Critics of the Anambra state government in southeastern Nigeria have been receiving death threats following the assassination of Barnabas Igwe and his wife on September 1, 2002, Human Rights Watch says. "There is strong, credible evidence that Igwe and his wife were targeted for political reasons - because of Igwe's and the NBA's public criticism of the Anambra state government's performance," said Peter Takirambudde, executive director of the Africa Division of Human Rights Watch.

Civil Resources Development and Documentation Centre (CIR-DDOC), an NGO in Abakaliki, has urged women to show more interest in politics to boost female representation in governance.

The Board of the World Bank has approved a $100 million credit facility for the Universal Basic Education (UBE) programme in Nigeria. The Federal Government is contributing a counterpart fund of $13 million to the project.

The Independent Corrupt Practices and Other Related Offences Commission (ICPC) says that Speaker of the House of Representatives, Ghali Na'Abba has a case to answer in a corruption petition filed against him.

Nigeria plans to set up a refugee centre in the southeastern city of Calabar in expectation that the border dispute with Cameroon might trigger a refugee crisis, a senior official in charge of refugees said on Saturday.

The Media Resource and Advocacy Centre (MRAC), Lagos Nigeria, announces the final in its series of regional strategic communications training course aimed at equipping NGO activists with skills in health promotion, advocacy and general publicity for development programs and projects. The course will take place between 25-26 May, 2003 in Kaduna, Nigeria.

Nigeria has started the massive task of registering voters in preparation for state and national elections but the complaints have also started. Election officials say registration started smoothly at 120,000 centres for a massive 10-day operation to enfranchise the country's 60 million voters.

Nigerian women are mad and they're not going to take it any more! A coalition of leading women's groups has issued an 11-point declaration demanding an end to political repression, environmental degradation, and gender-biased persecution based on Islamic laws.

President Olusegun Obasanjo, who came to office in 1999 after more than 15 years of military rule, has promised to help dispel widely held perceptions of Nigeria as an archetype of unethical business behaviour. Less than a year before he is due to stand for re-election, the country's continued notoriety raises questions about the effectiveness of the president's actions and highlights the manifold and deep-rooted difficulties that confront campaigns for greater public sector and corporate transparency in poor nations.

Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo urged U.N. members Sunday to seek a legally binding agreement to curb trafficking in small arms, which he said worsens many conflicts in Africa. Many African wars were exacerbated "by the influx of small arms into the continent," he said.

Amina Lawal has been sentenced to death by stoning - she is to buried up to her neck in the ground, after which her punishers will surround her and throw rocks at her head until her skull is crushed and she dies a painful and horrible death. She has only thirty days to appeal her trial. Please go to the Amnesty International site, www.mertonai.org/amina/ and sign the letter addressed to the President of Nigeria. It literally takes one minute, and could help to save her life, as well as put an end to this kind of cruel and disgraceful practice.

The trading house Marubeni Corp. has paid 400 million yen in penalty taxes for concealing about 1 billion yen in income over a three-year period, sources said. Of the hidden funds, hundreds of millions of yen went in kickbacks to Nigeria. Kickbacks were paid after Marubeni won a contract to sell printing machines to Nigeria.

There are indications that following the protracted dispute over who owns the Bakassi peninsular, Nigeria may have deployed troops to the disputed area, to protect Nigerian nationals around the border from possible attack from Cameroun's gendermes.

An outbreak of cholera in Gombe State, northern Nigeria, has killed dozens of people, local officials said on Sunday. Worst hit in the epidemic is the town of Jero Musa in Akko local council area, where 11 people, including three members of one family, died in one day, they said.

A rupture in a pipeline belonging to oil giant Royal Dutch/ Shell has resulted in a major oil slick in Nigeria’s southern Niger Delta, local residents reported last Friday. Residents of Rumuekpe community, near the Nigeria’s oil industry capital, Port Harcourt, said oil from a broken pipe, 20 inches diameter, was spreading through creeks and streams in the area, seeping into farmland and destroying plants and trees.

Persistent wrangling between the executive and legislative arms of government in Nigeria took a critical turn when the House of Representatives last month gave President Olusegun Obasanjo a fortnight to resign or face impeachment. The two weeks have since passed, with Obasanjo defying the motion of the lower chamber of parliament, ridiculing it as "a joke taken too far".

Nigeria has said it can no longer afford to service its $33bn foreign debts because of plunging oil revenues and the failure of some of its privatisation plans.

The last two and half years of elected civilian government in Nigeria have witnessed an alarming spate of violence and gross human rights violations. In over 50 separate and documented incidents, over 10 000 Nigerians have reportedly been victims of extra-judicial executions, says a new report from the World Organisation Against Torture.

Human Rights Watch has condemned the imposition of a death by stoning sentence on a man in the northern state of Jigawa in Nigeria. Earlier this month, an appellate Sharia court in northern Nigeria upheld a stoning sentence against a 30-year old woman for having sex outside marriage.

Dr. Zaynab Alkali presented her paper titled "Rediscovering The Family and our Cultural Heritage: The role of women and Youth" and said "women are natural custodians of our cultures. They are cultural bearers and preservers who propagate culture very diligently, even when it comes to harmful traditional practices."