At least 100 000 people have been displaced and farmland, houses and property destroyed by flooding in northern Nigeria. The area governor's spokesperson, Murtala Surajo, said on Monday: "It is too early to estimate the extent of damage but it won't be out of place to say at least 100 000 people are now homeless."

The Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) has described the recent police attack on journalists across the country as a clandestine approach to censor the press, and called for the immediate arrest and prosecution of those behind the acts. The union was reacting to the police brutalisation recently of a photojournalist, Mr. Akintunde Akinleye of the Daily Independent newspaper, a Lagos-based national tabloid.

The Bureau Chief of The Source magazine in Port Harcourt, Nigeria's delta region, Mr. Lawson Heyford, was arrested on August 23, 2003 by police detectives. Sources said his arrest may not be unconnected with stories he wrote on a communal clash in July in Ataba town, in the Delta region, during which many persons were killed and houses destroyed.

An outbreak of cholera in Zamfara State in northwest Nigeria has killed dozens of people with scores admitted in hospitals, officials said on Friday. The first cases were reported more than a week ago in the remote villages of Makera, Sanna, Salo and Marinai in Talata-Mafara local council area. Alhassan Abubakar, an official of the General Hospital, Talata-Mafara said at least 40 people had so far died with about 54 people receiving treatment in the hospital.

Crude oil from a ruptured oil pipeline caught fire, destroying farmland and polluting streams in the Ogoni area of southeastern Nigeria, residents said on Monday. Residents of Gio, a small Ogoni community 40 km east of Port Harcourt, said they were roused from their sleep in the early hours of Friday by a loud bang as crude oil gushing from the broken pipeline caught fire.

On 22 August 2003, Lawson Heyford, the Port Harcourt bureau chief of "The Source" magazine, was arrested by police officers and detained at the Force Criminal Investigation Department (FCID) in Lagos. According to Media Foundation for West Africa (MFWA) Nigeria sources, the police gave no reason for Heyford's arrest, but information gathered suggests the police action was informed by articles the journalist wrote on an intra-tribal conflict in southern Nigeria.

Overwhelmed by complaints of failed water projects due to official corruption, the African Development Bank (ADB) has announced the cancellation of 80 per cent of its projects in the country.

Nigerian textile firms are crumbling by the day courtesy of Nigeria's accord with the World Trade Organisation. The collapse of the firms - despite the federal government's limited protection - has thrown thousands of able-bodied men and women into the unemployment market. Since Nigeria signed a WTO agreement sometime in 1995, Nigerian firms have been groaning under the weight of goods-dumping by foreign companies.

Reporters sans frontières (RSF), has expressed concern about the numerous attacks on press freedom in Nigeria recently and the growing climate of lawlessness in which journalists have to work, especially outside Lagos. The organisation urged the authorities to ensure greater security for journalists working throughout the country and not to allow abuses and irregularities to go unpunished.

The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) condemns recent attempts by the House of Assembly in Nigeria's Akwa Ibom state to expel journalist Haruna Acheneje from the state, which is located on the country's southern coast. Acheneje is a correspondent based in Uyo, Akwa Ibom's capital, for the national daily The Punch. On August 11, The Punch ran an article by Acheneje titled "Lawmakers protest non-payment of allowances." On August 14, the House of Assembly passed a resolution to expel Acheneje from the state.

Ijaw women of Niger Delta have condemned the renewed spate of violence in Warri and blamed the federal and Delta state governments for not putting a stop to the unending crisis. In a statement signed by Mrs Bouma Ogan and Miss Kate Amapere, chairman and secretary respectively on behalf of Ijaw Women Vanguard in Lagos, the women said the delay in creating separate local governments for the three tribes, Ijaw, Itsekiri, Urhobo in the Warri area has prolonged the conflict.

About 1.4 million children are to be immunised in Bauchi State during the next round of this year's National Programme on Immunisation (NPI).

Adults living with HIV/AIDS are receiving subsidised anti-retroviral drugs, while children in a similar situation are not benefiting from the medicine which the government launched last year, rights activists complain. ''Infected children have a right to life just as their adult counterparts who are currently benefiting from government anti-retroviral programme,'' says Oba Oladapo, chairperson of Positive Life Association, a non-governmental organisation.

An Islamic court in the northern Nigerian state of Katsina has postponed for one month its ruling on the appeal of a woman convicted of adultery and sentenced to death by stoning under Sharia law. Throughout the day, Amina Lawal had struck a lonely figure in the court. She was convicted in March last year, and has waited 10 months for this, her second appeal, to be heard.

No fewer than 236 Nigerian police officers are billed to face dismissal following their alleged involvement in extorting money from drivers at police checkpoints across the country, local newspaper This Day reported Tuesday. Inspector-General of Police (IGP) Tafa Balogun was quoted as saying: "The exercise of dismissing corrupt officers will continue until the last cell in the corrupt clique is brought to book."

The Nigerian Red Cross said on Friday about 100 people were killed in five days of ethnic violence that rocked the southern oil city of Warri. The federal government meanwhile set up a task force to protect oil wells in the area and crack down on the massive theft of crude oil from pipelines.

In the wake of the September 11th attack and the Iraq war, Nigeria's geopolitical significance to the U.S. has come into sharper relief. In March and April 2003, militancy across the Niger Delta radically disrupted oil production in this major oil supplier nation. News of these actions, following conflict-ridden national elections, has reinforced the notion that Nigeria and the new West African "gulf states" in general are matters of U.S. national security. This commentary takes issue with a May 2003 analysis of the situation by an influential Washington think tank, the Centre for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS). The critique argues that the CSIS ignores the role of some key actors, the oil companies foremost among them.

The Federal Government has joined hands with the United Nations Children Fund (UNICEF) to develop the Strategy for Acceleration of Girls Education in Nigeria (SAGEN), a plan of action designed to ensure that equal number of boys and girls were in the education system by 2005.

Not a single member of the Nigerian police or security forces has been charged with dozens of killings during the "Miss World" riots in Kaduna last November, Human Rights Watch said in a new report. The 32-page report, "The 'Miss World riots': continued impunity for killings in Kaduna," provides detailed eyewitness accounts of how soldiers and police killed people in cold blood between November 21 and 23, during an operation intended to restore law and order.

Amnesty International is urging Nigerian authorities to launch an independent public inquiry into the death of at least four people reported to have been killed in Lagos in clashes involving the police and civilians during demonstrations against an increase in the price of fuel. More than seven days after the people were announced dead, no investigation has been carried out.