A two-week-long mass strike by doctors, who demanded a pay rise from hospitals in the Nigerian state of Lagos, has taken a deadly toll on a significant number of patients in need of urgent medical care. Hospital staff say many patients have either died or continue to suffer as the strike by about 1,000 doctors paralysed the medical institutions.

High-level Nigerian government participation is needed at an upcoming international conference to make progress in ending a lead poisoning epidemic among children in Zamfara State, Human Rights Watch said. The international conference, in Abuja, the capital, on May 9 and 10, 2012, will include representatives from the World Health Organization, bilateral donor agencies and nongovernmental organizations. It will focus on the mass lead poisoning in the northern Nigerian state of Zamfara, one of the worst such crises in modern history.

At least 34 people have been killed in an attack on a cattle market in north-eastern Nigeria, security officials have told the BBC. Another 29 people were injured, said Nigerian military spokesman Col Dahiru Abdussalam. The market in Potiskum, Yobe state, was set on fire by gunmen armed with explosives.

The problem of Nigeria is one-Nigeria. The state structure is wrong. The solution is restructuring; separation of the warring peoples, cultures and religions into independent countries.

Labour on May Day threatened to mobilise Nigerians for another street protest if the Federal Government fails to implement the report of the Farouk Lawan-led committee on the probe of the fuel subsidy. The President of the Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC), Abdulwaheed Omar, who issued the threat in his goodwill message to the May Day celebration in Ibadan, Oyo State, also accused the government of an alleged plans to outlaw strikes.

Only a fraction of the millions of people worldwide with blood and autoimmune disorders survive - especially those in poorer countries - partly due to the lack of bone marrow stem cell transplants. A recently established Nigerian bone marrow registry hopes to boost matches between donors and patients, and survival chances. Some 200,000 babies are born annually in sub-Saharan Africa with sickle cell disease, a blood disorder in which mutated red blood cells can clump and block blood vessels, causing pain, infection and organ damage. Nigeria has up to two million sickle cell patients, many of whom can benefit from stem cell transplants.

Officials and witnesses are reporting a death of around 20 people after attackers with bombs and guns opened fire at worshippers attending church services at a university in northern Nigeria on Sunday. Explosions and gunfire rocked Bayero University in the northern city of Kano, and witnesses said they targeted two campus church services – one outdoors, the other in a building but with the crowd spilling outside.

With a recent report detailing corruption in the fuel subsidy system, a symposium is planned to address the issues and map out a plan of action on the imperative of accountability and probity
on how the collective state resources must and should be managed.

Five people have been killed and 10 injured in two separate attacks in central Nigeria - one targeting football fans, officials have said. Unknown gunmen shot dead five villagers in an overnight attack on Rim, 50km (30 miles) south of Jos in Plateau state. Earlier, in Jos city nine people were injured after a blast outside a venue where fans had been watching the Chelsea-Barcelona football match.

The African Media Barometer (AMB) is an in-depth and comprehensive description and measurement system for national media environments on the African continent. Unlike other press surveys or media indices the AMB is a self assessment exercise based on home-grown criteria derived from African Protocols and Declarations like the 'Declaration of Principles on Freedom of Expression in Africa' (2002) by the 'African Commission for Human and Peoples’ Rights'. The instrument was jointly developed by fesmedia Africa, the Media Project of the Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung (FES) in Africa, and the Media Institute of Southern Africa (MISA) in 2004.

A Nigerian pressure group, Socio-Economic Rights and Accountability Project (SERAP), has petitioned the International Criminal Court (ICC) to investigate an alleged US$6 billion fuel subsidy loot in the West African country. It said in its petition to Luis Moreno Ocampo, ICC Prosecutor, that the ICC should examine and investigate whether 'the widespread and systematic corruption and theft of over US$6 billion in the fuel subsidy scheme over a period of three years and its devastating effects on millions of Nigerians amount to inhumane acts intentionally causing great suffering, or serious injury to body or to mental or physical health as provided by Article 7 of the Rome Statute of International Criminal Court'.

This brief update from the United Nations Fund (UNICEF) reports on recent developments in polio-endemic Nigeria. As of 13th of April 2012, 20 new cases of wild poliovirus (WPV) have been reported in eight states, compared to nine cases for the same time period in four states in 2011. The polio eradication programme is addressing challenges in campaign quality while dealing with a deteriorating security situation. In key infected states (Borno, Kano, Sokoto, Yobe), more than one in three children has received less than four doses of the oral polio vaccine (OPV).

A major oil spill in the Niger Delta was far worse than Shell previously admitted, according to an independent assessment obtained by Amnesty International and the Centre for Environment, Human Rights and Development (CEHRD), which exposes how the oil giant dramatically under-estimated the quantities involved. The spill in 2008, caused by a fault in a Shell pipeline, resulted in tens of thousands of barrels of oil polluting the land and creek surrounding Bodo, a Niger Delta town of some 69,000 people.

So far this year 14 schools have been burnt down in Maiduguri, the capital of Borno State, northern Nigeria, forcing over 7,000 children out of formal education and pushing down enrolment rates in an already ill-educated region. In a video posted on YouTube in February, Boko Haram, the Islamic jihadist group based in Nigeria, called on their followers to destroy schools providing Western education.

Barely 24 hours after James Ibori landed a 13-year jail term in the United Kingdom for money laundering, jubilation turned to anger following reports of the planned repatriation to Nigeria of the $250 million stolen by the former Delta State governor. Nigerians both at home and in Diaspora are strongly opposing plans to return the money to Delta State where the current governor, Emmanuel Uduaghan, is Ibori’s cousin and 'stooge'.

A bill of rights that protects Nigerians from insecurity and violence on the roads is also needed alongside the coming bill of rights for air travellers.

A Nigerian-born asylum seeker in the United Kingdom, John Abraham, was finally deported on Friday 16 March, despite the intervention of organisations that pursue LGBT migrants’ issues in the UK and across Europe. Prior to the deportation, Abraham was detained at the Coinbrook Immigration Removal Centre near Heathrow airport, West London and was initially due to be deported to Nigeria on 8 March.

The African Union has added their backing to Nigerian finance minister Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala’s run at becoming World Bank President. This post from blog Africa is a Country says there are those who would be pleased to see her get the job simply so that Nigeria could be rid of her. Her opponents accuse her 'of acting as an agent for global financial instutions, she was widely seen as the instigator of the removal of the fuel subsidy in January that led to the eruption of the Occupy Nigeria movement.'

Blog Africa is a Country highlights how Nigerian producers Chris Dada and Funmi Iyanda, the creators of chopcassava.com which documented fuel subsidy protests in Nigeria, have stitched together their short viral films and video-blog diary made during the protests. What ChopCassava’s reporting made increasingly clear was, says Africa is a Country, was that the protests developed into the question of 'the way how we are governed as a people'.

The Anglo-Dutch oil giant Shell has been hit by a swarm of 11,000 villagers seeking compensation for oil spills which they said have polluted their waters and devastated farmlands. The villagers from Bodo community, a network of 35 villages in Nigeria’s oil-rich Niger Delta are set to square off against the oil company in a London Courtroom with Martyn Day of law firm Leigh Day & Co. saying the spills devastated a once-thriving fishing community.