Students told to cover up

14/06/2004 21:09  - (SA)  

News 24

Lagos - Authorities at the University of Lagos, Nigeria's largest campus, on Monday banned what they called an indecent "bare-it-all" trend in the clothes worn by female students.

In the statement spelling out a new dress code, the senate of the university warned that students should not attend lectures in clothes revealing their busts, chest, stomach, upper arms, back or buttocks.

The new code also bans party clothes, beachwear, bathroom slippers, skirts with a slit above the knee, skimpy "spaghetti tops" and "show-me-your-belly" crop tops, the statement added.

The new rules came into force just two weeks before classes resume after a two-month vaction.

The university has a student population of about 40 000.

Edited by Tisha Steyn

http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=reutersEdge&storyID=5462873

Nigerian Warlord Says Vote Fraud Fuels Conflict

Sat Jun 19, 2004 02:13 PM ET

By Tom Ashby

OLD CALABAR RIVER, Nigeria (Reuters) - A Nigerian warlord said on Saturday he took up arms to fight for control of the Niger delta's oil wealth because the government had thwarted peaceful change by stealing elections.

Flanked by militia wearing charms and holding Kalashnikov assault rifles in a fishing camp close to the oil city Port Harcourt, Mujahid Dokubo-Asari said his group now controls three local councils in Rivers state, one of the main oil-producing states of southern Nigeria.

Nigeria is Africa's most populous country and its leading oil producer but its resource wealth has fueled political division, violence and corruption.

Asari, who recently stepped down as president of the ethno-political group the Ijaw Youth Council, has been declared a wanted man by the state for alleged "cult" activities, a local term for gangsterism.

But he says the government is trying to discredit the delta people's fight for a fair share of the region's huge oil wealth.

"I believe that the only path to self determination and resource control is the path followed by people in South Africa, in Chechnya, in Kosovo -- the path of armed struggle," he said in an interview with Reuters in a tin-roofed shack hidden in the mangrove forest.

Asari, who is based in the eastern side of the Delta's vast region of swamps and river channels, said he uses oil siphoned from pipelines to finance a huge arsenal, including rocket-propelled grenades, machine guns and "hundreds" of Kalashnikovs, and an army of 2,000 men.

"We will take our oil and whatever resources are available to us to sustain our struggle and we have no apology to anybody. We are not stealing it, it belongs to us. People are stealing our resources."

DISENFRANCHISED

Asari, once a leading public figure in the Ijaw activist scene, said he was driven underground soon after the Ijaw Youth Council publicly rejected the April 2003 election result, which gave President Olusegun Obasanjo a second term and his PDP party a huge majority in Rivers state.

"Our people were disenfranchised. They were not allowed to vote," he said.

The State Department said the elections were "marred by serious irregularities and fraud."

Since the poll, Asari says he has been attacked several times by paramilitary groups supported by the government. State information commissioner Magnus Ngei Abe denied the state government gave any support to militia.

Then in early June, hundreds of army, air force and navy descended on Asari's stronghold at Buguma, near Port Harcourt, where about 20 were killed.

"The government is sponsoring a counter-revolutionary group to thwart the efforts of the popular movement," Asari said.

Asari is one of a long line of self-styled freedom fighters in the Niger delta, who have tapped popular discontent with the government's failure to provide basic services and relieve poverty despite the region's huge oil wealth.

Last year, thousands of Ijaw militants staged an uprising in the western part of the delta around the city of Warri in an attempt to win more political and economic power.

The fighting briefly forced oil companies to shut about 40 percent of the OPEC nation's oil output, until it was crushed by the deployment of about 5,000 troops who remain there today.

ILLICIT OIL

Asari said the electoral fraud and militarisation of the delta showed that the path of negotiation, pursued by many other Ijaw activists, had failed.

"It is only violence that brings tyrants to their senses because tyrants survive by violence."

Oronto Douglas, a leading Ijaw activist and human rights lawyer, said the rise of Asari was an indictment of government's policy toward the impoverished delta region.

"The rise of Asari is a clear manifestation of the government's refusal to adopt a dialogue of reason and respond to the needs of the local people," he said.

"But whether the mass of the people support Asari's decision to take up arms remains to be seen."

Oil companies blame criminal gangs for stealing between 50,000 and 100,000 barrels per day from the maze of pipelines criss-crossing the delta's mangrove swamps.

Asari said he was against taking oil workers hostage, but supported the closure of oil production in the delta.

The state government said Asari's political rhetoric was just a cover for a criminal engaged in turf wars over lucrative river routes used by oil smugglers to export stolen crude.

Asari says his army, known as the Niger Delta People's Volunteer Force, is clearly distinguished from criminal gangs.

Like many Niger delta activists before him, Asari questions the legality of the Nigerian state and wants a referendum of Niger delta people to decide it they want to opt out of the federation.

Muslims Mark Empire's 200 Years in Africa

Sunday June 20, 2004 7:16 PM

By GLENN McKENZIE

Associated Press Writer

SOKOTO, Nigeria (AP) - Saluted by sword-waving Muslim warriors on horses and camels, African presidents and emirs on Sunday celebrated the 200th anniversary of a holy war that launched the sub-Sahara's greatest Islamic empire and urged an end to rising Christian-Muslim violence that has killed thousands here.

Appeals for peace - evoking six years of fiery religious rampages by machete-waving mobs in Nigeria, Africa's most populous nation - overlaid a day of musket-blasting pageantry in Sokoto, capital of the 19th-century Sokoto caliphate, or kingdom.

President Olusegun Obasanjo, a Christian from the south, condemned culprits of both faiths for the rising bloodshed in the nation's modern day holy wars.

``Anyone who burns houses or places of worship, either mosques or churches'' is an ``infidel,'' said Obasanjo, who wore the brown embroidered caftan and towering white headdress of northern Muslims in a gesture of Muslim-Christian conciliation.

Obasanjo's 1999 election, ending 15 years of repressive junta rule, unleashed religious, ethnic and political turmoil that since has claimed more than 10,000 lives in Nigeria.

Explosions of Muslim-Christian violence have killed hundreds this year alone - most recently last month in Adamawa state, where dozens died in clashes over the height of a mosque's minarets next to the palace of a Christian tribal chief.

In May, religious slaughter led Obasanjo to declare emergency rule in one state for the first time in his six-year effort to cement civilian rule.

On Sunday, Obasanjo recalled the successes of the long-ago African empire, before the advent of the West.

``Contrary to the misrepresentations of some ... we were already a highly organized people before the arrival of the adventurers of colonization,'' the Nigerian leader added.

Sokoto, in Nigeria's north, stood until British colonial rule as the center of a Muslim kingdom that spanned parts of six modern African nations - Nigeria, Cameroon, Togo, Benin, Niger and Burkina Faso.

Itinerant preacher Shehu Usman dan Fodio had catapulted the kingdom into being with a 1804-1808 holy war launched against infidels and wayward Muslims.

The June 19, 1804, battle of Tafkin Kwatto, a village about 60 miles from Sokoto, was widely seen as the war's turning point.

The victory of what some historians term West Africa's ``French Revolution'' sparked copycat jihads across the arid savannah plains of Senegal, Mali, Ivory Coast, Chad, Central African Republic and Sudan.

In Sokoto's central square on Sunday, Muslim Hausa and Fulani fighters in flowing robes and medieval battle garb paid fierce homage to that history.

Riding tasseled horses and camels, hundreds of warriors clutching swords, spears and battle axes saluted Obasanjo, three former Nigerian presidents, and the leaders of Ghana, Chad and Niger.

In rare public comments, the current sultan of Sokoto declared that the 19th-century jihad fighter's cause had nothing to do with the rampages of today.

``I wish our own leaders would hold these values close to our hearts and entrench unity and peaceful coexistence,'' Sultan Mohammed Maccido told the crowd and the warriors.

He mourned ``the loss of intolerable numbers of lives, and destruction and loss in property'' in Nigeria's religious violence.

Sokoto today is part of 12 predominantly Muslim states that have adopted strict Islamic Shariah laws since 2000. Christians in Sokoto are few.

Dan Fodio is still widely revered by Muslims as a hero for spreading piety and Arabic literacy. Yet some Christians remember his uncompromising attitude toward nonbelievers, for whom he was once quoted as saying ``there is no free place of the intellect.''

Battle sites and burial grounds for Dan Fodio and his followers have been turned into monuments and mausoleums.

``He fought for Islam. He captured many places and spread knowledge,'' said Muhammadu Tambari, Dan Fodio's great-great-great grandson, an ostrich farmer.

``The jihad we are doing now is teaching and preaching to our children and the children of others. Spreading Islam,'' Tambari said. Modern day religious violence had no value, the jihad fighter's descendant said - only ``creating more problems.''

http://www.guardian.co.uk/worldlatest/story/0,1280,-4225756,00.html

Nigeria: Soldiers Kill Two Villagers in Plateau State

UN Integrated Regional Information Networks

NEWS

June 24, 2004

Posted to the web June 24, 2004

Abuja

Two villagers were shot dead and several others injured by soldiers searching for weapons in Nigeria's volatile Plateau State, witnesses said on Thursday.

The soldiers were in the village of Mabudi, in Langtang South district, investigating reports of villagers hoarding illegal weapons, according to one local resident, Justin Kampak.

A crowd of villagers was attracted by the commotion caused by soldiers who were shooting their guns in the air, he said.

"Fearing they were about to be attacked by the crowd the soldiers fired at them, killing two people and injuring a number of others," Kampak explained to IRIN.

Troops were deployed in Plateau State under emergency rules imposed following Christian-Muslim violence that left hundreds dead and tens of thousands displaced.

Plateau State police commissioner, Innocent Ilozuke, confirmed the incident to reporters on Wednesday, but declined to make further comment, saying "it is a military affair".

A military officer at the Rukuba Barracks in the state capital, Jos, also confirmed the shootings and added that three people were injured, one of whom was an off-duty policeman. All the injured are receiving treatment at the barracks hospital.

In May, President Olusegun Obasanjo fearful of the violence spreading, declared a state emergency in Plateau State; sacked the elected governor and legislature and appointed retired Major-General, Chris Alli, state administrator.

Alli subsequently gave warring Plateau State residents until 7 June to turn in their weapons for cash payments of US $1,515 for every automatic weapon and US $189 for locally made rifles.

The response was lukewarm and the authorities believe large quantities of illegal weapons are still in the hands of local militias.

Christian-Muslim relations have worsened over the last four years as 12 overwhelmingly Muslim states in northern Nigeria adopted strict Islamic Shari'ah law.

Many Christians in this country of 126 million people fear that Muslims are seeking hegemony over the whole of Nigeria through the introduction of Shari'ah.

The Islamic legal code prescribes harsh punishments for many offences, including public flogging for drinking alcohol, stoning to death for adultery and the amputation of limbs for stealing.

http://allafrica.com/stories/200406240797.html

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Warri: Ijaw, Itsekiri Leaders Join Peace Deal

This Day (Lagos)

NEWS

June 24, 2004

Posted to the web June 24, 2004

By Onwuka Nzeshi

Warri

The march towards peaceful co-existence and cessation of all ethnic hostilities in Warri yesterday received further boost as leaders of both the Ijaw and Itsekiri ethnic groups signed a new peace accord. The accord was signed after six months of consistent dialogue.

Leaders of both ethnic nationalities have been holding peace talks geared toward ending the conflict over the ownership of Warri since January 14, 2004. Yesterday's resolution came barely three weeks after the youth militia groups signed a similar accord declaring a total cease-fire across the troubled area.

A joint press statement issued by the Ijaw of Warri/ Itsekiri Peace Forum disclosed that both parties have agreed that disagreements were never truly resolved through the barrels of the gun but through dialogue.

Chief Gabriel Mabiaku, the Iyasere of Warri who addressed a news conference on behalf of the two ethnic groups said even when people go to war and ignore dialogue, they soon find their way back to the negotiation table where the issues that led to the war are finally resolved.

"In pursuance of peace, both ethnic groups have resolved in the words of Prophet Isaiah to beat their swords into ploughshares and spears into prunning shears' and sing a new song - a song of peace and brotherly co-existence.

"Both ethnic groups agree to abhor violence as a means of solving political or any other problems. Both ethnic groups are committed to dialogue as the only means of peace in all situations," Mabiaku told newsmen at the Senior Officers mess NNS Delta, Navy Base, Warri, venue of yesterday's peace declaration.

Titled: "The Dawn of a New Era," the joint statement signed at yesterday's press conference, THISDAY gathered, was an abridged version of the report of deliberations and agreements between the two ethnic groups during the course of the six month dialogue.

Delta State Commissioner for Inter-Ethnic Relation and Conflict Resolution, Comrade Ovuzuorie Macauley, who was chief mediator at the bi-party dialogue said the full text of the report would be submitted to the state government before some of the salient parts of the peace accord could become manifest.

Macauley, a former chairman of the Nigeria Union of Journalists (NUJ) and subsequently chairman of the Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) in Delta State disclosed that the peace accord was not an end in itself, but a means to an end. He added that peace was truly in sight given the calibre of persons behind the present accord and the fact that the agreement was entirely produced by the feuding groups.

"Unlike in the past, this is the first time the warring groups have been allowed to enter into genuine dialogue devoid of government interference or the intimidatory atmosphere of security agencies as it were during the military days," Macauley re-assured newsmen who had questioned the authenticity of the new accord since similar peace accords had been discarded shortly after they were signed.

It was also gathered that though the six-month dialogue was not without the usual outpour of emotions and anger from the two age-long foes, an atmosphere of peace, cordiality and friendly disposition dominated the round-table talks.

Among signatories to the new peace deal were, Chief Wellington Okrika (Ijaw), Chief E.E. Ebimami (Ijaw), Chief Abel Ugedi (Ijaw), and Chief Jonathan Ari (Ijaw). There were also Chief Isaac Jemide (Itsekiri), Mr. J.O.S. Ayomike (Itsekiri), Chief O.P. Edodo (Itsekiri), Rev. Sam Ken (Ijaw) as well as Mr. A.S. Mene (Itsekiri).

Only on June 1, leaders of Itsekiri and Ijaw ethnic militias in Warri declared total cease-fire.

In what observers described as the immediate consequence of the special security operation lauched recently by the Delta State Governor James Ibori, leaders of the militias pledged to pursue a new initiative geared towards peaceful co-existence and re-integration of the feuding nationalties.

Kingsley Otuavo, an Ijaw who read the 'testament of peace', stated that the era of bloodshed and unbridled violence was over.

"We members of the Warri Itsekiri/Ijaw Grassroots Peace Front (WIIGPF), a coalition of grassroots leaders from both ethnic groups; on behalf of our people, are happy to announce to the Nigerian nation that we are greatly concerned about the failures occasioned by the protracted violence in the area (Warri) and vehemently express our discontent with the state of affairs and hereby convey our collective resolution to chart a new course in the interest of our treasured future. We yearn for a halt to the violence and look forward to a new dawn.

"We come before you today as a people who have been entangled in a vicious cycle of violence for nearly a decade. For years now, we have depleted huge human and natural resources, relentlessly scared away investments, recklessly rendered our people homeless and in fact ushered in a period of unrest characterised by a rise in crime rate including armed robbery, piracy, rape, and high mortality rate, just to mention but a few," said Otuavo.

The violence, kidnapping and killings in Warri area led to the suspension of the production of about 140,000 barrels per day of Nigeria's crude oil by ChevronTexaco, which in monetary terms translated to a daily loss of $4.76 million revenue.

The violence in the Warri area is also responsible for the loss of about 60,000 bpd of oil production by Shell Petroleum Development Company (SPDC). Militant youths in the area blew up the Escravos crude pipeline, which cut supply to the Warri and Kaduna refineries output and the eventual closure of the plants.

The Federal Government said the country was losing on the average $10 billion revenue yearly to the crises in Warri and other Niger Delta areas.

http://allafrica.com/stories/200406240311.html

Nigerian articles posted elsewhere.

Nigeria Paralyzed by Strike Over Fuel Prices

Shell says it unwittingly fed conflict in Nigeria

SEC Investigating Halliburton

The Nigerian Threat

Beneath Nigerian unrest, complex layers of tension

Nigeria: HIV/Aids Eradicating Military - Study

Shell Staff Begin 2-Day Warning Strike

Hector Igbikiowubo |Port Harcourt , Nigeria

| June 22, 2004

(allafrica)Staff of Shell Petroleum Development Company (SPDC) commenced a two day warning strike Monday in the Lagos, Port Harcourt and Warri offices bringing activities at the company to a temporary halt.

FG Evacuates 17,000 Nigerians From Cameroon

Oghenekevwe Laba | Lagos, Nigeria |June 22, 2004

(allafrica)The Federal Government has set a machinery in motion to repatriate no fewer than 17,000 Nigerians who fled the country to Cameroon in 2001 due to communal disturbances.

Nigeria: Freedom of Information Bill still elusive

Sam Olukoya  | IPS | 22 June 2004

(Mail & Guardian)In recent decades, Nigeria has acquired the unhappy reputation of being one of the world's most corrupt states. It would also earn a high ranking in a list of the most secretive nations.

http://allafrica.com/stories/200406280191.html

 *Bakassi: Nigeria Takes Over 12 Camerounian Towns in July *    

Vanguard (Lagos)

NEWS

June 27, 2004

Posted to the web June 28, 2004

By Victoria Ojeme

NIGERIA is due to take over about twelve former Camerounian towns and villages in line with the World Court judgment in the border dispute in Bakassi and other border areas.

The exercise that will be carried out under the auspices of the Nigeria/Cameroun Mixed Commission will have Cameroun formally ceding the towns to Adamawa, Borno and Taraba from July 14.

Confirming this development at the weekend, the resident information officer of the National Boundary Commission, Mr. Charles Dafe, disclosed that both Nigerian, Camerounian officials of the recipient states will be on hand to witness the handover ceremony.

Speaking with Sunday Vanguard exclusively in Abuja, Dafe said, " From July 14 some towns and villages will be formally handed over to the Nigerian Government. This handover will take place in the border towns in Adamawa, Borno and Taraba states"

" Towns and villages which will revert to Nigeria include, Nyame, Bourha, Vamngo, Batou currently occupied by Cameroun, while towns of Sepeo, Jumba, Leinde, Tipson and Gangwoni contested in the World Court by Cameroun are confirmed as Nigerian towns"

He added that "the Court's boundary alignment transferred Wula Hanko into Cameroun, while the status of Mogode and Roumzou which may encroach into Cameroun will be determined during the demarcation exercise"

The World Court judgment on the disputed oil rich Bakassi and other border areas between the two neighbouring countries had ruled on both countries claims to the disputed areas in November 2002, following which a Mixed Commission chaired by a United Nations Representative was set up to ensure a peaceful implementation of the judgment.

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Copyright © 2004 Vanguard. All rights reserved. Distributed by AllAfrica Global Media (allAfrica.com).

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http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/L2289150.htm

FEATURE-Islamic jihad yields to Nigerian politics

28 Jun 2004 01:03:06 GMT

By Dino Mahtani

SOKOTO, Nigeria, June 28 (Reuters) - Firebrand Muslim preacher Hussain Yusuf Mabira attended the 200th anniversary celebration of Islamic holy war in Nigeria, and was sickened by the display.

Thousands flocked to the northern town of Sokoto to remember the 19th century Islamic scholar, Usman dan Fodio, whose empire conquered swaths of West Africa and ruled northern Nigeria for 100 years.

Mabira said the ceremony had become just another tool for secular politicians, eager to hide their failings and paper over the sectarian divide -- which has killed thousands -- in the country's young democracy.

"The celebration is an innovation. It has nothing to do with Islam, it is only a political gathering," said Mabira, one of a growing number of Nigerian preachers pushing for an Islamic state in the world's seventh largest oil exporter.

As if to prove the point, the born-again Christian president Olusegun Obasanjo wore the costume and towering headdress of an emir to address the gathering of clerics, traditional kings and West African presidents assembled for the event.

Below his podium, horsemen in colourful flowing robes charged past kicking up dust, followed by drummers and footmen in medieval dress brandishing clubs and swords in a mock display of battle.

Only "infidels" would destroy a house of worship such as a church or mosque, said former military ruler Obasanjo, in a reference to a surge in ethno-religious violence that has killed more than 1,000 Nigerians over the past two months.

"We all belong to one entity, and that entity is Nigeria," he told the crowd. Outside the enclosure, armed policemen horsewhipped the swelling crowd into line.

CHRISTIANS AND MUSLIMS

Oil rich Nigeria's population of 130 million, the biggest in Africa, is almost equally divided between Christians and Muslims who have competed for dominance since the country's creation by the British 90 years ago.

Dan Fodio's bloody religious campaigns which pushed from the dry Sahel to the rainforested southern coastal regions of Nigeria, still reverberate across the huge West African country two centuries later.

Last month, fighting over fertile farmlands in the central state of Plateau killed hundreds of Muslims, sparked reprisal killings of Christians in the northern town of Kano and prompted Obasanjo to declare a state of emergency in Plateau.

The surge in religious conflict has accompanied the country's return to civilian rule since 1999, when Obasanjo's election ended 15 years' rule by the military, dominated by Muslim generals.

Pogroms in different parts of the country against minorities, both Christian and Muslims, have spread as tribal and religious communities compete for wealth and political power amid economic stagnation.

SECULAR KINGMAKERS

Usman's Sokoto Caliphate ceased to wield real power after independence from Britain in 1960, when the central and state governments became the "kingmakers".

In a famous case of meddling, the late military dictator Sani Abacha replaced the Sultan in 1996 over a disagreement related to an inheritance and replaced him with another of dan Fodio's descendents.

"The caliphate does not exist anymore," said Dr. Abubakar Siddique Muhammed, head of political science at the Ahmadu Bello University, the northern region's premier tertiary institution.

"But by giving the impression that it does as before, it can be used as a device to ensure unity for the north against southerners in order to mobilise support for their own politicians," he said.

Indeed, senior politicians from across Nigeria arrived at the ceremony, their motorcades thundering past bewildered cattle herdsmen, in search of cementing old alliances and fostering new ones ahead of the 2007 general elections which are expected to produce a northern Muslim president.

ISLAMIC LAW

Since the return of democracy to Nigeria in 1999, the northern ruling elite has become increasingly hostage to radical Islamic scholars such as Mabira, who attract thousands of faithful to their Friday sermons across the region.

Politicians introduced Muslim sharia law to the criminal courts across 12 northern states in 2000, and now push for more complete implementation of the code, including alms giving for the poor and stoning and amputation for adulterers and thieves.

Even some of those who support sharia privately feel that it is being used for the wrong reasons in Nigeria, where northern governors depend on religious leaders to deliver votes.

"They are playing to the gallery and the common man. If you uphold a man's religion he is more likely to follow you," said one Muslim government worker in Sokoto who asked not to be named.

For Mabira the politicisation of Islam precludes a true Islamic state.

"Full sharia cannot be implemented under a democratic dispensation, especially this one," he said in a shabby roadside cafe, sitting under a tattered calendar displaying a half naked woman.

"The Sultan is a government stooge, there to help a corrupt government perpetuate itself. Just look at the amount of money spent on this celebration."

Nearby, in the "Low-Cost" neighbourhood of Sokoto, a piece of graffiti scrawled on a wall of a crumbling brick shelter read "Down with the U.S.A., Bin Laden rules the world".

 

Jul 2, 2004

Polio Outbreak Reported in Nigerian State That Shunned Vaccination

The Associated Press

KANO, Nigeria (AP) - A suspected polio outbreak was reported Friday among children in a heavily Muslim Nigerian state that had boycotted immunizations campaigns.

Officials in the Kano state city of Rogo said there have been dozens of suspected polio cases in recent weeks.

The World Health Organization said it couldn't confirm the outbreak until a team that it has sent to the area finishes an assessment.

Kano was on of several states in northern Nigeria that had shunned polio vaccination drives over suspicions the vaccines were part of a U.S.-led plot to render Muslims sterile.

Nasril Dalha, city council vice chairman, told local Freedom Radio that the city is seeking help from Kano's state government.

"If this is not addressed quickly, I'm afraid more children will be affected," he said.

WHO officials in Geneva said this week that they expected immunization to resume in Kano within days. Local officials in Kano have not yet publicly committed to a date.

Since Kano suspended polio immunization, there has been a resurgence of cases across 10 African countries previously polio-free, with strains traced to Nigeria.

Nigeria has reported 259 polio cases this year. The figure represents more than 60 percent of the 339 cases reported worldwide.

AP-ES-07-02-04 2238EDT

This story can be found at: http://ap.tbo.com/ap/breaking/MGBPIHM47WD.html

Go Back To The Story

Polio surfaces in Nigeria: spread by rumour

Fear that immunizations were part of an American plot to make Nigerian Muslims sterile and spread HIV has led to a large outbreak of polio among children in the country's most heavily populated state, Kano.

Medical news agencies report that the outbreak is concentrated in the city of Rogo.

Kano is among the Nigerian states that have adopted the Sharia code of law, in which offences against the faith can be punished by death, flogging, amputations and shunning.

According to News.Medical.Net, local officials say they have recorded dozens of suspected polio cases in the last few weeks. Rogo is 80 kilometres southeast of the state capital Kano.

Late last month, epidemiologists of the Global Polio Eradication Initiative warned that west and central Africa is on the brink of the largest polio epidemic in recent years and that the Sudan had been reinfected with the disease.

In Nigeria, up to the last week of June, 197 children had been paralyzed as a result of the disease since the government suspended polio immunization campaigns in northern Nigeria late last year.

Dr David Heymann, the World Health Organization's Representative for Polio Eradication, said that the growth in polio infections in Africa was a crisis.

"At the beginning of 2003, only two countries in sub-Saharan Africa were polio-endemic. Today, however, Africa accounts for nearly 90 per cent of the global polio burden, with children now paralyzed in ten previously polio-free countries across the continent."

At the beginning of the month, the governor of Kano said the state would resume oral polio immunization in July but according to AllAfrica.com, it now says it cannot set a firm timetable for the resumption of vaccinations.

On July 1, according to the International Herald Tribune, the World Health Organisation advised all travelers to Nigeria to be fully immunized against polio.

According to the IHT, Nigeria, with 259 polio cases, now accounts for 77 per cent of polio cases in the world, and health officials are awaiting findings from tests on an additional 85 paralyzed children.

The polio virus has also spread from Nigeria to 10 formerly polio-free countries elsewhere in Africa, the IHT reported.

AllAfrica.com reported that WHO's "Kick polio out of Africa" campaign had cut polio infection on the continent to just one case a day last year from 205 cases a day in 1996.

3-Jul-2004

http://abcnews.go.com/wire/World/ap20040708_1300.html

Total Reaches Deal in Nigeria Oil Shutdown

Energy Giant Total Reaches Deal to End Shutdown of Oil Gas Production in Nigeria

The Associated Press

LAGOS, Nigeria July 8, 2004 -- A subsidiary of energy giant Total reached a deal with labor groups to end the shutdown of its oil and gas production in Nigeria, Africa's largest exporter, a company spokesman said Thursday.

Production was to resume later Thursday, according to a spokesman for Elf Nigeria. Labor officials could not immediately be reached for comment.

On Friday, the subsidiary stopped pumping the 235,000 barrels of oil and 187 million cubic feet of natural gas it normally produces each day. It feared violence and sabotage if workers staged a threatened strike.

The shutdown accounts for roughly 10 percent of Nigeria's total production of 2.5 million barrels a day.

Analysts said the amount lost represented roughly 10 percent of the world's excess capacity at a time of disruptions in supply from Iraq.

The reported deal followed meetings among government, management and union officials in the southeastern oil city of Port Harcourt.

The accord covers most major points of contentions between labor and management, the Elf Nigeria spokesman said, speaking on condition of anonymity. He declined to elaborate apart from saying that some smaller issues still needed to be settled.

The company informed clients Tuesday that it was unable to meet obligations for deliveries of oil and gas exports from Nigeria.

Nigeria is the world's seventh-largest oil exporter and the fifth-biggest source of U.S. oil imports. The West African country is facing growing labor unrest in its oil sector, with several major strikes threatened later this month

July 9, 2004, 11:04PM

Firms admit Nigerian bribery

Two units gave over $1 million to influence deals

By NELSON ANTOSH

Copyright 2004 Houston Chronicle

A guilty plea in a Houston court this week detailed how an oil-field services company paid $1.1 million in bribes over five years in Nigeria.

ABB Vetco Gray, a Houston-based subsidiary of ABB Ltd. of Switzerland, and its United Kingdom counterpart, ABB Vetco Gray of Aberdeen, Scotland, each agreed to pay fines of $5.25 million.

These deals bring the penalty to $16.4 million for the parent company after it agreed to surrender more than $5.9 million in profits and interest.

The U.S. Justice Department and the Securities and Exchange Commission began their investigations after ABB disclosed the payments last year.

ABB Ltd. is in the process of selling its two subsidiaries. Putting the bribery investigation behind it is a major step toward closing the deals, an ABB spokesman told Bloomberg News.

The subsidiaries are being sold to investment firms. At one point last year, Houston's Cooper Cameron was thought to be a lead bidder for Vetco Gray, which makes equipment for oil and gas exploration and production.

In its complaint, the SEC said that from 1998 through early 2003 the U.S. and foreign-based subsidiaries of ABB that were doing business in Nigeria made illicit payments totaling more than $1.1 million to government officials. There also were suspicious payments in Angola and Kazakhstan.

From at least 1998 through 2001, employees of Vetco Gray U.S. and Vetco Gray UK provided cash and gifts to officials of the National Petroleum Investment Management Service, the Nigerian state-owned agency responsible for overseeing investment in oil and gas.

The payments were part of a scheme to influence the agency's consideration of Vetco Gray bids on projects, according to the complaint.

At least five other Nigerian contracts involved illicit offers and payments, the SEC charged.

The largest of these payments totaled $845,300, the SEC said, and involved the Bonga Project, a contract to provide equipment for drilling Nigeria's offshore Bonga oil field. Vetco Gray was selected, and the Bonga project alone generated revenues of about $187 million. The Bonga project payments were made through an intermediary.

Most of the payments were made directly in the United States in the form of cash and gifts, by an employee of Vetco Gray U.S. The money came from cash advances on the employee's corporate credit card and were reimbursed by Vetco Gray U.S., and Vetco Gray UK, which listed them as consulting fees.

The employee, whose last payment was reimbursed in February 2002, was not identified.

In particular, said the SEC, the payments were intended to reward Nigerian officials for giving Vetco Gray an edge by disclosing its evaluations of competing bids.

These employee payments were improperly recorded as ordinary business expenses in ABB's books, the SEC said. Part of the payments happened after ABB entered the U.S. market and came under the purview of the U.S. Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, which bans such payments.

nelson.antosh@chron.com

http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/ssistory.mpl/business/2672209

Itsekiri Protest Seizure of Orugbo Village by Soldiers, as Ijaw Allege Missing of 100 People

Vanguard (Lagos)

NEWS

July 16, 2004

Posted to the web July 16, 2004

By Kingsley Omonobi

Warri

THE Itsekiri are protesting the continued occupation of Orugbo in the Warri South local government area of Delta State by soldiers purportedly in pursuit of killers of ChevronTexaco workers, two American, and two naval men.

The Ijaw community of Ogbinbiri in Delta State, however, alleged yesterday that about 100 people were missing following Sunday's invasion by soldiers.

Also, the Ijaw National Congress (INC) said yesterday that for peace to reign in Warri, the Federal and Delta State governments should create a distinct local government each for the Ijaw, Itsekiri and Urhobo in the area.

However, Commander of the Joint Security Task Force, Brigadier-General Elias Zamani, yesterday vowed to flush out sea pirates and other bandits in the riverine, saying attempt to slow down the outfit would fail.

The Iwere (Itsekiri) Development Association in a statement said the people of Orugbo "want to go back home as their wives and children are the ones left in the town," and appealed to the Military Task Force in Warri to "allow them return home peacefully as they are neither the killers of the oil workers in Benin River or involved in sea piracy."

The group frowned at "the connection between the soldiers search for the killers of ChevronTexaco Oil workers episode and the Itsekiri/Ijaw peace accord. The peace accord is between the Itsekiri and Ijaw wanting peace as a result of the lingering crisis since 1997. The peace accord is supposed to usher in peace and economic well-being of both the Itsekiri and Ijaw.

"On the other hand, the soldiers are doing their work to effect law and order. It is, therefore, ironical to say what Zamani and his soldiers are doing will breach the Itsekiri /Ijaw peace accord. Instead, the work of the soldiers should complement the peace accord."

100 missing at Ogbinbiri

The Ogbinbiri community in a statement alleged that dozens of corpses littered the area while about 100 were missing following Sunday's alleged invasion by soldier.

Some of the missing persons were identified as Kaku Akpasibewei (student), Mrs. Victoria Edeku (house wife), John Pabiri, Helen Dawari and Mr. Diewari Aruplani. Among the dead were two children of the same parents: Augustine and Okumagbeni Lombiri, Cecelia Dimadi and Seimokumo Yinkori, a house wife.

The Amaokosuwei of the community, Chief Bresibe Sayami, and four other leaders in a statement, in Benin asked the Federal Government to "as a matter of urgency rescind its decision of brutality, killing, maiming and extinction of Ogbinbiri people and communities as reports on ground have never implicated or incriminated any of its members in the circumstances that culminated in the death of the expatriates."

The community stated that it was yet to understand the rationale for the indiscriminate killings and destructive military raids adopted by the Joint Military Task Force, tagged Operation Restore Hope, to the overall detriment of Ogbinbiri communities and enjoined both the Federal and State Governments to immediately put a machinery in place to rehabilitate and resettle displaced persons as well as stop further attack on Ijaw communities and people.

"All Ogbinbiri communities that have been razed down for no justifiable reason should be rebuilt and the socio-economic life of the people restored. To forestall further death and hardship, the Federal and State Governments should immediately send relief materials to the affected communities and persons.

How to achieve peace--Mamamu

However, Chairman, Western Zone of the INC, Chief Samson Mamamu, speaking in Warri said the creation of a distinct council each for the Ijaw, Itsekiri amd Urhobo "can be done by bringing all the Ijaw to Warri South-West local government with headquarters at Ogbe-Ijoh while all the Itsekiri will be under Warri North local government and have their headquarters at the Koko. The Urhobo can have their own headquarters at Okumagba Layout if they wish.

"Since it has now become clear that the purported peace accord was a sponsored one, we will suggest a way forward for peace to be regained. It has been a long time that the Ijaw and the Urhobo have been looking for political freedom, after they had been under serious political inconvenience for a long time.

"So, the divine message from the past commissions of enquiry including our present demand is separate local government areas for each of these ethnic groups. And since there is no further constitutional provision for the creation of new local governments as contained in the Ciroma Committee report, we are now compelled to advise both the Federal and State Governments to put heads together to infuse these ethnic groups into already existing three Warri local governments areas.

"That means, bringing all the Ijaw to Warri South-West with headquarters at Ogbe-Ijoh. The carving will include NPA right and left to Bowen Avenue, step down, South Warri with all lands at the right hand side down to Odion road to catch up with Cemetery road.

"For the Itsekiri, they can have Warri North consisting Ugborodo, Ogidigben, Orere and such areas like Ajamimogha, Ugbuwangue, Ugbori, Ekurede Itsekiri up to Warri North. If they desire, they can put their headquarters in Ugbori or Koko. The Urhobo have Agbara, Okere and Okumagba Layout."

Reminded that some Ijaw settlements are in Warri North, Chief Mamamu said: "The adjustment and separation will be a simple one to do as Ogbe-Ijoh, Saba, Diebiri and Gbaramatu clan were sometimes in Warri North for six years. So, no government should think of any geographical contiguity. We urge government to put this in place immediately for the real peace to come. In fact, the government can put in place another peace and reconciliation committee.

"But this time, the peace and reconciliation committee will be one embracing all the affected traditional rulers, known and respected political chiefs and leaders of thought with more straight forward thinking outside politics to establish solid peace."

On the arrest and flushing out of criminals which the Joint Task Force embarked upon, Chief Mamamu said: "The purported leaders of peace accord should not arrogate to themselves the achievement of sweeping the criminals from Warri. It was peace-loving Ijaw of Warri that came out of their own free will to assist the Task Force to flush out the bandits in their midst."

Zamani vows to flush out pirates

Speaking against the backdrop of reports that six villages were razed last weekend and several people killed when his men went for criminals and suspected pirates who have been terrorising Warri and the waterways, Gen. Zamani said the allegations were cooked up by certain people to cover their tracks.

He dismissed speculations in Warri that the Task Force had declared a member of the Egbema United Front wanted, pointing out that "if I had done anything like that, would you not know since it is through the media that we would declare them wanted. It is their conscience that is worrying them. They know that what they are saying is not right."

The commander then vowed that the security outfit would not relent until it had cleared the riverine and Warri of criminals. "And let me emphasize that the attempt to link the pursuit of criminals and sea bandits who have been making life miserable for people of these areas to the peace process would not work," Zamani said.

The Public Relations Officer of the Task Force, Major Said Ahmed, had earlier said contrary to reports that several people were killed, the Task Force men only went for cordon and search operation tofish out pirates and other bandits.

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Kano Govt Now Okays Polio Vaccine

Vanguard (Lagos)

NEWS

July 16, 2004

Posted to the web July 16, 2004

Kano

THE Kano State Government has told local opinion-formers that tests it conducted on oral polio vaccines have proved it is safe for distribution to children, delegates at a stakeholders' meeting said.

Although a spokesman for the state government refused to reveal the results of tests conducted by local medical experts -- saying only that an official statement would be made "very soon, perhaps by the end of the week" -- some of those at the meeting said they expected immunisation to restart rapidly.

"From the way the issues were discussed at the meeting, the government may have agreed to restart the exercise," said Kano businessman Ta'ambu Abdullahi, one of a group of influential figures invited by the state government to review its tests on the vaccine.

The densely populated city of Kano is at the centre of the world's largest and fastest growing outbreak of the polio virus, a contagious disease which strikes infants under six years old and often leaves them crippled.

Last year influential Muslim preachers in the region alleged that vaccines distributed by United Nations' health agencies to combat the disease were laced with chemicals designed to leave African girls sterile, as part of a US-led plot to depopulate the continent.

Governor Ibrahim Shekarau banned all immunisation work and commissioned a series of expert committees to conduct their own tests and to seek out a new source of "safe" drugs from a Muslim Asian country. International health experts dismissed the allegations and condemned the ban, warning that polio has now spread from Kano to re-infect African countries once free of the disease and has undermined attempts to eradicate the illness worldwide by the end of the year.

But Abdullahi Saleh Pakistan, an Islamic preacher who attended yesterday meeting said that most of his fellow clerics on the panel have been convinced by the local tests conducted on a batch of vaccine imported from Indonesia that the drugs were safe.

"From what we were told at the meeting, the committee said that polio vaccines to infertility ratio has been exaggerated, and it cannot cause harm to mothers. Almost all the Ulema (Muslim scholars) at the meeting are convinced of the need to urgently restart polio vaccination," he said.

The businessman, Abdullahi, agreed. "Even though I did not understand most of the medical jargon of the committee, I'm convinced that the polio vaccination should go on," he told AFP. However, despite the enthusiasm of those at the meeting, a spokesman for Shekarau refused to release the results of the nine-man medical committee's study of the test results or to give his government's reaction to them.

"The stakeholders were adequately briefed ... on the implications of the polio vaccine and comments were invited. The government will now very soon make an official pronouncement on its stance," spokesman Sule Ya'u Sule said.

"I don't want to be specific, but it's possible the pronouncement might be made by the end of the week. We have never said we will never be part of polio immunisation. We only suspended it to verify complaints of contamination of the vaccine," he added.

Earlier this month, the World Health Organisation and the UN children's agency UNICEF said that with 257 cases, Nigeria now accounts for more than three quarters of all the new polio infections in the world. Forty-four new cases of polio believed to be linked to the Kano outbreak have been recorded elsewhere in West Africa in regions once thought safe from the disease, the agencies said.

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3 Ijaw Groups Back Warri Peace Accord

Vanguard (Lagos)

NEWS

July 19, 2004

Posted to the web July 19, 2004

By Kingsley Omonobi & Neville Amorighoye

Warri

THE peace accord between Ijaw and Itsekiri was boosted, weekend, when three Ijaw groups decided to embrace peace in Warri, Delta State. The trio of Price Collins Eselemo, President, Warri National Congress (WNC); Richard Debekeme, Secretary, Meinbutus and Michael Iyoro, spokesman, Ijaw Youths Council (IYC) Western Zone led their groups to insist on a peaceful resolution of the numerous problems afflicting Ijaw/Itsekiri relationship. In the meantime, some other Ijaw leaders have said the controversial peace accord did not take the plights of the Ijaw into consideration.

A communique issued by the three groups said: "Not unmindful of the numerous problems afflicting Ijaw/Itsekiri relationship, they choose dialogue and not bloodshed in resolving them," adding that "any leader who wishes to cause any crisis is free to recruit his sons or daughters and family members for such demonic exercise." They called on Chief E. K. Clark and S. Y Mamamu to support the on-going peace effort between Ijaw and Itsekiri in the three Warri local government areas.

It would be recalled that on July 12, 2004, 11 of the 14-member Ijaw delegation supported the peace accord with the Itsekiri saying that the accord was intact and acceptable by the Ijaw irrespective of the blackmail by some groups and persons. "Our resolve to support the peace accord is based on our conviction that there is no alternative to peace. No crisis can be resolved by the barrel of the gun. Crisis can only be resolved at a round-table and we are determined to remain on the path of peace," the 11 members said.

However, the three Ijaw groups said in a communique that "the representatives of Ogbe-Ijoh, Egbema, Isaba and Diebiri clans of the three Warri local government areas, without prejudice to the withdrawal of Gbaramayu representatives, restate our resolve to stand by the report of the dialogue with the Itsekiri. We shall continue to work with our Itsekiri neighbours, the state and Federal Governments as well as well-meaning persons and organisations in the task of finding lasting solutions to the Warri crisis.

"We condemn opposition to the peace meeting and decisions so far taken at the round-table conference which brought not only a cease-fire to hostilities but immense benefits to Ijaw and Itsekiri. It is not true that the Ijaw were overshadowed by their Itsekiri counterparts at the peace meeting. We don't need to use AK-47 or bazooka to fire at the Itsekiri to create local government areas."

They absolved the Itsekiri of blame in the creation of new local government areas for the Ijaw, saying the Itsekiri are not the government and neither any of their agencies responsible for creating wards or local government councils.

However, the angry Ijaw leaders said they were irked by the purported peace accord because it did not give any concession to the Ijaw while the Itsekiri had a field day. "For instance, the area that says we should accept all court judgements of the Itsekiri. What type of agreement is that? If we are to accept such court judgements, even when they are suspicious, where would Gbaramatu, for instance, get its own local government council."

Coordinator of Ijaw communities in Delta State, Chief Bare Etolor, who gave the explanation in Warri, wondered if the leaders that signed the accord for the Ijaw did it for their personal interest or were ignorant. Said he: "Our people (leaders) are the ones confusing us. Around February and March last year, the elders agreed that we go for peace and drop hostilities. We all supported the peace process. But we have seen now that we are the fools not the Itsekiri. What I am saying is that, they ought to bring the contents to the Ijaw people whom they say they were representing. Nobody will trust them again.In fact, we are ashamed of these leaders. If their conscience was clear, they ought to stand by the agreement they signed. Why should some boys threaten you and you chicken out?"

Chief Bare Etolor, while explaining the seeming violence among the Ijaw ethnic nationality, said: "It is the frustration of the Ijaw that caused it. The Ijaw are the most deprived people. We are very slow to anger. We are so respectful to the extent that people see us as very primitive people."

Expatiating on the call for the Federal Government to probe the killing of 29 suspected pirates in the riverine Ijaw communities by the Joint Task Force, Chief Etolor said: "We suspect that these people were killed by youths armed and supported by the military. I want Gen. Zamani to probe where the people were killed. In the first place, why kill them without trial? These youths that killed them, will they not turn to sea pirates or armed bandits tomorrow if they are denied logistics, guns and other rewards? So, Zamani must investigate who killed those people."

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Jul 20, 2004

Royal Dutch/Shell Appoints First Nigerian to Lead Subsidiary in Africa's Oil Giant

By Dulue Mbachu

Associated Press Writer

LAGOS, Nigeria (AP) - Oil giant Royal Dutch/Shell Group named a Nigerian national Tuesday to head the firm's biggest African subsidiary - the first appointment of a Nigerian to the post.

The appointment of Basil Omiyi followed months of pressure by Nigerian labor unions who threatened production shutdowns to get Nigerians in senior positions with the company.

Omiyi, 58, will become managing director of Shell Petroleum Development Co. of Nigeria Ltd. on Sept. 1, the company said. Omiyi is the first Nigerian ever appointed to lead a major oil multinational subsidiary in Nigeria.

He also is the first African to hold such a senior industry post.

Shell is the biggest oil company in Nigeria, accounting for half of the 2.5 million barrels Africa's oil giant produces daily. Nigeria is the seventh-largest oil exporter and the fifth-biggest source of U.S. oil imports.

"I am honored to be the first of what I expect will be many Nigerians to hold the post. I look forward to the opportunities and challenges which lie ahead," Omiyi said in a statement.

He will succeed 48-year-old Briton Chris Finlayson, who will retain the role of "country chair for Nigeria" and assume the role of chief executive officer of Shell Exploration and Production in Africa. He will remain in Lagos, Nigeria's largest city, assuming his new duties from outgoing Netherlands-based chief executive Brian Ward, 57, who is retiring.

Omiyi, Shell's incoming Nigeria managing director, joined the multinational in 1970 as a petroleum engineer and currently is production director of Shell's Nigerian subsidiary. He has worked in Nigeria, the United Kingdom and the Netherlands.

Union leaders celebrated the news after threatening to shut down Nigeria's oil industry over demands for more senior positions for Nigerian nationals.

"That's cheering news. That's exactly what we've been fighting for 40-something years, that a Nigerian should head the operations of a major multinational here," said Brown Ogbeifun, president of the nation's main white-collar oil workers' union.

"It's a victory for all of us."

Ogbeifun, however, did not rule out a national oil workers' strike threatened for next week over other issues - pensions and demands Nigeria's government-owned oil refineries to be repaired.

AP-ES-07-20-04 1103EDT

This story can be found at: http://ap.tbo.com/ap/breaking/MGBSW8P5WWD.html

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Six Foreign Oil Workers Kidnapped in Bayelsa

This Day (Lagos)

NEWS

July 20, 2004

Posted to the web July 20, 2004

By John Iwori

Yenagoa

alamieyeseigha Cuts Short Overseas Trip

A resurgent siege on oil workers hit the industry yesterday after about six expatriate staff of an oil services firm, Conoil Limited, a subsidiary of Consolidated Oil Limited, were held hostage by suspected Ijaw youths at Sangana in Brass Local Government Area of Bayelsa State.

Although the cause of the youths action and the nationalities of the foreign workers could not be immediately ascertained, THISDAY checks revealed that the hostage taking incident might not be unconnected with the youths' demand on the oil service company for employment and contract opportunities.

The development, coming barely three months after four oil workers, including two Americans, were killed in the Niger Delta area, forced the Balyesa State Governor, Chief Diepreye Alamieyeseigha, to cut short his trip to the United Kingdom.

It was learnt that the irate youths took over the facilities of the oil service firm late yesterday following the breakdown of negotiations with the company's management.

Sources said while the youths militants demanded full employment in the company as long as its contract lasts, the management of Conoil Ltd insisted that they do not have the requisite experience and qualifications to work in the company. The youths insisted that the oil company's position was "unbearable and unacceptable".

"That is why they went into negotiations with the management of the company but when this did not yield the desired results, the aggrieved youths took over the oil facilities and held the workers on duty hostage", the source explained.

It was gathered that while the embassies of the affected expatriate staff had been contacted, President Olusegun Obasanjo was also said to have contacted Alamieyeseigha and his deputy, Dr. Goodluck Jonathan.

Alamieyeseigha who was on the entourage of Vice President Atiku Abukabar to United Kingdom was asked to return to the country immediately.

Already, a rescue team made up of top government functionaries from the area has been put together by the state government.

The team will be leaving the state capital, Yenagoa this morning to Sangana.

"The rescue team mission is to secure the release of the abducted oil workers with minimal involvement of security agents," another source said. The state government was said to have taken the option of using prominent indigenes of the area to secure the release of the workers to avoid any confrontation between the irate youths and security operatives which may lead to loss of lives.

Sangana, Fish Town, Ezetu I and II, Kolokuama I and II in Bayelsa State are the host communities to American oil giant, Chevron-Texaco.

Disagreements between the management of the oil company and the people of the host communities over the implementation of memorandum of understanding (MOU) had often led to the abduction of oil workers in the past.

Yesterday's incident was the latest in the act of kidnapping of oil workers by militant youths in the oil-producing Niger Delta region to press demand for cash, jobs and contracts.

Mid last year, seven foreign oil workers were kidnapped by suspected Ijaw militants who demanded N46 million as ransom to release their hostages. The workers including two Colombians, a Briton, one Australian, a Russian and a Scot, were abducted while testing an evacuation boat.

The kidnap was preceded by an earlier fierce battle between Nigerian Navy personnel and Ijaw youths over the rescue of 16 oil workers held hostage by Ijaw militants on two ChevronTexaco oil platforms offshore in Bayelsa State. The act led to the loss of 23,000 barrels of oil per day. One of the militants was killed while another youth and an oil worker were wounded during the operation.

Militants also took hostage - nine oil workers employed by Shell. The contract workers were ambushed while ferrying supplies by barge to Shell's Forcados/Yokri oil and gas facility in the Niger Delta.

In April 2003, about 100 Nigerian oil workers took 170 Nigerians and 97 of their foreign colleagues hostage during a wildcat strike over transportation and other demands. The rigs were about 25 miles off Nigeria's southern coast.

The nation and the oil industry was visibly shaken when militant youths attacked a boat carrying some oil workers on the Benin River last April, killing seven people including four oil workers and three naval personnel.

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FG Unveils Strategies for Re-Branding Nigeria

This Day (Lagos)

NEWS

July 23, 2004

Posted to the web July 23, 2004

By Tokunbo Adedoja And Tunmise Adekunle

Lagos

In its bid to promote the image of the country abroad and re-orientate Nigerians, the Federal Government yesterday unveiled strategies to be employed in achieving the objectives.

Explaning the strategies at a briefing of media executives in Lagos, Minister for Infor-mation, Mr. Chukwuemeka Chikelu, said the project would involve both the private and the public sectors.

Noting that the nation's image abroad has been dented by unscrupulous Nigerians and some foreigners, Chikelu said government was determined to ensure that Nigeria's image abroad improved.

The strategy, which has been divided into two parts, namely informational agenda and orientational agenda, he said, would involve both the print and electronic media, public relations practitioners and advertising agencies.

Also, a strong campaign against certain activities such as the Advance Fee Fraud (a.k.a 419) which has battered Nigeria image abroad would be embarked upon while positive aspects of the nation would also be highlighted for all to see.

As a way of achieving the project, Chikelu said government has identified some countries that are of strategic importance to the nation's interest and information about Nigeria's potentials would be made readily available in those countries.

One of the locations where such informational materials would be circulated, according to him, are the entry points in those countries such as airports.

Under the project, countries like the United States of America, Jamaica, Egypt, United Kingdom, South Africa, France and China are classified as primary centres. Also, countries like Canada, Belgium and Japan are grouped as secondary centres, while Brazil has been classified as tertiary.

The minister also said outstanding Nigerians that have made the country proud in various fields of endeavour would be given recognition and promoted as role models.

The minister added that the National Orientation Agency (NOA) would also be actively involved in the project that would include the promotion of the nation's values, resources and cultural heritage.

Describing Nigeria as a country with limitless potentials, Chikelu said the image problem created for the country by some unpatriotic Nigerians and greedy foreigners is responsible for the fears which some genuine investors entertain about their safety in the country.

He noted that most of the foreign companies operating in the country, have high returns on their investments, such that cannot be matched by those operating in other parts of the continent.

Describing Nigeria as an emerging market, the Minister said the country has the fastest growing telecommunication sector in the world.

Chikelu also said any investor that is not operating in Nigeria cannot be said to have entered the African market.

While allaying fears about what would become of the project after the expiration of the tenure of the present administration, the minister expressed confidence that the project would outlive the Obasanjo government. He added that unlike similar projects in the past, it would be packaged, not as a government initiative, but as a Nigerian plan.

President Olusegun Obasanjo had last week, during a presidential forum for captains of Industries and Commerce, disclosed that government has approved the inclusion of over N600 million in this year's budget for promoting the nation's image.

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Nigeria: Piracy Report Says Nigerian Waters the Most Deadly

UN Integrated Regional Information Networks

NEWS

July 27, 2004

Posted to the web July 27, 2004

Lagos

Nigerian waters were the most deadly during the first half of 2004 according to a new piracy report, and analysts are blaming the proliferation of weapons in the coastal oil-rich Niger Delta region where armed gangs trade stolen crude.

The International Maritime Bureau (IMB) said on Monday that half of the 30 deaths recorded in pirate attacks around the world between 1 January and 30 June occurred in Nigerian territorial waters.

In terms of the number of attacks, Nigeria ranked third with 13 attacks, behind Indonesia (50) and the Malacca Straits (20).

"Both the increased number of attacks in this area and the degree of violence being used is of grave concern and we will be putting pressure on the Nigerians to step up anti-piracy measures," IMB director Pottengal Mukundan said in a statement.

Industry watchers, like Gbenga Olumide of oil research firm Rigs Concerns, say Nigeria's growing prominence for piracy can be traced back to its economic lifeblood and the illicit ciphoning of crude oil to sell to vessels offshore.

"The trade has in turn funded further arms procurement and been behind the spawning of a wide range of criminal activities, including sea piracy," Olumide told IRIN on Tuesday.

Gangs, armed with automatic rifles and increasingly with rocket-propelled grenades, cruise along in speedboats and barges, finding cover in the maze of creeks and rivers intertwined with mangrove swamps that make up the delta where the River Niger empties into the Atlantic Ocean.

According to Olumide, their activities have drawn illegal oil buyers and arms traders to the Gulf of Guinea coast off Nigeria, making the region, which has always had high volumes of shipping traffic including oil tankers and general goods vessels, more dangerous.

Self-styled rebel leader, Asari Dokubo of the Niger Delta People's Volunteer Force, is one of the militants who wants to end the federal government's stranglehold on the 2.5 million barrels of oil produced each day in the region.

In an interview with IRIN this month he admitted to availing himself of crude from the pipelines of oil multinationals to fund his struggle. And he confirmed the presence of illegal arms dealers along the coast, saying he had enough weapons at his command -- AK47s, general purpose machine guns and rocket-propelled grenades -- to equip 2,000 men.

"We are very close to the international waters and it's very easy to get weapons," Dokubo said.

Industry analysts say that decades of corruption and mismanagement by successive Nigerian regimes has left the oil-rich Niger Delta one of the most impoverished regions across the country. Massive unemployment is just one of the manifestations with a myriad of knock-on effects.

"The consequences of unemployment are numerous," said a recent report commissioned by oil giant Royal Dutch/Shell and written by WAC Global Services. "Youths become involved in criminal activities (e.g. illegal oil bunkering, thuggery, kidnapping, piracy, etc.) and recruited into crime cartels and armed militias."

The report estimates that the 10 percent of Nigeria's daily output or 100,000 barrels stolen every day is worth about US$1.5 million and would buy enough weapons to sustain a force of 1,500 youths for two months.

Captains complaining

Emeka Okoroanyanwu, editor of Lagos-based Maritime Quarterly, told IRIN that waters within and just outside Nigeria's territory posed problems.

"Many of the attacks occur on the high seas as ships approach Nigerian waters," he explained. "An equally large number of attacks occur within Nigerian waters as well and ship captains are complaining."

Okoroanyanwu said one almost certain consequence would be higher shipping costs for Nigerian and other Gulf of Guinea destinations as shippers begin to factor higher insurance premiums into their pricing.

The IMB said it had issued a warning to ships in the vicinity of Nigeria and advised seafarers to be on their guard.

The maritime group also noted that security problems on land were diverting the resources of the Nigerian authorities from security at sea.

"The IMB believes the increased ferocity and number of attacks is linked to law and order problems ashore that criminal gangs of pirates are using to their advantage, knowing that the authorities are under pressure and so unable to respond adequately to attacks at sea," it said.

But Nigerian security forces say that without their crackdown on militia groups and other armed gangs in the Niger Delta over the past year, the tally of piracy deaths would have been considerably higher.

Security officials told IRIN that navy troops patrolling the coastal wars in four ships donated by the U.S. Defence Department had impounded more than 20 ships in the past year and arrested 90 people, including 37 foreigners, accused of dealing in stolen crude oil.

A military spokesman, who did not want to be named, said that troops had been successful in destroying several criminal gangs operating in the Niger Delta following an incident in April in which gunmen attacked a boat belonging to ChevronTexaco, killing seven people, including two American oil workers.

"Troops have killed at least 30 pirates in gun-battles in the past two months and dismantled their infrastructure, including sophisticated communication equipment," he said but declined to provide further details.

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Aug 8, 2004

Ethnic, Criminal Bloodletting Over Oil Wealth Has Nigeria's Petroleum Industry Reeling

By Glenn McKenzie

Associated Press Writer

OMADINO, Nigeria (AP) - The sound of speedboats on the otherwise calm rain forest creek was enough to send villagers fleeing.

"They were afraid. They just ran away," said Gabriel Walter, 42, the only resident of Omadino who stayed to meet journalists and soldiers visiting the oil-rich swamps of Nigeria's volatile Niger Delta. Entire families fled into surrounding forests with laundry still hanging on the line and pots gurgling on cooking fires.

Walter would not say whether it was Nigerian security forces or ethnic militants that the townspeople feared. Both groups are known to go on killing rampages.

Nigeria's oil industry - Africa's largest and the fifth-biggest source of U.S. oil imports - is likewise concerned for its future. A yearlong spree of bloodletting has killed more than 1,000 people in the delta - unrest comparable in scale to Chechnya and Colombia.

The growing insecurity in Nigeria's most lucrative industry comes as oil prices briefly hit a record intraday trading high Tuesday of $44.24 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange following a heightened U.S. terror alert and supply concerns in Russia and OPEC, of which Nigeria is a key member.

Major oil companies hope to double production in West Africa's Gulf of Guinea, estimated to hold up to 10 percent of the world's oil reserves. The United States, Europe and Asia are increasingly looking to the region's oil as an alternative to crude from the Middle East.

Yet residents of Nigeria's southern oil-producing delta complain their elected leaders have failed to fight poverty in the region. Tensions over oil revenues have aggravated ethnic strife. Kidnappings and sabotage have escalated, forcing costly shutdowns by companies pumping crude.

The Nigerian subsidiary of San Ramon, Calif.-based ChevronTexaco Corp. is among the companies hit hardest by Nigeria's worsening oil-related violence, suffering an estimated $750 million in costs from sabotage to its wells, pipelines and other facilities since March 2003.

Sixteen months later, the company still can't restart production at pipeline pump stations and wells considered unusable or unsafe, resulting in production losses estimated at more than $1 billion.

Royal Dutch/Shell, Nigeria's largest oil operation, which produces half the 2.5 million barrels Nigeria exports daily, also is reeling.

A confidential 93-page security report commissioned by Shell in December 2003 and obtained by The Associated Press and other news organizations warns that mounting attacks by criminals and ethnic militants could force the oil giant to abandon its onshore operations in the delta by 2008.

Shell spokesman Simon Buerk rejects the possibility of a company pullout.

"We don't agree with that conclusion. We are committed to our operations in Nigeria," Buerk told the AP.

Other company officials concede, however, that the firm is increasingly turning its attention to offshore oil fields because it considers them safer from attack by bandits and activists.

Buerk declined to discuss the confidential report's other conclusions: that Shell "exacerbates conflict" in the way it gives cash and contracts to delta residents and offers "stay-at-home pay" to disgruntled youths.

Such "lack of transparency" encourages villagers to fight Shell - and each other - for a share of the oil money, the report's authors concluded.

Multinational companies encourage crime through "corruption in the contracting process and the payment of ransoms that make crime lucrative," the study warned, adding that Shell's "social license to operate is fast-eroding."

Indeed, delta residents, most of whom earn less than $1 a day despite the region's petroleum wealth, accuse oil companies of colluding with Nigeria's government to foment divisions between rival community groups in a strategy to deprive them of oil earnings.

Addressing such allegations, the Shell-commissioned report's authors say there is "no evidence" companies have these sinister motives. Yet the authors warn that some oil company employees do "engage in criminal activities" that deprive residents of benefits.

Oil companies are feeling the backlash from militants and other groups, which increasingly use sophisticated equipment to syphon oil from pipelines for resale to tankers bound for Europe, Asia and South America. Nigeria's government estimates the industry loses up to 300,000 barrels a day - the equivalent of 15 percent of total exports.

Another growing concern for oil multinationals, company officials privately acknowledge, is the possibility of being blamed for killings, robberies or other abuses inflicted by Nigerian police and soldiers trying to control the restive delta.

Earlier this month, security forces raided five delta villages, leaving 15 people dead and ransacking and burning homes, according to witnesses and militants. The operation was part of an effort to combat attacks on multinational oil operations, the security forces said.

In March, a U.S. federal judge in San Francisco ruled that ChevronTexaco could be made to stand trial for civil damages in the United States on allegations that its Nigerian subsidiary was linked to the deaths of nine people allegedly shot by soldiers during protests on an offshore oil platform in 1998. ChevronTexaco has denied any wrongdoing in the case.

Similar U.S. cases are pending against other oil concerns. A lawsuit brought by members of Nigeria's ethnic Ogoni tribe in New York accuses Shell of colluding with Nigeria's former military regime to cause the hanging of nine activists, including author and Nobel Peace Prize nominee Ken Saro-Wiwa, in November 1995. Shell contends it lobbied Nigeria's government to free the activists.

Many residents of the delta, increasingly awash with automatic weapons and rocket launchers, say they have given up hope of a peaceful resolution to the conflicts between armed gangs, soldiers and oil companies.

One group led by Alhaji Dokubo Asari, a self-styled warlord in the jungle creeks near the oil city of Port Harcourt, openly challenges President Olusegun Obasanjo's government in what activists call an "armed struggle" for territory and crude.

"If we had guns, we wouldn't be running," said Walter, the resident remaining in Omadino after all his fellow villagers had fled.

AP-ES-08-08-04 1921EDT

This story can be found at: http://ap.tbo.com/ap/breaking/MGBPSNUSNXD.html

http://allafrica.com/stories/200408250207.html

Senate Directs Shell to Pay Ijaws $1.5bn Compensation

This Day (Lagos)

NEWS

August 25, 2004

Posted to the web August 25, 2004

By Kola Ologbondiyan

Abuja

Senate yesterday unanimously directed Shell Petroleum Development Company Nigeria Limited (SPDC) to commence the payment of the sum of $1.5 billion to the Ijaws Aborigines of Bayelsa State as compensation. The money was for the severe health hazards, economic hardship, injurious affection, avoidable deaths and sundry maladies which the people have suffered as a direct or indirect consequence of multiple spillages occurring in SPDC's facilities across the eight local government areas of the state since the company commenced operations in 1956.

The upper legislative house approved that $1 billion is payable forthwith while the $500 million be paid within five years period in five equal installments of $100 million per annum commencing not later than one year after the payment of the initial $1 billion aforementioned.

The Senate mandated its committees for Petroleum Resources (Upstream) and its Niger Delta counterpart to ensure SPDC compliance, even as it resolved that "the recommendations of the Legal Advisory Panel on the Investigative Hearing of Petition by the Ijaw Aborigines of Bayelsa State against Shell Petroleum Development Company Limited (SPDC) as presented to the Federal House of Representatives on 24 February 2003 be implemented."

These resolutions were predicated upon a motion entitled "Enforcement of the Recommendation of the Panel on the Petition by the Ijaw Aborigines of Bayelsa State Against Shell Petroleum Development Com-pany," brought by Senators Lee Maeba, David Brigidi, Inatimi Rufus Spiff, John K. Brambaifa, James Manager and Ibiapuye Martyns-Yellowe.

Maeba, who moved the motion which was seconded by Senator Sanni Kamba, recalled that the House of Representatives Committee on Public Petitions received a petition from a body known as the Ijaw Aborigines of Bayelsa State, dated 8 December 2000 against SPDC.

He noted that the House Committee conducted public hearings on the said petition and received oral and documentary evidence from the petitioners and the respondent respectively.

http://allafrica.com/stories/200408300105.html

12 Killed in Fresh Cult War in Rivers

This Day (Lagos)

NEWS

August 30, 2004

Posted to the web August 30, 2004

By Okon Bassey

Port Harcourt

Twelve people were believed shot dead in a bloody exchange between people suspected to be cultists and a combined team of military personnel in Port Harcourt yesterday.

THISDAY gathered that the gunmen had overrun the Marine Base in the city and killed about five residents before the team of security personnel swooped on them and gunned down about seven of the cultists.

The invasion which occurred at about 5am Sunday morning along the Marine Base, Amadi Creek, close to the state police headquarters on Moscow road also left more than 80 cars badly damaged while kiosks along the water front were burnt down.

The latest attack on the Marine Base, coming a week after a similar event occurred at the Njamanze water front in which 10 people died, has led to mass exodus of non-indigenes residing at various water fronts in the state.

Prior to this incident, THISDAY checks reveal that the gunmen had served notice to residents living along all water fronts in the state including areas called Abuja, Creek road, Dockyard to quit. The cultists had claimed that they were not allowed to stay or operate from water fronts in the state..

The attackers, another source said, are suspected to be from Diobu area and those living in a section of the city popularly called 'Town'.

Residents in the area told THISDAY that they woke-up in the morning to an intensive exchange of gun fire between 5am and 9am.

According to sources, police succeeded in killing some of the gunmen after pilots of the flying boats the cultists used for the invasion were shot.

As at the time of filling this report, residents in the affected areas were seen packing their properties and fleeing the environment.

Ambulance and some other vehicles were also seen conveying corpses of the victims from the Marine Base just as a combined team of more than 60 mobile policemen and soldiers have completely cordoned off the area.

The Rivers State Police Commissioner, Mr. Sylvester Araba, confirmed the report but said only three people were killed. He said the violent clash was between armed men suspected to be members of rival cult groups operating in boats along Marine canals and water ways.

Following the sporadic shooting and invasion of water fronts by the combatants, he said anti-crime policemen have been deployed to fortify all Marine jetties, beaches and wharfs to counter the hoodlums and prevent their possible incursion into Port Harcourt metropolis. "Three suspects have been arrested in this connection while a contigent of the Rivers State joint security operations have been deployed to cordon off and protect all vulnerable points," the police commissioner stated.

http://allafrica.com/stories/200408300106.html

Shell Plans $9bn Five-Year Investment

This Day (Lagos)

NEWS

August 30, 2004

Posted to the web August 30, 2004

By Mike Oduniyi

Lagos

Moves Headquarters to Port Harcourt January

Shell Petroleum Develop-ment Company (SPDC) is planning to invest another $9 billion in the Nigerian oil and gas sector, over the next five years.

The investment covers the company's joint venture projects with the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NN-PC), oil exploration and production in the deep offshore and the expansion of the Nigerian Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) plant.

Already, Shell has awarded a $43 million contract for the exploitation of non-associated gas from its Oil Mining Leases (OMLs) 35 and 46. The gas will be supplied to the Bonny LNG plant from 2008.

Speaking in Lagos at a dinner in honour of staff of the company appointed into senior positions at the weekend, the outgoing Managing Director of SPDC, Mr. Chris Finlayson, said the investment plan will ensure that Shell maintains its position as the largest foreign investor in Nigeria.

Finlayson said that the investment represents Shell's long-term commitment to Nigeria.

"Coming at a time when there was some speculation about Shell's future in Nigeria, this development is a resounding demonstration of Shell's long-term commitment, quite apart from the further $9 billion that Shell intends to invest through SPDC, SNEPCO and NLNG over the next five years," he said.

Projects that will benefit from the investment include, the NLNG Train Six, Soku gas plant expansion, Offshore Gas Gathering System (OGGS) and the Bonga Southwest deepwater field with capacity of 145,000 barrels per day (bpd).

The commitment, according to him, was also demonstrated by the recent designation of Lagos as the Headquarters of Shell Exploration and Production Africa, where 30 percent of its leadership will be in Nigeria.

Finlayson will assume the position of Chief Executive Officer of Shell Exploration and Production (Shell EP) in Africa with effect from October 1, 2004. He will be succeeded as head of the Nigerian operations by Mr. Basil Omiyi, a Nigerian.

Finlayson announced that SPDC headquarters will be fully relocated to Port Harcourt next January, as part of a major restructuring in the company.

He said despite the location of Shell's African regional headquarters in Lagos, the incoming managing director of SPDC, "will have exactly the same freedom of action and responsibilities as I have had as MD."

SPDC had appointed Mr. Mark Corner, as deputy managing director in addition to holding the portfolio of the Production Director. According to Finlayson, oil and gas production remains the heart of the company's business. "The aspirations of the Federal Government and the current favourable oil price environment both represent unique opportunities for the industry to grow," he said. Also speaking at the occasion, the SPDC managing director designate, Omiyi, said he would on assumption of duty on September 1, this year, be leading a new team that would deliver on Shell's commitment as operator of the NNPC/Shell/Total/Agip Joint Venture. The immediate focus of the team, according to Omiyi, will be to reposition the business to be able to deliver real value to stakeholders, achieve a gas flare down by 2008, pay more attention to sustainable community development and work closely with the government to eradicate criminality in the oil producing areas, especially oil theft. Shell said it was currently losing on the average, 50,000 barrels per day (bpd) to crude theft. "We will therefore continue to depend on governments at local, state and federal levels, as well as community leaders to address the situation. "The challenges posed by SPDC's importance to the national economy and the sensitivities surrounding oil and gas production mean there has never been and would never be a dull moment for us," he said.

Nigeria launches new offensive on delta criminals

02 Sep 2004 16:36:16 GMT

Source: Reuters

By Austin Ekeinde

PORT HARCOURT, Nigeria, Sept 2 (Reuters) - The governor of Nigeria's oil-rich state of Rivers has ordered top members of his government to leave office in what his spokesman said on Thursday was a purge of public figures linked to criminal gangs.

Governor Peter Odili made the order on Wednesday after cutting short his holiday to tackle escalating violence by gangs backed by political and ethnic leaders in the eastern Niger delta.

Odili vowed to eliminate the gangs who are involved in stealing an estimated 100,000 barrels of crude oil a day from pipelines and wellheads which they sell to buy weapons.

Clashes have killed at least nine people since the weekend, officials said on Thursday.

Odili said he had asked his state executive council to leave office in line with a directive he had issued in June following earlier fighting in the Niger delta.

Spokesman Emmanuel Okah said the move was to purge public figures linked to criminal gangs known as "cults".

"If any public officer is linked to any cult, he or she will no longer find safe haven in the government. There is going to be a state of reorganisation," he said.

The gangs, many of whom were originally armed to fight turf battles on behalf of politicians during last year's elections, have stepped up attacks in the swamps and mangroves of the eastern Niger delta in recent weeks.

"We have therefore given instructions that all necessary steps should be taken to decisively rid our state of these undesirable elements," said Odili, in a statement dated Sept. 1, obtained by Reuters on Thursday.

Security forces have already begun 24-hour patrols in and around the state capital and oil hub Port Harcourt.

Odili said patrols would be intensified on all waterways.

At least four people died in weekend violence and police said another five were killed in fighting between rival gangs in Port Harcourt on Tuesday night. Nigerian media reported at least 18 killed.

The chronic ethno-political conflict in the delta has threatened oil operations in Nigeria, the world's seventh largest oil exporter with an output of 2.5 million barrels per day.

Although the violence in the eastern delta has not halted exports, ethnic clashes in the western delta last year forced oil multinationals to temporarily shut in 40 percent of output.

The United States agreed recently to help Nigeria with military training in the region.

At least 11,000 people have been killed in sectarian fighting since Nigeria emerged from 15 years of military rule in 1999.

http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/L02321656.htm

09/04

Sackings over Nigeria's oil war

The governor of Nigeria's River State has axed his cabinet after renewed violence in the oil-rich southern city Port Harcourt left seven dead.

Gunmen walked into a restaurant on Tuesday night and opened fire, despite increased army and navy patrols after two weeks of clashes.

Peter Odili cut short his leave to deal with the escalating militia war.

Gangs vying for territory in the area are involved in the lucrative business of siphoning oil from pipelines.

The governor said the gangs amassed sophisticated weapons to defend their illegal activities and usually targeted each other in their struggle for supremacy.

"Unfortunately these dastardly acts often take place within the town and innocent citizens are caught in the crossfire," Mr Odili said, promising to do everything necessary to rout the militias.

Political dimension

According to the BBC's Sola Odunfa in Port Harcourt, people believe the gunmen were initially recruited, armed and funded by politicians to fight their opponents during the last year's elections.

Anyakwe Nsirimovu, head of a local human rights group says the politicians have now lost control of their private armies because gang leaders had not received their promised pay-offs.

"The initial contracts which they reached [with gang leaders] were not fulfilled, and they are rebelling," Mr Nsirimovu told AFP news agency.

However, Governor Odili said the gangs have always