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ABUJA, Nigeria (AP) — Gunmen opened fire on worshippers and detonated explosives at a Catholic church in southwestern Nigeria on Sunday, leaving dozens feared dead, state lawmakers said. The attackers targeted the St. Francis Catholic Church in Ondo state just as the worshippers gathered on Pentecost Sunday, legislator Ogunmolasuyi Oluwole said. Among the dead were many children, he said.

Blessing was only six years old when her mother arranged for her to become an unpaid housemaid for a family in the Nigerian city of Abuja, on the promise they would put her through school. In her home town in southwest Nigeria, her mother had trouble making enough money to feed her three children. But when Blessing arrived in Abuja, instead of going to school, the family worked her round-the-clock, beat her with an electrical wire if she forgot one of her chores and fed her rotten leftovers.

We must stand up to terrorism,” bleated Hillary Clinton a few days ago in a tweet expressing outrage against BokoHaram, the jihadist organization that has abducted hundreds of young girls in Nigeria. Yet, when she was actually in a position to stand up to Boko Haram’s terrorism as secretary of state, Mrs. Clinton instead protected the group.At the Daily Beast, Josh Rogin reports: The State Department under Hillary Clinton fought hard against placing the al Qaeda-linked militant group Boko Haram on its official list of foreign terrorist organizations for two years. And now, lawmakers and former U.S. officials are saying that the decision may have hampered the...

A ‘terrorist cell’ believed to be linked to Lebanese Shiite movement Hezbollah and housing weapons intended to attack Israeli and Western targets has been discovered in a compound in northern Nigeria, the country’s security services said on Thursday. Nigeria's security services said Thursday they had discovered a home in the northern city of Kano where Lebanese nationals had stored weapons intended to attack Israeli and Western targets in Nigeria. The Kano state intelligence chief, Bassey Etang, and a separate military statement described the compound as hosting a "terrorist cell" tied to the powerful Lebanese Shiite movement Hezbollah. No evidence was...

www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-16052074 SNIPPET: "A Nigerian court has sentenced a former spokesman of the militant Islamist sect Boko Haram to three years in prison. Ali Sanda Umar Konduga was arrested last month with Nigerian senator Ali Ndume, who is accused of backing Boko Haram. The group has staged several attacks in Nigeria, including on the UN base and police headquarters in Abuja. Last week, a US Congressional report said Boko Haram was an "emerging threat" to the US and its interests. Nigeria's security services said Konduga spoke on behalf of Boko Haram, using the name Usman al-Zawahiri." SNIPPET: "Boko Haram means "Western...

The death toll in a bomb attack targeting the United Nations' offices in the Nigerian capital Abuja rose overnight to 25, medics said Saturday. Dozens were injured and remained hospitalized, some in critical condition. Police were still declining to give an official number of those killed and injured when a suicide bomber drove an explosives-laden car into the compound, DPA reported. Unconfirmed reports in the Nigerian media said the number of fatalities could be even higher, as victims were taken to several hospitals and information was being pulled together slowly. Among the dead were Nigerian workmen, who were involved in...

At least 18 people have been killed in an apparent suicide car bombing at the United Nations headquarters in the Nigerian capital, Abuja.The powerful blast destroyed the lower floors of the building. Dozens have been injured, some critically. A spokesman for the Islamist group Boko Haram told the BBC in a phone call that it had carried out the attack. UN chief Ban Ki-moon said the attack was "an assault on those who devote their lives to helping others". > Boko Haram, which is fighting for the establishment of Sharia law in Nigeria, also said it carried out a car...

SNIPPET: "In fact, Mower said, the pilot described it as "a serious security risk." Mower was unable to see the man who was taken off the plane, she said. " SNIPPET: "Two sources confirmed to Fox News that the man in question, a citizen of Gambia, had been added to the no-fly list while Flight 215 was in the air. The man had already been on the Terrorist Identities Datamart Environment list, which is comprised of more than 500,000 people with even limited ties to known terrorists, one source said."

Daily Independent (Lagos) "Nigeria: Police Arrest Suspected Terrorist At Abuja Airport - Probe Al-Jazeera Report On Extra-Judicial Killings" Maxwell Oditta And Abel Orukpe 26 February 2010 SNIPPET: "Lagos — Barely two months after Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, a 23-year-old Nigerian was arrested by U.S. authorities for attempting to blow up a Northwest Airlines Flight 253 flying from Amsterdam, Netherlands to Detroit, Michigan, with 289 passengers on December 25, 2009, the Police at the Nnamdi Azikiwe International Airport (NAIA), Abuja, has arrested a 36-year-old suspected terrorist Ahmed Ibrahim Muhammad from Eritrea. A highly dependable source in the Abuja airport told our correspondent...

Abuja, Nigeria (AHN) - The Nigerian military has launched several raids against oil militants, a few days after they killed 17 soldiers in the Niger Delta. Militants say the army swept through an oil producing community of the region with crushing strength. A militant group dubbed the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND) said, "In light of this attack on a helpless community, we are at present considering reciprocal action against the military or oil installations in Rivers [State]." A local army spokesman, Sagir Musa, has denied the report saying, "There is no truth in the...

On March 13th ten new Anglican bishops were consecrated and nine new dioceses created while the ECUSA Bishops discussed disciplinary canons and whether or not they would minimally respond to the proposals of the Windsor Report and the Primates Communique … ---------------------Abuja, Jan. 24, 2004- The Episcopal Synod of the Church of Nigeria (Anglican Communion) has announced the election of ten new Bishops.In a statement issued at the weekend in Abuja, Director of Communication of the Church of Nigeria, The Rev Canon Tunde Popoola said the election was made at the Bishops¹ meeting held in The Chapel of St Peter,...

The son of Kofi Annan, the United Nations Secretary-General, lobbied for business contacts at gatherings of UN officials on behalf of a company in the same year as it won an oil-for-food programme deal, it has emerged. The second disclosure in a week about Kojo Annan's role with the Swiss company Cotecna Inspection Services, which secured the $4.8 million (£2.46 million) UN contract to monitor goods entering and leaving Iraq in 1998, has raised embarrassing questions for his father. The details were revealed in Cotecna company documents handed over under subpoena to US congressional scrutineers who are investigating the oil-for-food...

ABUJA: United States President George W. Bush will pay a one-day visit to Nigeria next month, Information Minister Jerry Gana said here on Thursday. Although Gana did not give a precise date for the visit, diplomatic sources said that the visit is expected to be on January 11. "There are indications that President Bush will be visiting Nigeria. As to the actual date of his coming, I will allow President Olusegun Obasanjo, his host, to announce it to the public," Gana told reporters. Officials at the Nigerian presidency said Bush is expected to pass a night in the Nigerian capital,...