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Nigeria: Presidency - Obasanjo Did Not Authorise Diversion of FundsThis Day (Lagos) Posted to the web September 15, 2006 Kola Ologbondiyan Lagos The Presidency yesterday reacted to Vice President Atiku Abubakar's claim that the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) as well as organisations where President Olusegun Obasanjo has interests benefited from the controversial MOFAS Account at the Abuja branch of defunct Trans International Bank (TIB). Besides, it said, the President did not authorise diversion of public funds to any individual or organisation. "Obasanjo has never directed or forced any individual or organization to make donations to any of the many associations...

Nigeria: How Jefferson Reported PTDF Deal to ObasanjoSeptember 10, 2006 Posted to the web September 11, 2006 Lagos United States Congressman, William Jefferson, who is now at the centre of an investigation by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) for alleged corrupt practices, was the one who gave the first hint to President Olusegun Obasanjo on the alleged illegal use of Petroleum Trust Development Fund (PTDF) by some Nigerian businessmen. The businessmen were believed to be associates of Vice President Atiku Abubakar. In a letter on his congressional office letterhead dated May 28, 22004 and addressed to Obasanjo, Jefferson who...

PORT HARCOURT, Nigeria - Militants battling for a bigger cut of Nigeria's oil revenue exploded a car bomb inside a military base, ending weeks of relative calm with a blast that killed at least two people and sent a fireball into the night sky. The Movement for Emancipation of the Niger Delta claimed responsibility for the blast late Wednesday at a barracks in the southern oil center of Port Harcourt. The group's attacks on oil installations in Nigeria, Africa's leading oil exporter, had already helped drive up world oil prices. This country is the fifth-biggest source of U.S. oil imports....

The president met with Nigeria's president Obasanjo in the Oval Office, and discussed freedom in Iraq with an audience in Freedom House (D.C.), reminding the people that Saddam Hussein, not continued U.S. involvement in Iraq, is responsible for ongoing sectarian violence that is threatening the formation of a democratic government. He is heading to Cancun, Mexico to meet with the leaders of Mexico and Canada for two days. Welcome to SANITY ISLAND!

AP News Alert ABUJA, Nigeria (AP) -- Nigerian police say they have arrested Liberian warlord Charles Taylor.

JOHANNESBURG, SOUTH AFRICA - In his three-year effort to reengineer the racial and economic landscape of Zimbabwe by forcibly taking farms away from whites and giving them to blacks, President Robert Mugabe has long counted on - and gotten - support from almost all of Africa's leaders. Until now. With half of Zimbabwe's 12 million people facing hunger, inflation over 600 percent, and state-sponsored torture a common tool, hints of criticism by regional leaders that began showing up last month have now started to expand. Everyone from Nigeria's President Olesegun Obasanjo to Archbishop Desmond Tutu has distanced themselves from Mugabe....

LAGOS (AFP) - A Nigerian man has been sentenced to death by stoning for sodomy, officials said only moments after single mother Amina Lawal had her stoning sentence for adultery lifted by another Islamic court. The conviction of 20-year-old Jibrin Babaji for sleeping with three boys was made on Tuesday by a Sharia court in the northern Bauchi State, state officials told AFP. A spokesman for the court, Bala Ahmed, said Babaji had been sentenced after having confessed to sexually molesting the minors at different times over the past year, contrary to the Islamic law, or Sharia, in force in...

Yetunde Ogunwa, a 45-year-old mother of five, lives without water or electricity in a dilapidated house next to mountains of garbage in Lagos, Nigeria's vast seaside commercial capital. Despite the country's massive oil wealth, Nigeria's citizens have grown steadily poorer and its cities more violent in the four years since military rule gave way to democracy. So as the United States turns to Nigeria to help lessen its dependence on Middle East oil, pressure is mounting for US President George Bush to take a stand against rampant corruption in the West African country. "If only they would let him see...

MONROVIA, Liberia (AP) -- President Charles Taylor said he is ready to step down "in a jiffy" - but only after an international stabilization force arrives to ensure an orderly transition in this war-dived country. Taylor's comments, in an interview Monday with The Associated Press, came after a team of U.S. military civil affairs experts arrived in Liberia to help assess whether to contribute to such a force. Taylor, beset by rebels and indicted by a U.N.-backed war crimes court, insisted on "avoiding an unceremonious departure" in order to prevent "chaos and anarchy." "If one U.S. marine stood on...

MONROVIA, Liberia (AP) -- Embattled President Charles Taylor accepted an offer of asylum in Nigeria on Sunday, but gave no timeframe for quitting power and insisted the transition must be orderly, urging the United States to send peacekeepers. The calls by Taylor and Nigeria's leader for a peaceful transition increase pressure on President Bush to send U.S. troops to Liberia to enforce a ceasefire in the wartorn nation. Bush heads to Africa on Monday for visits to five nations -- including Nigeria, the top powerbroker in West Africa. A team of 15 U.S. military experts were to head to...

MONROVIA, Liberia (AP) -- The leader of Nigeria and embattled Liberian President Charles Taylor met Sunday for what aides said would be a discussion of a Nigerian offer of asylum for Taylor, an accused war criminal under intense international pressure to give up the leadership of his civil-war divided country. Liberian officials said on Saturday that Nigeria's President Olusegun Obasanjo and Taylor will discuss a Nigerian offer of temporary asylum until Taylor finds permanent exile in a third country. Neither man addressed reporters before entering a private salon at Monrovia's airport on Sunday. Obasanjo earlier stepped from his jet...