The Historical Society of Nigeria, the umbrella body of professional Historians in Nigeria, will be marking its fifty years of existence this year (1955-2005). To mark this rare feat, a Golden Jubilee Anniversary Conference has been slated for the third week of October 2005, with the theme: "Historical Society of Nigeria at 50: Reflections on the Discipline of History". It is hoped that the occasion will reinvigorate historical consciousness and scholarship in Nigeria.

A government programme to provide primary school children with free lunches has been launched in Nigeria, to encourage parents to educate their children - and to ensure that pupils learn effectively. While a campaign to achieve universal primary education was started in 1999, it has become clear that poverty is still resulting in the exclusion of millions of children from the West African country's education system. The prospect of free lunches can make sending children to school a more attractive proposition for poor parents. According to Ayalew Abai, country representative in Nigeria for the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF), there is evidence to suggest that free school meals lead to increased attendance -- and better performance on the part of pupils.

It’s nearly ten years after Nigerian activist and writer Ken Saro-Wiwa and eight other members of the Movement for the Survival of Ogoni People (MOSOP) were hanged on the morning of 10 November, 1995. Present day Nigeria faces fresh protests in Saro-Wiwa’s stomping ground of the Niger Delta over authoritarian rule and the plunder of the environment by big oil companies. Ike Okonta writes that despite a strategy of state intimidation to suppress the demands of the Ogoni people, the words of Ken Saro-Wiwa live on and are firmly embedded in the political soil of the Niger Delta. (See below for French version).

In life, Ken Saro-Wiwa, the Nigerian writer and minority rights activist, was an elemental force. Like the sun that illuminates all that it touches, Saro-Wiwa’s work beamed a powerful searchlight on the crummy corners of the Nigerian state, illuminating the sordid acts of injustice and oppression that have been visited on the poor and the powerless in the country since it was cobbled together by imperial Britain in 1914.

It was a light that the wealthy and powerful found discomforting, and they resolved to extinguish it. Ken Saro-Wiwa was saying things they did not want to hear, even if all of it was true. Even more worrying, he had mobilized his people, the Ogoni, a small ethnic group in Nigeria’s Niger Delta where Royal/Dutch Shell and several other transnational companies had been producing oil for four decades without giving them any of the proceeds, to stand up and insist that enough was enough.

This was in the early 1990s. Ken Saro-Wiwa had written a small pamphlet in 1990 in which he spelled out the grievances of the Ogoni against the Nigerian state and Shell that was exploiting several oil fields in the area and had subjected the farmlands and fishing rivers of local people to devastation. Saro-Wiwa also spelled out how these grievances might be ameliorated, informed by a regime of rights that have been observed only in the breach since the turn of the 20th century. The Ogoni had been reduced to subjects by the British with the advent of colonial rule, an unhappy state of affairs that had been perpetuated by subsequent Nigerian governing elites. They wanted to reclaim their rights as citizens.

This pamphlet, which has since attained iconic status in the international environmental and human rights community, is the Ogoni Bill of Rights. A few months after it was published, Ken Saro-Wiwa and other Ogoni worthies banded together and established the Movement for the Survival of Ogoni People (MOSOP), a grassroots political organization they planned to use as a vehicle to achieve all the demands and goals in the Ogoni Bill of Rights.

MOSOP was a run-away success from the onset. The organization was ingeniously structured, taping into the age-old republican norms of the six federating Ogoni clans and embedding itself in all hamlets, villages, and towns in the Ogoni nation. MOSOP was not just an ethnic movement. It combined the civic and communal, encouraging women, youth, workers organizations and self-help groups to form their own branches that were then affiliated with the umbrella organization. Ken Saro-Wiwa, the guiding genius of MOSOP, was appointed its spokesman by popular acclaim.

On January 4, 1993, MOSOP and the Ogoni people marked the United Nations day of the world’s indigenous peoples with a peaceful march that saw 300,000 children, women and men in the streets of Bori and other Ogoni towns and villages singing songs of protest. The Nigerian subsidiary of Shell was declared persona non grata and its workers in Ogoni were peacefully expelled from the oil fields. The Nigerian military government was also asked to account for the 30 billion dollars worth of oil taken from the Ogoni oil fields since 1958, and to recognize the demand of the people for a measure of political and economic autonomy within the Nigerian federation.

This was the beginning of MOSOP and Ken Saro-Wiwa’s travails. Nigeria’s political elites had since the oil boom of the early 1970s, considered the oil fields of the Niger delta as a private fief, for them to do with as they saw fit. A raft of decrees and laws had been passed taking over the oil-bearing land of local communities in the area and transferring it to the central government in Abuja, Nigeria’s capital. Shell and the other oil companies had been encouraged to barge into this land to mine oil without paying adequate compensation to the rightful owners. Billions of dollars had poured into the coffers of these elites and their accomplices in Shell while the Ogoni, the Ijaw and the other minority groups pined away in poverty and neglect, denied such basic amenities as water, power, roads, schools, and hospitals.

Ken Saro-Wiwa threatened this cozy arrangement between Nigeria’s corrupt power elite and the oil companies, and they determined to do away with him. Beginning in mid 1993, a special military task force was established by the military government, and with the active cooperation of senior Shell Nigeria officials, proceeded on a campaign of terror, mayhem, and mass murder in Ogoniland. MOSOP elements were identified, isolated, and murdered or maimed. Women were raped. Homes were looted and razed to the ground. In all, 102 Ogoni villages were plundered and their inhabitants either murdered or driven out into the forests.

In May 1994 Saro-Wiwa was arrested by the government on trumped up charges of murder. Several other MOSOP members were detained along with him. After a judicially flawed trial that was widely condemned by human rights groups and opinion leaders world-wide, Ken Saro-Wiwa and eight other MOSOP leaders were hanged in a Nigerian prison in the morning of 10 November, 1995.

In November 2005 it will be ten years since Ken Saro-Wiwa and the Ogoni Eight were murdered in cold blood by the Nigerian military junta and dumped into unmarked graves. Their intent was to remove the writer and activist from political contention in the Niger delta, and also rid Shell of its most powerful critic. But Saro-Wiwa dead has become even more of a potent force in the burgeoning campaign for minority rights, corporate social responsibility, and environmental protection than when he was alive. He has joined the eternal greats beautified by their selfless service to humanity, even at the cost of their lives.

All over the world preparations are being made to mark the tenth anniversary of Saro-Wiwa’s passing. Several non governmental organizations in Nigeria are banding together to establish a writers resort for the late writer who gave African literature such classics as ‘Soza-boy: A Novel in Rotten English’, ‘On a Darkling Plain’, and ‘A Forest of Flowers’. A memorial statute of Saro-Wiwa will be erected in London by a group of environmental and human rights groups. San Francisco will offer a musical concert and fundraiser on behalf of the Ken Saro-Wiwa Foundation, recently established by the late writer’s son, Ken Wiwa Jnr.

Still, the present Nigerian government, and the oil companies to which it is in hock, are working feverishly to undermine the legacies of this moral and political giant, in the Niger delta and elsewhere in the country. A fresh wave of communal and civic unrest is sweeping through the delta as youth, women and communal leaders join their counterparts in other parts of the country to demand an end to authoritarian rule and the regime of impunity that has enabled the transnational oil companies to plunder the resources of local people and despoil their environment.

The government took delivery of yet another batch of fast attack boats from the United States in early September and has deployed them to the delta, ostensibly to check the activities of oil smugglers. But local activists say there has been a marked increase in military deployments in the region of recent, coinciding with the mass mobilisation of civic and political groups in the delta to frustrate the ruling government’s plot to perpetuate itself in office beyond 2007 when fresh presidential and local elections are due.

Niger delta leaders walked out of a conference convened by the central government in February to work out a new federal framework and an acceptable formula for sharing the oil revenue when their demand for twenty percent of oil receipts was rejected. They also refused to back a covert plan that would have enabled the President, Olusegun Obasanjo, to alter the provisions of the constitution and continue in office when his term expires in May 2007.

The increased military presence in the region, and the recent spate of detention of local leaders, is President Obasanjo’s way of retaliating against those in the region he now characterises as ‘subversive elements’. It is, however, unlikely, that these strong-arm methods will suppress the clamour for democratic accountability, self-representation, and proper consideration for the environment in the region. Saro-Wiwa was hanged in order that Shell might return to its oil wells in Ogoni. But the Ogoni have refused to back down, and the oil company is still persona non grata in the area twelve years after it was peacefully expelled from the Ogoni oil fields. The present wave of military intimidation will not achieve the result Nigeria's authoritarian leaders desire: unchecked plunder of the oil wealth of the delta communities. Saro-Wiwa's words have embedded firmly in the political soil of the Niger Delta.

Ken Saro-Wiwa was a writer and a man of ideas. He believed that the written word was potent, and that good ideas would endure no matter the travails and obstacles placed on their path. Saro-Wiwa was right. Ten years after he was brutally cut down, his word and ideas are as potent as when he first uttered them in the early 1990s.

* Dr Ike Okonta is a Junior Research Fellow in the Department of Politics and International Relations, University of Oxford. He's co-author of ‘Where Vultures Feast: Shell, Human Rights and Oil’ (Verso: London, 2003). He writes a weekly column for the Lagos daily, ThisDay.

* Please send comments to [email protected]

Remember Saro-Wiwa
http://www.remembersarowiwa.com

Remember Saro-Wiwa is a coalition of organisations and individuals encompassing the arts and literature, human rights and environmental and development issues. Remember Saro-Wiwa is working with Ken Saro-Wiwa's family and the Ken Saro-Wiwa Foundation (based in Toronto, Canada). Visit http://www.remembersarowiwa.com for a list of planned events and partner organisations.

Remembering Ken Saro-Wiwa: Book titles resissued
http://www.africanbookscollective.com/

To coincide with the ten-year anniversary of the execution of Ken Saro-Wiwa, and in association with the Remember Ken Saro-Wiwa coalition, African Books Collective is reissuing some of his best known works. Visit the ABC website at http://www.africanbookscollective.com/ to browse the titles.

À la mémoire de Ken Saro-Wiwa et la lutte pour la justice au Nigeria
Dr. Ike Okonta

Ça fait presque dix ans que Ken Saro-Wiwa, activiste et écrivain nigérian, et huit autres membres du Mouvement pour la Survie du Peuple Ogoni (MOSOP) ont été pendus au matin du 10 novembre, 1995. Aujourd’hui, le Nigeria doit faire face à de nouvelles manifestations dans le delta du Niger, le territoire fréquenté surtout par Saro-Wiwa, à cause de lu régime autoritaire et du pillage de l’environnement commis par les grandes sociétés pétrolières. Ike Okonta écrit que, malgré la stratégie d’intimidation qu’emploie l’état pour supprimer les demandes du peuple Ogoni, les mots de Ken Saro-Wiwa vivent toujours et sont solidement enracinés dans le sol politique du delta nigérian.

Vivant, Ken Saro-Wiwa, écrivain nigérian et défenseur des droits des peuples minoritaires, était une force élémentaire. Comme le soleil, qui illumine tout ce qu’il touche, l’?uvre de Ken Saro-Wiwa était une torche qui a exposé les coins minables de l’état nigérian, illuminant les actes sordides d’injustice et d’oppression qui ont été commis contre les pauvres et les impuissants dans le pays depuis son origine, origine d’ailleurs mal organisé par les Britanniques quand ils ont pris possession du pays en 1914.

C’était une lumière qui a troublé les riches et les puissants, et donc ils ont résolu de l’éteindre. Ken Saro-Wiwa disait des choses qu’ils ne voulaient pas entendre, même si tout était vrai. Encore plus troublant, il avait mobilisé son peuple, les Ogoni, un petit groupe ethnique dans la région du delta nigérien du Nigeria, où Royal/Dutch Shell et plusieurs autres sociétés transnationales produisaient du pétrole déjà depuis quatre décennies sans leur en donner aucun revenu, à se mettre debout et à insister que cela en était assez.

Nous sommes au début des années 90. Ken Saro-Wiwa avait écrit un court pamphlet en 1990 dans lequel il a énoncé les plaintes des Ogoni contre l’état nigérian et contre Shell, qui exploitait plusieurs gisements de pétrole dans la région et qui avait dévasté les terrains agriculteurs et les rivières utilisés par le peuple local. Saro-Wiwa a aussi articulé les moyens par lesquels ces plaintes pourraient être améliorées, informé par un régime de droits qui ont été observés seulement dans leur infraction depuis le début du 20e siècle. Les Ogoni avaient été réduits à des sujets par les Britanniques sous la règne coloniale, un état malheureux qu’avaient perpétué les élites nigérians après leur appropriation du pouvoir gouvernemental. Les Ogoni voulaient reprendre leurs droits comme citoyens.

Ce pamphlet, qui a depuis atteint un statut iconique parmi les communautés internationales qui défendent l’environnement et les droits humains, est le Bill of Rights des Ogoni. Quelques mois après sa publication, Ken Saro-Wiwa et d’autres notables Ogoni se sont groupés ensemble et ont établi le Mouvement pour la Survie du Peuple Ogoni (MOSOP), une organisation politique au niveau de la base dont ils voulaient profiter afin d’accomplir toutes les demandes et tous les buts annoncés dans le Bill of Rights Ogoni.

MOSOP était un succès éclatant depuis son origine. L’organisation était structurée de façon brillante, tirant profit comme il l’a fait des normes républicaines et anciennes des six clans fédérants des Ogoni, et s’enracinant dans tous les hameaux, tous les villages, et toutes les villes de la nation Ogoni. MOSOP n’était pas seulement un mouvement ethnique. C’était un mélange des éléments civiques et communautaires, et a encouragé des femmes, des jeunes, des organisations d’ouvriers, et des groupes d’entraide à former leurs propres branches qui étaient associées, à l’époque, avec l’organisation centrale. MOSOP a nommé Ken Saro-Wiwa, son génie conducteur, comme porte-parole à cause de sa renommée populaire.

Le 4 janvier 1993, MOSOP et le peuple Ogoni ont observé le jour reconnu par l’ONU comme celui des peuples indigènes avec une manifestation paisible, une action qui a inspiré 300,000 enfants, femmes, et hommes à marcher dans les rues de Bori et celles d’autres villages, tout en chantant des chansons de protestation. On a déclara la filiale nigérienne de Shell persona non grata, et on a expulsé ses ouvriers postés à Ogoni des gisements de pétrole de façon paisible. On a demandé aussi au gouvernement militaire du Nigeria de rendre compte des 30 milliards de dollars de pétrole puisé des gisements de pétrole Ogonis depuis 1958, et de reconnaître la demande du peuple d’une mesure d’autonomie politique et économique dans la fédération nigériane.

Ceci était le début du travail pénible pour MOSOP et pour Ken Saro-Wiwa. Depuis la forte hausse du pétrole du début des années 70, les élites politiques du Nigeria avaient considéré les gisements de pétrole du delta nigérien comme un fief privé, dont elles pouvaient se servir comme elles voulaient. Elles avaient approuvé un tas de décrets et de lois qui ont pris possession des terres qui avaient appartenu à des communautés locales, terres qui étaient riches en pétrole, et elles ont transféré l’administration de ces terres au gouvernement central à Abuja, la capitale du Nigeria. Ces élites avaient encouragé Shell et les autres sociétés pétrolières à s’installer dans ces terres et à en exploiter le pétrole, sans les obliger de payer une compensation adéquate aux propriétaires légitimes du pétrole. Les coffrets des élites et de leurs accomplisses à Shell débordaient des milliards de dollars, tandis que les Ogoni, les Ijaw, et les autres groupes minoritaires languissaient dans la pauvreté et l’oubli, privés des nécessités fondamentales telles l’eau, l’électricité, les autoroutes, les écoles, et les hôpitaux.

Ken Saro-Wiwa a menacé ce rapport intime entre les élites puissantes et corrompues et les sociétés pétrolières, et donc elles ont déterminé de se débarrasser de lui. Vers le milieu de 1993, un corps expéditionnaire a été établi par le gouvernement militaire pour ce but singulier, et, avec la collaboration active de la part des officiaux les plus haut placés de Shell Nigeria, ce corps a procédé à une campagne de terreur, de chaos, et de meurtre en masse dans le pays des Ogoni. Des éléments de MOSOP étaient identifiés, isolés, et assassinés ou mutilés. Des femmes, violées. Des maisons, pillées et détruites. En somme, 102 villages Ogoni ont été pillés et leurs habitants ont été assassinés ou chassés dans la forêt.

En mai 1994, le gouvernement a arrêté Ken Saro-Wiwa et l’a accusé de meurtre, une accusation inventée de toutes pièces. Le gouvernement a retenu, en plus, plusieurs autres membres de MOSOP. Après un procès plein de défauts judiciaires qui a mérité la condamnation de nombreux groupes défenseurs des droits humains et des chefs d’opinion à travers le monde, Ken Saro-Wiwa a été pendu avec huit autres dirigeants de MOSOP dans une prison nigériane au matin du 10 novembre, 1995.

Ça fera, en novembre 2005, dix ans depuis l’assassinat de Ken Saro-Wiwa et les Huit Ogoni, tués avec sang-froid par le junta militaire du Nigeria et jetés dans des tombeaux anonymes. Leur intention, c’était d’enlever l’écrivain et l’activiste du conflit politique du delta du Niger, et aussi de se débarrasser du critique le plus fort de Shell. Cependant, mort, Saro-Wiwa est devenu une force encore plus puissante dans la campagne croissante pour les droits des peuples minoritaires, la responsabilité des grandes sociétés envers la population nigériane, et la protection de l’environnement, encore plus puissant qu’il ne l’a été quand il était vivant. Il s’est joint avec ces grands immortels dont le service désintéressé envers l’humanité, même au prix de leurs vies, les rend beaux.

Partout dans le monde, les préparations se font pour observer le dixième anniversaire de la mort de Saro-Wiwa. Plusieurs organisations non gouvernementales au Nigeria s’unissent afin d’établir un ressort pour les écrivains en l’honneur de l’écrivain décédé qui a légué à la littérature africaine des ?uvres classiques telles « Soza-boy : A Novel in Rotten English », « On a Darkling Plain », et « A Forest of Flowers ». Une statue sera érigée en sa mémoire à Londres par un groupe d’associations qui soutiennent les droits humains et la protection environnementale. San Francisco offrira un concert musical et un projet organisé pour collectionner des fonds au nom de la Fondation Ken Saro-Wiwa, établie récemment par le fils de l’écrivain décédé, Ken Wiwa Jr.

Quand même, le gouvernement nigérian actuel, et les sociétés pétrolières envers lesquelles il est au clou, travaillent infatigablement à saper les legs à ce géant politique et moral, dans le delta du Niger et autre part dans le pays. Une nouvelle vague d’agitation communautaire et civile prend possession du delta comme des jeunes, des femmes, et des chefs communautaires s’unissent avec leurs semblables dans des autres parties du pays afin de demander une terminaison du règne autoritaire et du régime d’impunité qui a permis aux sociétés pétrolières transnationales de piller les ressources et de spolier l’environnement du peuple local.

Le gouvernement a accueilli, vers le début de septembre, la livraison d’encore un groupe de bateaux d’attaque rapide de la part des États-Unis, et les a déployés au delta, avec la prétention de suivre les activités des contrebandiers de pétrole. Pourtant, des activistes locales remarquent que, récemment, il y a eu un croissement signifiant dans les déploiements militaires dans la région, ce qui coïncide avec la mobilisation en masse des groupes civiques et politiques dans le delta, qui ont pour but de frustrer le complot de la part du gouvernement régnant de se maintenir au-delà de 2007, la date des nouvelles élections locales et présidentielles.

En février, les chefs du delta du Niger ont quitté une conférence organisée par le gouvernement central qui avait pour but d’esquisser un nouveau cadre pour le gouvernement fédéral et une formule acceptable pour le partage des revenus pétroliers. Leur demande de vingt pourcent des revenus était rejetée. Ils ont refusé, d’ailleurs, de soutenir un plan secret qui aurait permis au président, Olusegun Obasanjo, de changer les provisions de la constitution et de rester au pouvoir quand son terme se termine en mai 2007.

La présence croissante des forces militaires dans la région, et le nombre de retentions des chefs locaux dans des temps récents, ce sont les moyens par lesquels le président Obasanjo se venge de ceux dans la région qu’il caractérise maintenant comme « des éléments subversifs ». Il est, pourtant, peu probable que ces méthodes de force supprimeront la clameur pour la transparence démocratique, l’autoreprésentation, et une considération adéquate pour l’environnement dans la région. On a pendu Saro-Wiwa afin de permettre à Shell de retourner aux puits pétroliers dans le pays des Ogoni. Mais les Ogoni ont refusé de céder, et la société pétrolière est toujours persona non grata dans la région douze ans après son expulsion paisible des gisements de pétrole Ogonis. La vague actuelle d’intimidation militaire n’atteindra pas le résultat que souhaitent les chefs autoritaires du Nigeria, c’est-à-dire le pillage sans bornes de la richesse pétrolière des communautés du delta. Les mots de Saro-Wiwa sont fermement enracinés dans le sol politique du delta du Niger.

Ken Saro-Wiwa était un écrivain et un homme d’idées. Il croyait que l’écriture était puissante, et que les idées justes endureraient malgré toutes les difficultés et tous les obstacles mis sur leur chemin. Saro-Wiwa avait raison. Dix ans après sa mort brutale, ses mots et ses idées sont aussi puissants que la première fois qu’il les a articulés au début des années 90.

*Le Dr. Ike Okonto est Junior Research Fellow dans le département de politique et de relations internationales à l’université d’Oxford. C’est le coauteur de Where Vultures Feast : Shell, Oil, and Human Rights (Verso : Londres, 2003). Il écrit une rubrique chaque semaine pour le journal de Lagos, « ThisDay ».

*Veuillez envoyer des commentaires à [email protected].

Remember Saro-Wiwa
http://www.remembersarowiwa.com

« Remember Saro-Wiwa » (« À la mémoire de Saro-Wiwa ») est une coalition d’organisations et d’individus qui englobe les arts et la littérature, les droits humains, et les questions de l’environnement et du développement international. Remember Saro-Wiwa travaille avec la famille de Saro-Wiwa et la Fondation Ken Saro-Wiwa (basée à Toronto, Canada). Visitez http://www.remembersarowiwa.com pour une liste des événements prévus et des organisations partenaires.

À la mémoire de Ken Saro-Wiwa : Ses livres réimprimés
http://www.africanbookscollective.com

Pour coïncider avec le dixième anniversaire de l’exécution de Ken Saro-Wiwa, et en association avec la coalition « Remember Ken Saro-Wiwa », African Books Collective vous offre des nouvelles éditions de ses ?uvres les mieux connues. Veuillez visiter le site web ABC à http://www.aficanbookscollective.com pour une liste de tous les titres.

Pambazuka is grateful to Sara Gibson (Yale University) who has translated this article on behalf of Translations for Progress.

IFES' current program in Nigeria builds upon work that began with transitional elections of 1998-99, under which a newly established Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) ushered in a civilian administration and a new era in Nigerian politics. Over the coming 3 years, the program will seek to leverage gains in the transparency, credibility, and efficiency of the electoral process, and to extend development of the process into new areas.

Five year-old Fati could barely hold back her tears. This little girl who loves going to school had just been sent home. Like the other three kids turned away at the gates on the first day of classes, Fati is HIV-positive and has been orphaned by AIDS. Her head low, her uniform not quite hiding a stomach swollen from the antiretroviral (ARV) drugs she's been taking for a year, Fati, which is not her real name, clung to Cathryn Barrera, director of Mother's Welfare Group (MWG).

Three Nigerians have died in clashes in Lagos as soldiers fought running battles with police.
The dead were civilians caught in the crossfire of a battle that began when a soldier and policeman argued over who had the right to a free ride on a bus. The police officer hit out at the soldier, who raised the alarm at a nearby barracks, sparking violence.

After two weeks of peace talks and amid signs that world patience is running thin, rival parties in Sudan's Darfur conflict finally entered face-to-face negotiations this week on the key issues that need to be resolved before reaching a deal. African Union (AU) chief mediator Salim Ahmed Salim brought delegates representing the Sudan government and Darfur's two main rebel groups together on Monday, saying continued violations of truce agreements in Sudan's western Darfur region were unacceptable at a time when peace seemed within reach.

Confessions of the mind - ( http://confessionsofnneka.blogspot.com/)
has an interesting piece on Christianity and Africans with particular reference to Nigeria, which criticises the trend of commercialising religion and the growth of churches on the continent and “the hypocrites who come to church to see and be seen”, though I cannot agree with her comment about women “luring catholic priests into committing sin”.

"Then a couple of months later you see they have built a roof to ward off merciless sun, then a year later, they have an actual building, the pastor is looking fatter, the congregation more presentable. But the pastor is still preaching give to the lord for he is good. Next thing the pastor is driving a hummer or Mercedes truck fully Air Conditioned, Suits by Armani, shoes by Prada, monogrammed hanky, house in Lekki and still telling people, who have come with their whole families on a bike to give unto to the lord and still collecting church funds from these people and using himself as an example of how the lord blessed his life because he was “giving to the church”".

African Bullets & Honey - African Bullets & Honey (http://bulletsandhoney.blogspot.com/2005/09/why-western-visions-of-utop…) believes that “fighting the aid industry in its many forms is one of the great moral crusades of our time” and I have to agree with him on this. He draws on an article by William Easterly writing in “Foreign Policy” magazine which discusses the utopianism of “economists, politicians, and rock stars in rich countries have pleaded for debt relief and aid for the world’s poorest countries“.

Congo Watch - Congo Watch (http://congowatch.blogspot.com/) reports on the recently discovered remains believed to be those of Congolese and Rwandan Hutus killed by Rwandan soldiers in 1996.

Kenyan Democracy Project - Kenyan Democracy Project (http://demokrasia-kenya.blogspot.com) has a message to the Kenyan “Postponent Proponents” - “Postpone your Duplicity”.

“This essay is going to suggest that the “Tuhairishe Kura ya Maoni” aficionados are nothing more than closeted Yes supporters who have developed running stomachs in the face of the Hapana avalanche that threatens to bury many of the parliamentary turncoats in humiliating defeating in 2007- if not sooner“.

Black Star Journal - (http://popeyeafrica.blogspot.com/2005/09/amnestyisia.html) reports on the recent referendum held in Algeria for a “Charter for Peace and National Reconciliation”.

Allegedly 97% of voters approved the project with a reported 79% turnout... though the opposition and journalists dispute the latter figure ...The opposition called for a boycott of the plan.

The charter is controversial as it absolves the Algerian military from any role in the disappearance of thousands of Algerians during the civil war.

As Nigeria celebrates its 45th year of independence, Black Looks - Black Looks (http://okra soup.typepad.com/black_looks) reports on the recent arrest of the Bayelsa State Governor, Diepreye Alamieyeseigha in London for money laundering.

The whole sordid shameful saga has undermined the ongoing call for 50% derivation of oil monies to the Niger Delta states of which Bayelsa is one and the calls of self-determination and autonomy.

Governors and other top public officials who may have large sums of money stashed are running scared as Interpol’s dragnet widens. This is coming on the heels of moves by President Olusegun Obasanjo’s economic team who may have seized the initiative to push aside corrupt members of the political elite in the battle for 2007 presidential succession.

A Nigerian governor from oil-producing Bayelsa state was charged in London on Wednesday with laundering £1,82m, a court official said. Diepreye Alamieyeseigha was arrested on September 15 by London's Metropolitan Police. The police later found £1m in cash in the governor's London house. He was charged at Bow Street magistrate's court with laundering money on three occasions: £420000 in September 2001, £475724 in March 2002 and £920000 in September this year, court documents showed.

Frauds and forgeries in banks between April and June 2005, rose sharply by 48 per cent or 107 cases to 329 cases compared to 222 cases recorded in the preceding quarter. Vice Chairman/Chief Executive of Intercontinental Bank Plc Dr Erastus Akingbola citing reports from the Financial Institutions Training Centre (FITC) said the amount involved went up by 25.6 per cent, from N1.15 billion to N1.47 billion.

"The Centre for Democracy and Development would like to express its concerns at the 7 September statement by Professor Maurice Iwu, Chair of Nigeria’s Independent National Electoral Commission in which he seemed to indicate that foreign election monitors will be barred from the crucial 2007 presidential, legislative and gubernatorial elections in the country."

Nigeria is withdrawing its 120-strong police contingent serving with the UN peacekeeping mission in the Democratic Republic of Congo's capital, Kinshasa. The UN launched an investigation into sexual harassment allegations three weeks ago and the entire unit were withdrawn from their duties. Nigerian police spokesman Haz Iwendi said 10 officers were accused of sexually harassing local women. "When one is contaminated, the whole bunch is contaminated," he said. Speaking from Nigeria, he said a senior police officer had already been sent to DR Congo to bring them home.

Nigeria's Federal High Court will on Tuesday, 13 September 2005, announce a ruling in a petition by two Nigerian businessmen amputated by Charles Taylor-backed militias in Sierra Leone in 1999 challenging President Olusegun Obasanjo's decision to grant asylum to fugitive former Liberian President, Mr. Charles Taylor. In their petition initiated on 13 May 2004, the two businessmen, David Anyaele and Emmanuel Egbuna, claim that President Obasanjo's decision to grant asylum to Mr. Taylor was contrary to the United Nations Refugee Convention of 1951 and the African Union's Refugee Convention of 1969 and unlawfully usurped the powers of Nigeria's National Refugee Commission.

Anti-riot police arrested 45 protestors in the southeast Nigerian town of Onitsha during region-wide demonstrations called by a banned secessionist group, police officials and witnesses said last Thursday. The Movement for the Actualisation of the Sovereign State of Biafra (MASSOB) said it called protests held in several southeastern cities on Wednesday to protest alleged harassment of its members by the security forces and to intensify its demand for secession.

Imo State government has approved the establishment of a Forestry Trust Fund (FTF) in the state. Flagging off this year's tree planting campaign in Owerri, Governor Achike Udenwa, also directed local council administrations to encourage the people to plant economic trees. "In recognition of the role trees and forests can play in realising our tripod vision, my administration approved the establishment of a Forestry Trust Fund in Imo State," Udenwa disclosed.

About 200 delegates from 28 countries all over the world are expected on Monday at the 31st Annual Conference of International Association for Educational Assessment (IAEA), slated to take off on September 4-9,2005 in Abuja. The Conference, which for the first time will take place in Nigeria, is aimed at assisting educational agencies in the development and appropriate application of techniques to improve the quality of education, will be hosted by JAMB, NECO, NTI,WAEC, NABTEB, and Fleet Technologies limited.

The Minister of Solid Minerals and Chairman of the Nigeria Extractive Industry Transparency Initiative (NEITI) Dr. Obiageli Ezekwesili, has said that the body is determined to wipe out corruption and unwholesome practices from the oil industry. Ezekwesili, who spoke while receiving the British High Commissioner, Richard Gozney in her office said, the hitherto inaccessible revenue records of the nation's oil and gas industry would henceforth become public notice.

Kafanchan in northern Nigeria is an unlikely place for a digital renaissance. But a television program prominently telecast found people there not only "eager to join the information age, use computers and get on-line"but planning to do so in a rather unorthodox manner. APC member the Fantsuam Foundation is working on a revolutionary alternative computer, tailor made for the so-called "developing" world, that uses solar power.

The proportion of fake and often deadly medicines in Nigeria has dropped from nearly 70 percent circulating in 2002 to less than 10 percent three years later, according to the country’s drug control agency. The figures are preliminary results from a new government survey of the counterfeit drug trade, Dora Akunyili, head of the National Agency for Food and Drug Administration and Control (NAFDAC), told IRIN this week.