Looking back at the immense optimism Nigeria's citizens felt for their country in the immediate post-colonial period, Sabella Ogbobode Abidde stresses that former pride has been entirely replaced by a pervasive desire to escape into 'exile'. In the face of corruption and poor healthcare and education, the average Nigerian cannot help but lament an absence of opportunities. This reality notwithstanding however, Abidde argues that it is incumbent upon Nigeria's youth to shape a better future for themselves and their children.

Shell’s commencement of a new gas flare at a time when the routine gas flaring has received global condemnation, and with the full knowledge that gas flaring is an illegal activity in Nigeria, is seen by the locals as an act of impunity and total disregard for their health. Gas flaring is a major contributor of global warming greenhouse gases. The commence this destructive activity a few weeks from the climate negotiations in Copenhagen indicates Shell’s disregard for the welfare of humanity and our climate.

Seeking to minimise the perceived damage done to it by the recent conviction of one of its top members, Bode George, Nigeria's ruling Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) has endorsed the conviction. George, a former deputy national chairman of the PDP, was sentenced to two-and-a-half years imprisonment, along with five others, last week for a contract scam while he served as the chairman of the Nigerian Ports Authority (NPA).

In this week’s Pambazuka News, Sabella Ogbobode Abidde discovers why titles matter in the Nigerian context, where not properly addressing ‘certain people with their earned, dashed, or forged title, could get one into trouble’. ‘Some Nigerians, it seems, do not like to be ordinary people,’ Abidde writes, ‘They have to be somebody. They have to be important, a very, very important person – whether or not they add value to the community they live in.’

Finding 'an African solution to an African problem', the African Union (AU) has endorsed the establishment of a hybrid court to try all crimes committed in the Darfur crisis. The decision was reached by the AU Peace and Security Council (PSC), which met at the level of heads of state and government in Nigeria's capital city of Abuja Thursday to consider the recommendations of the Thabo Mbeki Panel on the Darfur crisis.

With Nigeria's Yar'Adua administration pursuing a policy of 'deregulation', Ayodele Ademiluyi calls on Nigerian workers to oppose the country's direction and stand up for their rights. Critical of the marked gulf in the decision-making power of labour's leadership and ordinary workers, Ademiluyi also stresses the need for greater democratic organisation in the struggle to effectively challenge the excesses and exploitation of the government.

Nigeria plans to offer inhabitants of its oil-producing Niger Delta region ten percent of oil and gas ventures in a bid to end a rebellion that has hampered output for years, a report said. The Financial Times said the initiative, if approved by parliament, would signal a new phase in the government's efforts to forge a lasting peace in the delta, the key production area in the world's eighth largest oil exporter.

Governor Timipre Sylva of Nigeria's Bayelsa state is notable solely for his 'profligacy, perfidiousness, aloofness and incompetence', writes Sabella Ogbobode Abidde in this week's Pambazuka News. With Sylva content to pursue an apparently never-ending programme of foolish and money-gulping schemes, Abidde stresses that Bayelsans and the Ijaw group as a whole need to demonstrate the same willingness to challenge their own elites as they do the federal government and exploitative oil companies.

With Nigeria's ruling elites seemingly intent on continuing to rob their country blind, Kola Ibrahim stresses the need for a nationalised economy rooted in a genuine workers' democracy.

Nigeria's main rebel group has ended its 90-day ceasefire with the government and threatened to resume attacks in the oil-producing southern region. The Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (Mend) said in an emailed statement that it would resume "hostilities against the Nigerian oil industry, the Nigerian armed forces and its collaborators" on Friday.

This Report is on the recent Genocide at Bundu Waterfront in the Township axis of Port Harcourt in the Rivers State of Nigeria. The Report is presented by the National Union of Tenants of Nigeria and based, not only on newspaper publications, but more on the personal experiences by officials of the union who visited the scene and equally had interviews with leaders of the affected community who confirmed the incident and gave useful information to the union.

The Oakland City Council unanimously voted in favor of a resolution urging the U.S. State Department to facilitate peace in the Niger Delta through independently monitored peace negotiations. The City’s call contrasts with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s pledge in August to explore further U.S. military assistance to the government of Nigeria. The resolution marks a new level of support to pressure the United States to adopt a foreign policy that promotes constructive change through dialog in alignment with the American values of democratic civic engagement, and freedom of speech and the press.

Some 8,299 militants embraced the Nigerian government's amnesty programme for oil militants, which ended 4 October, according to officials of the Coordinating Committee on the Amnesty. Chief Coordinator Lucky Ararile, an Air Vice Marshall, told journalists that the militants also surrendered 287,445 ammunition, 2,760 assorted weapons, 18 gunboats, 763 dynamites, 1,090 dynamite caps and 3,155 magazines.

Nigeria's most vocal opposition party, the Action Congress (AC), has condemned the plan by federal legislators to surreptitiously grant themselves and their state counterparts the kind of immunity from arrest and prosecution now being enjoyed by the President, Vice President and the governors of the 36 states. In a statement, issued in Abuja by its National Publicity Secretary,Alhaji Lai Mohammed, the party said the bill, which, according to media reports, had scaled second reading in the House, could create a new set of 'untouchables' if passed into law.

Founder of the Niger Delta People’s Volunteer Force, one of the most prominent armed groups operating in the Niger Delta region, today Mujahid Dokubo Asari is a member of the main opposition party of Nigeria. After numerous unsuccessful attempts to win elections with the aim to fight the unbalanced oil management in the country, in 2004 he and his armed group stopped oil production but did not damage oil lots.

Nigeria's most vocal opposition political party, the Action Congress (AC), said Nigeria's "comatose state", on the occasion of its 49th independence anniversary, has brought to the fore the litany of opportunities missed by the nation to leap into the rarefied height of developed countries and ensure better life for its people. In a statement issued by its National Publicity Secretary, Alha ji Lai Mohammed, the party said a succession of inept, selfish and visionless le a ders was to blame for the sorry state in which a country that was so promising at independence in 1960 had now found itself.

Libya deported an additional 740 Nigerians Thursday, bringing the total number of Nigerians repatriated from the north African nation in recent days to 1,064, the local press reported. Last month, Libya also brought back about 330 Nigerians. Most of the deportees did not have the required papers to stay in Libya, which many use as a transit point to Europe.

Nigerian militants said on Tuesday they opposed a bid by a Chinese energy group to secure 6bn barrels of crude reserves, comparing the potential new investors to “locusts”. The Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta told the Financial Times that the record of Chinese companies in other African counties suggested “an entry into the oil industry in Nigeria will be a disaster for the oil-bearing communities”.

The Nigerian government is bleeding the Niger Delta dry of its oil, but the Ijaw ethnic community that actually owns most of the land is left empty-handed, writes Sabella Ogbobode Abidde in this week's Pambazuka News. Abidde stresses that Niger Deltans cannot be treated in this fashion and that their will must be respected by the central government, arguing that more money must flow back into Ijawland in order to tackle the chronic neglect the region has suffered.

On September 16, 2009, Mr. Wale Oluokun, the Radio Nigeria Correspondent for Government House in Owerri, the Imo State capital in South-east Nigeria was beaten and injured by four armed government security agents in the presence of the Imo State Chief Press Secretary, Mr. Henry Ekpe and a couple of other journalists.