Two people have been shot dead and several trade unionists have been arrested in isolated flare-ups of violence triggered by Nigeria's general strike. Lagos, the commercial capital of the West African country, remained shut down on Tuesday for the second day running. Banks, schools, offices and most businesses stayed closed in Nigeria's other main cities, except for Abuja. The four-day stoppage began on Monday and was called by Nigeria's largest trade union movement to protest at a recent 25 percent increase in fuel prices.

Nigerian authorities are committing serious acts of intimidation against senior leaders and activists of the Nigerian trade union movement, said the ICFTU today. In a spate of incidents which began to flourish in the days prior to the general strike called by the Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) after talks with the government to reverse petrol price increases of 25% broke down, the Nigerian authorities subjected the trade union leader Adams Oshiomole to unlawful arrest and ill treatment.

The survival of youths in a private sector-driven or full capitalist economy can no longer be guaranteed, due to the challenges that such an economy presents. The Youth Emancipation Crusader is requesting you to share your views on our discussion board related to the following questions: How can unemployed youth survive in a capitalist world?; Has youth empowerment eroded?; How vulnerable are youth to exploitation by this system?; Is youth survival or protection an issue of national and continental (African) interest?; How responsive are the government(s) and the society(ies) to this issue?

Do you know any person or organization, whose works or actions have helped to break the silence around HIV/AIDS in your community? Do you know any individual, organization or community-based intervention, whose impact has helped highlight the campaign against HIV-related stigma and discrimination? Do you know of any radio or television station that has shown outstanding commitment to coverage of HIV/AIDS and demonstrated accuracy, depth and innovative programming in its coverage? Here is your chance to help us select the most outstanding media and community responses to HIV/AIDS in Nigeria. Deadline for nominations: November 1, 2004

The International conference on AIDS and STI in Africa is a gathering place for leaders across various sectors in Africa to discuss HIV/AIDS and its effects on Africa's development. The XIV edition of ICASA is billed for Abuja in December 2005. The e-consultation begain October 2 and will end November 2, 2004. To join the discussion, send a blank email to youthaticasa2005- [email protected].

With the brand name TITV, African Trumpet Telecommunications Limited (ATTL), will through the use of satellite technology bring to Nigerians world-class television programming that resonates with its African target as well as Internet services through the same channel. At the media presentation of the company last week, Managing Director, Nathan Garner, said the company was established to help West Africans in large numbers unto the Information Technology age, stressing that the company would live up to the promise by offering its services at affordable prices.

Political leaders and health workers launched a drive Saturday to immunise more than 80 million children against polio in 23 African nations and fight back against a resurgence of the crippling disease. Campaigners had been hoping to eradicate polio this year or next but the virus has spread in the past 18 months to 12 countries where it had been wiped out, in part because the northern Nigerian state of Kano banned the vaccination.

Determined to ensure compliance with the Sharia practice in Bauchi, the stat Sharia Consultative Council has placed an embargo on condom advertisements on the state-owned electronic media, saying such adverts promote and encourage immorality, and expose youth to unwholesome acts. The Council also urged the government to ban "immoral films" aired on the government-owned television station, arguing that such films apart from promoting promiscuity were against the tenets of the Sharia Legal System being operated in the state.

I have recently purchased some books and journals that may be of interest to Africanists, or anybody interested in Nigerian literature and academia. If you know anybody who may be interested in purchasing these, please have them contact me at this address. Thanks. Most of the materials range in period from 1937-the early 1970s.

Twenty-eight Internet fraudsters have been arrested in Lagos, in joint operations between the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), and the FBI.Also, USD3.5 million (N490 million) was recovered in fraudulent cashier cheques and goods bought over the Internet and shipped to Nigeria by credit card scammers.

Nigeria's Minister of Finance, Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, told reporters her country is working to change the perception that the West African nation is riddled with corruption and not doing anything about it. The Nigerian government, she said, begun a wide-ranging series of reforms 15 months ago and they're already starting to produce results.

Only a few days after Nigeria's military warned Mr. Asari's Niger Delta People's Volunteer Force that it would take off the "kid gloves" unless the militia stops threatening oil workers, an agreement has been made. Mr. Asari and five other colleagues met President Olusegun Obasanjo on Wednesday where both parties agreed to cease their attacks on each other.

The Nigerian security forces have killed 27 Islamic militants of the Al Sunna wal Jamma sect during a raid on their hideout in Borno State in the northeast of the country following attacks on two police stations on September 20th. It was the first attack by the Islamic fundamentalist group, which models itself on Afghanistan's Taliban movement, since it briefly occupied two towns in Yobe state in northeastern Nigeria in December last year.

NDI is seeking to hire a Country Director to oversee the implementation of its legislative strengthening program in Nigeria. The Director will be based in Abuja and will serve as principal liaison with the donor community, representatives from the executive and legislative branch of the Nigerian government, local non-governmental organizations (NGOs), and the US Embassy.

During a meeting with World Bank officials, Nigerian Education Minister Fabian Osuji outlined his expectations of the World Bank to be more proactive in its support to education. He explained that education was a vital tool for national development, especially in areas of poverty eradication, improvement in health, economic empowerment and job creation. Nigeria's universal basic education (UBE) program is an ambitious one, as it is compulsory and free.

When Sharia criminal law was first introduced in Nigeria, it was very popular with many Muslims hoping it would deliver an improved justice system. However, an 111-page report by Human Rights Watch outlines how the law has contributed to many human rights abuses and how it has been used by many northern Nigerian governors to gain political advantage. To read the full report, go to: http://www.hrw.org/reports/2004/nigeria0904/

Even though Nigeria's forests are only some ten percent of the size they were just two decades ago, they still provide an incredibly rich and diverse habitat. From the tropical highlands to the lowland rainforest, from the plateau grasslands to the savanna, from the swamps to the mangrove forests.

The forests of Cross River State in southeastern Nigeria are the last remaining rainforests in Nigeria and are home to 2,400 native forest communities comprising 1.5 million people, the highest primate diversity on the planet --including the world's most endangered gorillas--, and an estimated 20 percent of the world's butterfly species. For global logging companies, Nigerian forests appear to be an easy target. Environmental regulations in the country are rarely enforced, and many officials in the recently ousted Abacha dictatorship were notoriously corrupt --more interested in personal gain than in the protection of Nigeria's natural resources.

Hong Kong-based Western Metal Products Company (WEMPCO) is one of the most destructive companies operating in the region (see also http://www.wrm.org.uy/countries/Nigeria/Odey.html). Although they own the rights to log in some areas of Cross River State, WEMPCO flaunts regulations and logs illegally in the forest buffer zone surrounding the Cross River National Park, not only threatening to decimate the forest's magnificent hardwoods, but also endangering the livelihoods of Cross River State's forest communities.

Logging has significantly reduced animal habitat, shrinking the animal populations that serve as a traditional source of protein in Cross River State. The bushmeat that was once plentiful is now scarce. The plundering of trees which provide shelter has left whole areas without windbreakers or sufficient trees to check the devastating rainstorms. Thus, the roofs of houses are often blown off by the slightest rainstorm.

Since 1996, environmental and human rights groups across the world have been campaigning against the destructive logging activities of WEMPCO which has operated in Cross River State since 1992, illegally harvesting and exporting the state's forest resources, inciting and inflicting violence and threatening those who have spoken out against their activities.

Prior to doing business in Cross River State, WEMPCO was kicked out of Nigerian Ogun State, for the same flagrancies of forest management policies and laws.

Indeed, the threats to the rainforest continue. The Nigerian government commissioned in 2003 the operation of WEMPCO's wood processing factory and approved a new 540 square mile logging concession located on the river upstream from many forest communities and the national park. The logging concessions will devastate the remaining forest in the buffer zones surrounding the national park. The mill's voracious appetite has the capacity to process twice the amount of wood legally designated by the concessions, sending the company looking for more hardwood in nearby Cameroon. By-products of WEMPCO's hardwood processing mill threaten to pollute the water sources of two million tribal people and threaten the habitat of the endangered gorilla and many other rare primate species.

Now, the NGO Coalition for the Environment and its members, including 2003 Goldman Prize Winner Mr. Odigha Odigha, Mr. Odey Oyama of Rainforest Resource Development Centre and Mr. Oronto Douglas of Environmental Rights Action, which has been actively opposing WEMPCO's logging activities, has something to celebrate. The Governor of Cross River State, Mr. Donald Duke, has recently approved the closure of the WEMPCO wood-processing factory and the immediate cessation of the company's forest-related activities due to what it described as unwholesome activities contrary to the earlier agreement reached with the company.

However, the great menace of an unsustainable global log trade pervades the whole logging activity, either legal or illegal. That is why West Africa Rainforest Network continues pushing for a ban on all commercial logging for the next 12 months.

* SOURCE: World Rainforest Movement B U L L E T I N 86 September 2004, E-Mail: [email protected], Web page: http://www.wrm.org.uy Article based on information from: "West Africa Rainforest Network", http://www.earthisland.org/warn/ ; "Odigha Odigha", http://www.goldmanprize.org/recipients/recipientProfile.cfm?recipientID…

The Nigerian Federal Government has blacklisted an oil service company linked to the current United States Vice President Dick Cheney, Halliburton Energy Services Nigeria Limited (HENSL), based on negligent conduct. The company is currently facing a probe over alleged fraudulent deals in Nigeria and Iraq. It has also been indicted over the loss of two ionizing radioactive materials from Nigeria in 2002 and lack of co-operation with the Federal Government in ensuring the return of the materials to the country.

Chairman of the National Action Committee on AIDS (NACA), Prof. Babatunde Osotimehin, has revealed that while 90 percent of Nigerians know about AIDS, only about 20 per cent of the country's 140 million population believe in its reality. Osotimehin noted the importance of the endemic in different sectors, saying it was not merely a health issue but a development phenomenon. The HIV/AIDS prevalence in Nigeria is at five per cent.

The Federal Government of Nigeria through the National Action Committee on AIDS (NACA) and partners is planning to jointly review the National Response to HIV/AIDS in Nigeria and also develop a new 5-year Strategic Framework to guide the National Response. This will require the cooperation of all organizations and institutions that have done any intervention in HIV/AIDS in Nigeria to send all available documents to the Directorate for Policy, Strategy & Communication, in NACA.