If some writers in the Nigerian media are to be believed, a group of six white farmers from Zimbabwe have the power to destabilise their country of about 130-million people. Racist diatribes, in the mould of President Robert Mugabe's own thundering speeches, have suggested the farmers invited by the Kwara State government will only steal Nigerians' land, dupe innocent Nigerians with dangerous genetically modified crops and spread HIV/AIDS in order to get rid of black people. Others feel the invitation is tantamount to sabotaging Mugabe's land reform programme.

The percentage of Nigeria's population infected with the HIV virus fell for the first time last year, according to a government survey of pregnant women tested in ante-natal clinics. However, the sentinel survey conducted by the Ministry of Health showed that the AIDS epidemic was continuing to grow in some regions of the country. It also predicted that the number of Nigerians infected with the virus that causes AIDS would rise sharply over the next five years.

President Olusegun Obasanjo has directed the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) to carry out a comprehensive investigation into the alleged fuel import racket that cost the corporation huge sums of money in foreign exchange. The president also directed the corporation to recover from oil trading companies and their collaborators in the Pipelines and Products Marketing Company (PPMC), a subsidiary of the NNPC, the total sum of $143 million. The NNPC, which received the report of the committee set up to investigate the rising cost of demurrage paid by the NNPC on its imported fuel cargoes and the mounting debts owed the corporation by major oil marketers, had already sacked seven senior officials mostly from the PPMC.

Against the backdrop of the recent anti-Obasanjo demonstrations in Abuja and Lagos, Independent Advocacy Project (IAP), the good governance group, has called on the federal government and the police to exercise restraint in dealing with the situation. While noting that freedom of assembly is a fundamental right of all Nigerians, IAP however urged organisers of the rally to use only lawful means in protesting against the Obasanjo-led administration.

This study documents a crucial dimension of the resistance of Nigerian civil society to a repressive and monumentally corrupt military state in the late 1980s and 1990s in Nigeria. Employing a neo-Gramscian theoretical framework, the study relates how a section of the media defied censorship laws, outright bans, incarceration and the assassination of opposition figures, to prosecute the struggle for democracy. It captures the tensions and contradictions between a pliant section of the media which sought to legitimise the state and a critical section of the same media which, in alliance with radical civil society, invented rebellious outlets to carry on the struggle against dictatorship.

Police in Nigeria fired tear gas Monday to break up demonstrations over last year's presidential elections, which opposition members claim were rigged. In the capital, Abuja, police used tear gas on a convoy of vehicles carrying opposition leaders. There was similar action against protestors in the largest city, Lagos, where about 20 arrests were made.

Many Nigerians remain ignorant about Aids. Nigeria has one of the world's highest numbers of people living with the Aids virus, the health minister has said. Eyitayo Lambo said that some 2.3m Nigerians have already died from Aids, while 3.8m were HIV- positive. Only South Africa and India have more people infected with HIV. The rate of Aids infection is much lower in West Africa than in southern Africa, where 30% of the population of some countries is HIV positive. Nigeria - Africa's most populous country, with some 130m people - has been criticised for not doing enough to fight Aids.

Nigerian authorities detained an opposition leader last Thursday ahead of a mass anti-government protest. "They think that by arresting and detaining him they will stop the mass action, but they will not be able to," Balarabe Musa, chairman of the opposition-dominated Conference of Nigerian Political Parties, told Reuters. The group's mobilisation committee chairman Buba Galadima was detained by intelligence officers of the State Security Services in the capital Abuja, he said.

Malaria was responsible for one out of three deaths in children and one out of 10 deaths in pregnant women and cost Nigeria 132 billion Naira per year to treat, minister of health Prof Eyitayo Lambo said at the commemoration of the fourth Africa Malaria day. Prof Lambo said government had adjusted its fiscal policies to include zero concessional duties for insecticides for public health use, a reduction of taxes and tariffs on yarns and the maintenance of a 40% import duty on imported nets to protect local industries.

Chairperson of Women Trafficking and Child Labour Eradication Foundation (WOTCLEF) and convener of the African Women Conference, Mrs. Amina Titi Atiku Abubakar, has said the conference is meant to reposition Africa and write a new chapter in the history of African women. The event is a six-day conference intended to highlight and deliberate on issues related to the development of African women.

At least 20 people died in three days of clashes between rival ethnic militias in central Plateau State, residents and officials said on Tuesday. The clashes between ethnic Tarok fighters and their Fulani rivals at Bakin Chiyawa in the Shendam district of the state began on Saturday, Emmanuel Bakat, a local government official and resident of the area, told IRIN.

Participants at a one-day conference on education have expressed fears over the realisation of education for all by the year 2015. The fear was hinged on the attitudes of parents, students, as well as government on ways of enhancing education, which they agreed could hinder global projection of education for all. Ondo State Commissioner for Education, Chief Bisi Taiwo, said some parents deliberately deny their children access to schools. Instead, they prefer to assist their children make instant money through cart-pushing, scavenging and hawking at motor parks.

Children are increasingly recognised by geographers and other social scientists as independent actors who make valuable (albeit often overlooked) economic contributions to households and society. Hausa children in rural Northern Nigeria are highly mobile and play important economic roles supporting married women who spend much time in their walled residences (gida) because of the local socio-religious practice of Muslim seclusion. Secluded Hausa women have low mobility and do not attend local periodic markets, but make essential day-to-day purchases from child house-to-house hawkers while sending children on errands to make purchases on their behalf. This study shows how children work both independently and alongside adults in the spheres of agricultural production (on farms), domestic reproduction (in homesteads) and trade (within markets).

Nigeria's state-run oil company is reported to have sacked seven senior managers in connection with a multi-million-dollar fraud scheme. The dismissals have been approved by President Olusegun Obasanjo, Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) told the French AFP news agency.

Nigeria has struck a deal to bring 50 million dollars belonging to late dictator Sani Abacha that were frozen by the Swiss authorities in 1999 back to the country, the justice department said Monday. In total, more than 600 million dollars (498 million euros) of Abacha's money has been frozen in Switzerland. Nigerian authorities finished an investigation into an individual involved in the Abacha case and, in an out-of-court settlement, secured the return of 50 million dollars through the Bank for International Settlements, the Federal Office of Justice said.

Trafficking in Nigeria is seen as an everyday part of West African life. It starts with the promise of a better life. The parents are taken in. The children are persuaded. When they leave home they do so willingly, with some excitement, not trepidation. The trafficker has promised a good job, a schooling, a regular income. But that is not how it works out.

Military authorities in Nigeria said last Thursday they had set up a special panel to determine whether a group of soldiers and civilians arrested on suspicion of plotting to topple the government should face court martial. General Alexander Ogomudia, the Chief of Defence Staff, has created an all military "Special Investigation Panel" which will determine whether those arrested should face military trial on the basis of the allegations against them, his spokesman Colonel Ganiyu Adewale said.

The National Refugee Commission has approved the proposal of the Nigerian Popular Theatre Alliance (NPTA) and African Youth Parliament (AYP), Kenya, in collaboration with Movement for Cultural Awareness (MOCA) to hold a conflict management and transformation workshop with refugees at the Oru Camp, Ogun State.

The Federal Government has directed all tertiary institutions in Nigeria to start the teaching of peace studies as part of courses for their students commencing from the next academic session. The Vice-Chancellor of the University of Ibadan, Prof. Ayodele Falase dropped this hint at the closing of the first foundation course in peace practice organised by the peace and conflict studies programme of the university. The Vice-Chancellor, in an address read on his behalf by one of his deputies, Prof. Olusoji Offi, stated that violent conflicts rank amongst the most potent factors stifling the objectives of sustainable development in Nigeria today. He said: “This ugly situation can be reversed through both formal and informal peace education."

Each year, more than 200,000 Nigerian children are forcibly taken from their homes to be put to work. Some go with the permission of their parents, and some do not. Many, especially boys who may be as young as five or six, end up as household slaves far from home, or as agricultural workers on smallholdings or in quarries, where they break large lumps of granite with heavy iron hammers and earn little more than a few cents a day. The dust they inhale will do them lasting damage. Some, especially the younger ones, die as a result; others end up with terrible scars, both physical and psychological.