On Friday, November 15, an explosion destroyed the offices of the independent weekly National Pilot in Ilorin, the capital of Nigeria's west central Kwara State. Five people were seriously injured in the blast-which local sources suspected was a politically motivated bomb attack-including the paper's deputy editor-in-chief, Mudasiru Adewuyi.

Mohammed Abacha, the son of late military ruler General Sani Abacha, has confirmed that his lawyers are fighting to have millions of dollars returned to him and his family.
Banks in Switzerland and other European countries have frozen accounts holding money allegedly siphoned away while Abacha ruled Nigeria from 1993 to his death in 1998.

The Miss World beauty circus fled to Britain on Sunday while in northern Nigeria the death toll continued to mount in bloody sectarian rioting fuelled by Muslim anger at the pageant. As around 90 contestants arrived in London, the Nigerian Red Cross said that the toll in the flashpoint city of Kaduna had passed the 200 mark and that violence linked to the event was expected to continue.

Deputy Senate President Ibrahim Nasiru Mantu says the Senate is not conducting a witch -hunt against the Independent Corrupt Practices Commission (ICPC), but rather aims to reinforce it. He was commenting about the creation of a committee to probe the activities of the ICPC.

Angered by perceived biased reporting of the ethno-religious crises buffeting Plateau State, North-Central Nigeria, the governor, Joshua Dariye, has threatened to declare "persona non grata," journalists who write "negative reports" on the State.

Mohammed Abacha, son of Nigeria's late military ruler General Sani Abacha, who was recently released from three years in prison on charges of money laundering and corruption, has instructed lawyers to retrieve millions of dollars he says are rightfully his. Banks in Europe have frozen accounts holding money allegedly siphoned off while General Abacha ruled Nigeria from 1993 to his death in 1998.

The Delta Steel Company, Ovwian-Aladja, was forcibly shut down this week when a mob of over 5,000 women besieged its gates to protest alleged marginalisation of the host communities by the consortium of companies involved in the rehabilitation of the steel plant.

The National Human Rights Commission has called on the National Assembly to revisit the Child Rights Bill, which was thrown out by the House last month. Stressing that as signatories to the International Convention on Child Rights, Nigeria is bound to make laws that would improve the condition of the Nigerian Child, Mr. Bukhari Bello, executive Chairman of the Commission, suggested that the legislators were probably not sensitised enough on what the bill is all about.

Vigilante violence, which has already spiraled out of control since the return of civilian rule in Nigeria three years ago, stands to turn increasingly political - and even more dangerous - as the country approaches presidential, state and local elections in April 2003, Amnesty International has warned in a report released this week.

Former military ruler General Ibrahim Badamasi Babangida will contest the 2003 presidential election on the ticket of the newly registered National Democratic Party.

Senate president Anyim Pius Anyim has said he has no confidence in an anti-corruption body investigating allegations of corruption levelled against him in an unbiased manner and called for an independent body to investigate the allegations.

Billions of naira are being lost annually to capital flight through the activities of various government officials and influential Nigerians who stash away illegally-gotten funds in foreign accounts.

HIV/AIDS treatment activists in Nigeria have expressed serious concern about a meeting in Abuja this week that threatens access to treatment for people living with HIV/AIDS in the country. The activists met on Saturday in Lagos under the auspices of the Treatment Action Movement (TAM), a coalition of civil society groups working in the area of HIV/AIDS treatment and care. The activists say that the meeting, sponsored by the United States Department of Commerce, could erode access to cheap and affordable medicines, especially antiretrovirals (ARV) that are currently being enjoyed by people living with HIV/AIDS.

Talks between Nigeria and Cameroon, chaired by the Secretary General of the United Nations, Kofi Annan, have ended without a final agreement in the Swiss city of Geneva. The presidents of the two countries were attempting to resolve a dispute over an oil-rich section of their border, the Bakassi peninsula, which was awarded to Cameroon last month by the International Court of Justice.

A young and blonde Danish girl is shattering Nigeria's dreams of organising a world event of unprecedented beauty, estimated to produce millions of US$ of tourism revenues. Masja Juel, or Miss Denmark, is leading a boycott campaign in response to a Nigerian death-by-stoning sentence of a woman for having a child outside marriage.

The Education Tax Fund (ETF) has approved N75 million as its contribution to the establishment of the Obasanjo Engineering Innovation Centre of the Federal Polytechnic, Ado-Ekiti.

A human right organisation, Access to Justice (AJ) has petitioned the African commission on human rights over the systematic and extra-judicial killings in Nigeria, saying that the President Olusegun Obasanjo government has not done enough to check the legacy of impunity in law enforcement practice in the country.

In a move reminiscent of taking the fight to the lion's den, the Nigeria Bar Association (NBA), has visited President Olusegun Obasanjo in the State House, and told him that his decision to seek re-election would impair the nation's unity.

Shell Nigeria has reacted angrily to threats by human rights groups who say they will disrupt Shell's activities in the Niger Delta unless it compensates women who were injured in protests against Shell's environmental record earlier this year.

Nigeria’s Supreme Court has unanimously thrown out several guidelines used by the country’s electoral body to deny registration to five political parties. The court's seven judges, led by Chief Justice Mohammed Uwais, ruled that 11 of 18 conditions imposed by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) for the registration of political parties were unconstitutional.