The New York-based media rights group Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has expressed concern about the health of imprisoned editor Abdoulaye Tiemogo, after his transfer from a hospital in Niger's capital, Niamey, to a prison in a remote town. A CPJ statement obtained by PANA quoted Zeinabou , wife of Tiemogo, editor of the weekly Le Canard Déchaîné, as saying the husband is suffering from malaria and is no longer receiving adequate medical attention in a prison in Ouallam, 88 kilometres to the north of Niamey.

Human rights activists and journalists in Ghana on August 3, 2009 converged at the Ghana International Press Centre in Accra for a public forum to expose the Ghanaian public to the political situation in Niger which has brought in its wake dire consequences for democratic institutions in the country including the media. The forum on the theme “Niger-Democracy Under Threat” was aimed at reminding the public of the need to prevent another violent conflict in West Africa, which has in the last decade experienced a number of civil wars with devastating humanitarian consequences.

It isn’t an amnesty the people of the Niger Delta need to bring peace and security to the region, it’s equity and good governance, Sabella Ogbobode Abidde tells Pambazuka News. The Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND) and other groups like it are justice-seeking groups fighting their people’s cause, argues Abidde, and it is only when the government genuinely resolves to tackle underlying problems from environmental pollution to underdevelopment that the ‘ongoing, low intensity conflict’ in the Delta will abate.