Nigeria’s powerful trade unions on Monday called off a general strike planned for the next day after the government, in an eleventh-hour move, offered an almost 10-percent cut in the price of domestic fuels. “The government has reduced the price of petrol,” John Odah, General Secretary of the Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC), told IRIN by phone from Abuja. “We therefore decided to suspend the strike.”

On 11 November 2004, a photojournalist with the Lagos-based daily "Vanguard", Diran Oshe, was assaulted by security agents who also smashed his camera as he attempted to take photographs of Major Hamza Al-Mustapha, the former chief security officer to the late Nigerian head of state, General Sani Abacha. The incident took place at the premises of the High Court in Ikeja, Lagos, where Major Al-Mustapha is standing trial along with four others for his alleged involved in the attempted murder of Alex Ibru, publisher of the privately-owned national daily "The Guardian".

Nigerian Finance Minister Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala has launched an anti-corruption drive at the ministry three weeks after a global watchdog named her country the world's third most corrupt nation. "We are not trying to say corruption does not exist or defending it. We know it exists and we reject it," said Okonjo-Iweala, a former World Bank vice president, who launched the initiative in Abuja.

An Islamic court in northern Nigeria on Wednesday threw out a death by stoning sentence against a pregnant 18-year-old girl who had been condemned for adultery. Judge Mohammed Mustapha Umar of the Upper Shariah Court in Dass, a rural town in Bauchi state, said a lower court was wrong to have convicted Hajara Ibrahim. The judge said it was an error to sentence Ibrahim both to death for adultery and 100 lashes of the cane — the punishment for pre-marital sex. The accused also was not given a chance to defend herself, the judge said.

The failure of the Nigerian government to rigorously enforce its obligations to protect human rights is fuelling violations of civil and political as well as economic, social and cultural rights in the process of the oil exploration and production in the Niger Delta, Amnesty International said in a new report entitled 'Nigeria: Are human rights in the pipeline?' The report examines how the human rights of individuals and communities have been abused as a result of practices of some transnational corporations (TNCs) and violated by the inactions and actions of the Nigerian Federal Government in the Niger Delta. It also includes three cases highlighting issues such as non-inclusive consultation processes and the failure to clean up oil spills, involving the Shell Petroleum Development Corporation (SPDC) and the Nigerian Agip Oil Corporation (NAOC).

Owei Sikpi, of the "Weekly Star" newspaper, based in Port Harcourt, the Rivers State capital, was assaulted by thugs allegedly acting on instructions from Steven Diver, chairman of the Southern Ijaw Local Government Area in Bayelsa State, reports Media Rights Agenda. The thugs, who were reportedly backed by anti-riot policemen, introduced themselves as State Security Service (SSS) operatives. They then forcibly took Sikpi to a house located at 24 Woji Road in Port Harcourt, where they beat him until he was nearly unconscious. Thereafter, they stripped him naked and took several photographs of him.

A 25-year-old woman appealed against a death-by-stoning sentence for adultery in an Islamic court on Wednesday. In September an Islamic shariah court in Nigeria's Bauchi state found Daso Adamu guilty of adultery.

Nigeria's main trade union has said it will hold a second general strike in protest at fuel rises, warning it would specifically target oil production. The umbrella union body Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) confirmed the action would start on 16 November. Union leaders accused the Anglo-Dutch oil giant Shell of being the "enemy of the Nigerian people" and called for action against the firm.

The Nigerian President, Olusegun Obasanjo, has praised Anglican bishops from Africa for what he called their principled stand against homosexuality. At a meeting of 300 African bishops in Nigeria, Mr Obasanjo condemned homosexuality and same-sex marriages as un-Biblical, unnatural and un-African. The conference, to discuss future ties with the Anglican Church, has already vowed to stop training priests abroad. The African division - which represents over half of the world's Anglican congregation - has collided with its US counterpart over same-sex unions and the consecration last year of Gene Robinson, a homosexual.

Against the backdrop of another poor performance by Nigeria in Transparency International's Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI) Independent Advocacy Project (IAP) the good governance group, has expressed serious concerns about the ineffectiveness of government anti corruption programmes and how corruption continues to impoverish Nigerians.

Nigeria has failed to agree on a new date for handing over the disputed Bakassi peninsula to Cameroon after refusing to withdraw from the potentially oil-rich territory by the original deadline of 15 September, the UN mediator in the border dispute has announced. The UN Office for West Africa (UNOWA) said the latest meeting of the Cameroon-Nigeria Mixed Commission in Abuja on 21 and 22 October had simply referred the issue to the heads of state of the two countries and UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan.

A widening investigation has implicated some of the world's largest oil services firms in an alleged scheme to bribe Nigerian officials to win $5.3 billion in contracts to build a natural gas complex in the African country. As details of the case unfolded, one of the key players, Houston-based Halliburton Co., said that the questionable conduct occurred almost entirely before it became a partner. But information shows that Halliburton, through a subsidiary, was more involved in some of the suspicious deals than it has acknowledged.

Asari and his foes have pulled back from the brink in the Niger Delta but the threat remains. After Mujahid Dokubo Asari's 'Operation Locust Feast' effectively declared war against Olusegun Obasanjo's government and oil companies working in Nigeria on 1 October, world oil prices soared above US $50 a barrel and Obasanjo feared the threat of more violence. The crisis was unfolding on three levels: local clashes over oil shipments and political rights; national political competition between state governors and presidency; and the effects of these conflicts on an already volatile world oil market. Asari stated that while his group had put down their weapons for the moment, they were willing to pick them up again if his demands were not met or if the government threatened him.

Beyond the three-sided conflict in Rivers State – between Asari, Ateke Tom (Asari's former rival for political control and theft operations) and the government task force, Operation Flush Out 3 – there are the crime and political syndicates which sponsor their own gangs which carry out hijacking, kidnapping of oil workers, protection and other criminal rackets which supplement the gangs’ income from bunkering.

There are also hundreds of disputes in the Delta. As Asari and Tom were talking peace with Obasanjo, Operation Flush Out 3, which was formed to take out Asari and other ‘cultists’ whom Rivers Governor Peter Odili blames for the crisis, was drawn into a dispute in Bille and Ke, two small communities in Degema Local Government Area. Shooting their way to negotiations Nigerian activists are drawing harsh lessons from the Delta crisis: taking up guns gets a place at the negotiating table, particularly if a group threatens economic assets. A leading human rights activist, Ayo Obe, said that the Delta events showed that while peaceful protesters were chased off the streets, armed opponents would be flown to to Abuja for high-level talks. She was sceptical that renewed talk of a national conference based on demands by ‘warlords’ would make progress.

Before peace talks, Odili called Asari a ‘joker’ and said that he couldn’t wage war on the government and oil companies. In fact, Asari is waging war through the international media, relying on the nervous oil market and the oil-hungry United States to push for deals to keep the oil flowing.

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Despite increasing dependence of the Nigerian public and private sector operations on the Internet, there were fears over the weekend that Nigeria might be losing out of the critical issue of Internet governance in the African region where it prides itself as a giant. Such fears come from the apparent lack of positioning by government and private sector operatives in the relevant bodies that are striving to seek control the administration of the Internet in the African region.

Archbishop Peter Akinola of Nigeria - which has some 17.5 million Anglicans - angrily blasted a report, saying that it was "patronising" and said the world communion could split. The report was ordered by the church's leaders after the ordination by a US church of a gay bishop. It said that both sides of the debate should seek reconciliation and that the US diocese should apologise for making Gene Robinson a bishop. But Archbishop Akinola said this did not go far enough and wanted those who are "promoting sexual sins" to be rebuked.

Nigeria angrily rejected the results and methodology of the world's best-known corruption study on Wednesday after being named the third most corrupt of the 145 countries surveyed. Nigeria, the oil-rich but socially poor West African giant, has been anchored at or around the bottom of Transparency International's annual Corruption Perceptions Index since it was first published 10 years ago.

World-famous Nigerian author Chinua Achebe has rejected an award from his home country, criticising the "dangerous" state of affairs. "The situation is getting worse and worse," he told the BBC, saying that President Olusegun Obasanjo bears primary responsibility. Achebe told the BBC's Network Africa programme that he hoped that rejecting the Commander of the Federal Republic - Nigeria's second highest honour - would serve as a "wake-up call". He also said that he hoped the recent wave of strikes and protests would continue until there is "change".

Editors and managers of top media organizations across Nigeria have committed themselves to supporting the national response to the HIV/AIDS challenge in the country. Face to face to with the reality of HIV/AIDS like never before, the gatekeepers of the media saw the epidemic at personal levels. As a group, the media managers committed their organization - the Nigerian Guild of Editors (NGE) - to deploying their skills and influence to the anti-AIDS campaign.

Tony Blair and other G8 leaders must urgently act to stop supporting oil multinationals plundering Nigeria for oil. Despite the damaging impacts on countries like Nigeria, the oil industry receives public funding from the UK Government to support new pipelines and operations via publicly-funded financial bodies, such as the World Bank and European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD).

Islamic courts in Nigeria sentenced two women to death by stoning for having sex out of wedlock, but two men whom they said they slept with were acquitted for lack of evidence, authorities said Tuesday. Both sentences, which were passed within the last month in the northern state of Bauchi, have to be confirmed by the state governor before being carried out, and they are open to appeal.