Nigeria

SINCE winning an alleged 62 percent of the vote in Nigeria's election Feb. 27, President-elect Olusegun Obasanjo has said all the right things.These include a promise of "an open and fair and transparent government"; a mandate to "rebuild this nation"; and a plea that "together, we will strive to bequeath to the next generation a truly democratic system of governance."The words were needed. General Obasanjo's own Yoruba people in the southwest, including the great commercial city of Lagos, favored his opponent.

NYANYA, Nigeria -- Schoolteacher Rakmat M. Sani lent her old, ink-stained desk to the cause of democracy and historic change here yesterday.It was placed on the veranda outside the dingy primary school classroom in which she teaches 10-year-olds, so that voters in this depressed township could choose a civilian to replace this country's military head of state.The presidential choice was between former military leader Gen. Olusegun Obasanjo, 61, who campaigned as a democrat, and Olu Falae, 60, a Yale-trained former finance minister in a military regime who ran as an economic reformer.

LANDOVER -- Unseeded Brazil, outplayed the entire second half, stole a dramatic 3-3 draw with top-seeded Germany in Women's World Cup play yesterday, turning a botched clear of a free kick into a goal 10 seconds from the game's end."We have a saying, `God is Brazilian,' so this proves it," said coach Wilson De Oliveira Rica, grinning over the goal that came nearly four minutes into stoppage time, his team's only bright moment of the second half.Second-half substitute Maicon had the errant ball drop to her in traffic 14 yards from goal and just to the right of center, and she slammed home a rising shot for the tie with scarcely 10 seconds left.

ABUJA, Nigeria -- In an exuberant ceremony of martial music and marches, Nigeria's military ruler turned over power to an elected leader yesterday, opening an era of civilian government in the nation where one in six Africans lives.Seconds after he was handed a copy of Nigeria's 24-day-old Constitution and 20 years after he stepped down as its military ruler, Olusegun Obasanjo, a retired general, was sworn in as president.After the ceremony, in a symbolic retirement of the military from politics, the outgoing head of state, Gen. Abdulsalam Abubakar, was escorted in a motorcade by the military's highest-ranking officers to his hometown of Minna, about 75 miles west of the capital.

LAGOS, Nigeria -- A former military ruler appeared set last night to head the country's first civilian government in 15 years, but his rival plans to contest the results, casting doubts over Africa's most populous nation.Gen. Olusegun Obasanjo, 61, overcame misgivings about his continuing ties with the generals to take a substantial lead over economist Olu Falae, 60, who campaigned on a clean break with the military.Results from 33 of Nigeria's 36 states gave 17,129 votes, or about 62 percent, to Obasanjo by last night.

IKORODU, Nigeria -- For the fourth and final time, Kehind Adewole will wait in the tropical sun tomorrow to vote an end to military rule, joining millions of his countrymen in an act they hope will save this most populous African nation.The transition from army dictatorship to civilian democracy here has been a carefully paced process, and Adewole has participated in each step.First, the civil servant and father of three went to the polling station on the veranda of an ornate but dowdy green house at Ogunsanya and Alison streets to elect a local council for this down-at-its-heels township Dec. 5.On Jan. 9, he was back to elect a provincial governor.

Nigerians go to polls to choose civilians for National AssemblyLAGOS, Nigeria -- Nigerians voted yesterday in landmark parliamentary elections, marking the latest step in their country's transition to civilian rule and greater democracy.An estimated 40 million voters in this West African nation were given their first chance in 15 years to select civilians for a two-chamber National Assembly. However, there was little fanfare here in Nigeria's commercial capital and second city.Political observers attributed the lack of outward enthusiasm to pent-up excitement in anticipation of a hotly contested vote Feb. 27 for a civilian president to lead this nation of 108 million.

ABUJA, Nigeria -- In the headquarters of one of this country's crack army units, a young captain ponders his future under the civilian government that Nigerians will vote in today."

THE WORLD should take Gen. Abdulsalam Abubakar's pledge to restore democracy to Nigeria at face value. Dissidents in Africa's most populous country, accustomed to military strongmen's brutality and duplicity, will not.General Abubakar, who found himself the ruler of the oil-producing country after the June 9 death of dictator Sani Abacha, has laid out a commendable transition to democracy. Abacha-appointed officials were dismissed, political parties created to support him were dissolved and political prisoners were released.

AKPABUYO, Nigeria -- Margaret Bassey Ene has one mission in life: gaining weight.The Nigerian teen-ager has spent every day since early June in a "fattening room" specially set aside in her father's mud-and-thatch house. Most of her waking hours are spent eating bowl after bowl of rice, yams, plantains, beans and "gari," a porridge-like mixture of dried cassava and water.After two more months of starchy diet and forced inactivity, Margaret will be ready to re-enter society bearing the traditional mark of female beauty among her Efik people: fat.Many culture-conscious people in the Efik and other communities in Nigeria's southeastern Cross River state hail a woman's rotundity as a sign of good health, prosperity and allure.

On September 29, 2009, CORDELIA NWANDO ENEKWE. Visitation will be held on Saturday, at the family owned MARCH FUNERAL HOME WEST INC, 4300 Wabash Avenue from 8:30 A.M. to 4:30 P.M. Interment at the Enekwe Family Compound Ajalli, Nigeria.

The other day I attempted to eat like a Nigerian. I had a serving of jollof rice, red rice flavored with a sauce made of tomatoes, spices and chili peppers. It was topped, initially, with some piece of boiled beef. Later I replaced the beef with goat meat, a piece that still had the skin on. "People who know about meat, always go for the goat," said Bamidelle Ogundele, better known as Lady D, the owner and chief chef of Lady D's Cafe at 2637 Greenmount Ave. Ogundele was giving me a quick tutorial in the cuisine of her native country, Nigeria.

Valentina Ukwuoma marches down an alley in East Baltimore, shaking her car keys in the air and yelling to get the attention of a city employee standing in the street about a half block away. Ukwuoma, who was named director of Baltimore's Bureau of Solid Waste last year, is upset about a blue mattress tossed on the sidewalk. She wants to know why the area supervisor hasn't picked it up. Seconds later, she's leaning on the same supervisor for a pile of tires in a back lot. "You can't say, 'Oh, she's in a nice, posh air-conditioned office,' " said the 42-year-old Ukwuoma, who immigrated from Nigeria in 1989 and is the first woman to lead the city's trash operation.

John Ayodele of Nigeria recently became the proud owner of a used Hummer. He went through his daughter, a grad student living in Maryland, to buy it from a Perry Hall plumber for $24,500. Ayodele, an engineering executive, has practical reasons for buying and shipping across the Atlantic a vehicle seen by many as an eco-villain. Nigeria's potholes are like lunar craters. And the truck could almost certainly plow through most log roadblocks laid out by highway bandits. Too bad for Hummer there aren't more highwaymen out there.

The Hammond High School cafeteria is packed with students. In one corner, a mix of Irish, Israeli and Ethiopian music can be heard while students cheer those competing in a chopstick pick-up competition. This was not a scene from a lunch period; this was Culture Fest, a showcase of the diverse international population at the Columbia school. More than 30 students last week presented informational poster boards, traditional clothing, food, toys, games and currency from 29 countries native to them or their parents.

Moving from England to Nigeria and back again would be a bit of culture shock for most, but for singer, songwriter and producer Adesiji "Siji" Awoyinka, the meshing of two vastly different cultures was the impetus of his musical career. Moving around "gave me a broad perspective, a broad palette from which to draw from," Siji said. The soft-spoken musician, who plays the Naija Fest on Saturday, was born in London to Nigerian parents, but was raised for most of his childhood in Lagos, the most populous city in Nigeria and also a hot spot of the African music scene.

The Institute of Human Virology at the University of Maryland School of Medicine has received a $43 million federal grant to expand its efforts to fight HIV and AIDS in Nigeria, institute officials announced. The money will be used to provide medical care and HIV testing and counseling services to tens of thousands of Nigerians through the virology institute's AIDS Care and Treatment in Nigeria (ACTION) project, which was launched in 2004. "There is a huge need here," said project director Dr. William Blattner, speaking from ACTION's headquarters in Abuja, Nigeria.

The Maryland Court of Appeals upheld yesterday the second-degree murder conviction of a Columbia man in the fatal beating of his toddler stepson, ruling that he was too late in challenging a juror's citizenship. In a 5-2 ruling, the state's highest court said that Marcus Dannon Owens could have asked the judge at his trial to inquire about the citizenship of potential jurors when they were being questioned during jury selection. After the 2004 trial in Howard County, one juror told authorities he had inadvertently failed to note on his juror questionnaire that he was a citizen of Nigeria -- a reason for being disqualified from serving on a Maryland jury.

Nigerian militants call for cease-fire LAGOS, Nigeria -- The main militant group responsible for attacks on foreign oil installations in Nigeria's lawless south announced a one-month cease-fire yesterday, giving the new president a chance to resolve the crisis that has helped cause global crude prices to spike. The Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta did not offer to stop kidnapping foreign oil workers, but it released six hostages who had been seized May 1, including one American, as a peace offering to the government.

And now for the latest fraud from Nigeria - puppies. The Council of Better Business Bureaus and American Kennel Club issued a warning yesterday about fraudulent Web sites, MySpace postings and print ads asking people to help save puppies who are in desperate straits. The sites and ads usually show adorable bulldog puppies that have become stuck somehow in Nigeria or other countries and are offered free to new owners. A variation of the scheme is to offer the purebred English bulldogs - a particularly expensive breed - at vastly discounted prices.