Members of the campaign group, Nigerians in Diaspora Against Anti Same-Sex Laws held a protest in front of the Embassy of the Federal Republic of Nigeria in New York on Monday, 5 December. A Nigerian representative in New York met with the protestors to receive the petition letter to the Nigerian President with 53,000 supporters.

It was tragedy in Kaduna on 7 December as more than 15 people lost their lives and several others injured following a bomb blast that hit the heart of the city. The incident occurred shortly after the elders in the North ended the Peace and Unity Conference intended to find solution to the insecurity posed by the militant Islamic sect, Boko Haram in the country.

Following the death of separatist leader Chukwuemeka Odumegwu Ojukwu, Funmi Feyedi-John reflects both on his life and on the impact of Biafra's secession.

The Nigerian senate on 29 November passed a bill prohibiting same-sex marriage. Termed Same-Sex Prohibition Bill, it stipulates a 10-year jail term for offenders. Announcing the passage of the bill, Senate president David Mark said that marriage between same sexes is alien to the Nigerian tradition and against all religious morals.

Unconfirmed reports about the Nigerian National Assembly claim that the Nigerian Senate may have already voted on the controversial prohibition of Same-sex Marriage Bill. However, Nigeria LGBT human rights activists are uncertain about information on the status of the bill, which many believe to still be at the Senate committee on human rights and judicial matters.

Churches, homes and the police headquarters in the small northeast Nigerian town of Geidam were set ablaze in a wave of night time gun and bomb attacks by a radical Islamist sect, the police said on Sunday. 'Four policemen were killed, 20 wounded, eight churches and 20 market stalls as well as Geidam council secretariat are completely destroyed,' a police spokesperson said.

Two years after the Nigerian government granted amnesty to militants fighting mainly for development and job opportunities in the oil-rich Niger River Delta, violence has diminished, and oil revenues - which dropped at the height of the conflict - have increased. But analysts argue that the amnesty programme is flawed and will not lead to long-term peace. In the delta, former fighters are picking up their guns again, and resentment brews among those not included.

Nigeria is better known for its massive problems than the people who are working to tackle them. Ron Singer speaks to four anti-corruption activists about their ideas for reform and their efforts to implement them.

Not for the first time, Nigeria is considering a law against same-sex relationships, Sanyu Awori and Rithika Nair write. But the proposed law violates the rights enshrined in the national constitution and human rights instruments that Nigeria is a state party to.

The Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) has said the removal of fuel subsidy will not address the numerous challenges facing the country. Issa Aremu, the vice president of the NLC, made this known in Abuja at a ceremony organised by an NGO, Friedrich Ebert Stiftung. He listed the non remittance of tax by multinational companies operating in the country, crude oil theft, the petroleum income bill pending before the National Assembly and the issue of local content as some of the problems facing the country.

A four-fold increase in polio has been reported in Nigeria, with the disease spreading to other countries, a World Health Organisation official says. Forty-three cases were reported in Nigeria this year, compared to 11 last year, the official, Thomas Moran, said. Curbing the polio virus in Nigeria is key to eradicating the crippling disease in Africa, he said.

Nigeria's secret police have said Boko Haram Islamic militants are receiving funding from certain politicians in the north. The intelligence agency said it had arrested an alleged spokesman for the group, who told them he was sponsored by a politician in Borno state. Boko Haram is blamed for a growing number of deadly attacks in Nigeria. These include the UN headquarters bombing in Abuja in August, which killed 24 people.

A by CRBM, Corner House and FoE Nigeria and others condemns oil majors Eni, Total and Shell for their record of environmental and social devastation in Nigeria. It also dissects EU ‘energy security’, arguing that a policy that locks the EU into dependence on fossil fuels leads to increased conflict and climate chaos.

Nigeria has evacuated from Mali 104 of its citizens, mostly women, either made to work as 'sexual slaves' or suspected of involvement in human trafficking, officials said. The National Agency for the Prohibition of Traffic in Persons (NAPTIP) evacuated 93 alleged victims of human trafficking, nine suspected traffickers and two babies, the agency's head, Beatrice Jedy-Agba, told reporters.

Rights groups in Nigeria fear a same-sex marriage bill being discussed in parliament could boost already prevalent discrimination against homosexuals. The bill goes much further than banning same-sex marriage; it threatens to ban the formation of groups supporting homosexuality, with imprisonment for anyone who 'witnesses, abet[s] or aids' same-gender relationships, and could lead to any discussion or activities related to gay rights being banned.

Amnesty International has called on Shell to pay $1bn to start cleaning up two oil spills in Nigeria's Niger Delta which it says caused huge suffering to locals whose fisheries and farmland were poisoned. The report by the human rights group to mark the 16th anniversary of the execution of environmental activist Ken Saro Wiwa by Nigerian authorities said the two spills in 2008 in Bodo, Ogoniland, had wrecked the livelihoods of 69,000 people.

Nigerian newspaper NEXT shone like a million stars on 1 November as one of its editors and two of its reporters scooped two of the three awards on offer at the FAIR (Forum for African Investigative Reporters) African Investigative Journalism Awards in Johannesburg, South Africa. Pambazuka News contributor Khadija Sharife’s untangling of pharmaceutical medicines pricing, with devastating consequences for young children in need of anti-diarrhoea treatment, which she did for Al Jazeera Africa, received a special mention from a number of judges.

With reference to the fuel subsidy debate in Nigeria, where government plans to scrap fuel subsidies, resulting in a substantial increase in the price of fuel, Nnimmo Bassey argues in The Guardian of Nigeria that the real debate should be on the true cost of crude oil. 'And this is not just about how much is currently spent in refining a litre of petrol in a Nigerian refinery or whether we can justify any plan to raise the pump price of a litre of petrol to N144 or more. The true cost of oil must include the environmental costs that have been externalised and dumped on the poor communities of the Niger Delta.'

In this keynote lecture delivered at the annual conference of the Stanford Forum for African Studies in Palo Alto, California, on 29 October Pius Adesanmi explores how capitalism has organised human history and experience in the pursuit of profit. The full lecture is available here.

Nigeria records 10 extra-judicial killings per week, and 95 per cent of such killings are unresolved, the local media quoted the non-governmental organisation Legal Defence and Assistance Project (LEDAP) as saying. LEDAP also said about 2,800 unlawful killings are recorded annually in Nigeria, with most of the killings carried out by criminal gangs. 'About 16 per cent are done by state agents and most of them are not resolved and perpetrators punished,' LEDAP National Coordinator Chino Obiagwu was quoted as saying.