Information Minister Dora Akunyili announced the decision by Acting President Goodluck Jonathan at the same time that the state-run broadcaster broke the news to citizens long confused about who remained in charge of the oil-rich nation. Akunyili said Jonathan would issue a statement soon on who will now serve in the Cabinet.

"The acting president gives no reason for the dissolution," Akunyili told reporters Wednesday night. "There is no vacuum in the government as permanent secretaries will take charge."

The Cabinet remained stocked with loyalists of President Umaru Yar'Adua, a Muslim from the country's north. Some cabinet members had begun to shift allegiances from Yar'Adua to Jonathan, a Christian from the country's south, as time passed. Akunyili herself had previously circulated a memo to the cabinet calling on it to install Jonathan as acting president — providing a rare public voice for those uncomfortable with Yar'Adua's long absence from the country.

The move is the first major step by Jonathan, a quiet 52-year-old biologist from the Niger Delta who largely remained quiet as a constitutional crisis gripped the nation over Yar'Adua's absence. Yar'Adua left Nigeria in late November for medical treatment at a Saudi Arabian hospital over what his physician described as serious heart condition.

Though the nation's constitution offers clear steps for president to hand over power in his absence, Yar'Adua chose not to implement them. For months, many wondered how Yar'Adua would rule Africa's most populous nation from abroad.

The National Assembly empowered Jonathan to become acting president in a vote Feb. 9. Two weeks later, Yar'Adua's handlers apparently whisked the ill president back to the presidential palace in an ambulance surrounded by a military convoy. However, Yar'Adua still has not been seen publicly since returning.

Jonathan largely shied away from making major decisions since becoming acting president, though he did move some cabinet ministers loyal to Yar'Adua into new positions. While fears of a coup permeated the country, which has a long history of military dictators, top officials in the armed forces promised not to intervene.

Those forces likely will be kept at bay, even with Jonathan asserting more power, said analyst Charles Dokubo of the Nigerian Institute of International Affairs.

"I think the Nigerian people have been so quiet and have been allowing things to unfold in an evolutionary manner," Dokubo told The Associated Press. Yar'Adua supporters "might make noise about it, but I don't think it will lead to any other upheaval or anarchy in the country."

Still Jonathan remains largely unknown in Nigeria, a former deputy state governor who rose to the governor's office after his predecessor was indicted on corruption charges. Now, as Yar'Adua remains ill and unseen, Jonathan finds himself at the helm as the West African country faces endemic corruption, simmering militancy in the oil-rich Niger Delta and long-running religious tensions that have led to hundreds of deaths in recent months.

Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak is recovering well after undergoing gallbladder surgery 10 days ago, a spokeswoman for the German hospital where he is receiving treatment said on Tuesday.

Mubarak, 81, who has ruled Egypt for almost three decades, had surgery on March 6, treatment that has sparked rumours about the seriousness of his condition and weighed on Egyptian market share prices.

"The recovery is going well. Everything is fine," the hospital spokeswoman said.

Mubarak has not said whether he will run again for a sixth six-year term in the 2011 presidential election. Many Egyptians believe that if he does not, he will try to hand power to his politician son, Gamal, 46. Both Mubaraks deny any such plan.

Egypt's al-Shorouk newspaper said an Egyptian television crew was heading to Germany to film Mubarak. Traders in Egypt had said the market was likely to stay under pressure until the president was seen on television.

Mubarak, who has never appointed a vice president since he took over in 1981, handed powers temporarily to his prime minister, Ahmed Nazif, before the operation.

The United States Federal Bureau of Investigation, FBI has added a Nigerian, Mr. Tobechukwu Enyinna Onwuhara, 30, to its list of ‘Most Wanted Fugitives.’

According to a report on America’s Most Wanted, the Bureau said ‘Tobechi Onwuhara is a criminal mastermind’ who in less than three years stole $44 million dollars from banks in the United States using sophisticated methods including stealing bank customer’s personal information, Home Equity Lines of Credit details and account numbers.

FBI agents say Onwuhara was born in Houston and sent to live with his wealthy Nigerian father, Prince Doris Onwuhara who the Bureau say is a ‘well-known con man who made a fortune from the notorious Nigerian 419 scheme’ before returning to the United States when he reached his teenage years in 1999.

Having settled in the southern state of Texas, he got a job with US lender, Capital One Financial Corporation where authorities believe he gained insider knowledge on how to work the US financial system.

His first brush with the law happened in April 2002 when he was arrested by Lewisville city police in Lewisville, Texas after police got a tipoff that he may be using stolen identification to steal money from credit card accounts. When police raided his apartment, they found stolen credit card account numbers, fake driver’s licenses and materials used to forge identification.

Same year in December in the western state of Seattle, FBI said ‘Onwuhara walked into a local bank and tried to max out the cash withdrawal limit on a stolen credit card’ but fled the bank when he sensed trouble. He was said to have jumped into a waiting car driven by a friend of his, Abel Nnabue and they led Seattle police on a high-speed chase but were eventually caught when they tried to flee on foot.

Both men were charged, convicted and sentenced to two years in a Seattle prison but spent only eight months of their sentence for good behaviour.

After their release, they relocated to Texas and went low for a while until sometime in 2005 when the real estate market was at an all time high and Home Equity Lines Of Credit loans became available. Though it was harder to steal from Home Equity Lines of Credit, Onwuhara and his co-conspirators found a way around it.

FBI say Onwuhara painstakingly researched home owners credit reports to see if they opened home lines of credit accounts and how much they had available. At this time in the real estate market, it was very common to find homeowners with $300, 000 - $ 400, 000 in home equity.

Onwuhara impersonated such homeowners after learning their passwords and home phone numbers through extensive research.

The Nigerian acquired multiple prepaid phone lines and wireless internet cards to prevent anyone from successfully tracing their numbers. He then also signed up to a spoofing service which allowed a home owner’s number appear on the bank representative’s caller ID when he called a bank to request a wire transfer from the account to a home owner’s regular checking account before the funds are eventually wired to accounts in Asia and then the monies would go to a Hawala in Africa.

‘Hawalas’ are funds transfer systems that are not regulated instead, they operate on trust. ‘Brokers or Hawalanders would take a cut and then transfer the money to an African Bank, eventually returning to a US bank,’ according to America’s Most Wanted.

Most of the funds returning to the United States came through accounts belonging to Precious Matthews or one of the other conspirators.

Investigators say Onwuhara made most of the calls himself but when an account belonged to a female, he would get his girlfriend, Precious Matthews to make the call while other co-conspirators would be delegated other duties including finding new home owners with equity in their homes.

According to FBI records, Onwuhara and his crew had stolen more than $20 million dollars before the bureau were notified of the scam and by the time the FBI penetrated their well-organized syndicate and learned their identity, they had stolen an additional $20 million dollars.

To learn their identity, the FBI contacted Verizon Wireless, a prepaid wireless company after it learned they were using prepaid internet services provided by the company to log into bank accounts and were able to obtain surveillance videos of three men paying for the service at one of the provider’s stores.

In the spring of 2008, the FBI got a break when they also found out that Onwuhara was using a spoofing service and they contacted the provider who made more than 1500 audio recordings available to them. As expected, most of the recordings were conversations between Onwuhara and various bank representatives, but unfortunately for Onwuhara someone from his crew had also used the phone to call a pharmacy pretending to be a doctor and ordered a prescription for Tobechi Onwuhara. This was a huge lead for the FBI. When they ran Onwuhara’s name, there was a match in their database where they found out he had been arrested before for bank fraud.

When they matched his photo with the surveillance videos obtained from the telecommunications company, they believed they had their man.

Gradually, they started their investigations and tried to learn the identity of his co-conspirators. This was when they discovered that Onwuhara had left Miami for Nigeria with a brief stopover in New York.

The FBI waited for Onwuhara and his travelling companions to return to the country and decided to stop him at the airport after he had rerouted his ticket several times.

The Bureau said they wanted him to believe he was being questioned as a possible terrorist and he fell for it by giving them information that eventually linked him to the fraud.

Before August 1, 2008, FBI agents already knew Onwuhara and his girlfriend, Matthews lived in their $5000 a month mansion near Miami in Florida. As they were making their way to a Florida casino with their crew on that day, agents and local police decided they had enough evidence to take them in. While they were effecting their arrest, agents realized that Onwuhara had entered the casino and believed Matthews sent a text message to him that they were being arrested and he managed to get away.

Authorities say they have not been able to track him down since.

FBI said before they took the gang down, Onwuhara would spend about $50, 000 a night in a strip club up to three times in a week and usually stayed at various five star hotels whenever he made his frequent travels.

Onwuhara according to the Bureau has stashed cash abroad and also shipped many luxury cars to Nigeria- all paid for in cash.

They believe he is hiding in either Canada; Miami, Florida; Atlanta, Georgia; or New Jersey.

His co-conspirators have been sentenced to various jail terms:

Henry ‘Uche’ Obilo, 30, Miami: Sentenced to 88 months in prison.

Abel Nnabule, 34, Dallas: Sentenced to 54 months on Jan. 30, 2009.

Precious Matthews (Onwuhara’s girlfriend): Sentenced to 51 months on Feb. 13, 2009.

Brandy Anderson, 31, Dallas, Sentenced to two years of supervised probation and 40 days of community confinement on Feb. 20, 2009..

Ezenwa Onyedebelu, 21, Dallas, Sentenced to 37 months on Feb. 27, 2009.

Daniel Orjinta, 43, Nigeria: Sentenced to 42 months on March 06, 2009.

Paula Gipson, 34, Dallas, Sentenced to 15 months on September 04, 2009.

Aliases: "T", "Tobe", Xavier, Enyinna DESCRIPTION Date of Birth Used: July 24, 1979 Hair: Black Place of Birth: Nigeria Eyes: Brown Height: 5'10" Sex: Male Weight: 185 pounds Race: Black NCIC: W054871136 Nationality: Nigerian Occupation: Onwuhara reportedly is the Chief Executive Officer of a record label S.W.A.T. Up Entertainment, and has owned a record studio for artists to record tracks. Scars and Marks: Unknown Remarks: Onwuhara may have travelled to Dallas, Texas; Miami, Florida; New York or Canada. He frequents strip clubs and enjoys gambling at casinos. He has access to fake driver's licenses and passports and millions of dollars in overseas accounts. CAUTION Tobechi Enyinna Onwuhara, a convicted felon, is wanted for his alleged involvement in an elaborate scheme that defrauded the financial industry out of tens of millions of dollars. Onwuhara is a key member of a group of Nigerians who allegedly have been conducting fraudulent banking activities from Florida and Texas, since 2005. It is alleged that the group has been using online Internet databases to steal victims' identities. Once acquired, they allegedly use the victims' information to gain access to the victims' Home Equity Line of Credit accounts and wire transfer the money to accounts mainly located overseas, some in the United States. Some of Onwuhara's alleged co-conspirators have been arrested, inside and outside of the United States, however, Onwuhara remains at large. Onwuhara was charged federally with conspiracy to commit bank fraud, and a federal warrant was issued for his arrest by the United States District Court, Eastern District of Virginia, on August 1, 2008. SHOULD BE CONSIDERED AN ESCAPE RISK IF YOU HAVE ANY INFORMATION CONCERNING THIS CASE, PLEASE CONTACT YOUR LOCAL FBI OFFICE OR THE NEAREST AMERICAN EMBASSY OR CONSULATE.

ROBERT S. MUELLER, III DIRECTOR FEDERAL BUREAU OF INVESTIGATION UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE WASHINGTON, D.C. 20535 TELEPHONE: (202) 324-3000

Explosion rocks amnesty talks

The topic of divorce is no longer new; it has remained a subject of discussion for some time now. But a celebrity divorce rings a bell. There is a belief that if a very well known spouse manage to succeed in marriage for at least five of marriage, they’ve arrived at very important event in their marriage. Anytime, famous people or celebrities make current event in media headlines with their quarrelsome attitude with continuous public outrage, no doubt that the public is excited with the close relationship being disclosed. Apart from that, why those couple colored like gold divorce nearly after honeymoon remains unanswered.

The Type of Job

Majority of notorious marriage in Nollywood appear to be those that begun on the assigned films. Going on for a lengthy period of time, from elsewhere and closeness that foster close relationship. Most people in ordinary jobs always agree how simple it is to relate with colleagues who share a common interest or profession.

The reason is understandable: if you are a celebrity having paid jobs in a little or no personal privacy of category brings the needed environment for involving in sexual relation with someone other than your married partner. Functioning intimately at work with others on any task that needs much bodily contact and emotionally inspired ability that frequently attracts fellow celebrities. Two people with common goals have the tendency of being separated from one’s husband or wife (on regular basis) --- and divorce appears to be irresistible.

The News

You and I understands that dangerous love affair in Nollywood on the headline news attracts almost every reader. The scandal seeking media is always on the lookout for shocking or scandalous news to make their living. As soon as celebrities embrace each other, the pictures are almost automatically published or later on, on the internet! A welcoming embrace, light kiss on the cheek, any unusually greetings can speak volume as deadly love affair to the public and freelance photographer. They just repeat somebody’s statement within and a succulent title for newspaper article is begun. Only a fraction of those stories will go round and it is enough to trigger off crisis for married celebrities. When the marriage is not promising as they initially believed, the spouse is usually divorced, or become irreconcilable.

From http://lovergist.com

Not so with the fifteen sites here. These sites changed the Internet, mostly for good, in substantial ways. Included here is everything from Geocities (which could probably be blamed
entirely, either directly or indirectly, for every ugly web design
“trend” that’s ever been) to Wikipedia (which has made
information almost universally accessible) to Google (which has
changed or influenced virtually everything online)..

1. Wikipedia

Changed the way we find information. Before Wikipedia, most online encyclopedias were either sorely lacking in information, or required you to have a paid subscription to access their content. Wikipedia
changed all that by not only allowing anyone to view the content for
free, but also by allowing individual users to review and update
content, making it more complete and accurate overall. Wikipedia also
brought crowdsourcing and user-generated content to the mainstream
online, making both much more viable and valuable.

2. Amazon.com

Changed the way we shop. Prior to Amazon.com, online shopping wasn’t much different than shopping out of a mail-order catalog, except it wasn’t nearly as popular. While Amazon started out selling just books
and related items, it has expanded to sell virtually anything you can
think of, either directly or through partner sites large and small.
Amazon also made free shipping a standard on orders over a certain
dollar value, which has impacted the shipping rates and policies of many
other online retailers.

3. Hotmail

Changed the way we use email. Before Hotmail came along, email was basically tethered to a single computer. When you checked your email, it was pulled and deleted from the remote server, meaning the only place
you could view it was at your computer. Need an email at home that you
received at work? Too bad. There was no way to access it unless you went
back to the office. Hotmail changed all that by providing webmail that
could be accessed from any computer with an Internet connection. Now,
web-based email is widely used and provided by a huge variety of
providers. Even though Hotmail is no longer the primary provider of
webmail (and is now owned by Microsoft), they were still pioneers in the
technology.

4. Facebook

Changed the way friends connected. While Facebook wasn’t the first social network, it has definitely become the most popular and has really changed the way friends interact with one another. Sure, people use FB to talk
online, but they’re also increasingly using it as a way to plan
get-togethers offline. They’re using it to follow and interact
with their favorite bands, actors, and other personalities. People use
it to keep in touch with business contacts, friends, family, and
acquaintances. Facebook has made social networking mainstream, across a
variety of demographics and virtually worldwide.

5. Project Gutenberg

Changed the way we read. Project Gutenberg has a much longer history than most people realize. They created the first ebooks, and gave them away for free. You can now read virtually every major book in
the public domain, sometimes in multiple languages on their site.
Without the pioneering steps the founders of Project Gutenberg took,
ebooks would not be where they are today.

6. Twitter

Changed the way we communicate. Twitter has made one of the biggest impacts on the Internet in recent memory. The idea that 140-character messages, broadcast publicly (for the most part), would change the way
people communicate with one another would have been hard to believe ten
years ago. But Twitter has become not just a powerhouse in the way
individual communicate with one another, but also in the way businesses
communicate with their customers. Complaining about poor customer
service on Twitter can often result in almost instant messages from the
company in question, and often results in a satisfactory resolution.
Twitter has also made celebrities more accessible, with hundreds of
celebs now using the service to interact with their fans.

7. Pandora

Changed the way we find new music. Before Pandora, if you wanted to listen to music online, you usually turned to a streaming radio station with pre-programmed content. Sure, you might get lucky and find a station
that had mostly music you liked, but maybe it wasn’t diverse enough, or
it still kept playing that one song you HATED. Pandora changed all that.
Now, you can program your own radio station by just entering the name
or a song or artist and then giving the thumbs up or down to music
played. With a minimal amount of user input, Pandora has gotten
surprisingly good at creating playlists that reflect one’s musical
taste. The bonus is that songs or artists you might not have heard of
are often thrown into the mix, based on what you already like.

8. Apple

Made minimalist web design cool. Apple had one of the first corporate websites designed with a minimalist aesthetic. As far back as the late 90s, Apple was starting to show a more minimalist take on web design
than many other corporate sites, and by early 2000, they’d adopted the
white and gray color scheme and top navigation they still employ today.

9. YouTube

Changed entertainment. Before YouTube, there weren’t many options if you wanted to watch a video online. You could sometimes find a video here or there, but with bandwidth costs, they were few and far between.
Website owners just didn’t want to pay the extra costs associated with
video content. Then YouTube came along and made it free to post any
video you wanted (as long as it wasn’t copyrighted or over ten minutes
long). Web users now had a centralized place to go to watch video
online. And because of YouTube’s pioneering effort, online video is now
enjoyed by millions every day.

10. Craigslist

Changed classifieds. Online classified sites used to be nearly unusable. Between the huge number of spam postings and the fact there were few if any local listings in most areas, there wasn’t
much point in using them. But then Craigslist
caught on and suddenly there was an online classifieds site that
rivaled most local newspaper classifieds. Now you can use Craigslist to
find almost anything, no matter where you live.

11. The Drudge Report

Changed the stature of online news. When the Monica Lewinsky/President Clinton story broke in 1998, it wasn’t a mainstream news source that first reported it. Instead, The Drudge Report held those
honors, forever changing the standing of online news sources. Now,
online news sources break stories on a regular basis, and are considered
by most to be just as reliable as television or print news sources.

12. GeoCities

Made the web more accessible. In the early days of the Internet, the only people online (for the most part) were scientists, academics, and those involved in technology. It wasn’t a
very exciting place. Then came GeoCities, and
suddenly anyone could set up their own webpage for free. Sure, GeoCities
spawned a legion of horrifically ugly websites, but it also got a lot
of regular people involved in the Internet for the first time and was
likely the first design experience of many early web designers.

13. Digg

Changed the way we find and share news. Digg was originally set up as an experiment, but it has completely changed the way many people find news online. The idea of users determining which news was important, relevant, and
interesting rather than editors or executives at big news organizations
was revolutionary. Now, user-generated news sites are all over the
place, both for mainstream news and for individual industries and
niches.

14. LiveJournal

Hooked millions on blogging. Blogging wasn’t invented by LiveJournal, but they were the first site to offer free blogs to their members. Millions now
use LiveJournal, and tens of millions more blog elsewhere, either
through other blog hosts or on their own websites. If it weren’t for
LiveJournal and similar free blogs hosts that came later, blogging might
not have caught on as the global phenomenon it has become.

15. Google

Changed everything. This one might seem a bit dramatic, but it really is true. Google has invaded virtually every aspect of the Internet. No matter what you
do online, you probably interact with one Google service or another
multiple times every day. And most people use at least one Google
product or service one a regular basis personally. Whether it’s a
Blogger blog, a Picasa photo album, a Google search, or even a YouTube
video (or any of the dozens of other services Google owns),
Google-controlled sites are everywhere.

About Author – Cameron Chapman is a professional Web and graphic designer with over 7 years of experience. She writes for a number of blogs, including her own, Cameron Chapman On Writing. She’s
also the author of Internet
Famous: A Practical Guide to Becoming an Online Celebrity.

Supersize Donna Simpson has found a bizarre way to turn her passion for food into money. Hundreds of men pay to watch online as 45st Donna scoffs vast amounts of burgers, pizza, crisps and cakes in an attempt to hit her target weight of 1,000lbs, or 72st.
Since setting up her website last November, Donna, who squeezes into size 40 clothes, has already attracted 260 subscribers and their fees net her an impressive £2,000 a month – which she spends on food.

Donna, who’s 39 and 5ft 4, hopes to become one of the world’s heaviest women by consuming up to 12,000 calories a day. To reach her target, ex-carer Donna, who already suffers from diabetes and high-blood pressure, needs to gain another 27st and predicts it will take her until 2012 at her current weight gain of 7st a year.

“I don’t know why my target is 1,000lbs – it’s just the weight I believe I was born to be,” she says. Donna has been obese since childhood. By nine, she weighed 13st – she was bullied at school and dubbed “Fatty four-eyes.”

"He liked me supersized"

At the age of 24 Donna married Robert Simpson, a chef who encouraged her eating by bringing home leftovers from work to feed her. “He’d come home with steak and desserts,” she recalls. “He liked me supersized.”

Robert – who was already a dad to son Sean, now 18 – and Donna had a child together, Devin, now 12, but divorced shortly after. By then Donna weighed 43st. For the first time ever she went on a diet, urged on by her father who was concerned for her health, and lost 5st in six months.

But she soon lapsed when she met fat-lover Philippe Gouamba, 47, in an online chat room for oversized women in 2006. “When I ate enough for five people on our first date, it really impressed him,” says Donna, from New Jersey, USA. Philippe, who counts watching his girlfriend eat as one of his favourite hobbies, says: “I’ve always been attracted to big women, but Donna is my fantasy. The more she weighs, the sexier she is.”

Extreme health risks

The couple, who plan to marry next year, say that Donna’s size makes their sex life even better. “Philippe goes on top so he can play with my fat belly,” says Donna. Regular gym-goer Philippe, who is 13st and 6ft 4, also gets aroused by helping Donna, who is a bra size 56E, wash her rolls of fat in the shower.

Although doctors had said her 38st frame would make it almost impossible to conceive, Donna fell pregnant within three months of dating Phillipe. But she developed diabetes and high-blood pressure during pregnancy and needed a team of 19 doctors and nurses to get through the high-risk Caesarean birth.

When baby Jacqueline was born weighing 8lbs 14oz in February 2007, Donna became the world’s fattest woman to give birth – the previous largest had weighed 34st. But she admits she struggles to care for her daughter, as she can barely walk 20ft without needing to sit down. “It’s difficult keeping up with Jacqueline, but we’re very closely bonded,” says Donna. “Fortunately, anything I can’t do with her, her dad can, so I don’t feel guilty.”

It was six months after giving birth that Donna resolved to become one of the world’s heaviest women by weighing 1,000lbs. “I decided that if I was healthy enough to have a baby, then my body could cope with an extra 34st,” says Donna. “It will be a great achievement – not many other people have reached that weight.”

And despite initial worries for Donna’s health, Philippe supports his fiancée. He says: “Gaining weight makes
Donna happy and seeing her happy makes me happy.”

"My food costs £400 a week"

But Donna’s ambition proved expensive, so she decided to set up a website after discovering that there were men willing to pay to watch large women eat. “My food costs £400 a week,” says Donna. “In a typical day I’ll eat four burgers and fries, a loaf of bread with peanut butter and jam, four servings of meatloaf and mashed potato, a large pizza, a chocolate cake with ice cream and cream, 12 cupcakes, two cheesecakes and fizzy drinks. And I don’t want Philippe to foot the bill just because I’m too big to go out and work.”

Donna charges £8 a month for access to photos of her body and videos of her feasting and measuring her ever-expanding waistline. She has 260 “fat admirers” from as far away as Japan and Australia and their ages range from 20 to 68. She spends between six and 10 hours a day responding to emails or doing live chats online. And although she admits to getting some sexual requests, these are firmly ignored.

Human resources executive Philippe is supportive of Donna’s venture. He says: “I don’t mind other men looking at her because I’m the only one who touches her.”

Since launching her site, Donna has gained 7st. Incredibly, she doesn’t care that reaching 72st will probably confine her to a wheelchair and could kill her, leaving her daughter – who she feeds a healthy diet – motherless.
“I’m well enough to cope with my target weight,” she says defiantly.

The immediate past governor of Delta State, James Ibori, who was recently acquitted of a 170-count corruption charges brought against him by Nigeria’s anti-graft agency, the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), is not home free, as the agency has launched a fresh round of investigations on the activities of the former governor..

Double trouble

In addition to the fact that the EFCC has, since December 2009, filed a notice of appeal against the December 17, 2009 judgement which absolved Mr. Ibori of all wrong doing, the commission has begun this new round of investigations on the former governor following a petition by members of the Delta State Elders, Leaders and Stakeholders Forum, which was made available to the public last week.

Last week, the chairman of the EFCC, Farida Waziri, held a meeting with the acting president, Goodluck Jonathan, during which Mr. Jonathan re-emphasised the determination of the federal government to wage a vibrant anti-corruption campaign.

The latest petition against Mr. Ibori, signed by 10 leading citizens of Delta State headed by a former minister of information, Edwin Clark, includes a demand for a probe of the former governor over alleged illegal disposal of 528 million shares belonging to Delta State, in Oceanic Bank. The shares were said to have been disposed of in 2007 by government officials.

In the petition, which was also published in some national dailies, the group asked the anti- corruption agency to hold Mr. Ibori liable for the disposal of the shares. Mr. Ibori was alleged to have unlawfully used the 528.01 million units as “a collateral for a loan from Intercontinental Bank for his private company, Ascot Offshore Nigeria Ltd.”

Officials of the EFCC, who declined to be named, confirmed over the weekend that the agency has launched fresh investigations into several allegations against Mr. Ibori made by Mr. Clark, a delta chief and head of the Elders Committee of the ruling Peoples Democratic Party (PDP).

“The EFCC has initiated investigations into some other allegations, including the ones made by Clark and co,” an operative of the agency told NEXT over the weekend.

However, the spokesman of the EFCC, Femi Babafemi, declined to speak on ongoing investigations against the former governor. “We are looking into the petition,” he said.

Old and new charges

Mr. Babafemi however confirmed that the commission was eager to go on with the earlier case, but that the appeal court was yet to fix a date for hearing on the matter.

“After the December 17th judgement, the EFCC on December 23rd filled a notice of appeal at the appeal court in Benin. We are just waiting for the appeal court to fix a date for the hearing,” Mr. Babafemi said.

The EFCC had slammed a 170-count charge of corruption on Mr. Ibori in 2007. After two years, a trial judge, Marcel Awokulehin, ruled the case in favour of the former governor in a Federal High Court sitting in Asaba, Delta State.

Mr. Ibori, however, still faces money laundering charges brought against him and some of his associates by the Metropolitan Police in London. The case is being heard at the Southwark County Court, Londo