The World Bank has budgeted about $230 million for Nigeria for project financing in the new fiscal year, which started July 1 2002 and ends June 30 2003. World Bank Country Director Dr. Mark D. Tomlinson said that basic education would gulp a total of $100 million, while Lagos State Transport Project and eradication of polio have been apportioned $100 million and $30 million respectively.

Nigeria has rejected a verdict of the International Court of Justice (ICJ) on the disputed Bakassi Peninsula, declaring that the court failed to take fundamental facts into consideration in arriving at its decision. The court had awarded sovereignty over the Peninsula to Cameroon.

President Obasanjo has picked up a nomination form to become a candidate for president in next year's vote, apparently rejecting suggestions that he should "reconsider" his re-election bid "in the national interest".

Scores of people have died in central Nigeria’s Plateau State in a series of raids by bandits and clashes between farmers and herders, residents and officials said.

A crude oil pipeline belonging to Royal/Dutch Shell has ruptured in southern Nigeria's Delta State. The resulting oil slick has affected five communities, company officials said on Wednesday.

Nigerian author Wole Soyinka, who made history as Africa's first Nobel Laureate in Literature, last week became the first African writer to win the coveted Italian Vita di Poeta prize.

Internews Network and Journalists Against AIDS (JAAIDS) Nigeria are currently accepting applications for the Project Manager position of the Local Voices program.

There is growing concern over the disproportionate increase in the number of women living with HIV/AIDS in Africa.  A paper by the Women Empowerment and Reproductive Rights Centre (WERRC) critically examines factors that promote the vulnerability of women to HIV infection under the patriarchal system in Africa, with a focus on Nigeria.

The Deputy Speaker of the House of Representatives has accused developed nations of encouraging multinational corporations operating in Africa and other third world countries to offer bribes to win contracts in strategic sectors of the economy.

CRS/Nigeria established its health programme in September 2001, with its initial efforts focusing on the fight against HIV/AIDS. CRS/Nigeria provides technical and financial assistance to the health and social services of the Catholic Church in order to build their capacity to respond to the HIV/AIDS pandemic. CRS is currently looking for a committed Programme Manager to join their Health team.

International attention is now focused on achieving sustainable tourism development through conservation of the ecosystem and Nigeria is no exception to this approach.

The Niger Delta town of Okpella in Nigeria's Edo state suffered its second oil spill in three years when a pipeline belonging to the Nigerian National Petroleum Company, a state owned concern, ruptured and spilled an as yet undetermined amount of refined crude oil into the environment.

Leaders of the disputed oil-rich Bakassi peninsular have reportedly threatened to secede if Nigeria hands it over to Cameroon, as ordered by the world court.

The end of military rule in Nigeria has brought little benefit to the people living in the oil producing communities of the Niger Delta, Human Rights Watch says in a new report. Despite the change from military to civilian government in 1999, there is still widespread deployment of army, navy and paramilitary Mobile Police at oil facilities across the delta. Much greater sums of money are flowing from the federal government to the delta region, but ordinary people living in the delta see little if any benefit from these funds, Human Rights Watch said.

At least 16 people were killed in renewed violence that erupted on Monday in Plateau State, central Nigeria, according to officials and residents.

The impeachment notice served on President Olusegun Obasanjo by the House of Representatives in Nigeria on August 13, 2002 is yet the greatest indication of the frustration which the democratic government inaugurated on May 29, 1999 has created among many Nigerians. In fact it can be said that there is even a crisis of confidence in the country and its system of government.

The International Secretariat of the World Organisation Against Torture (OMCT) has expressed “deep concern” about the fact that copies of a report published by OMCT and Nigerian NGO the Centre for Law Enforcement Education (CLEEN), entitled "Hope betrayed? A Report on Impunity and State-Sponsored Violence in Nigeria," based on the input of some 60 local NGOs, have been seized by the customs office in Lagos.

A few months after the mysterious death in June 1998 of General Sani Abacha, his finance minister, Chief Anthony Ani, then no longer a minister, called a press conference in Lagos during which he said that his boss had repeatedly ignored his advice against the withdrawal of huge sums of money in local and foreign currency from the Central Bank of Nigeria, by Abacha's National Security Adviser, Alhaji Ismaila Gwarzo. All told, said Ani, Gwarzo had, among other things, withdrawn over 1.3 billion dollars over a period of nearly two years before Abacha's death.

The Nigerian government's recent action to crack down on the vigilante group known as the Bakassi Boys is welcome but more fundamental reforms are needed, Human Rights Watch says.
Related Link:
http://irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=30358

Nigerian leaders have appealed for calm as they urge their countrymen to accept a ruling by the International Court of Justice (ICJ) handing sovereignty of the disputed oil-rich Bakassi peninsula to its neighbour Cameroon.