Nigeria

Worsening international economic conditions, tighter credit lines and Nigeria’s weak industrial policy have led to a sharp cutback in the US$3.3 billion cement manufacturing deal between China’s Sinoma...

The catastrophic failure in November of Nigeria’s US$340 million, Chinese-built satellite NIGCOMSAT-1, launched only a year ago, is the latest, most visible indication of increasing difficulties...

The Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria says there is no need to panic, the country is adequately insulated from the global slowdown and will not suffer...

Calculated and recalculated according to the wild swings of the global oil market, the 2009 budget is almost up there with the election tribunal and the cabinet reshuffle...

Three groups of ambitious politicians stalk Abuja's corridors of power, hoping for events to unfold in their favour. There are the men who would be king: former Vice-President...

After months of speculation, President Umaru Musa Yar'Adua has sacked half his cabinet but retained several of his old associates and surprisingly kept on a few of the...

Watching oil prices fall from US$147 a barrel to $57 over the past month and listening to endless media speculation about his health must have been disconcerting for...

Nigerian visitors to London’s Heathrow Airport are pleasantly surprised to see billboards publicising one or another of their country’s biggest banks. Many of the taxis operating out of...

Nobody has told Nigerians what was wrong with their President, who was in hospital in Saudi Arabia from 20 August to 6 September. Things are clearly not well...

Britain’s Virgin Atlantic has lost the first round in its battle with Nigeria’s government and is expected to sell all but 7% of its 49% stake in the...

Telecoms impresario Mike Adenuga has bounced back, despite the longrunning investigation into his company by Nigeria’s Economic and Financial Crimes Commission.

The rumours of President Umaru Musa Yar’Adua’s demise reverberating around Nigeria’s mobile phone networks over the past week were assuredly exaggerated, a combination of misinformation and idle political...

Offering military assistance to a country that did not request it is extremely bad manners, responded a seasoned Nigerian analyst after French President Nicolas Sarkozy and British...

Nigerian suspicion of foreign military support creates opportunities for the security professionals, some of whom are looking for business openings since an agreement between the United States and...

President Umaru Musa Yar'Adua's appointment of new service chiefs and a new Chief of Defence Staff on 20 August will further reduce the political power of former President...

Since President Umaru Musa Yar'Adua came to power after a widely-criticised election and started extolling the rule of law much has changed. Yar Adua's own electoral case will...

Cameroonian security forces in the disputed oil-rich Bakassi peninsula are on maximum alert after fatal attacks by the Niger Delta Defence and Security Council. The NDDSC, a little-known,...

Troops from Nigeria and Cameroon were put on high alert in the Bakassi Peninsula, following the unexplained slaughter of five Cameroonian soldiers and a local government official on...

Nigeria is determined to raise its oil production capacity to four million barrels per day by 2010, President Umaru Musa Yar'Adua told Africa Confidential in Paris on 13...

Former Delta State Governor James Ibori faces charges of fraud and corruption in the Kaduna High Court and his wife Theresa faces money laundering charges in Britain, where...

There was little fanfare for Umaru Musa Yar’Adua’s first anniversary as Nigeria’s President on 29 May. His quiet leadership infuriates his opponents and bewilders those accustomed to rulers...

British banks could face awkward questions after police in London charged Theresa Nkoyo Ibori, wife of former Delta State Governor James Ibori, with money laundering on 20 May....

Criminal investigators in the United States and Europe are widening their probe into claims that the USA's oil service giant Halliburton and three other multinationals working on a...

The discovery by Halliburton's lawyers Baker Botts of more than 500 pages of notes penned by Wojciech Chodan (a Halliburton consultant and the Samuel Pepys of the energy...

The humiliation of ex-President Olusegun Obasanjo is forging ahead, less than a year after he left office. In the past few months, parliamentary committees have exposed allegations of...

If nothing else, President Umaru Musa Yar’Adua has proved wrong those critics who claimed he would be a mere puppet of his predecessor, Olusegun Obasanjo. Both men lead...

President Umaru Yar'Adua has launched a thorough restructuring of the state-owned energy sector and a review of commercial contracts. His reform team hopes to bring in partners like...

The verdict was emphatic. On 26 February, Justice James Ogebe and his four colleagues on the Presidential Election Tribunal in Abuja voted 5-0 to dismiss the petitions brought...

The rival factions in the political drama in Abuja agree on one thing: the legal and political battles over the legitimacy of the 2007 elections will rumble on...

Relations between multinational oil companies and the government of President Umaru Musa Yar'Adua are deteriorating. The big oil companies are talking of a chronic financing crisis. Tony Chukwueke,...

Ambassador to Africa’s biggest oil producer, Xu Jianguo has presided over a rapid expansion of commercial and diplomatic ties since his posting to Abuja in September 2006. Chinese...

A sizable and much-ballyhooed credit line looks to be little more than a goodwill gesture from China to Nigeria, promising much but delivering little. The brief fanfare attached to the initial...

Born in 1954, Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala studied economics at Harvard University, then earned a Ph.D in regional economics and development from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1981. She joined the World...

Since joining Umaru Musa Yar'Adua's cabinet in 2007 as Finance Minister, Shamsudeen Usman has courted foreign investment - particularly from China - to rejuvenate Nigeria's infrastructure and boost its petroleum production....

Agreements signed this month between Dangote Industries of Nigeria and China's Sinoma International Engineering Company to build 13 cement production lines across Africa at a cost of US$2.8 billion will give...