Ben Amunwa looks at how the settlement of the Wiwa v Shell case affects the ongoing Niger Delta crisis, and the settlement's implications for human rights, environmental justice and the control of resources in the region.

In this week's review of the African blogosphere, there's debate over the constitutionality of Goodluck Jonathan’s appointment as the interim president of Nigeria, amid fears that the country could become the next Pakistan. Meanwhile legendary Cameroonian swindler Donatien Koagne dies in a Yemeni prison, and there are calls for South Africa's ruling elite to go beyond the euphoria of the 'Mandela Moment'.

Nigeria's acting president, Goodluck Jonathan, should take immediate and concrete steps to address large-scale violence, endemic corruption, a lack of accountability for abuses, and other pressing human rights problems in Nigeria, Human Rights Watch said in a letter to the newly mandated leader.

Nigeria's Vice President Goodluck Jonathan has assumed office as the country's Acting President, after the two chambers of the National Assembly (parliament) passed separate res olutions that ended 78 days without anyone being in charge of Africa's most populous nation,.

Soldiers have been deployed to help restore order after a resurgent communal violence in Nigeria's northern Gombe state has claimed six lives and left many more injured, the News Agency of Nigeria reported Thursday, quoting a Nigeria Red Cross official.

Nigeria will be struck off the list of 'countries of int erest' by the United States if the African nation can meet four conditions, the local media have reported. The conditions, issued by the US - according to Foreign Affairs Minister Ojo Maduekwe - include that the Nigerian government must make a public condemnation of acts of terrorism wherever they occur in the world and for Nigeria to take urgent steps to address security lapses at its airports.

Some 15,400 people who fled violence in the central Nigerian city of Jos remain displaced three weeks later and despite dire living conditions, many do not plan to return and rebuild their destroyed homes.

While President Yar'Adua’s absence – since November 2009 – has left a power vacuum in Nigeria, Funmi Feyide-John believes that this ‘cloud has a silver lining’. Feyide-John describes the events and steps that are being taken within Nigeria to fill the presidential seat: Peaceful demonstrations, letters of demand, court cases, discussions amongst legislators and increasing general discontent. She holds that the handing over of power – be it permanently or temporarily – strongly indicates the strength of the people and the giant steps that are being taken to shape a truly Nigerian democracy.

Ordinary Nigerians, Funmi Feyide-John observes, are experiencing a backlash of discrimination worldwide as a result of the attempted suicide bombing on an American flight by Nigerian Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab. Following the event, Nigeria has been listed as a ‘terror prone’ country. Feyide-John goes on to reveal that despite most Nigerians having denounced Abdulmutallab’s actions and terrorism, the US is denying Nigerian students their visas, Nigerian travellers are subjected to special ‘rules’ and Nigerian community initiatives in the US are being shunned. She notes that Nigerians are receiving no support from the Nigerian government to overcome these problems. Furthermore, Nigeria’s unstable political backdrop at the moment is one that encourages separation. What is needed, Feyide-John concludes, however, is unity.

One of Nigeria's most politically turbulent states goes to the polls on Saturday to elect a new governor in a vote seen as a test of the country's ability to hold credible national elections in 2011. vThe governorship vote in southeastern Anambra state is the first in a cycle of state and federal polls culminating in presidential elections next year.

The International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) has condemned today the continued harassment and intimidation of the reporters of the Plateau Radio and Television Corporation (PRTVC) by soldiers in Jos, Plateau State, Nigeria. Three reporters of the media house were molested by soldiers in Jos on Thursday, January 21, 2010, while on Sunday, January 24 PRTVC reporters were again repeatedly manhandled by soldiers in the exercise of their duties.

Nigeria's long-drawn political impasse, caused by the failure of President Umaru Yar'Adua to transfer power to his deputy while on a prolonged medical treatment in Saudi Ara bia, may soon be over, if assurances given Thursday by one of his aides are anything to go by.

Three flow stations in the oil-rich Niger Delta have had to be closed after a pipeline was sabotaged, according to Royal Dutch Shell. The company said the Jan. 30 leak on the Trans Ramos oil pipeline was due to sabotage, but no group has so far claimed responsibility for the attack. A represnetative of the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta told a Nigerian newspaper at the end of January that it was ending a truce agreed in October 2009.

People with HIV who selected treatment partners to support their adherence were more likely to return to the clinic to collect further doses of antiretrovirals, and showed a higher rate of viral suppression after six months of treatment, but showed no longer-lasting advantage in terms of viral suppression, CD4 cell counts or mortality, Nigerian and American researchers report in the Journal of Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndromes.

Nigeria's Senate and cabinet are at loggerheads over President Umaru Yar'Adua, who has spent two months in hospital in Saudi Arabia. The cabinet has declared that he is still capable of governing the country.

Relief agencies are struggling to help the some 18,000 displaced people in 17 makeshift camps in and around the central Nigerian city of Jos. Most of the displaced do not have enough food and they lack access to toilet facilities and safe drinking water, Nigeria Red Cross (NRC) head Auwalu Mohammed told IRIN.

The army has taken over responsibility for security in the central city of Jos, Nigeria's Vice-President Goodluck Jonathan has said. At least 65 Christians and 200 Muslims are believed to have died in religious rioting in Jos in recent days.

A group of 41 prominent Nigerians, led by former Senate President, Anyim Pius Anyim, were at the National Assembly in Abuja, the Nigerian Federal capital, urging lawmakers to take immediate steps to resolve the current political and constitutional crisis created by the 59 days of absence of President Umar Musa Yar'Adua from the country on account of ill health.

The Nigerian Senate has unanimously rejected calls for the declaration of a fresh state of emergency in crisis-ridden north-central Plateau State. Plateau State had been engulfed in sectarian violence, which began Sunday in capital, Jos, and had claimed several lives.

Several thousand residents of Jos, in central Nigeria, are displaced after their homes burned in deadly sectarian clashes, according to residents and the local Red Cross. Local authorities have not confirmed the death toll from the 17 January violence but reports put the number at 26, with 300 people injured.