In twenty-first century Britain we might view witchcraft as a harmless superstition from a bygone era. But for many an accusation of sorcery still ruins lives

On another beach in a different world, Chinasa Paul would be sipping a soft drink bought by his parents. But if the 15-year-old eats today in Lagos, it will be thanks to tips he receives for lugging crates of drinks up and down Kuramo Beach.

The former governor of a Nigerian state today admitted fraud totalling nearly £50 million, said to be part of total embezzlement which could exceed £250 million.

India marked a major success in its battle against polio yesterday by being removed from the World Health Organisation's list of countries plagued by the disease.

Albion manager Roy Hodgson is 64. He won his first title in 1976 and has taken charge of 1,000 games but shows no signs of slowing down. He talks to Robin Scott-Elliot about trouble at Liverpool and the 'living hell' of relegation

Pirates have killed the captain and chief engineer of a cargo ship they attacked off the coast of Nigeria.

Union leaders suspended a nationwide strike yesterday after the Nigerian President Goodluck Jonathan partially reinstated subsidies to keep petrol prices low and deployed soldiers in the streets to stop widening protests.

A union representing 20,000 oil and gas workers in Nigeria has threatened to shut down all production starting on Sunday as part of a crippling nationwide strike over spiralling fuel prices.

A national strike paralysing Nigeria risks "anarchy", the government has warned as demonstrations over spiralling fuel prices entered their third day today.

Protesters furious over spiralling petrol prices started fires on a motorway and at least one person was killed in the unrest after Nigeria's government scrapped a subsidy that had kept fuel costs down for more than 20 years.

Angry mobs of protesters stopped garage owners from selling fuel today while others lit a bonfire on a major highway in an attempt to thwart the Nigerian government's removal of a cherished consumer subsidy which had kept petrol affordable for more than two decades.

Nigeria's main opposition leader accused the government of incompetence on Monday after Islamist militants killed more than two dozen people in Christmas Day attacks on churches and other targets.

An oil spill near the coast of Nigeria is likely to be the worst there in a decade, the government official said today, as slicks from the Royal Dutch Shell spill approached the southern shoreline.

The image so often associated with Africa – a child with stick-thin limbs and swollen belly – dates back to the first televised famine, the Biafran war. The man who understood the power of that image was an Oxford-educated Nigerian soldier, Emeka Ojukwu.