Nigerian president Goodluck Jonathan has conceded victory to challenger Muhammadu Buhari.

About 19 people were killed and 17 others injured in a suicide bombing in north-east Nigeria, a day before the president visited another town hit by violence.

As Islamic militants from Boko Haram step up attacks in Nigeria that have led to the slaughter of more civilians, there is increasing talk that international military action, possibly including a multinational force, may be needed to help crush the insurgency in Africa’s most populous country.

More than 102 people were killed in the bomb explosions at the central mosque in Kano.

People in the home town of more than 200 kidnapped Nigerian schoolgirls are cautiously optimistic about a ceasefire with the Islamic extremists who abducted their daughters six months ago.

The World Health Organisation urged nations worldwide to help stop the spread of Ebola as it declared the outbreak in West Africa to be an international public health emergency.

The World Health Organisation has urged nations to donate money and resources to stop the spread of ebola as it declared the outbreak in West Africa to be an international public health emergency.

Shortly after sunrise yesterday morning in a hotel lobby near the national stadium in Brasilia, a group of Nigerian air force members in full attire were checking in when their laughter started over a simple question.

A suicide bomber in a tricycle taxi triggered an explosion at a World Cup viewing centre in north-east Nigeria, killing several people, witnesses said.

Nigeria’s leader blames “extremist foreign elements” for the Islamic uprising that has ballooned out of a homegrown religious sect.

Two car bombs have exploded at a bustling bus terminal and market in Nigeria's central city of Jos, killing at least 46 people, according to police.

Boko Haram, which is holding more than 200 girls captive, is “acting clearly as an al-Qaida operation” and is no longer a local problem, Nigeria’s president says.

Leaders from five African nations are in Paris for a summit with officials from the US, France and Britain in the hope of co-ordinating a strategy against Boko Haram, the extremist group that abducted more than 200 Nigerian girls.

Residents in a village in Nigeria from where more than 300 schoolgirls were kidnapped have criticised the country's president for not turning up on a planned visit.

Villagers in an area of Nigeria where Boko Haram operates have killed and detained scores of the Islamic militants who were suspected of planning a fresh attack, residents and a security official said.

A new video from Nigeria’s Boko Haram terrorist network purports to show dozens of abducted schoolgirls, covered in jihab and praying in Arabic.

Nigeria’s military had four hours’ advanced warning of the April 14 attack by Boko Haram that led to the kidnapping of 276 schoolgirls but failed to take immediate action, Amnesty International said.

Nigerian security officials failed to act on a warning about a militant group’s raid on a boarding school that led to the abduction of more than 300 girls, Amnesty International says.

American officials have arrived in Nigeria to help look for more than 200 kidnapped schoolgirls.

Suspected Boko Haram gunmen kidnapped eight girls from a village near one of their strongholds in northeastern Nigeria overnight, police and residents said yesterday.

Britain has offered assistance to Nigeria to help respond to the kidnap of about 300 schoolgirls by Islamist militants, Foreign Secretary William Hague has said.

Nigerian President Goodluck Jonathan has ordered top security chiefs and officials to secure the safe release of 223 schoolgirls.

All schools and government offices in Nigeria’s capital will close during a three-day international conference next week, according to a presidential order that follows two bomb attacks in three weeks that killed nearly 100 people in Abuja.

A mob armed with wooden clubs and iron bars, screaming that they were going to “cleanse” their neighbourhood of gay people, dragged 14 young men from their beds and assaulted them, human rights activists in Nigeria said today.

Nigeria’s president has signed a law banning same-sex marriage as well as homosexual associations, societies and meetings, with penalties of up to 14 years in jail.

Suspected Islamic extremists have targeted two Christian villages in mainly Muslim north-east Nigeria and killed at least 12 civilians, including guests at a wedding reception, witnesses said.

Nelson Mandela worked his magic once more yesterday, uniting friends and foes alike in a global outpouring of grief as they mourned the death of the anti-apartheid icon.

The American pilot of the passenger jet that crashed in Lagos, Nigeria, on Sunday reported engine trouble shortly before the crash, airline officials said.

Robbers angered by a crowd burning one of their colleagues alive attacked a cattle market in north east Nigeria, killing at least 34 people in the latest violence fanning across the bloodied region, witnesses and an official said.

Italian president Giorgio Napolitano led a chorus of condemnation of Britain’s failure to inform the Italian government before launching a botched rescue mission with Nigerian forces that led to the deaths of British and Italian hostages held by a militant Islamist group.

The alleged mastermind of a radical Islamist sect’s Christmas Day church bombing fled across Nigeria after escaping police custody and hid for about a month before finally being apprehended, authorities said.

UNIONS yesterday suspended their nationwide strike in Nigeria, hours after president Goodluck Jonathan partially reinstated subsidies to keep petrol prices low and deployed soldiers in the streets to halt widening demonstrations.

Nigeria’s president said the nation’s fuel prices will immediately drop amid a paralysing nationwide strike.

Members of a radical Muslim sect attacked a church in north-east Nigeria during a worship service, part of a series of assaults that killed at least 13 people, authorities said.

Gunmen from a radical Muslim sect attacked a town hall in Nigeria, killing at least 20 people who had gathered for a meeting of a Christian ethnic group.

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.

HEAVILY armed troops and tanks patrolled the streets of Maiduguri in northeast Nigeria yesterday, witnesses said, after the president declared a state of emergency in parts of the north affected by an Islamist insurgency.

Nigeria’s president has declared a state of emergency in parts of the West African nation after a slew of recent attacks blamed on a radical Muslim sect.

NIGERIA lacks competent leaders to tackle its security problems, a former military ruler said yesterday, after Christmas Day bomb attacks on churches by Islamist militants that killed more than two dozen people.

The death toll has risen to 23, two days after a car bombing at the United Nations’ Nigeria headquarters, a UN spokesman said.

Nigeria’s president vowed to bring terrorism “under control” as he visited the bombed headquarters of the United Nations in his country, a day after at least 18 people died in an attack claimed by a radical Muslim sect.

British Prime Minister David Cameron today promised he would get to the bottom of the problems raised by allegations of phone hacking at the News of the World.

At least 800 people were killed in post election violence that swept across northern Nigeria as it became clear that a northern candidate would not succeed in unseating the southern president, an international human rights group said.

Nigerian President Goodluck Jonathan has said that next week’s governor elections will go ahead, despite riots that have left more than 100 dead and forced 40,000 others to flee following the recent presidential vote in Africa’s most populous nation.