Residents of the Nigerian city of Lagos are demanding an independent inquiry into the destruction of a weapons dump which caused the deaths of more than 600 people.

THE governments of Nigeria and the Swiss Confederation in Abuja signed the fourth bilateral debt rescheduling agreement of about $152 million equivalent owed the Paris Club members by the country as at July 31, 2000.

Oyo state governor, Alhaji Lamidi Adesina at the weekend inaugurated a N3.2 million Library and Media Resource Centre built by the state chapter of the NUJ with a plea to journalists to refrain from reports that could break the country.

As many as 500 bodies were reportedly recovered after explosions tore through a military arms depot in Nigeria's commercial capital, Lagos. Hundreds of residents were reported to have drowned after plunging into a canal as they fled a chain reaction of blasts, believed to have been caused accidently, at the Ikeja military base.

An Islamic court in the northern Nigerian state of Sokoto acquitted on Wednesday a 17-year-old woman charged with adultery, which carries a sentence of death by stoning.