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.
The state-run Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation has sacked seven senior managers over multimillion-dollar fuel imports fraud, a spokesperson for the firm said on Monday. The dismissal of the senior managers in the commercial department of the group was approved at the weekend by President Olusegun Obasanjo.
Nigerian troops shot four river pirates, killing two of them, when an armed gang attempted to hijack a group of oil barges belonging to the Anglo-Dutch energy giant Shell, a miltary spokesperson said on Friday. Major Said Ahmed said a gunbattle erupted overnight on Wednesday at Shell’s Ogomu facility.
Nigeria’s defence authorities have set up a special panel to investigate the conduct of military officers detained amid rumours of a plot to overthrow the elected government, a spokesperson said on Thursday. ”Many military officers are undergoing investigation,” defence spokesperson Colonel Ganiyu Adewale said.
Gyude Bryant, head of Liberia’s transitional government, said on Tuesday in Abuja, Nigeria, that Liberians have resolved ”never to go to war again”. Bryant, who arrived on Tuesday for a two-day visit, said that his countrymen are in agreement that there should be no more war if Liberia is to overcome its war-weary past.
Nigeria’s armed forces have cancelled all leave and called troops back to barracks, military sources said on Thursday, amid rumours that disgruntled officers have been canvassing support for a coup d’état. ”We security forces don’t take any rumour lightly,” one naval captain said.
For many Nigerians, daylight hours are too busy to spend on commuting. As a result, they use nights to travel between the various towns and cities where they conduct business. But, fatigue, poor visibility and bad roads have taken their toll in the form of accidents.
At least 18 people, including a soldier, were killed when Nigerian troops raided a town to quell a protest over ballot-rigging in last week’s local government election, a local reporter said on Tuesday. Some press reports, citing witnesses, put the death toll in Sunday’s clash as high as 30.
At least 10 churches were torched and one police station vandalised when Nigerian Muslims rioted after a young Christian defaced a copy of Islam’s holy Qur’an, a witness said on Monday. Rioting broke out on Saturday in the religiously mixed northern town of Makarfi, a local resident said by telephone.
Oil is the undisputed kingpin of Nigeria’s economy, contributing more than 90% of its export earnings. But more than four decades after the start of oil extraction in Nigeria, the industry remains in foreign hands — much to the frustration of local entrepreneurs.
Nigeria has launched an investigation into claims that a large number of military officers have been canvassing support for a coup d’état in the oil-exporting West African giant, officials said on Friday. They played down fears that Africa’s most populous country was at risk of its sixth military takeover since 1966.
Low voter turnout, boycotts and a lack of ballot papers in various wards have marred local government elections in Nigeria, which took place on Saturday in 31 of the country’s 36 states. About nine people were also reported to have been killed the day before the vote in Port Harcourt, eastern Nigeria, in what some viewed as a political attack.
The prospects for cocoa farmers in West Africa have not appeared rosy in recent years, what with declining cocoa prices and reports of exploitive labour practices on their properties. Organisations like the International Institute for Tropical Agriculture have been working to assist these farmers, however.
A lawyer has urged Nigeria’s government to impeach President Olusegun Obasanjo for failing to maintain security in the country, a local newspaper reported on Tuesday. The lawyer referred, among other incidents, to last Sunday’s murder of Chief Philip Olorunnipa, chairperson of the Kogi State Independent Electoral Commission.
Business was good in the taverns of Kano as the city’s football fanatics gathered to watch the English FA Cup quarterfinals this weekend, and as the beer sellers stacked crate after crate of empties back onto their trucks they seemed unaware that this might be one of their last loads.
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/ 24 February 2004
A boycott of the vaccine for polio spread to two more northern Nigerian Islamic states on Tuesday, United Nations Children’s Fund officials said, hampering a massive drive to immunise 63-million children in 10 African nations against a polio outbreak.
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/ 23 February 2004
A Nigerian judge refused to grant bail on Monday to three suspects charged with masterminding a -million fraud and then trying to bribe investigators to drop the case against them. The three suspects face 86 charges relating to the biggest alleged case to date of ”419 fraud”, a crime for which Nigeria has become notorious.
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/ 17 February 2004
Nigeria’s Niger Delta region is one of the largest wetlands in the world. It is a source of great irony, therefore, that people living in the area struggle to get hold of clean drinking water: they take what they can from creeks and rivers. Providing safe drinking water for the country’s 120-million people will require considerable investment in the future.
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/ 12 February 2004
In the past two years, 800 policemen in Nigeria have been dismissed for extortion and another 65 have found themselves in court. But, the arrests and dismissals do not appear to be making a real dent in the levels of police corruption in Lagos, as far as extortion of money from motorists is concerned.
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/ 11 February 2004
An influential Nigerian Islamic body on Wednesday warned the London-based rights group Amnesty International to stop interfering in Islamic religion in the name of human rights campaigns. A new Amnesty report condemns the use of the death penalty in 12 Nigerian states where the Sharia legal system is in operation.
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/ 6 February 2004
Five alleged perpetrators of the world’s biggest advance-fee fraud scam were taken before a Nigerian High Court on Thursday charged with 86 counts of duping a Brazilian bank out of -million. Emmanuel Nwude, former director of Union Bank, a top-rated bank in Nigeria, led the accused, who all pleaded not guilty.
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/ 4 February 2004
More than 14 000 people living with Aids in Nigeria who had been receiving anti-retroviral drugs subsidised by the government are running out of supplies, an HIV/Aids activist group said on Tuesday. ”By June 2003 some centres had stopped administering the drugs,” the president of Aids Alliance Nigeria said.
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/ 3 February 2004
Many people were feared killed in fresh violence near Port Harcourt, the oil-rich southern Nigerian city, at the weekend, police and press reports said on Tuesday. Fighting broke out when one street gang launched a reprisal attack on suspected members of another gang.
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/ 28 January 2004
Relatives of the more than 1 000 people who died during the 2002 explosions at a military barracks in Lagos, Nigeria, have boycotted a ceremony to commemorate the event on Tuesday — this to show their displeasure at the government’s treatment of blast survivors.
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/ 26 January 2004
Nigeria’s government and trade unions took their battle over a controversial fuel tax back to court on Monday, five days after labour leaders suspended plans to launch a crippling general strike over the levy. The case has become a key battle for President Olusegun Obasanjo as he strives to push through wide-ranging economic reforms.
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/ 23 January 2004
When British officials intercepted a Nigerian man with a briefcase stuffed with  000 at London’s Heathrow airport, they thought they had stumbled upon a terrorist trail. Instead, the cash-filled carry-on has led to the highest-profile corruption case yet in Nigeria.
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/ 21 January 2004
Nigeria’s top labour leader, Adams Oshiomhole, on Wednesday announced the suspension of a 12-hour-old nationwide general strike over fuel tax after a meeting with senior union officials. Hundreds of thousands of Nigerian workers stayed at home on Wednesday despite a court order banning the planned protest.
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/ 21 January 2004
A court of appeal in Nigeria’s capital, Abuja, has ordered the Nigeria Labour Congress to suspend a proposed strike that had been scheduled to start on Wednesday. It has also ordered authorities to reverse the one cent petrol tax that is at the heart of the labour dispute.
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/ 13 January 2004
Almost 10 years after the death of Nigerian activist Ken Saro-Wiwa, his father — Pa Beesam Wiwa — remains angry and sad. A tribunal appointed by General Sani Abacha, Nigeria’s military ruler at the time, sentenced Saro-Wiwa to death in 1995 after a controversial trial. Pa Wiwa says the execution left him embittered.
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/ 24 December 2003
Nigeria’s generations-old father-to-son farming life is in jeopardy — because of concerns over the child labour it involves. Rights activists claim that many of these children are subject to hazardous conditions, including exposure to pesticides and being required to use dangerous tools like machetes.