Isn't that what you do with a qaqa in the toilet?
"Nigerians strike over gas prices, corruption" January 10, 2012|By Jon Gambrell
LAGOS, Nigeria - A national strike fueled by widespread dissent over spiraling gas prices paralyzed Nigeria yesterday, as tens of thousands of protesters took over empty streets across the country to criticize government corruption.
Related: Nigerian Sectarianism Stories Stink
So does the timing of the attacks that mobilized the military in anticipation of a fuel increase!!
The scope of the strike became clear at first light in Lagos. The typically snarled streets of the commercial capital stood empty. Trade unions set up informal roadblocks, aided by local gang members who attacked cars of those driving in spite of the strike.
More than 10,000 people later gathered at a public park in Lagos, with nearly everyone shouting their criticisms of President Goodluck Jonathan and Nigeria’s federal government. Placards and banners bore pictures of Jonathan with devil horns and fanged teeth, working as an attendant at a gas station. Thousands also demonstrated in Nigeria’s capital, Abuja.
The demonstrations were largely peaceful across the country on the strike’s first day, but a police shooting in Lagos left one dead and four wounded, while another in the northern city of Kano killed two more.
Occupy.... Nigeria?
Protesters attacked the seat of Kano’s state government, setting offices and cars ablaze, local police commissioner Ibrahim Idris said. Security officers there shot at the mob, resulting in a stampede that left seven wounded, protest organizer Ashiru Sharif said.
Authorities later set a dusk-to-dawn curfew to quell the violence.
The widespread anger could be felt just like the heat pouring off burning tires and debris left scattered by some protesters, who said they are upset by the ingrained graft and other failures of Nigeria’s young democracy.
“It is high time to take Nigeria into our hands,’’ said Bola Adejobi, 53, who works as an educational consultant and an interior designer. “It happened in Egypt. It happened in Libya.’’
Labor unions called the strike after Jonathan’s administration said Jan. 1 it unilaterally removed subsidies that kept gasoline prices low in the nation of 160 million people. The decision saw gas prices rise from $1.70 per gallon to at least $3.50 per gallon. That spurred a spike in prices for food and transportation across a country where most live on less than $2 a day.
Cheap gasoline remains the only noticeable benefit for Nigeria’s public after 50 years of oil production that has seen military leaders and politicians embezzle billions in government funds. Gasoline also remains vital in a nation where electricity is scarce.
“People have to understand that in the West, petrol is for your car. In Africa, in Nigeria especially, petrol is your life,’’ said musician Seun Anikulapo-Kuti, son of the late Afrobeat legend Fela. “There’s no light without petrol. Everybody runs a generator.’’
While most businesses remained closed yesterday, some flights left Lagos’s Murtala Muhammed International Airport.
Oil production also apparently continued in Nigeria, which produces about 2.4 million barrels of oil a day and remains a top crude supplier to the United States. However, the unions representing oil workers had promised to go along with the national strike.
Some activists wore shirts bearing symbols for a loose-knit group of protests called “Occupy Nigeria,’’ inspired by those near Wall Street in New York.
The anger of those gathered also extended to the government’s weak response to ongoing violence in Nigeria by a radical Muslim sect that, according to an Associated Press count, killed at least 510 people last year.
Well, it is kind of hard to "respond" to something YOU IN FACT CREATED and DID, isn't it?
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"Nigerian troops used to block more protests over high fuel prices" January 17, 2012|By Jon Gambrell
LAGOS, Nigeria - For the first time since protests erupted over spiraling fuel prices, soldiers barricaded key roads in Nigeria’s commercial capital of Lagos yesterday as the president offered a concession to stem demonstrations that he said were being stoked by provocateurs seeking anarchy.
Not as weak a response, 'eh?
Soldiers and police also barricaded entrances to protest venues in Nigeria’s second-largest city of Kano yesterday, including a park near a university and a square in the city center.
The deployment of troops is a sensitive issue in a nation with a young democracy and a history of military coups. Yesterday in a televised speech, President Goodluck Jonathan said that agitators have hijacked the demonstrations.
I have had JUST ABOUT ENOUGH of the CHARGED and CODED LANGUAGE, thank you!
Jonathan announced the government would subsidize gasoline prices to immediately reduce the price to about $2.27 a gallon.
It's called a backtrack.
The concession might not be enough to stem outrage over the government’s stripping of subsidies on Jan. 1 that had kept gas prices low in this oil-rich but impoverished nation.
Even with the measure announced yesterday, gasoline would still be more than a dollar higher than it was just 16 days ago, and anger in Africa’s most populous nation is also now aimed at government corruption and inefficiency.
Tens of thousands have marched in cities across the nation.
In Lagos, a city of 15 million, soldiers set up a checkpoint yesterday morning on the main highway that feeds traffic from the mainland into its islands.
At a park in the Ojota neighborhood on the mainland, where more than 20,000 people had gathered Friday for an antigovernment demonstration, two military armored personnel carriers were parked near an empty stage.
“They are here because they don’t want us to protest,’’ said Remi Odutayo, 25, referring to the soldiers in the park. “They are using the power given to them to do something illegal’’ by stopping demonstrators from gathering.
On Ikoyi Island in Lagos, where some of Nigeria’s wealthy and some foreign diplomats live, more than a dozen Nigerian air force personnel carrying assault rifles questioned drivers at a roundabout where more 1,000 protesters had regularly gathered last week. Drivers had to slow down because the airmen had put metal barricades and debris in the street.
Jonathan’s speech comes after his attempt to negotiate with labor unions failed late Sunday night to avert the strike entering a sixth day.
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"Nigeria dictator’s top aide sentenced to death" January 31, 2012
LAGOS, Nigeria - A federal judge in Nigeria yesterday sentenced to death the feared right-hand man to Nigeria’s former military dictator over the 1996 killing of an opposition candidate’s wife.
Major Hamza al Mustapha sat without expression, slowly shaking his head “no,’’ as the high court judge ordered him to be hanged over the killing of Kudirat Abiola.
His coconspirator, Lateef Shofolahan, received the same sentence after the two men were found guilty of murder and conspiracy charges.
Shofolahan was described by the court as a trusted employee of the Abiola family who ultimately betrayed them for money and power.
Mustapha was found guilty of ordering a security agent to kill the wife of Moshood Abiola, a businessman widely believed to be the winner of an annulled 1993 presidential poll in Nigeria.
Mustapha denied taking part in the 1996 machine-gun killing in Lagos, saying he was tortured into a false confession.
Mustapha served as the chief security officer to General Sani Abacha, a paranoid military ruler who stole billions from the oil-rich nation while brutally suppressing dissent.
Hey, as long as he kept the oil flowing west....
Abiola was imprisoned by the dictator at the time of his wife’s death, and died in prison a month after Abacha’s own death as the nation struggled toward democracy.
Judge Mojisola Dada, though speaking in a hushed tone over the several hours it took to read her judgment in the stifling hot courtroom, barely controlled her rage over the killings. Dada described Mustapha as a “venomous beast’’ and Shofolahan as a Judas who “sold his master for 30 pieces of silver.’’
“I think it is amazing that those who are most willing to shed the blood of others are the ones always scared of death,’’ Dada said when handing down the sentence.
One can only think of the whole neo-con cabal and the war-pimping Amerikan media there.
Lead defense lawyer Olalekan Ojo said both men would appeal their sentences and file for stays of execution.
The daughter of the two slain democratic activists, Hafsat Abiola, said the verdict came as a surprise after previous trials ended without convictions. Nigerian authorities still view Mustapha as a security threat, holding him in Lagos’s maximum-security Kirikiri prison.
In 2004, officials claimed he planned to have someone shoot down a helicopter carrying then-President Olusegun Obasanjo.
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"Bombing near Nigerian church kills 3" February 27, 2012
JOS, Nigeria - A suicide car bomber detonated his explosives outside a major church yesterday, killing three people and wounding 38 in a restive central Nigerian city that has seen hundreds die in religious and ethnic violence.
The radical Islamist sect Boko Haram claimed responsibility for the attack on the main headquarters of the Church of Christ in Nigeria that hit as worshipers took part in an early morning service.
The attack follows other assaults the sect has claimed against Christians in Nigeria’s north, widening distrust between the two main faiths - Christianity and Islam - in the multiethnic nation of more than 160 million people....
Sorry, but WE AIN'T BITING on the BAIT!
In a statement, President Goodluck Jonathan condemned the attack.
“Those who seek to divide us by fear and terror will not succeed,’’ Jonathan said. “The indiscriminate bombing of Christians and Muslims is a threat to all peace-loving Nigerians.’’
Speaking to journalists in a conference call yesterday, a Boko Haram spokesman calling himself Abul Qaqa claimed responsibility for the suicide car bombing.
What an IN-YOUR-FACE LAUGHER! One wonders if the guy even exists at all or whether he is just an INTELLIGENCE AGENCY CREATION and PROPAGANDA MOUTHPIECE.
Boko Haram has launched increasingly bloody attacks across Nigeria. A Christmas Day bombing of a Catholic church that left at least 44 dead was claimed by the sect in Madalla, a town just outside the country’s capital, Abuja. The group also claimed responsibility for 2010 bomb attacks in Jos that killed as many as 80 people.
It's like a TURD that JUST WON'T GO DOWN!
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"Suicide bomber kills 38 in Nigeria" Associated Press, April 09, 2012
LAGOS, Nigeria - A suicide car bomber detonated his explosives Sunday morning on a busy road near two Nigerian churches holding Easter services, killing at least 38 people in a massive blast that rattled a city long at the center of religious, ethnic, and political violence.
The blast struck Kaduna, the capital of Kaduna state, leaving charred motorcycles and debris strewn across a major road in the city where many gather to eat at restaurants and buy black market gasoline.
Nearby hotels and homes had their windows blown out and roofs torn away by the force of the explosion, which engulfed a group of motorcycle taxi drivers.
The blast badly damaged the nearby All Nations Christian Assembly Church and the ECWA Good News Church as churchgoers worshiped at an Easter service, the possible target of the bomber. Witnesses said it appeared the explosive-laden car attempted to go into the compound of the churches before it detonated, but was blocked by barriers in the street and was turned away by a security guard as police approached.
While no one immediately claimed responsibility for the attack, suspicion immediately fell on Boko Haram, a radical Islamist sect blamed for hundreds of killings in the nation this year alone.
Ah, the HALLMARK of an INTELLIGENCE AGENCY FALSE FLAG!
At least 38 people were killed in the blast, a spokesman for the Kaduna emergency office said.
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Someone get a plunger.
Hey, whatever happened to that oil slick, Globe?
