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/ 17 December 2003
A traditional doctor in central Nigeria has been shot dead by a patient who was testing the potency of an anti-bullet charm the herbalist had prepared for him, police said on Wednesday. Ashi Terfa died when patient Umaa Akor fired a gun at his head two weeks ago in south-central Benue state.
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/ 5 December 2003
A special edition of a newspaper banned by the government of Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe hit the newsstands in Nigeria on Friday as Commonwealth leaders were debating how to handle the Zimbabwe crisis. "The voices Mugabe wants to silence," shouted the front-page headline of <i>The Daily News</i>.
<li><a class=’standardtextsmall’ href="http://www.mg.co.za/Content/l3.asp?ao=24517">Summit opens under Zim cloud</a>
<li><a class=’standardtextsmall’ href="http://www.mg.co.za/Content/l3.asp?ao=24516">’Trade barriers should go'</a>
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/ 5 December 2003
Tackling poverty and lifting barriers to free trade are central to combating the spread of global terrorism, leaders at the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting in Nigeria said on Friday. Australian Prime Minister John Howard said said it is crucial to end the ”debilitating effect of trade barriers”.
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/ 5 December 2003
Britain’s Queen Elizabeth II called on Commonwealth leaders to fight poverty and build peace, as she opened a summit of the 54-nation grouping on Friday that is likely to focus on its rift over Zimbabwe. "Your decisions can make a real difference to people’s lives," the queen said.
<li><a class=’standardtextsmall’ href="http://www.mg.co.za/Content/l3.asp?ao=24516">’Trade barriers should go'</a>
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/ 4 December 2003
Commonwealth leaders will try to find a way to resolve their dispute over the suspension of Zimbabwe from the 54-member grouping but do not want the issue to dominate their summit, the body’s secretary general said on Thursday. Don McKinnon said ministers will meet to review Zimbabwe’s progress.
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/ 4 December 2003
British Prime Minister Tony Blair headed to a summit of Britain and its former colonies on Thursday with a message that Robert Mugabe’s Zimbabwe has yet to earn reinstatement to the bloc — while two African leaders pledged to campaign for Mugabe’s return.
<li><a class=’standardtextsmall’ href="http://www.mg.co.za/Content/l3.asp?ao=24441">Zim won’t ‘dominate’ Abuja meeting</a>
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/ 25 November 2003
Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe has not been invited to the Commonwealth summit due to be held in Nigeria next month, Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo said on Tuesday. Mugabe and Pakistan’s President Pervez Musharraf will not be attending as their nations are suspended from the Commonwealth’s ruling councils.
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/ 25 November 2003
Nigeria will surrender ousted Liberian leader Charles Taylor for trial if that country asks, President Olusegun Obasanjo, Taylor’s host in exile, said on Tuesday. Obasanjo has resisted surrendering Taylor on an indictment by a United Nations-backed court — but made it clear on Tuesday he would listen if Liberia itself asked.
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/ 23 November 2003
There has been no decision taken yet about the participation of Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe in next month’s Commonwealth summit to be staged in Abuja, Nigerian presidential spokesperson Remi Oyo said on Saturday. Zimbabwe has been suspended from the Commonwealth’s councils for the past 20 months.
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/ 29 October 2003
Polio vaccines recently administered in a nationwide campaign in Nigeria will undergo laboratory testing to calm fears the United States is using the immunisation campaign to sow Aids and sterility among Muslims. Ninety-nine percent of all new polio cases in the world are in Nigeria, Pakistan and India.
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/ 28 October 2003
A British man who was sentenced by a Nigerian court to be hanged for the murder of his Australian lover has appealed his conviction, his defence team said on Tuesday. Ian Millar, a 54-year-old long-term resident of Nigeria, was convicted last Thursday of the murder of his 43-year-old partner Anne Marie Gale.
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/ 14 October 2003
Former Liberian leader Charles Taylor has alleged that unidentified enemies are planning to attack Nigerian peacekeepers in his country and put the blame on him. Taylor said he feared a plot to turn the people of his host country against him and persuade them to compel him to leave.
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/ 13 October 2003
Nigeria’s President Olusegun Obasanjo has met exiled former Liberian leader Charles Taylor to warn him not to interfere in his homeland’s fragile peace process. Last month the United Nations’s chief respresentative on Liberia, Jacques Klein, said that Taylor had been telephoning his successor, Moses Blah.
Nigerian trade unions angrily demanded talks with the federal government on Monday as the deadline loomed for a nationwide general strike over fuel price rises. Nigeria is Africa’s largest oil producer, and labour leaders have threatened to disrupt crude exports and shut down government offices and firms.
Nigerian labour leaders have called for workers to protest a large hike in petrol prices by mounting their second nationwide general strike of the year. The strike could have a knock-on effect on international oil prices. The unions also called on all Nigerians to boycott the Eighth All-Africa Games.
Critics of Nigeria’s harsh Islamic punishments say the sentences are being handed down only to the poor and uneducated in a country where corruption is commonplace, armed robberies are part of the daily newspaper diet and top officials are regularly accused of embezzling state funds.
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/ 25 September 2003
A Nigerian man has been sentenced to death by stoning for sodomy, moments after single mother Amina Lawal had her stoning sentence for adultery lifted by another Islamic court. The conviction of 20-year-old Jibrin Babaji for sleeping with three boys was made by a Sharia court in the northern Bauchi State.
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/ 25 September 2003
Nigeria has invited South African Airways to bid for its proposed new national carrier to replace the bankrupt Nigeria Airways. President Olusegun Obasanjo last month approved a new airline for Nigeria after Nigeria Airways was liquidated because of debts and inefficiency.
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/ 10 September 2003
Eight people have been killed and 2 215 displaced in flooding in Kano State in northern Nigeria, state officials said on Wednesday.
Baby in her arms, a single mother condemned by an Islamic court to death by stoning appeared at a courthouse in northern Nigeria on Wednesday for an appeal of a sentence that has drawn an international outcry.
A third straight night of gunbattles between ethnic factions and security forces left at least 10 people dead in the Nigerian oil city of Warrim which has been at the centre of a conflict between the Itsekiri ethnic group and the neighbouring Ijaws, who are vying for supremacy in the oil-rich swamps west of the city.
Residents of Nigeria’s serene southeastern city of Calabar fretted on Wednesday about the arrival of Charles Taylor, despite official reassurances that Liberia’s former president and indicted war criminal would pose no threat to national security or to his neighbours.
Armed police backed by bulldozers tore down illegally built homes and shops in the Nigerian capital Abuja on Friday ahead of a visit by US President George Bush.
Police fired warning shots and tear gas on Monday to break up crowds of banner waving workers and armed thugs as a paralysing general strike over fuel prices took hold across oil-rich Nigeria.
An Islamic court in northern Nigeria on Tuesday adjourned, for the second time, an appeal hearing against the sentence to death by stoning of mother of three, Amina Lawal.
Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo was sworn in for a second term on Thursday despite opposition calls for the results of last month’s election to be rejected.
Ethnic militants vowed to prevent voting Saturday in a broad swathe of Nigeria’s oil delta during legislative elections that pose a test for civilian rule in Africa’s most populous nation.
A Nigerian Islamic court postponed the start of mother-of-three Amina Lawal’s appeal against being stoned to death at a brief hearing here on Tuesday.
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/ 30 January 2003
An army of women is fanning out across northern Nigeria, dressed in brightly coloured, ankle-length robes, heads covered with scarves for modesty, each carrying an insulated box with ice packs and an oral vaccine.