The ad-hoc committee investigating the petroleum subsidies saga continues to unravel one bombshell after the other. The lastest discovery is that Nigeria over-imported petrol on a daily basis to the tune of 24 million litres in 2011. The difference between fuel consumed and fuel imported is 24 million liters. Nigeria pays subsidy on this 24 million litres that is not even utilised by Nigerians.

Osmond Ugwu and Raphael Elobuike are Nigerian labour activists and human rights defenders currently spending their second month in Enugu Federal Prison in South East Nigeria. They are being detained on charges of attempted murder of a policeman following their arrest at a workers rally on 24 October 2011 at Enugu.

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Gado thinks recent protests in Nigeria prove that the president may have run out of luck.

What did the removal of the fuel subsidy mean for the LGBT community in Nigeria amongst other Nigerian citizens? The strike and protests had one positive effect for the LGBT community in that they brought mainstream civil society activists closer to LGBT activists, something that would have been unthinkable a couple of months ago when the anti-gay bill was brought to the Nigerian parliament and no voices from the wider civil society spoke out against it. Some local LGBT activists told Behind the Mask that they regard the current situation as an opportunity to buy time and make allies in their advocacy against the anti-gay bill.

A wind of disgruntlement is blowing across Nigeria. There are fears that, unless President Jonathan steadies the ship of state, divisions within the polity and the rising discontent could be hijacked by political opportunists to cause something more catastrophic.

The crippling strike called by labour organisations may have ended, but Nigeria is not yet at ease. The arguments the government offered for removal of the fuel subsidy ring hollow and the people are not convinced.

As a nationwide strike and protests against the lifting of the fuel subsidy paralysed Nigeria last week, analysts say the billions of dollars a year lost to corruption in the oil industry could have been used to leave the subsidy in place. 'We know that because of the corruption and irrelevant people placed in certain key positions in the sector, a lot of crude oil is being lost,' Garba Ibrahim Sheka, a senior lecturer in economics at Bayero University in the northern city of Kano, told IPS.

Nigeria's president has announced that the government will subsidise fuel prices to immediately reduce the price to about $2.75 a gallon, amid a crippling nationwide strike over fuel prices in Africa's most populous country. Protests have seen tens of thousands march in cities across the nation. Soldiers barricaded the country's commercial capital of Lagos and the entrances to protest venues in the second-largest city of Kano. Jonathan's speech comes after his attempt to negotiate with labour unions failed late on Sunday night to avert the strike entering a sixth day.

Amnesty International (AI) has repeated its call for the Nigeria police force to stop shooting at protesters and urged President Goodluck Jonathan to commit to protecting people, after several deaths and injuries were recorded in street protests. The global rights organisation urged the Nigerian authorities to reform the country's police regulations in line with international standards, to prevent additional loss of life and ensure that the police only use firearms when it is strictly necessary to protect life.

Most of the country supports not just the strikes but also the Occupy Nigeria movement which seeks to seriously challenge the status quo and once and for all end the rule by kleptocracy.

The outbreak of anger and revolt in Nigeria cannot be attributed entirely to the removal of the oil subsidy by the government. The people are rising against decades of astounding poverty, insecurity and utter disillusionment.

Anti-government protests have been quite successful, although with many reports of police brutality against protesters. But labour unions appear unable to provide a voice for the people in some parts of the country.

Ethnic and religious violence in Nigeria claimed 16 more victims, with gunmen killing eight in the north and a mob torching an Islamic school in the south, as a fuel strike added to the deadly tension. Amid the sectarian and social turmoil, Nobel literature prize laureate Wole Soyinka, one of the country's most respected voices, warned that the continent's most populous nation was heading toward civil war.

On the 9 January, Nigerians protested at the headquarters of the Wold Bank in the US. They acted in solidarity with Occupy Nigeria and labour activists in Nigeria who have called a general strikeagainst protesting fuel price hikes demanded by the IMF and World Bank. On New Year's Day, Nigerians awoke to find the price of gasoline and diesel had doubled overnight, as the Nigerian president acceded to the demands of the IMF and World Bank, removing public subsidies from fuel. This video reports on the US protest. 'IMF and World Bank policies have been very successful in transferring money from the rest of us to the one per cent,' says one speaker.

Last month, on the other side of the Atlantic, the oil giant Royal Dutch Shell's operation caused from 1m to 2m gallons of oil to spill into the ocean off the coast of Nigeria, also as the result of an industrial accident. 'You may wonder where the outrage against Shell is?' asks Michael Keating in this article on the website. 'To say that it is nonexistent except for a few responses from the environmental community would be an understatement. The simple fact is that Shell and its "sisters" in the West African oil patches are rarely scrutinized except in the most egregious cases – which this one surely is – and the world seems to simply expect that the people of Nigeria should live with these sorts of occurrences because they unfortunately lack the political and media clout to do otherwise.'

Formal women’s groups have historically been a part of the social and political organisation in the Niger Delta. Though these have tended to be based around cultural activities, they have also provided women-only spaces to organise voices of inclusion and assertion, writes Sokari Ekine in an article for Red Pepper. 'The success of women’s protests should not be seen solely in terms of the immediate impact on multinational oil companies. We should consider the wider impacts: the politicisation of women and the bringing together of communities such as the Itsekiri and Ijaw women in Delta State, who were driven into manipulated conflicts by the actions of the state and multinationals.'

‘Time To Reclaim Nigeria’ is an excellent collection of essays which reveal the Nigerian reality, but also point to the fact that another reality of a society founded on the principles of social justice and meaningful democracy is possible, Kwesi Pratt Jnr writes.

A powerful bomb blast targeting soldiers followed by gunfire rocked the troubled Nigerian city of Maiduguri on Tuesday 13 December, with at least 10 people killed, an official and a hospital source said. Residents claimed soldiers reacted to the bombing by shooting indiscriminately and burning homes, with troops having been accused of such abuses following previous attacks after alleging residents were complicit.

'Kill me, kill me, you people should just kill me,' an unidentified woman begged as she was being gang raped by five men while her ordeal was filmed with one of their mobile phones. The crime is believed to have taken place at a private off-campus hostel near Abia State University, Nigeria, in August 2011. The video of the rape, on the Internet, caught the attention of blogger Linda Ikeji. Her subsequent blogpost of the crime sparked widespread anger and debate in Nigeria and beyond, especially among bloggers, Twitter users and organisations such as the youth group EnoughisEnough Nigeria.

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