Nigeria

LAGOS, Nigeria - In a quarter century, at the rate Nigeria is growing, 300 million people - a population about as big as that of the United States - will live in a country the size of Arizona and New Mexico. In this commercial hub, where the population has by some estimates nearly doubled over 15 years to 21 million, living standards for many are falling. Lifelong residents like Peju Taofika and her three granddaughters inhabit a room in a typical apartment block known as a "Face Me, Face You" because whole families squeeze into 7-by-11-foot rooms along a narrow corridor.

Nigeria immigration officials say they've arrested 45 Chinese nationals working in the a popular northern market and plan to deport them. Kano state immigration controller Emmanuel Brasca Udo Ifeadi said Tuesday that the Chinese workers were arrested at a textile market in the city. Ifeadi described the workers as "economic scavengers" who were undercutting Nigerian sellers in the market. Nigeria's own textile factories collapsed in the 1980s over cheap imports, many coming from China.

OTA, Nigeria -- This West African nation's influential president set tough terms yesterday for two African pariahs, pledging to "persuade" indicted war criminal Charles Taylor to surrender for trial if Liberia asks and to bar Zimbabwe's president from an international summit. Olusegun Obasanjo's comments came in a rare interview. He has strongly resisted US congressional pressure to turn Taylor, the outsted Liberian president, over for prosecution on a UN-backed indictment for war crimes.

Witnesses say at least seven people have been killed in separate overnight shootings in northeast Nigeria likely carried out by a radical Islamist sect. The attacks Sunday night occurred around Maiduguri, the city where the sect known as Boko Haram once had its main mosque. A military spokesman and a police spokesman declined to comment Monday, though a police official who spoke to The Associated Press confirmed seven people had been killed. The police official spoke on condition of anonymity because the information was not supposed to be released publicly.

Germany reached the Women’s World Cup quarterfinals by beating Nigeria, 1-0, yesterday in Frankfurt as Simone Laudehr scored on a thunderous volley during a 54th-minute goalmouth scramble in a surprisingly tight game. Goalkeeper Nadine Angerer celebrated her 100th international appearance with a shutout. The host nation, which has won both its games, looked hardly convincing in the three-week tournament it is favored to win. After France routed Canada, 4-0, to also advance, Germany must beat its neighbor Tuesday if the two-time defending champions are to win Group A. Nigeria was eliminated...

LAGOS, Nigeria — A video posted on a militant website calls for Muslims in Nigeria to use “the sword and the spear’’ to rise up against Christians in Africa’s most populous nation, according to a translation released yesterday by a US group that monitors militant sites. The video on the Ansar al-Mujahideen forum, a website sympathetic to Al Qaeda, follows a series of religious massacres and riots in central Nigeria. The video shows television news footage and graphic images of those killed as a narrator tells viewers “the solution is jihad in the cause of...

Nigerian officials say they have launched a broadcast satellite into orbit to replace one that was lost in space. Project manager Abdulrahman Adejah said Monday on state-run television that NIGCOMSAT-1R launched successfully from a Chinese launch pad. Authorities say a Chinese team built the satellite which is expected to provide phone, broadband Internet and broadcasting services in Nigeria and other African countries. NIGCOMSAT-1R replaces Nigeria's first broadcast satellite, which was lost in 2008.

Health officials say at least 46 people have died from cholera-related symptoms in northern Nigeria over the last month. Yobe state health chief Fatsuma Talba said Tuesday that 33 people have died in the northeastern state. Community health officer Aishatu Yahaya says 11 others died in the north-central state of Nasarawa. And Sokoto state health chief Abdullahi Maigwandu says two children died over the weekend in the northwestern town of Gandi. Authorities say hundreds of cholera cases have been reported since June.

LAGOS, Nigeria — Goodluck Jonathan was sworn in yesterday for a full four-year term as president of Nigeria and is now faced with the challenge of uniting a country that saw deadly postelection violence despite what observers called the fairest vote in more than a decade. Hours after the inaugural, a series of bomb blasts at an army barracks in Nigeria’s northeast killed at least five people, police said. There was no immediate claim of responsibility. Many northerners believe someone from their region should have been the next leader after the Muslim...

ABUJA, Nigeria - Nigeria will bring terrorism "under control" and confront the radical Muslim sect that claimed responsibility for a car bombing at the country's United Nations headquarters that killed at least 19 people, its president vowed yesterday amid the wreckage. President Goodluck Jonathan stepped through shattered glass and passed dried pools of blood as UN employees salvaged printers, computers, and all they could carry to keep the mission running. The UN's top official in Nigeria promised humanitarian aid would continue to flow to Africa's most...

Gunmen surrounded villages in northeast Nigeria and set them ablaze, killing at least 12 people and wounding 48 others in violence that could spread as attackers remain hiding in the rural region, the Nigerian Red Cross said Monday. The attacks targeted four villages early Sunday morning in a remote area of Adamawa state, which borders Cameroon. The number of dead could rise as relief workers remain unable to reach the villages affected and about 2,000 people have fled, the Red Cross said in a report obtained by The Associated Press.

Regulators in Nigeria have fined four mobile phone carriers a total of $7.3 million over poor service in a nation that depends on cellular phones for communications, a spokesman said Sunday. The Nigeria Communications Commission's penalties hit Bharti Airtel Ltd. of India, Abu Dhabi-based Etisalat, local firm Globacom Ltd. and South Africa-based MTN Group Ltd., some of the dominant carriers in Africa's most populous nation. Etisalat and MTN must pay $2.25 million apiece, while Airtel faces a penalty of $1.68 million and Globacom faces a $1.125 million fine, said...

Separate attacks in northeast Nigeria likely carried out by a radical Islamist sect killed at least seven police officers Sunday, witnesses said, the latest violence to shake the bloodied region. The attacks focused around the city of Maiduguri, where the sect known as Boko Haram once had its main mosque. One attack struck the home of a former federal senator in the region, killing one officer, while other attacks killed four others, a police official said. The official spoke on condition of anonymity as the information was not yet authorized to be...

A deadly lead poisoning outbreak that began two years ago in northern Nigeria continues to claim young victims even today, an aid agency official said Thursday, while calling on the government to do more to protect those at risk. Ivan Gayton of Doctors Without Borders also criticized the government of oil-rich Nigeria for not taking the threat seriously, despite 4,000 children already being sickened by the outbreak linked to gold mining. Foreign aid groups have done much of the work to clean the villages affected in rural Zamfara state and provide care to...

Gunmen set fire to a home in a Christian village near a central Nigeria city violently divided by faith and shot those who ran outside to flee the flames, killing at least seven people and wounding one other, authorities said Thursday. The attack represents the latest killings spiraling out of unrest between Christians and Muslims living around the city of Jos, an area that has seen thousands killed in the last decade in fighting. That violence continues to go further and further out into rural villages, a potential sign that killings could again rage out...

A Nigerian police official says that three time bombs were found in different sections of a university in the city of Kano. Police spokesman Magaji Musa Majiya said Tuesday that the university personnel alerted the police after finding the bombs in the science and law buildings and at the sports complex of Bayero University. Majiya said police were on their way to the sites to diffuse the bombs. Kano is Nigeria's largest city in its predominantly Muslim north. It saw at least 185 people killed in an attack by the Islamist sect Boko Haram in January.

KANO, Nigeria - Gunmen attacked church services on a university campus Sunday in northern Nigeria, using small explosives to draw out then fire on panicking worshipers in an assault that killed at least 16 people, officials said. The attackers targeted an old section of Bayero University's campus where religious groups use a theater and other areas to hold worship services, Kano state police spokesman Ibrahim Idris said. The assault left many others seriously wounded, according to Idris.

ABUJA, Nigeria - Islamist militants attacked a police station in northern Nigeria yesterday, and police killed 39 militants and arrested more than 150, a police spokesman said. The Islamist fighters attacked a station in the capital of Bauchi State, said Mohammed Barau, state police spokesman. He said no police officers were killed. Fifteen Islamist fighters were injured and 156 were arrested, he said. “The fundamentalists, known as Pokoharam in the local language, are those clamoring for the prohibition of Western education in the state,’’ Barau said.

Nigeria's military says soldiers killed four suspected members of a radical Islamist sect during a raid. The raid happened Sunday in Kano, Nigeria's largest city in its predominantly Muslim north. Military spokesman Lt. Iweah Ikedichi said Monday the raid came after soldiers received reports that an area had become a safe haven for the radical Islamist sect Boko Haram. The lieutenant said four suspected Boko Haram members were killed, while others were arrested. Boko Haram is waging an increasingly bloody fight against Nigeria's weak central government in its effort to...