not yield to gentle and African pressure it will have to succumb to extra-African pressure that might not be so gentle,” said Remi Oyo, spokesperson for President Olusegun Obasanjo.
Atrocities ‘continue in Darfur’
Nigeria’s external debt stood at ,92-billion at the end of last year, Finance Minister Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala told a news conference in Abuja on Tuesday. Nigeria owes ,47-billion dollars, 83,45% of its total debt, to the Paris Club of creditor nations, ,04-billion to multilateral institutions and ,44-billion to the London Club.
Nigerian police have recovered 20 human skulls and more than 50 corpses in a raid on two black-magic shrines in an "evil forest" in the south of the country, police Commissioner Felix Ogbaudu said on Thursday. Ogbaudu said that 30 suspected cultists have been arrested in the raid on the shrines in Okija.
Health workers in the northern Nigerian state of Kano will on Saturday launch a drive to immunise more than four million infants against polio, despite ongoing opposition from Islamic radicals. Since August last year, Kano has become the epicentre of the world’s fastest-growing outbreak of the crippling virus.
Indigenous oil workers in Nigeria, the world’s sixth-largest oil producer, are angry with multinational oil companies operating in the country’s Niger Delta region over the influx of foreign oil workers, mainly from the United States and Europe. Communal unrest is also taking a toll on the country’s oil production.
Former Liberian leader Charles Taylor failed to attend a court hearing on Monday to defend himself against a bid by two Nigerian amputees to force their government to hand him over to international justice. The amputees allege that Taylor had a role in their ordeal and have asked for a judicial review of Nigeria’s decision to grant him political asylum.
The debate around a journalism school in Lagos that has withdrawn the admission letter of a new student after learning that he is living with HIV does not seem to go away. Adegboye Ibikunle’s dismissal by the Nigerian Institute of Journalism has sparked protests by civil societies who demand that the college take him back.
A radical Muslim group that triggered panic over polio immunisation in northern Nigeria said on Tuesday it remains opposed to the vaccine, despite it being passed as safe by a hardline state government. Polio vaccination was suspended in Kano state last year after claims that the drugs had been laced with chemicals to make African girls infertile.
The president of the Africa Business Roundtable, Nigeria’s Bamanga Tukur, on Friday urged countries in West Africa to take every step to ensure the region adopts a common currency, the eco, by next July. Speaking in Abuja, he said the first step will be to surmount challenges that have stood against their bid for a united and stronger region.
"Leaders come and go, but there will always be workers’ unions." This is the philosophical view that Elder Linus Ukamba, senior assistant general secretary of the Nigerian Labour Congress, has adopted towards plans by President Olusegun Obasanjo to dismantle the union federation.
Nigeria is to send troops to assist in the peace process in southern Sudan, where Africa’s longest running civil war appears to be on the brink of being resolved, an army spokesperson said on Thursday. Defence authorities have yet to decide whether the troops will be under the auspices of the United Nations peacekeeping mission.
Nigeria’s largest cellphone company with about two-million subscribers, South African-owned MTN , has run dry of pre-paid scratch cards due to what officials describe as ”logistical problems”. Hundreds of thousands of angry subscribers have been left unable to replenish their accounts for the past five days.
Millions of Nigerian workers stayed out on strike for the second day on Thursday as union leaders turned up the pressure on President Olusegun Obasanjo’s government over soaring fuel prices. In the commercial hub, Lagos, filling stations remained shut, markets lay deserted and banks were closed.
Children played soccer in the deserted streets of sub-Saharan Africa’s largest city and businesses and schools shuttered their doors across Nigeria on Wednesday as unions representing millions of workers launched a general strike over fuel-price hikes. The strike threatened oil exports from Nigeria, Africa’s largest producer.
At least 43 people were killed when a critically overloaded Nigerian truck carrying passengers and building materials plunged off the road and flipped over, rescue officials said on Wednesday. ”It was overloaded and speeding when it swerved off the road,” said Oheri Osondu, a senior officer of the Federal Road Safety Commission.
It’s a phenomenon that is now a permanent feature of the urban landscape in Nigeria: children hawking goods on the streets. A wide-ranging Child Rights Bill that was signed by President Olusegun Obasanjo in July last year seeks to check child hawking by prescribing penalties for the parents and guardians who allow children on to the streets.
Africa’s leading mobile phone operator Vodacom said on Monday it was terminating a management pact with its Nigerian partner barely two months into a five-year agreement, and dropping plans to invest -million (R1,3-billion) in it. On April 1, Vodacom signed a five-year pact to manage Econet Wireless Nigeria Limited.
More than 20 Christian villagers have been killed in a fresh outbreak of religious violence in Plateau state in central Nigeria, where President Olusegun Obasanjo imposed a state of emergency earlier this week, residents in the area said. Armed Muslims attacked five Christian villages on Tuesday near the town of Yelwa on Tuesday, they said.
The government of Nigeria put extra police and soldiers on the streets of several major cities across the country on Thursday to prevent any further outbreaks of religious violence between Muslims and Christians. The city of Kano remained tense but calm after two days of religious riots that claimed at least 30 lives.
Nigeria’s main body representing Christians claimed on Thursday that more than 400 members of its community were killed by Muslim mobs in two days of attacks in the northern city of Kano. The claim was impossible to verify immediately, and Kano’s chief of police, Abdul Ganiyu Dawodu, dismissed it.
Thousands of Christians have fled the suburbs of the northern Nigerian city of Kano to seek police protection after coming under attack from Muslim mobs. Also, security was tightened on Wednesday in many parts of Lagos, Nigeria’s commercial capital, amid fears that the fighting between Muslims and Christians could spread south.
Tensions between Nigeria’s rival Muslim and Christian communities rose sharply on Tuesday, as Islamic leaders addressing a 10Â 000-strong crowd warned of an imminent backlash in the aftermath of a sectarian massacre. The leaders issued President Olusegun Obasanjo with a seven-day ultimatum to put an end to the killings.
Nigeria is to spend -million this year to launch its second satellite, NigeriaSat II, Minister of Science and Technology Turner Isoun said on Thursday. ”We are satisfied with the performance of NigeriaSat I and were encouraged to go a step further,” the minister said.
Police have restored order in a Muslim village in Nigeria’s central highlands that was attacked by militants from a Christian ethnic group, sparking a clash in which at least 67 people died, an official said on Tuesday. Villagers who fled following Sunday’s overnight attack have said the final death toll could be as high as 350.
More than 30 people were feared drowned after the boat they were travelling on capsized on Lagos lagoon near Nigeria’s biggest city, police spokesperson Emmanuel Ighodalo said on Tuesday. The victims were returning from a burial when their boat capsized.
Nigeria’s universities are under the grip of cult gang members. About 20 cult groups operate in the country’s universities. They indulge in criminal acts such as rape, robbery and extortion. They also coerce lecturers into awarding them good grades. Strict lecturers, who refuse to cooperate, are often shot dead in their offices.
The Voice of Nigeria, Nigerian state radio’s international broadcast network, has been forced off the air by a power cut, workers in the organisation said on Friday. The network went silent on Tuesday after an electrical transformer outside its Lagos headquarters exploded.
Nigeria’s police are cracking down on illegal firearms that, they say, are threatening Africa’s most populous country. Nigeria’s police chief issued an order to crackdown on the illicit firearms three weeks ago. Since then, large numbers of weapons have been retrieved and 105 suspects arrested.
Several pirates were killed and three Nigerian soldiers were injured in a gun battle in the oil-rich swamps near the city of Warri in the unruly Niger Delta, a military spokesperson said on Tuesday. He said the clashes occurred on Sunday night when the smugglers ran into a patrol team at the Jones Creek flowstation.