No fewer than 50 women displaced in the on going military operations in selected riverine communities in Delta State, recently protested their eviction and appealed to the state to allow them and their families to return to their homes to save them the agony of being refugees in their own land. The women, most of them with babies strapped on their backs, besieged the Governor's Office, where they interrupted the weekly State Security Council meeting presided over by the Deputy Governor, Chief Benjamin Elue.

Two villagers were shot dead and several others injured by soldiers searching for weapons in Nigeria’s volatile Plateau State, witnesses said last Thursday. The soldiers were in the village of Mabudi, in Langtang South district, investigating reports of villagers hoarding illegal weapons, according to one local resident, Justin Kampak.

Shell's failed relationships with communities, the potential for aggravating civil conflict and lack of transparency have combined to produce a crisis in the company's Nigerian operations, says a newly-published briefing by Christian Aid, Friends of the Earth, Platform and the Stakeholder Democracy Network. The report details shared concerns for Shell's investors and oil and gas producing-communities in Nigeria. The report analyses leaked documents commissioned by Shell, arguing that unless the oil company significantly changes direction in Nigeria - onshore operations may not be possible beyond 2008. This may end in a chaotic withdrawal that would be damaging and costly for all. Nigeria represents about 10% of Shell's overall business.

The Coordinator of the National Directorate of Employment (NDE), Mr Joseph Modi, has said Nigerian women produce more than 50 per cent of the country's food needs but they still live in penury and deprivation, due to lack of modern knowledge and skill to preserve their farm produce. Modi said this at a four-day workshop on food processing organised by NDE.

The Nigerian government said on Wednesday that it planned to start repatriating more than 17,000 people who fled from eastern Nigerian into Cameroon following ethnic clashes two years ago. The National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA), in a statement obtained by IRIN, said that the return of the mainly pastoralist Fulani people to a mountainous frontier area in Taraba state would start next week. Salisu Makarfi, the director general of NEMA, said in the statement that four reception centres for the returnees had already been set up in the towns of Mbang, Dorafi, Mayo Bule and Kan Iyaka in the Sarduana local government area.

Nigerian labour unions called off a three-day-old general strike on Friday, citing “substantial compliance” by the government with a court order to cancel the fuel price increases which had triggered the stoppage. “We’ve seen substantial evidence that many petrol stations have adjusted their prices to reflect the court order,” Adams Oshiomhole, strike leader and president of the Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC), told a news conference in Lagos.

Commenting on Shell's announcement that it would remain in Nigeria and "help reduce conflict by changing our operating, security and community development practices,'' Friends of the Earth Executive Director Tony Juniper said. "At long last Shell is facing up to the impacts of its activities in Nigeria. The company must take responsibility for the damage it has caused in the Niger Delta, compensate the communities devastated by pollution from Shell's oil spills and gas flaring, and work with people on the ground to find a sustainable way forward.”

Both Nigeria's federal and state elections in 2003 and its local government elections in 2004 were marred by serious incidents of violence. The scale of the violence and intimidation, much of which went unreported, called into question the credibility of these elections. This report documents cases of electoral violence in 2003. It also refers to incidents of violence reported around the 2004 local government elections, although most of Human Rights Watch's detailed research was undertaken before those elections took place.

Police shot and injured two protesters in the Nigerian capital Abuja on Thursday as a nationwide general strike against a 20 per cent increase in fuel prices entered its second day, witnesses said. Streets that are normally clogged with traffic in the commercial capital Lagos remained deserted. Schools, offices and businesses stayed closed there and in most other Nigerian cities.

It's a phenomenon that became noticeable in the 1980s, and is now a permanent feature of the urban landscape in Nigeria: children hawking goods on the streets. Take 10-year-old Bimbo Dada, for example. Last week, IPS found her meandering between vehicles in one of Lagos' many traffic jams - also referred to as "go slows" - selling sachets of water to motorists. Although the Lagos State government has banned trading in traffic jams because of the dangers it poses to hawkers, the practice continues unabated due to lack of enforcement.

Nigeria’s Federal High Court agreed Monday to review the asylum status of fugitive former Liberian President Charles Taylor. Indicted one year ago for war crimes by the United Nations Special Court for Sierra Leone, Taylor has avoided justice by receiving asylum from Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo in August 2003. The High Court decision allowing the challenge to Taylor's asylum status to go forward was brought on behalf of two Nigerian businessmen who were tortured in 1999 by rebel groups in Sierra Leone backed by Taylor.

The leaders of rival ethnic militias agreed to make peace in the Nigerian oil town of Warri on Tuesday, while government officials urged foreign oil companies to resume operations disrupted by fighting in the Niger Delta region during the last year. In another part of the town, troops of a joint military task force demolished houses in three slum districts in an operation aimed at ridding Warri of the guns and criminals that have fuelled violence in the town.

Nigeria’s National Assembly has approved eight new laws giving President Olusegun Obasanjo sweeping powers in strife-torn Plateau State where he imposed a state of emergency last month after a surge in inter-ethnic and religious violence. The laws approved by the two-chamber legislature on Tuesday gave the police and other security services the power to detain people indefinitely, conduct searches without warrants, impose curfews and ban public processions.

Economic experts, private sector leaders and others who converged at the Pan-African University, Lekki, Lagos, recently, concurred that Nigerians in the diaspora are a critical factor in the federal government's efforts towards seeking foreign direct investments (FDI) into the country.

This report from Partners for Health Reformplus presents estimates of the total cost of providing comprehensive antiretroviral (ARV) treatment in the public sector in Nigeria. Drugs are not the only major cost of an ARV program, but they are the largest single component. Overall treatment costs, currently borne by the patient, are well beyond the resources of most Nigerians. The development of an effective ARV programme, therefore, must include support not only for ARV drugs but all aspects of patient cost.

More than 20 Christian villagers have been killed in a fresh outbreak of religious violence in Plateau State in central Nigeria, where President Olusegun Obasanjo imposed a state of emergency earlier this week, residents in the area told IRIN. Armed Muslims attacked five Christian villages on Tuesday near the town of Yelwa on Tuesday morning, they said.

The President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, Retired General Olushegun Obasanjo, has declared a state of emergency in Plateau State, one of Nigeria's 36 states. The Governor of the state and the parliament have been suspended from office and replaced by an Army General. Plateau, in the middle Belt region of the country, has been the centre of sectarian massacres between different ethnic and religious communities since 2001. The North Western state of Kano, Nigeria's second commercial city, has also seen ethnic and religious massacres recently, allegedly as a 'revenge' for the killings in Jos. Both states are not alone in the spate of killings that has gripped Nigeria in the past few years.

As to be expected the State of Emergency measure has been criticized by many people. Human rights groups decry it as a descent into dictatorship and a threat to the already faltering democratisation in the country. Some critics including the Christian Association of Nigeria have criticized it as discriminatory against Christians who are the majority in the state while a similar measure was not directed at Kano state where the majority of the population is Muslim. Still others see a majority and minority dimension in it. Plateau state is not one of the core states of the tripodal majority groups (Hausa -Fulani, Yoruba and Igbo) in the country therefore the president, himself part of the majority, feels he can get away with it whereas he dares not introduce similar measures in Kano.

The problem with conspiracy theories is that while it may be easy to be dismissive of them rationally and intellectually, the mix of fact, prejudice and beliefs make for serious political dangers in a very polarized society like Nigeria.

The principle of fairness should have demanded that the President imposes a state of emergency on both Plateau and Kano State. And if for any reason it is not possible in one then that extreme measure should never have been considered for one of the two states for similar crimes. There is no way in which the government can now escape criticisms of both intimidation in one case and timidity in the other.

However I can hazard guesses why the President took the steps he took in Plateau state. One, it is a state controlled by his party, the PDP, therefore he could not be accused of partisanship, whereas Kano state is controlled by the main opposition party, the ANPP.

Two, Plateau is a state with majority Christian population and since he is a Christian, a born again one for that matter, no one will accuse him of being anti-Christian. A third reason and a more personal one must be his anger. The president is known to take things personally and be slow to forgiveness for conduct he considers a personal affront to his leadership.

Therefore, the widely reported altercation he had with religious leaders in Jos when he visited the scene of the massacres during which he called one of them 'idiot' may have contributed to his determination 'to teach them a lesson'. Four, the president may have decided that in going for Plateu, seemingly the weakest link in the chain of shame in the governance of Nigeria, he could teach other states a lesson that enough was enough. Plateu's Governorbseemed to have lost the popular confidence of the people and elite of the state and was recently at the centre of criminal investigations by the British Police over money laundering allegations.

All of these would be the wrong reasons for taking the extraordinary step of suspending all elective institutions. If that happens at the federal level it would amount to a successful coup and an end to civilian rule. A democratic society must find other ways of dealing with threats to national security instead of resorting to the Army. It is a fire brigade approach that does not address the fundamental basis of the conflicts. Those who are saluting the 'courage' of the president, in taking this step, including many who have been his worst critics, would sing different tunes if the state of emergency had been declared in their own states or states controlled by parties they are sympathetic towards. Justice and the rule of law must be blind and should apply to all equally. This state of emergency may not strengthen the rule of law because its politics undermines the process of justice and democracy.

Now that this bad precedent has been set does that mean that the next state where such conflicts take place will also be placed under state of emergency? Lagos , Kaduna, Anabra, Imo and the whole of the Delta region continue to be ravaged by communal violence - does that mean a state of emergency will apply in all of these states now?

There are many sources for the intermittent communal, religious and other sectarian conflicts across the country. An obvious one is the extreme poverty that the majority of the preponderantly youth population live in. It has made available a ready-made army of militias to be deployed at the whim and caprice of any patron. But more importantly the irresponsibility of the government through its security and other law and order agencies to bring perpetrators to justice, respect the rule of law and compensate victims has created a culture of impunity. Because the government is failing in this basic function of protecting all the citizens and residents of the country people are taking the law into their hands and putting their faith in sectarian militias. So instead of declaring a state of emergency the president should stop residing in Aso Rock and start presiding over the peace and security of the country.

The government alone does not and should not carry the blame. The various religious and community leaders must also assume their responsibility of being frank even at the risk of personal safety to ask their followers to stop 'killing in the name of God'. There is no faith whose God wants to be worshipped in the grave yard. The media must also stop justifying unlawful killing of fellow citizens as 'revenge'. ([email protected]; [email protected])

* Dr Tajudeen Abdul-Raheem is General Secretary of the Global Pan African Movement, based in Kampala, Uganda and also Director of Justice Africa, based in London.

* Send your comments to [email protected]

At least six serving state governors and a former governor are under investigation in Nigeria for alleged illegal transfer of state funds abroad, local media reported Sunday. A total amount of about 417.4 million US dollars has been transferred to other countries from the African country.

The northern Nigerian state of Kano says it has obtained a "safe" polio vaccine from Indonesia. But Kano government spokesman Sule Yau Sule told BBC News Online the vaccine would be tested further before it is given to children. Kano opted out of an immunisation campaign last year, when some Islamic leaders said it was part of a western plot to render Muslim women infertile.

Nigeria's parliament was set to debate the state of emergency in the central state of Plateau declared by President Olusegun Obasanjo on Tuesday. The emergency decree must be ratified by the National Assembly within two days to remain in effect. The president ordered the measure to control continuing violence between the state's Muslims and Christians. He said serious action was needed to deal with a situation that he called "near mutual-genocide".