Police in Nigeria have tightened security ahead of a bail hearing for imprisoned Muslim cleric, Sheikh Ibrahim al-Zakzaky, whose supporters are expected to stage protests for his release during the court hearing.

The Kaduna State High Court will on Monday decide whether to grant bail to the cleric, who isin dire need of medical treatment overseas.

The cleric, who has been in prison since December 2015, was reportedly poisoned in prison and requires urgent medical care abroad, according to members of Islamic Movement in Nigeria (IMN).

IMN members regularly take to the streets of the Nigerian capital to call for the release of Sheikh Zakzaky, who has been in detention since 2015. Nigerian forces have used live ammunition against the protesters.

Just days ahead of the court hearing, a Federal High Court in the capital Abuja granted the government permission to label the Islamic movement a “terrorist” organization.

Police in Kaduna said in a statement on Sunday that they have deployed a security detail to the city in anticipation of protests as a result of the court hearing.

Security forces killed at least 20 members of the movement during protests on Friday, according to a spokesman for the IMN.

Protests have also been underway in recent weeks outside the Nigerian embassy in the British capital, London.

On Monday, Zakzaky’s supporters were staging protests outside the Nigerian embassy in London ahead of his appearance in court.

The London-based Islamic Human Rights Commission, (IHRC), have previously called on the Nigerian government to immediately release the cleric and send him abroad for urgent medical treatment.

The IHRC, which sent a medical team to Nigeria in April to examine the health and overall condition of Sheikh Zakzaky and his wife, has already said the specialist treatment they require can only be fully accessed outside the African country.

Sheikh Zakzaky, who is in his mid-sixties, lost the ability to see using his left eye in a 2015 raid by security forces, which left more than 300 of his followers, and three of his sons dead. His wife also sustained serious injuries.

The cleric was charged in April 2018 with murder, culpable homicide, unlawful assembly, disruption of public peace and other accusations. He has pleaded not guilty, vehemently rejecting all accusations brought up against him by the authorities.

In 2016, Nigeria’s federal high court ordered Zakzaky’s unconditional release from jail following a trial, but the government has so far refused to set him free.

Nigeria’s Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, EFCC, announced on Wednesday that it had began probing a two-time governor of the southern Imo State.

Rochas Okorocha, a member of the All Progressives Congress, APC, is currently serving as a Senator. The EFCC said its operatives had so far marked properties in his name as well as that of family members and cronies.

“It was the outcome of painstaking investigation, and as a result of the failure of those to whom they were traced to, to honour the EFCC’s invitation for interrogation. Operatives neither “raided” nor “harassed” anyone in the course of the action.

“They include: Dews of Hope Hospital traced to Dr. Paschal Obi, ex-Principal Secretary to Okorocha; Market Square Supermarket; All in One Shop, and premises belonging to Imo State Broadcasting Corporation now hosting Rochas Foundation College owned by Senator Okorocha,” an EFCC statement read.

“Others include: East High Academy and East High College, owned by Okorocha’s daughter, Uloma Okorocha-Nwosu; Royal Spring Palm Hotel and Apartment, a 16 block cum 96 flats and eight bungalow multi-million Naira estate traced to Okorocha’s wife,” it added.

State governors are powerful political voices across Nigeria, most of them have serially been accused of high-level corruption but they are shielded by immunity whiles in office.

A former governor of Ekiti Stae, Peter Ayodele Fayose, is currently being probed by the EFCC. In the north central Kano State, the incumbent governor, Abdullahi Ganduje, is the subject of a dollar bribe saga.

The ex-governor during his tenure which ended in March 2019 is no stranger to controversy. He justified and built a number of statues with over $1m of tax payers money.

He constructed Imo’s infamous statue avenue which has honoured among others, Liberia’s Ellen Johnson Sirleaf and South Africa’s Jacob Zuma. President Buhari also has one of the larger-than-life statues in Imo State.

In 2017, then governor Okorocha appointed a Commissioner for Happiness and Couples’ Fulfillment. He handed the portfolio to his sister Ogechi Ololo.

She had previously held the position of Deputy Chief of Staff and special adviser on domestic matters. The decision received flak on social media with many Twitter users asking whether there is really the need for the post.

Source: Africa News

Rescue team search for survivors in Jos, Central Nigeria following a three-storey residential facility collapse that killed 13 people on Tuesday.

An official of the Red Cross said 7 survivors are receiving treatment at a local hospital.

Taiye Segun Folorunsho is resident in Jos. He was injured in the incident. This thing that happened to our neighbours and our loved ones is heartbreaking.

“I was in the shop working with my dad, suddenly we just saw the building collapse. I stood up and tried to run and I fell down and I could not move my legs”, Folorunsho recounts.

“This thing that happened to our neighbours and our loved ones is heartbreaking. The house that they were living in collapsed leaving some of the occupants injured and some dead’‘, said Jos resident, Ali Baba Mairam.

Nigeria frequently witnesses building collapse in a country where millions of people live in dilapidated buildings and building legislation is regularly flouted.

In March, 20 people died when a building housing kindergarten and primary school pupils collapsed in Lagos.

AFP

Militants have launched a triple bombing attack in northeast Nigeria killing a multitude of people in Borno State.

Local emergency services workers reported on Monday that 30 people had died in the triple blasts in the town of Konduga, 25 kilometers from the state capital Maiduguri.

They said three bombers detonated their explosives outside a location where football fans were watching a match on TV on Sunday evening.

The militants, suspected to be members of the Boko Haram terrorist organization, have carried out numerous attacks on civilian and military targets in northeast Nigeria, and elsewhere.

Boko Haram Takfiri terrorist group began its deadly attacks in northeastern Nigeria in 2009.

An estimated 27,000 people have been killed in its attacks which have forced 1.8 million people to flee their homes.

Since then, the terrorist activities of Boko Haram and a Daesh affiliate, which broke away in 2016 and is now considered by security experts as the stronger of the two, have extended into the neighboring countries of Niger, Chad, and Cameroon.

To make matters worse, criminal gangs have been wreaking havoc and terrorizing villagers in remote areas, as well.

Armed bandits on motorcycles killed 34 people in remote villages in Nigeria’s northern Zamfara state on Friday. Days before that, motorcycle-riding bandits also attacked several villages in the far northwestern Sokoto state, killing more than two dozen of the local residents.

With the lack of a strong police force and an effective judicial system in Africa’s most populous nation, villagers have established local vigilante groups to defend civilians against militants.

But the vigilantes are themselves accused of disrupting peace and justice, engaging in extra-judicial killings.

At least 43 people have been killed after gunmen, riding motorbikes, attacked villages in northern Nigeria.

The string of attacks — the latest violence by criminal gangs raiding villages and stealing livestock — were carried out overnight Saturday to Sunday in Nigeria’s far northwestern Sokoto state, police said on Monday.

Gunmen rode out from forest hideouts, speeding into four villages in Sokoto state’s Rabah district, killing 25 people.

“Twenty-five people were killed,” said Ibrahim Kaoje, Sokoto state’s top police officer. “Several domestic animals were rustled by the attackers.”

Four people — including a female informant of the gangs — have been arrested in connection to those attacks, Kaoje said.

In a separate attack in Satiru village, in Sokoto’s Isa district, attackers murdered 18 people, and then stole animals.

“We lost 18 people in the raid by the gunmen, who came into the village on motorcycles,” said Satiru village resident Umeh Na-Ta’ala.

President Muhammadu Buhari has condemned the killings, expressing his “deep shock and sadness over the death of scores of people in the banditry attacks,” in a statement issued late Sunday.

The gunmen have repeatedly conducted raids on villages, stealing cattle and food, setting homes ablaze and kidnapping for ransom, prompting rural communities to take up arms to defend themselves.

Nigeria also suffers from attacks conducted by Boko Haram Takfiri terrorist group, which began its activities in northeastern Nigeria in 2009. It has spread them into the neighboring countries of Niger, Chad, and Cameroon.

With the lack of a strong police force and an effective judicial system in Africa’s most populous nations, villagers have established local vigilante groups to battle the gangs. But the vigilantes are themselves accused of engaging in extra-judicial killings.

Source: Presstv

Members of the Takfiri Boko Haram terrorist group have carried out multiple attacks on military bases in northeast Nigeria, seizing three of them and stealing weapons.  

Militants of the terror group have invaded four bases in the volatile Borno State from Friday through Sunday in the recent series of attacks targeting the army, military sources said on Monday.

There were no immediate reports about possible casualties.

In the latest assault on Sunday, the militants failed to seize a base in the town of Dikwa, located in Borno State, following a predawn attack.

“The terrorists attacked troops in Dikwa around 4:00 a.m. (0300 GMT) but the attack was repelled without casualty on our side,” said a military officer, who did not want to be identified.

The assailants were driving 13 trucks fitted with heavy machine guns, said a second officer.

On Saturday, the militants stormed a base in the town of Marte, which lies 40 kilometers away from Dikwa, forcing soldiers to withdraw after a long gunfight, the two military sources said.

As the soldiers retreated to Dikwa, the militants invaded another base in Kirenowa village, located 30 kilometers from Marte.

Troops in a base in Dalwa village, 16 kilometers outside Borno State’s capital of Maiduguri, were pushed out after a six-hour battle with the militants which continued into Sunday, said the military sources.

The fighting forced Marte residents to flee into Maiduguri, arriving in trucks on Sunday, according to residents of the city.

However, troops returned to the town late Sunday with reinforcement from Maiduguri, the sources said.

The Boko Haram terror group has since July last year targeted dozens of military bases in attacks that have left scores of troopers dead.

Boko Haram’s nine-year militancy is estimated to have killed more than 27,000 people and forced 1.8 million others to flee their homes.

Boko Haram’s sphere of activities spreads as far as neighboring Niger, Chad and Cameroon.

These countries have created a joint military force to stop the terrorists from further spreading, but sustained efforts to eradicate the militants have failed and the military continues to suffer heavy losses.

Source: Presstv

Traffic jams on the snarled up roads of Nigeria’s megacity of Lagos are legendary, but a growing problem is also clogging up the waterways of Africa’s biggest city — water hyacinths.

The spread of the invasive species of fast-growing plant is not only damaging transport links in Nigeria’s economic capital, built on a lagoon dotted with islands.

With waterways covered and silting up, the aquatic weed is also threatening fishing jobs and a vital food source.

“This is all I can get since morning,” said fisherman Solomon Omoyajowo, showing a handful of fish in a bowl in his wooden canoe.

The 45-year-old fisherman has already been forced to move his nets from one part of the Ogun river too thick with weeds, to a new area nearer the sea.

“Many fishermen have abandoned their boats, while some of us who still want to continue, now try our luck here,” he told AFP, using his palms to wipe a stream of sweat from his face.

“Water hyacinths are killing the fish in the river,” said another nearby fisherman, Adisa, as he cast his net into the river.

When he hauled it up, he had caught only four small fish.

“I don’t think I can do any other job apart from fishing,” Adisa said. “I will continue to manage until the government comes to our aid to clear the weeds.”

– Jobs at risk –

Originally from South America, the plant has caused chaos across several countries in Africa. Earlier this year, a thick green carpet of the weed choked up Kenya’s main entry to Lake Victoria, the largest body of water in Africa.

It was first noted in Nigeria in the early 1980s, in the Badagry creeks west of Lagos, reportedly spreading from neighbouring Benin.

Since then, mats of weeds have spread to rivers across the country, including Nigeria’s oil-rich Niger delta.

Fishermen say the weed is so thick it creates a dense cover that makes it difficult for fishing boats to navigate the river.

It is having a damaging impact.

One study, from Nigeria’s Obafemi Awolowo University, estimated it put at risk one-third of Nigeria’s local fish supply, a cheap source of food millions rely on.

That threatens to put thousands of fishermen out of a job.

“It has become a menace to the marine ecosystems of Lagos,” said Nkechi Ajayi, spokeswoman from Lagos State Waterways Authority, adding that it impacted “the socio-economic activities” of river communities.

– Propeller problems –

Water transportation is also at risk. Operators complain of damaged boats and risk of accidents.

“We often find it difficult to navigate whenever the weeds clog the river,” said boat driver John Ibikunle, as he waited to pick passengers on Lagos Island.

He said many commuters, who once preferred water transport to beat the perennial Lagos traffic gridlock, are returning to the roads, tired of being stuck on water with weeds snagging the propeller.

“They cause mechanical problems to the propulsion system of boats,” added Ajayi, from the waterways authority.

The plant doesn’t grow well in salt water, and environmental experts say the plant expands during the rainy season when the level of fresh water rises in Lagos lagoon.

“It is a seasonal plant,” said Noah Shemede, an environmental activist, from the vast area of wooden homes on stilts built into the water, a fishing settlement called Makoko.

“In the Makoko community for instance, its impact is felt when the rain is heavy and the salt level is lower,” Shemede said.

– ‘Underwater lawn mower’ –

Lagos State Waterways Authority chief Abisola Kamson said they have brought in two water hyacinth removal machines to clear the weeds.

“The machines act like an underwater lawn mower,” Kamson said. “It cuts the vegetation, collecting and storing the weeds and debris on board.”

But while fishermen and boat operators struggle with the weed, one local entrepreneur sees a business opportunity.

Achenyo Idachaba set up a firm that processes the weed into handwoven products including baskets and bags.

“The weeds are harvested from water channels and spread out in the sun to dry,” Idachaba said. “They are processed into small ropes, required to weave the products together.”

Some see a brighter future.

Scientists at the University of Lagos say the plant could also be converted into energy as biomass production, to help solve part of Nigeria’s chronic electricity shortages.

AFP

At least 20 people have been killed by bandit gunmen in separate attacks in the restive region of Katsina in northwestern Nigeria, police say.

Katsina state police spokesman Gambo Isah said gunmen on motorcycles stormed into the village of Yargamji in Batsari district, some 50 kilometers (30 miles) from the state capital Katsina, on Tuesday, and opened fire at the residents.

“They killed 18,” he said.

A gunfight broke out in the forest after a self-defense militia from another village chased the thieves.

Police said two militia members were shot dead during the gun battle, but residents said the fight claimed the lives of more people.

“We lost 11 people who went to fight the bandits in the bush,” resident Sada Iro said.

Iro noted that five residents were also killed in other attacks in the nearby village of Mara Zamfarawa.

Katsina state has seen a string of violent attacks in recent months that claimed the lives of hundreds of people.

The gunmen have repeatedly conducted raids on villages, stealing cattle and food, setting homes ablaze and kidnapping for ransom, prompting rural communities to take up arms to defend themselves.

Nigeria also suffers from attacks conducted by Boko Haram Takfiri terrorist group, which began its activities in northeastern Nigeria in 2009. It has spread them into the neighboring countries of Niger, Chad, and Cameroon.

Boko Haram Takfiri terrorists have raided and briefly seized a military post in Nigeria’s northeastern province of Borno, stealing weapons before they were forced out, a week after terrorists similarly raided another army outpost in the volatile province.

According to security forces and local residents on Saturday, a column of terrorists in trucks and on motorcycles stormed into a military base in the town of Magumeri, some 50 kilometers from the provincial capital Maiduguri late on Friday.

The Boko Haram terrorists overran the base for several hours, hauling away weapons before they were forced out by army soldiers.

“The terrorists dislodged troops from the base after an intense fight,” AFP quoted an unnamed military officer as saying.  “We lost weapons and equipment to the terrorists but it is not clear if there was any human loss,” further said the officer, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

According to pro-government militia leader Gremah Kaka, terrorists came to the town about 5:00 p.m. local time (1600 GMT) and started an hour-long fight with the troops in the base before they “gained the upper hand and chased the troops away.”

He further noted that Boko Haram terrorists overpowered the army soldiers and forced them to flee into the nearby woods, adding that the invaders stayed in the base for “more than four hours” before they were chased away by reinforcements from another base in Gubio, some 46 kilometres from Magumeri.

On April 26, Boko Haram terrorists stormed a military outpost in Mararrabar Kimba, some 135 kilometres from Maiduguri, killing five soldiers and stealing weapons, while some 30 troops were listed as missing.

The terror group has since July last year targeted dozens of military bases in attacks that saw the terrorists kill scores of troopers.

Boko Haram’s nine-year militancy is estimated to have killed more than 27,000 people and forced 1.8 million others to flee their homes.

In 2015, Boko Haram pledged allegiance to the Daesh Takfiri terrorist group.

Source: Presstv

Members of the Takfiri Boko Haram terrorist group have attacked and overrun an outpost belonging to the Nigerian government troops in the northeastern parts of the African country, stealing weapons before fleeing, military sources say.

Militants of the terror group launched their attack against the outpost at Mararrabar Kimba in the volatile Borno state late on Friday, two unnamed military sources told AFP on Saturday.

The assailants were reportedly driving more than a dozen pickup trucks with heavy machine guns mounted on their top. Terrorists were accompanied by three armored personal carriers stolen from security forces.

The terror convoy, flanked by a fleet of armed men firing from motorbikes, emerged from the woods and sped straight towards the outpost.

“There was a serious gunfight,” one of the sources said, adding, “The troops put up a good fight, but they were outgunned and overwhelmed… unfortunately, the base fell to the terrorists, who took away weapons and fled.”

The base lies some 135 kilometers from the state capital Maiduguri. It was not yet clear whether there were casualties, especially as some troopers reportedly scattered into the woods to escape the attack.

One eyewitness had told the sources that some of stranded soldiers arrived at Biu, a town around 45 kilometers away from the outpost, a number of them wounded.

Boko Haram’s nine-year militancy is estimated to have killed more than 27,000 people and forced 1.8 million others to flee their homes.

In 2015, Boko Haram pledged allegiance to the Takfiri Daesh terrorist group.

Source: Presstv