Amnesty International says that hundreds of those awaiting execution on Nigeria's death row did not have fair trials and may therefore be innocent. At an Oct. 21 press conference in Abuja, the capital, releasing its latest report on the death penalty in Nigeria, co-authored by the Nigerian rights organisation Legal Defence and Assistance Project (LEDAP), Amnesty called for an immediate moratorium on executions in the country.

Manufacturers' Association of Nigeria (MAN) and Nigerian Textile Manufacturers Association (NTMA), has raised alarm over the systematic and deliberate destruction of the Nigerian textile industry and economy by unscrupulous Chinese textile exporters and called on the Federal government to engage the Chinese government over the matter.

Africa's and Nigeria's first geosynchronous communication satellite NigComSat-1 may have been lost for ever, although operators hold it only suffers from a flat battery, which can be fixed. The Chinese-build satellite had cost at least US$ 340 million.

The World Bank has offered Nigeria $3 billion facility to enable the President Umaru Yar’Adua improve education, health, roads, and agriculture with a view to reducing the nation’s poverty rate and living standards of the people. If accepted by the president, the loan would be provided under the International Development Assistance (IDA) and would be in three tranches of $ 1 billion, annually, between 2009 and 2011.

This week marks the 13th anniversary of the death of famed Nigerian activist, Ken Saro Wiwa. On November 10, 1995 Wiwa and 8 other Ogoni activists, known as the Ogoni 9 were ruthlessly executed by the then Nigerian dictator, Sani Abacha. Wiwa and his colleagues were members of the Movement for the Survival of the Ogoni People (MOSOP) who peacefully protested against Shell Oil and the Nigerian government for human rights abuses and environmental damage in their community.

Reporters Without Borders has condemned the arrest of online journalist Emmanuel Emeka Asiwe, a US national, at the Muritala Muhammed international airport on his arrival from the United States on 28 October to visit his sick mother and attend to family matters. He is currently being held at the headquarters of the internal intelligence service, the State Security Service (SSS) in the capital Aubuja. He is the second blogger to be arrested in Nigeria within a week.

The World Bank, acting as administrator for the Global Partnership on Output-Based Aid (GPOBA), has signed a grant agreement for US$6.02 million with the Health Insurance Fund (HIF), a non-profit organization based in the Netherlands, to establish a community health scheme for low-income families in Lagos, Nigeria. The scheme will provide affordable pre-paid health insurance plans for up to 22,500 beneficiaries.

In a case that looks set to again highlight the legal and reputational risks associated with environmental damage arising from alleged corporate negligence, oil giant Shell will this week be served with a summons compelling representatives from the company's Dutch HQ to respond to accusations that its operations have caused environmental damage in Nigeria. Four Nigerian citizens, together with campaigners from Friends of the Earth Netherlands and Nigeria will file the lawsuit in the The Hague on Friday.

The Writers in Prison Committee (WiPC) of International PEN protests the detention of the US-based blogger Jonathan Elendu, who has been held incommunicado without charge in Abuja, Nigeria, since 17 October 2008. There are fears for his health following reports of ill treatment. The WiPC believes that Elendu has been detained for his critical reporting on Nigeria. It calls on the Nigerian authorities to charge Elendu with a recognisable criminal offense or to release him immediately and unconditionally.

Twenty out of 40 cabinet ministers in Nigeria have been sacked for non-performance. President Umaru Yar'Adua said his decision is to reposition and strengthen his administration for effective service delivery, Presidential Spokesman, Olusegun Adeniyi disclosed on Thursday. According to This Day newspaper, the President after taking a valedictory photographs with the sacked ministers said yesterday’s meeting will be the last for some of them.

Bowoto v Chevron is likely to test how the American legal system can be applied to human rights in other countries. The civil suit is being brought under the 1789 Alien Tort Claims Act, one of America’s oldest laws (it was signed by George Washington). The act allows foreigners to bring civil cases before American courts arising from violations of law or treaty anywhere in the world. It was invoked just twice before 1980, when it was used by a victim of state repression in Paraguay.

Nigeria's Supreme Court on Thursday deferred ruling on a challenge to President Umaru Yar'Adua's April 2007 election victory, but did not set a date for handing down its final judgement. Former military ruler Muhammadu Buhari and former vice president Atiku Abubakar, Yar'Adua's main challengers in last year's polls, have appealed to the Supreme Court to annul his victory in an election deemed flawed by foreign and local observers.

Hundreds of people on death row in Nigeria did not have a fair trial and may therefore be innocent, according to a new Amnesty International report. Nigeria: Waiting for the Hangman, says that those sentenced to death are poor and that more than half of the convictions are based on a confession – in many cases, extracted under torture.

On October 27th, the 1st day of a landmark jury trial against Chevron in San Francisco, tell the company that you will not tolerate their human rights abuses in Nigeria or anywhere. Join us at the Chevron gas station at the corner of 9th and Howard in San Francisco in solidarity with Nigerian plaintiffs who are in Federal court nearby from 12pm-1pm. Bring your friends and co-workers.

Nigeria’s government is to pass new laws to overhaul the country’s oil and gas sector before the end of the year, ramping up the pace of reform in spite of fears among Western majors that the changes could cost billions in profits. Umaru Yar’Adua, the president, hopes the new law will form the foundation for a revival of an industry where attacks on pipelines and constraints on investment have fuelled a growing sense of crisis among energy companies.

Malaria has killed 401 people in the last four weeks in northern Nigeria’s Katsina state, according to local health officials. “In the last 28 days 401 people have died of malaria which has become endemic in the state,” Halliru Idris, director of public health in the state’s health ministry, told IRIN.

Nigerian journalist Eiphraim Audu shot and killed on Wednesday by six unknown gunmen near his residence in Lafia, central Nigeria. Mr Audu was a senior radio journalist with Nasarawa State Broadcasting Service and chairman of credential committee of forthcoming Nigeria Union of Journalist elections in Nasarawa.

Royal Dutch Shell has appealed a Nigerian court order requiring it hand over the site of a key base in the oil-rich but impoverished Niger Delta. A high court in Rivers State ruled in July that the site of the Bonny lifting terminal belonged to the local community, not the oil multinational.

Sokari Ekine interviews Tunji Buhari, an environmental campaigns worker for Environmental Rights Action (ERA), Friends of the Earth, Nigeria. Buhari is based in Lagos and has been working with ERA on their anti-tobacco campaign.

With no fixed-line service and mobile phone operators reluctant to invest in rural areas, the Fantsuam Foundation decided to provide VoIP to customers on its wireless network in northern Nigeria.