The two main candidates for the governorship of Nigeria's Lagos state took to the stage, making a flurry of promises to the all-female audience at the select Cosmopolitan Women's Club.

The men even pledged a 35 percent quota of women in the state government and initiatives on girls' education.

Switzerland will return to Nigeria some $380 million (360 million euros) linked to ex-dictator Sani Abacha, Geneva's public prosecutor said Tuesday, adding that it was closing a 16-year case on the funds.

Abacha ruled oil-rich Nigeria with an iron fist from 1993 until he died in 1998. The economy grew under his rule, though he was seen as extremely corrupt and faced criticism over his human rights abuses in the oil-rich nation.

Pope Francis on Tuesday hailed the bravery of Nigerian priests who have stood strong in the face of Boko Haram violence and worked to build bridges with the Muslim community.

"How can we fail to remember the priests, religious men and women, missionaries and catechists (lay teachers) who, despite untold sacrifices, never abandoned their flock, but remained at their service," the Argentinian pope said in an open letter.

A weekend attack by suspected Fulani herdsmen on a farming village in central Nigeria's Benue state left 82 dead, a police spokesman said Tuesday, giving an updated toll from the earlier figure of 45.

"From the latest report available to the police command, 82 people were killed in the attack on Egba village by suspected Fulani herdsmen", Austin Ezeani told AFP.

The head of Nigeria's electoral body said on Monday it was ready to conduct presidential and parliamentary elections in less than two weeks' time, after the vote was delayed by security concerns.

Attahiru Jega told a meeting in the capital city Abuja that his Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) had done "everything humanly possible" for a free, fair, credible and peaceful vote on March 28.

Boko Haram Islamists have set fire to homes in Nigeria's northeast town of Bama that are under their control, forcing residents to flee as troops advance to recapture it, witnesses said Sunday.

The Islamists on Saturday told residents of Bama, 70 kilometers (37.5 miles) southeast of Maiduguri, to evacuate before setting fire to many homes as Nigerian troops inched closer in a bid to retake the town, residents told Agence France Presse.

Nigerian soldiers on Saturday detonated two homemade bombs found in a camp housing people displaced by Boko Haram violence in the restive northeastern city of Maiduguri, witnesses told AFP.

Two men suspected of planting the explosives were arrested and an investigation is ongoing, they said.

Boko Haram are no longer in a position to seize a single town in Niger, a Niger government minister said on Saturday, following a regional effort to boost the fight against the Islamist group.

Thousands of troops from Niger and Chad, which had gathered in southeastern Niger, launched a major ground and air offensive against the Islamist group last Sunday and succeeded in retaking the northeastern Nigerian town of Damasak.

Gunmen abducted three Chinese workers after a shootout that left a police officer dead in central Nigeria, police said Saturday.

"Three Chinese nationals were abducted by some unknown gunmen within the early hours of Friday," a senior police officer told Agence France-Presse, requesting anonymity.

South Africa was one of the first countries in the world to ban mercenaries but remains a major supplier of military instructors, some of them from the time of the brutal apartheid regime.

Former Koevoet officer Leon Lotz, who was relatively well-known in South Africa, was one of them.