Nigeria is demanding Shell and ExxonMobil pay a combined total of almost $2bn in unpaid taxes and revenues after a review of contracts covering giant offshore oilfields signed in the early 1990s.

The demand has underlined the government's desire to drive a harder bargain with western majors in spite of deals struck in the past week to tackle funding shortfalls damaging its joint ventures with ExxonMobil and Total.

Emmanuel Egbogah, the chairman of the committee that examined the contracts, told the Financial Times he would contact the oil companies soon to begin recovering the funds.

"I am extremely confident that we will get the money that we say is owed to us, because this is based on the facts of the agreement," Mr Egbogah said.

The committee concluded that Shell and ExxonMobil owe the government a total of $1.9bn (?1.2bn, ?975m) after reviewing the way tax breaks were implemented under the agreements, and the pricing system for gas sold by Shell.

Shell said the matter was under discussion. "Shell Nigeria Exploration and Production Company Ltd conducts its business in compliance with all laws and regulations," the company said. ExxonMobil was not available for comment. Analystssaid both companies were likely to contest the findings.

The review of the contracts forms part of a overhaul of the energy sector launched last year by Umaru Yar'Adua, Nigeria's president, aimed at maximising revenues from Africa's biggest oil industry.

But industry executives say Nigeria's increasingly assertive demands are among the factors slowing growth in the deepwater arena, seen by western majors as one of the world's most geologically promising but under-explored oil and gas frontiers. Angola, by contrast, has enjoyed much faster offshore expansion, pumping more oil than Nigeria for the first time last month after a strike and militant attacks hit output at its larger rival.

Nigeria aims to boost production partly by tackling funding shortfalls in its five joint ventures with western majors in the creeks of the Niger delta, where the government's failure to pay its share of costs has stalled key projects.

The state-owned Nigerian National Petroleum Corp said it had agreed to borrow $2bn from ExxonMobil and $1bn from Total in the past week to kick-start development. Shell said it was close to striking a similar kind of agreement.

The tax and revenue claims stem from contracts signed in 1993 covering Shell's giant Bonga field and ExxonMobil's Erha development, which heralded the start of a new era of deepwater production in Nigeria. The investments have proved some of the most lucrative for oil majors, but the government feels short-changed.

The review committee has calculated it is owed $850m from Bonga and $646.3m from Erha due to the incorrect application of tax breaks. The government wants a further $414.6m in revenues it says Shell owes from sales of Bonga's gas. Bonga supplies Nigeria's sole plant for exporting liquefied natural gas.

(Johannesburg) - Looking at the current state of the South African state, there is nothing hollow about applying the well-worn cliche, "desperate times have called for desperate measures".

No doubt, the dire economic times have played their role in making intolerable the life of the unemployed man-on-the-street.  Some citizens, in utter desperation, have been overcome by a sense of hopelessness.  Is it possible that this, compounded by a sense of claustrophobia, (feeling that foreign nationals were  taking up the resources and spaces that would otherwise belong to the citizens) could have pushed the indigenous South African to the edge?   
 
The result? Wanton destruction of property and disregard for "Foreign lives".  The violence that has been unleashed against foreigners has been the fodder for both the local and international media over the last fortnight or so, as a few citizens have been sending ?bloody? messages (no pun intended) to anyone who cares to listen.
 
I stand corrected: Are these not the same kind of scenarios (albeit under a short leash), playing themselves out in the U.K (against Eastern Europeans) and other places?
 
Only a few short months ago I witnessed first-hand a similar out-pouring of hate in Kenya.  This brand of xenophobia was labelled ?ethnic cleansing? ? and was aimed at ?foreigners? (never mind that these guys are Kenyans who migrated from a different part of the same country).  This massacre left nearly 1.000 dead and hundreds of thousands internally displaced.
 
Surely, it would be the height of folly to extinguish the lives of African after African and not at least learn a thing about our frail human nature.  We need protection from ourselves?
 
As the world looks in sheer disbelief, I have to as, what ails us as Africans? Poor leadership? Is it afterall ?the economy, stupid!?
 
Sad but true? this is way too much d?j? vu for one African woman! 

(Johannesburg) - The governments of Mozambique and Zimbabwe have begun the "voluntary repatriation" of their citizens, in the wake of ongoing xenophobic violence in South Africa that police say has claimed 42 lives, displaced more than 16,000 people and led to 400 arrests.

The violence, which has seen some foreign nationals necklaced - a throwback to a horrific practice used during the apartheid era, when suspected police informants were killed by placing a burning tyre around their necks - has spread throughout Gauteng and into other provinces since it first broke out in the Johannesburg township of Alexandra 12 days ago.

Johannesburg's mayor, Amos Masondo, has invited all foreign diplomatic missions to a meeting on 23 May, "to discuss xenophobic attitudes in Johannesburg", a spokesperson for the Mozambican consulate told IRIN.

"Plus or minus 10 buses left yesterday [21 May] and there are about 10 buses leaving today for Mozambique. We are doing our best to take our people home," the spokesperson said. About 1,200 people have been repatriated by the Mozambique government and many other Mozambique nationals were making their own way home.

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