Shell accused of lying over Nigeria oil spill clean-up

Shell has been accused of making false claims about the extent of its oil spill clean-up operations in Nigeria and urged to take more action to help worst-hit communities. Amnesty International and the Centre for Environment, Human Rights and Development (CEHRD) charged the oil major with failing to implement recommendations from a critical 2011 UN report. Amnesty and the CEHRD's claims come in a new report, "Clean It Up: Shell's False Claims about Oil Spill Response in the Niger Delta".

The 38-page document said most of the recommendations of a UN Environment Programme (UNEP) report had not been implemented since its publication five years ago. Thirteen out of 15 areas visited between July and September this year were still "visibly polluted" or contaminated, despite claims to the contrary by Shell and the government. The inadequate clean up left thousands of people "exposed to contaminated land, water and air, in some cases for years or even decades," said Amnesty researcher Mark Dummett.

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Wasilat Tasi'u, 14-Year-Old Nigerian Girl, Sentenced To Death For Murdering Husband

The father of a 14-year-old child bride accused of murdering her husband said Thursday he was appealing to a Nigerian court to spare his daughter the death sentence. Wasilat Tasi'u is on trial for the murder of her 35-year-old husband, Umar Sani, who died after eating food that Tasi'u allegedly laced with rat poison. "We are appealing to the judge to consider Wasilat's plea," her father, Isyaku Tasi'u, told The Associated Press on Thursday.

On Wednesday witnesses told the High Court in Gezawa, a town 60 miles outside Nigeria's second largest city of Kano, that Tasi'u killed her husband two weeks after their wedding in April. Three others allegedly died after eating the poisoned meal. The prosecution, led by Lamido Soron-Dinki, senior state council from the Kano State Ministry of Justice, is seeking the death penalty.

The case calls into question the legality of trying a 14-year-old for murder under criminal law and the rights of child brides, who are common in the poverty-stricken, predominantly Muslim northern Nigeria region. "She was married to a man that she didn't love. She protested but her parents forced her to marry him," Zubeida Nagee, a women's rights activist in Kano, told AP. Nagee and other activists have written a letter of protest to the Kano state deputy governor. Nagee said Tasi'u was a victim of systematic abuse endured by millions of girls in the region. Activists say the blend of traditional customs, Islamic law and Nigeria's constitutional law poses a challenge when advocating for the rights of young girls in Nigeria.

The World Post

Boko Haram video claims to show missing Nigerian schoolgirls

Boko Haram released a new video on Monday claiming to show the missing Nigerian schoolgirls, alleging they had converted to Islam and would not be released until all militant prisoners were freed.

Over 100 killed in Islamist attack in Nigeria

Suspected Boko Haram Islamists have killed more than 100 people in an attack on a village in Nigeria, a local senator said.
The attackers stormed the village in Nigeria's restive northeastern Borno state on Saturday, slaughtering scores of civilians and sending many others fleeing.
"A hundred and six people, including an old woman, have been killed by the attackers, suspected to be Boko Haram gunmen," senator Ali Ndume told AFP.
"Sixty of the dead have been buried while the rest are awaiting burial," he said, adding the attacks in the area were becoming "deadlier and more frequent by the day."

The raid took place on Saturday in the mostly Christian village of Izghe in Borno, which has been under emergency rule since May last year in a bid to stop an Islamist rebellion that has claimed thousands of lives since 2009.
A local farmer who escaped by scaling the fence of his house and crawling on his belly for 40 minutes said the attackers had gone door-to-door looking for those hiding in their houses. "The attackers came around 9:30 PM (20.30 GMT) in six trucks and some motorcycles. They were dressed in military uniform," Barnabas Idi said.
"They asked men to assemble at a place, and began hacking and slaughtering them." There were no security forces in the town at the time of the attack, he said.

The Times of India

Nigeria Poised to Pass 'Jail the Gays' Bill

A draconian bill was introduced in Nigeria's Assembly that would ultimately jail Nigeria's gay citizens and anyone who supported them if it becomes law. All Out joined Nigeria's lesbians, gays, and allies by calling upon Nigeria's President Goodluck Jonathan to veto the bill should it pass its final reading in the Assembly this month.

The bill would make it a crime for gays and lesbians to get married, to witness a gay marriage, or for an affirming churches to perform a gay wedding. Gays and lesbians who marry will face 14 years in prison.

Any public displays of affection, such as holding hands, or even looking at each other affectionately could result in a 10-year jail sentence. Whether the participant is gay or straight, anyone who organizes or becomes a member of a "gay club" or supports a gay organization financially could also face jail time.

Joe Mirabella on Huffington Post

Nigeria troops 'shoot dead' unarmed men

Nigerian soldiers have shot dead dozens of young men during raids in a city seen as a stronghold of Boko Haram, an armed Islamist group, residents have told reporters. The reported military operations targeted four neighbourhoods of Maiduguri on Friday. Residents said the troops conducting the raids ordered males in their teens and twenties to separate from the others in the area. In the Kalari neighbourhood, soldiers told the young men "to lie face down on the ground", then asked the rest to look away, according to witnesses.

"All we heard were gunshots. They shot them on the spot," said the elderly religious leader, who did not want to be named. "They did the same in three other neighbourhoods. We went to the morgue to collect the bodies and we found 48 in all." A resident of the city's Gwange area told the AFP news agency that the alleged massacre was "like a movie scene". The troops "picked young men from their homes and were shooting them dead before everyone and took the bodies away to the hospital. I have never seen something like this", he said, also requesting that his name be withheld.

The Sabon Lamba and Gomboru neighbourhoods were also said to have been raided. A morgue attendant at the Maiduguri General Hospital said they "received 39 bodies yesterday which were brought in by soldiers. They all have fresh gunshot wounds". A military source declined to comment on the allegations, saying only that if such killings had taken place they were "unjustified".

Al Jazeera English

Music Is The Weapon

Fela Kuti in a film by Green Grin

Death penalty for asking for fair wages

After months of torture in Nigeria, labour activists Osmond Ugwu and Raphael Elobuike will go to trial Friday on murder charges that human rights groups call "an apparent bid by the police and prosecution to silence union activists." And the two activists could face the death penalty if they lose.

But Damian Ugwu (no relation to Osmond) knows that the only "crime" the two men have committed is empowering workers in Nigeria to demand fair compensation and humane treatment.

Damian is convinced that international outcry can save Osmond and Raphael -- not only from an unfair sentencing but from the possibility of assassination while imprisoned, too, which their friends fear. He started a petition on Change.org calling on government officials to drop all charges against Osmond and Raphael and release them immediately.

Click here to sign Damian's petition calling for imprisoned labour activists Osmond Ogwu and Raphael Elobuike to be released immediately, and all charges against them dropped.

Change.org - Amnesty International

Boko Haram vows to fight until Nigeria establishes sharia law

The Islamist group Boko Haram, which has killed almost 1,000 people in Nigeria, will continue its campaign of violence until the country is ruled by sharia law, a senior member has told the Guardian.

"We will consider negotiation only when we have brought the government to their knees," the spokesman, Abu Qaqa, said in the group's first major interview with a western newspaper. "Once we see that things are being done according to the dictates of Allah, and our members are released [from prison], we will only put aside our arms – but we will not lay them down. You don't put down your arms in Islam, you only put them aside."

Qaqa, whose name is a pseudonym, said the group's members were spiritual followers of al-Qaida, and claimed they had met senior figures in the network founded by Osama bin Laden during visits to Saudia Arabia.

The Guardian - Nigeria: Islamist sect Boko Haram is growing threat (RNW)

Shell oil paid Nigerian military to put down protests

Shell has never denied that its oil operations have polluted large areas of the Niger Delta – land and air. But it had resisted charges of complicity in human rights abuses.

Court documents now reveal that in the 1990s Shell routinely worked with Nigeria's military and mobile police to suppress resistance to its oil activities, often from activists in Ogoniland, in the delta region.

Confidential memos, faxes, witness statements and other documents, released in 2009, show the company regularly paid the military to stop the peaceful protest movement against the pollution, even helping to plan raids on villages suspected of opposing the company.

According to Ogoni activists, several thousand people were killed in the 1990s and many more fled that wave of terror that took place in the 1990s.

In 2009, in a New York federal court, that evidence never saw light during the trial. Shell had been accused of collaborating with the state in the execution in 1995 of writer Ken Saro-Wiwa and other leaders of the Ogoni tribe. Instead, Shell paid $15.5m (£9.6m) to the eight families in settlement.

Among the documents was a 1994 letter from Shell agreeing to pay a unit of the Nigerian army to retrieve a truck, an action that left one Ogoni man dead and two wounded. Shell said it was making the payment "as a show of gratitude and motivation for a sustained favourable disposition in future assignments".

The Guardian – The Independent – Nigeria 70 - Essential Action

The Nigerian Connection

Every year tens of thousands of West Africans migrate to Europe in search of a better life. But for some of them that search will end in tragedy, as they fall victim to competing mafia gangs that prey on the hopes of the desperate. In southern Italy, it is Nigerian women who are among the most exploited, with many ending up trapped in the nightmare world of the sex trade.

Al Jazeera