A suicide bomber has driven a vehicle packed with explosives into a Catholic church in northern Nigeria, killing at least eight people and wounding more than 100, triggering reprisal attacks that have killed at least two more, according to officials. The attack happened in the Malali neighbourhood of Kaduna, a city on the dividing line between Nigeria's largely Christian south and mainly Muslim north, where religious rioting has killed hundreds in recent years.

In spite of the assurances by the Joint Task Force to bring additional troops to beef up security in Potiskum, Yobe, residents have continued to flee the town en mass. The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that residents are fleeing the commercial town to other states and Local Government Areas, following series of explosions and gun attacks in which no fewer than 13 people have been killed.

Nigeria lost out on tens of billions of dollars in oil and gas revenues over the last decade from cut price deals struck between multinational oil companies and government officials, a confidential report seen by Reuters says. A team headed by the former head of the anti-corruption agency Nuhu Ribadu produced the 146-page study on an oil ministry request. It covers the year 2002 to the present.

A recent Unesco report confirms that poor funding, inadequate facilities and outright criminal neglect of education take their toll on quality in one of Africa’s richest countries.

A gay Nigerian asylum seeker who was living in Bradford has been deported from the UK. Olamiekan Ayelokun had argued that he could not return to Nigeria because he was at risk of homophobic persecution. He had been trying to stay in the UK ever since his visa expired in 2003.

Hundreds of residents of a northeastern Nigerian city were fleeing Sunday after three days of Islamist attacks that left at least 31 dead and many buildings and properties razed, witnesses said. The troubled city of Potiskum had been under security lockdown since Thursday with troops patrolling the streets and residents keeping in-doors for fear of new attacks.

For decades Nigeria has failed to fix chronic electricity shortages that stifle growth and help keep millions in poverty. That is about to change, the government says, when most of the power sector is privatised by the end of the year. Its target is to increase electricity output tenfold to 40,000 megawatts by 2020, reports Reuters. Turning on the lights in a country where power cuts are a daily ordeal could push Nigeria's growth into double digits and help diversify its economy away from oil, which in 50 years has created a super-rich elite but has done little to reduce mass poverty.

The Joint Task Force (JTF) in Borno State has disclosed that it killed 24 suspected Boko Haram members in different parts of Maiduguri metropolis on Monday night during series of encounters with its personnel. Similarly, no fewer than 25 persons were killed and properties worth millions of naira destroyed in a renewed attack by Fulani herdsmen against residents of Yogbo in Guma Local Government Area of Benue State on Sunday. Among those killed were children and women.

The latest assessment of governance in Nigeria paints a gloomy picture of the African giant. It is not that Nigerians do not know their own problems; they must now step up and stop national decay.

Loud explosions and gunfire have rocked Nigeria's northern city of Maiduguri, which has seen growing violence by the militant Islamist group Boko Haram. Details are unclear, but reports said at least 10 people had been killed, including several soldiers. A primary school and a radio tower were reportedly set ablaze.

Four farmers whose farmlands were washed away by the flood that has ravaged Nigeria's central Kogi state, among other states, have committed suicide, the local media reported Monday. The reports quoted President Goodluck Jonathan as making the revelation during a tour of the camps for those displaced by the flood in his home state of Bayelsa.

Gunmen have killed at least 20 people in a dawn attack in a remote village prone to bandit attacks, in northern Nigeria's Kaduna State, reports say. Residents of Dogo Dawa said the attackers stormed the village, shooting and stabbing anyone in sight. Many of those targeted were worshippers leaving a mosque.

A Nigerian university has been closed because of violent protests about the lynching of four students accused of stealing laptops and mobile phones. A horrific video of the killings near Nigeria's oil capital was posted on the YouTube video-sharing website. Students say the four were mistaken for thieves in the village of Aluu.

Anglo-Dutch oil and gas super major, Shell, will appear in a Dutch court to account for damage it caused in Nigeria. This is the first time in history, an European company is appearing in a Dutch court. Friends of the Earth International (FoEI) made this known to AkanimoReports in an online statement.

Environmental Rights Action/Friends of the Earth Nigeria visited several communities in Kogi, Edo, Cross River, Benue and Delta States inundated by waters and have issued their findings in a special report available on their website. Excessive rains are believed to have caused the overflow of dams and the flooding thereof of communities along the banks of River Niger and Benue in Nigeria. The floods have led to destruction of farmlands across the affected states, complete inundation of hundreds of communities, loss of property in unquantifiable sums and about 104 deaths going by official statistics from the Nigerian government.

Nigeria's attorney general said the country would not appeal an international ruling that handed the oil-rich Bakassi peninsula to its neighbour Cameroon ten years ago, despite calls from the Senate to re-open the dispute. Nigeria gave up Bakassi in 2008 after years of political disputes, legal skirmishes and violence that killed dozens of people and nearly pushed the two nations into war. Its decision not to pursue a legal challenge was an attempt to avoid a new diplomatic row over the disputed territory.

At least 35 people were killed on Monday when Nigerian soldiers opened fire after a bomb blast struck their convoy in the northeastern city of Maiduguri, nurses at the hospital that received the bodies said. The nurses in the Umaru Shehu hospital said 30 of the dead were in civilian clothes, while another five wore military uniforms.

Flooding across Nigeria has killed at least 148 people and displaced more than 64 000, the Red Cross said Tuesday 2 October. The organisation is also warning of an increased risk that water-borne diseases like cholera could spread.

Nigeria’s 52nd independence anniversary is drowned by hot air over a possible break-up even as questions are being raised about its feasibility.

Gunmen massacred at least 26 people in a student housing area of northeast Nigeria on Tuesday 1 October, calling victims out by name before shooting them or slitting their throats, officials said. The motive for the attack at the mixed Christian and Muslim school was not immediately clear. It occurred in the early hours in the town of Mubi, where the military last week carried out a high-profile raid against Islamist extremist group Boko Haram, which has been waging a deadly insurgency.