As more women clamour for political offices in the forthcoming elections, an Islamic scholar in Bauchi has warned muslim women against participating in partisan politics.

The report by a panel set up last week by the Federal Government to investigate an allegation in the Time magazine that foreign correspondents resident in the country were bribed with $400 each to give the nation a less negative image described the allegation as unfounded, adding that officials of the Ministry of Information and National Orientation "acted above board in the circumstance."

The BBC is reporting that a man has been condemned to death by stoning by an Islamic (or Sharia) court in northern Nigeria. He was convicted of rape in the northern State of Jigawa. This comes on the heels of the cases of two women who were recently sentenced to death by stoning for adultery but had their sentences reduced largely due to outcry from the international community.

When Nigeria's Supreme Court ruled last month that all of the country's offshore oil and gas resources belonged to the federal government, it was an apparent triumph for President Olusegun Obasanjo. Not quite, analysts warn. "While Obasanjo has won a significant legal battle at the Supreme Court, an enormous political battle lies ahead of him," Ike Onyekwere, a political analyst, told IRIN. "And how he goes about it bodes a lot for Nigeria's political stability."

The Nigerian police force is to create hundreds of new mobile squadrons as part of its efforts to effectively combat crime, religious and political upheavals in the country, Assistant Commissioner of Police, Haz Lwendi, said on Tuesday.

A 19-year-old woman from Zaki local government area of Bauchi State, Adama Yunusa, who dragged her fiance, Isa Katagum, before a sharia court over unwanted pregnancy, would receive 100 strokes for indulging in immoral act. Katagun had denied the allegations, saying he never had any sexual intercourse with the complainant.

The Nigerian legislature is set to pass a law banning female genital mutilation and imposing a two year jail term for offenders. The bill, which is currently being considered by the Senate, was unanimously passed by Nigeria’s lower house, the House of Representatives last year. The senate is expected to conclude its deliberations on the bill in May, after which it will be sent to President Olusegun Obasanjo for his assent.

At least 148 people died in the northern Nigerian city
of Kano on Saturday when a jet aircraft crashed into a densely populated neighbourhood soon after takeoff , Red Cross officials said. The twin-engine, British-built BAC 1-11-500 bound for Lagos with 71
passengers and eight crew members ploughed through about a dozen buildings
in the Gwammaja quarters of Kano, killing 74 passengers and as many people
on the ground. Scores of people were injured.

Zamfara government has dismissed 11 traditional rulers, four sharia court judges and five civil servants on the recommendation of the state Anti-corruption Commission since its inception three years ago. The Chairman of the Commission, Alhaji Aliyu Mohammed, who made the disclosure to newsmen in Gusau, the state capital, said the dismissed officers were found guilty of corrupt practices as a result of complaints and petitions against them from members of the public.

A Muslim group in Nigeria's southern state of Oyo has said it was adopting the Islamic legal code of Sharia after the state government ignored their demands to implement the legal system.

THE 31st General Assembly of the Broadcasting Organisation of Nigeria (BON) ended in Warri, Delta State, last weekend with broadcasters showing great concerns for the coming elections.

Media Monitor reports on the situation of freedom of the press and the media in Nigeria. It is published weekly and circulated by the Independent Journalism Centre (IJC). It is a dialogical project. We expect that its contents will elicit reactions from its readers. You are encouraged to share your feelings with one another on its pages.

Militants in southern Nigeria have freed 43 oil
workers after holding them hostage for four days on an offshore oil rig,
ChevronTexaco, the US transnational for which the hostages worked, said on
Friday. "The youths left the rig on Wednesday night and the hostages were freed
unharmed," a senior company official told IRIN.

Tens of thousands of people in over 700 villages
in Kano State, northern Nigeria, may be infected by onchocerciasis (river
blindness), The Guardian newspaper reported the state governor, Rabiu Musa
Kwankwaso, as saying at the weekend.

A controversy over local elections in Nigeria,
originally scheduled for 18 May, was resolved on Wednesday with all
stakeholders agreeing on a postponement to 10 August. The decision to defer the polls - so as to accommodate a revision of the
voters' register and new political parties - was made at a meeting chaired
by President Olusegun Obasanjo.

The spread of the polio virus has declined sharply in Nigeria, the UN Children's Fund reported this week. It said 57 cases of poliomyelitis were recorded in 2001 as against 2,000 in the previous year. Nine cases have been recorded this year from a surveillance of 12 of
Nigeria's 36 states, UNICEF added in a statement made available to IRIN on Thursday.

The Nigerian Government has warned that it will prosecute any foreign journalist who publishes malicious falsehoods about the country.

In an effort to achieve more women participation in politics, a non-governmental organisation, Women Advocate Research and Documentation Centre (WARDC) has called on Nigerian women to initiate a nationwide campaign for the inclusion of an affirmative action clause in the Nigerian constitution.

At this Media Summit, while we look at the N12 billion the Media will spend on advertising and promoting Corporate Nigeria, we should look critically at the message. It is no longer okay to ape foreign advert strategies without solving our own local problems or without a thought to improving society.

TOP government officials and retired public servants including the Secretary to the Federal Government, the Accountant General of the Federation (AGF) and retired Permanent Secretaries have literally removed the bureaucratic guards over their mouths and revealed how pubic service accountants perpetrate corruption and how the scourge can be curbed.