A high-profile case against Nnamdi Kanu, a Nigerian separatist accused of terrorism and treason was adjourned Thursday, lawyers said, after a court appearance under heavy security in the capital Abuja.

Kanu, 53, leader of the proscribed Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB) group, which wants a separate state for the ethnic Igbo people in the southeast, was arrested abroad in June and brought back to Nigeria to face trial.

Leaving the courtroom Thursday, his lawyers Ifeanyi Ejiofor and Aloy Ejimakor told AFP that Kanu had pled “not guilty” to seven charges including terrorism and treason before the case was adjourned to November 10.

Dozens of heavily armed police, balaclava-wearing security operatives and Nigerian soldiers were deployed all around the federal high court.

Journalists were barred from entering the premises and threatened by police with tasers, an AFP reporter saw.

Lawyer Ejiofor said he urged the court “to dismiss the seven count charges… acquit our client and discharge him.”

Kanu’s family and lawyers say he was illegally extradited from Kenya, though Nigerian officials have not given any details.

He is a British citizen and used to work as an estate agent in London, where he also ran the outlawed Radio Biafra.

Separatist movements in Nigeria are particularly sensitive, after a unilateral declaration of independence in 1967 in Biafra sparked a brutal 30-month civil war.

More than one million people died, most of them Igbos, from the impact of conflict, hunger and disease.

Southeast Nigeria has seen a spike in violence with at least 127 police and other security personnel killed by gunmen this year, according to a local media tally.

Authorities have blamed the attacks on IPOB and its armed wing, the Eastern Security Network, a claim the groups deny.

Kanu was first arrested in October 2015 but was released on bail and fled the country in 2017.

IPOB called for a “sit-at-home” on Thursday across the southeast, to protest the arrest of their leader.

Another separatist, Sunday Igboho, who advocates for independence for the southwestern Yoruba people, was also recently arrested.

Igboho was taken into custody at the airport in neighbouring Benin, police and airport sources said.

He was on the run after a gun battle with security forces at his home, where weapons and ammunition were discovered.

Source: Africa News

Gunmen have killed 12 Nigerian security forces in a raid on a military base in northwest Zamfara state, before stealing weapons and torching buildings.

The perpetrators of the Saturday attack in Mutumji still remain unidentified. However, telecommunications have been cut in Zamfara to prevent armed groups from communicating and planning further attacks, two security sources told AFP on Monday.

Furthermore, the army is engaged in several military operations against armed criminal gangs in Northwest Nigeria.

Criminal gangs known as bandits are blamed for a series of mass abductions in recent months.

At least 12 people were killed when several hundred members of a criminal gang on motorbikes stormed Duba village in Katsina state last month.

Such attacks have added to security challenges in Nigeria, which is struggling to contain insurgencies in the northern part of the country.

President Muhammadu Buhari has come under fire for the worsening security situation in several regions of Nigeria.

Nigerian troops are fighting a 12-year militancy by the Boko Haram terrorist group in the northeast, herder-farmer tensions and banditry in the northwest, and separatist agitations in the southeast.

Source: Presstv

Desperate Nigerians are caught in the midst of a rash of abductions across the impoverished northwest of Nigeria, where thousands of bandits ask for hefty ransoms from families in return for their kidnapped children.

“We are in agony. Honestly, I don’t have anything left,” said Abubakar Adam on Tuesday, after selling his car and a parcel of land to raise a ransom to free his seven children, who were abducted along with hundreds of other students from a school in the northwestern Nigeria.

The 40-year-old tire repairman gave his three million naira (7,300 dollars) together with payments from other families in his town of Tegina to free their kidnapped children. The kidnappers took the money, seized one of the men delivering it, and demanded even more cash and six motorbikes.

Adam said they were still waiting for any sign of what happened to his children three months after the mass abduction.

Since December last year, around 1,000 students have been abducted by heavily-armed criminal gangs in different Nigerian states, with some of them having been released after negotiations with local officials and ransom payments.

President Muhammadu Buhari has advised states not to pay fees to kidnappers, saying it will only encourage more abductions. Security agencies say they are targeting the bandits through military operations.

“We are begging the government to help,” said Aminu Salisu, whose eight-year-old son was taken in the same daylight raid on Tegina’s school in May.

Salisu liquidated his own savings and sold everything in his store to raise the ransom. The owner of the school sold off half the land. Together, with the help of friends, relatives, and strangers, the people of Tegina raised 30 million naira, but that wasn’t enough for the bandits.

According to an estimate by Lagos-based analysts SBM Intelligence, Nigeria’s leading geopolitical intelligence platform, kidnappers collected more than 18 million dollars in ransom between June 2011 and March 2020.

In December last year, gunmen kidnapped 344 boys from the Government Science Secondary School in the northwestern state of Katsina during a night-time raid.

President Buhari, who promised to tackle insecurity at his inauguration in 2019, is under mounting pressure as kidnappings surge in the impoverished northwest of Nigeria.

The military is deployed to at least 30 of Nigeria’s 36 states to fight kidnappers. Security officials are concerned that they are being infiltrated by Takfiri terrorists. The northern and northeastern parts of the country have been wracked by years of violence involving Boko Haram and other affiliates of the Takfiri Daesh terrorist group.

Source: Press TV

Nigeria said on Friday it had indefinitely suspended Twitter’s activities, two days after the social media giant removed a post from President Muhammadu Buhari that threatened to punish regional secessionists.

Information Minister Lai Mohammed said the government had acted because of “the persistent use of the platform for activities that are capable of undermining Nigeria’s corporate existence”.

Mohammed did not spell out what form the suspension would take or give more details on the undermining activities. His ministry also announced Twitter’s suspension on Twitter.

When asked about the details of the suspension, a ministerial aide told Reuters: “Wait and see how things will turn out.”

As of the early hours of Saturday, Twitter’s website was inaccessible in Nigeria on some mobile carriers, while its app and website worked on others, according to Reuters tests in Lagos and Abuja.

Twitter is investigating its “deeply concerning” suspension of operations by the Nigerian government, and “will provide updates when we know more,” the company said in a statement.

On Wednesday, the U.S. tech firm said Buhari’s post threatening to punish groups blamed for attacks on government buildings had violated Twitter’s “abusive behaviour” policy.

In April, the information minister reacted angrily when Twitter chose neighbouring Ghana for its first African office. He said the company had been influenced by media misrepresentations of Nigeria, including reports of crackdowns on protests last year.

Demonstrators calling for police reform had used social media to organise, raise money and share alleged proof of police harassment. Twitter’s chief executive, Jack Dorsey, tweeted to encourage his followers to donate.

In the protests’ wake, Mohammed called for “some form of regulation” on social media to combat “fake news”.

A spokesperson for Airtel, one of Nigeria’s largest mobile carriers, on Friday declined to say whether the company had received any government directives about the suspension.

MTN, the largest mobile carrier, did not respond to calls and a message seeking comment.

Source: REUTERS

Gunmen on Sunday kidnapped scores of children from an Islamic seminary in central Nigeria’s Niger state, police and residents said.

Some 200 children were at the school at the time of the attack, the Niger state government said on Twitter, adding that “an unconfirmed number” were taken.

The abduction came a day after 14 students from a university in northwestern Nigeria were freed after 40 days in captivity.

Niger state police spokesman Wasiu Abiodun said the attackers arrived on motorbikes in Tegina town and started shooting indiscriminately, killing one resident and injuring another, before kidnapping the children from the Salihu Tanko Islamic school.

One of the school’s officials, who asked not to be named, said the attackers initially took more than 100 children “but later sent back those they considered too small for them, those between four and 12 years old”.

The state government, in a series of tweets, said the attackers had released 11 of the pupils who were “too small and couldn’t walk” very far.

Armed gangs are terrorising inhabitants in northwest and central Nigeria by looting villages, stealing cattle, and taking people hostage.

Such seizures have become a frequent way for criminals to collect ransoms.

Since December 2020, 730 children and students have been kidnapped, before the attack on Sunday.

On April 20, gunmen known locally as “bandits” stormed Greenfield University in northwestern Nigeria and kidnapped around 20 students, killing a member of the school’s staff in the process.

Five students were executed a few days later to force families and the government to pay a ransom. Fourteen of the students were released on Saturday.

Local press said that the families had paid a ransom totalling 180 million naira ($440,000) for their release.

The criminal gangs maintain camps in the Rugu forest which straddles Zamfara, Katsina, Kaduna and Niger states.

Their motives have been financial with no ideological leanings but there is growing concern they are being infiltrated by jihadists from the northeast waging a 12-year-old insurrection to establish an Islamic state.

Source: AFP