A somber day in Nigeria during the funeral of top-ranking army commander Lieutenant General Ibrahim Attahiru on Saturday.

The burial in Abuja comes a day after he and 10 other officers died when their plane crashed in bad weather.

It was the third military air disaster this year and the army posted videos on social networks of the service attended by political and military leaders at the national mosque.

“Yesterday, 21st day of May 2021, was a very sad day for the Armed Forces. One of our finest and best pilots was conveying him along with the entourage,” said Lucky Irabor, Nigeria Chief of Defense Staff.

“After landing at the Kaduna International airport, the cold hands of death which manifested in the stormy weather ended that journey. The war against insecurity must be won, truly must be won. All we ask of you is to keep praying for us.”

The aircraft went down trying to land at the Kaduna International Airport “due to inclement weather”, the armed forces said.

President Muhammadu Buhari did not attend the burial, which was crticised on social media.

Army chief of staff Attahiru was appointed by Buhari last January in a shakeup of the senior command to better fight surging violence and a more than decade-long jihadist insurgency.

Attahiru died as news emerged that Nigeria’s Boko Haram jihadist leader Abubakar Shekau had himself been seriously wounded or possibly killed after clashes with a rival Islamic State-allied faction.

Attahiru was in charge of leading the frontline offensive against Shekau in 2017.

Nigeria’s military has been battling an Islamist insurgency in the northeast since 2009, a conflict that has killed more than 40,000 and displaced around two million more.

Attahiru had once been in charge of leading the frontline offensive against Boko Haram’s commander Shekau in the northeast in 2017.

Source: Africa News

The son-in-law of Nigeria’s President Muhammadu Buhari is wanted as part of an investigation into an alleged $65 million property fraud, the country’s anti-corruption agency said Friday.

The Independent Corruption Prosecution Commission (ICPC) said in a statement Friday that Gimba Yau Kumo and two others are suspected of misappropriating funds earmarked for a national property development project.

Kumo, who in 2016 married Buhari’s daughter Fatima, was the managing director of a Nigerian mortgage bank. He is also under investigation for Tarry Rufus and Bola Ogunsola, whose positions have not been disclosed.

Buhari, a former general, was first elected in 2015 on a promise to clean up politics in Nigeria and make fighting corruption one of his main goals.

But critics have in the past accused his government and ruling elites of using the country’s anti-corruption agencies as political weapons to target their enemies.

“The persons whose photographs appear above, Tarry Ruffus, Mr Gimba Yau Kumo and Mr Bola Ogunsola, are hereby declared wanted… in connection with issues relating to the diversion of public funds for real estate to the tune of $65 million,” the commission wrote.

It added that anyone with information on their whereabouts should contact the police.

President Buhari’s spokesman, Garba Shehu, confirmed the ongoing investigation into the president’s son-in-law.

“This is an old case, it will take some time. He is the former managing director of the Federal Mortgage Bank,” Shehu told AFP.

Nigeria, Africa’s biggest oil producer, ranks 149th out of 180 countries in Transparency International’s index of global corruption.

When Buhari came to power he spoke of “staggering” theft by the previous government but the looting of public funds has been going on for decades.

Billions of dollars are alleged to have been stolen by former dictator Sani Abacha during his iron rule between 1993 and 1998.

Source: Africa News

Several protesters in Nigeria’s city of Lagos were arrested on Saturday after they tried to hold a peaceful rally against the reopening of the Lekki tollgate, where security forces shot at protesters in October, which became the epicentre of the #EndSARS movement.

“I’m not here with any weapon. I’m here for human rights. This is not done, everybody knows,” said arrested protester Jay D Boy, an artist who spoke from inside a police van.

“Even those police officers today, they know. They know that things are not going well in this country. Three of my friends were killed here last year. And we are not hearing anything about it, this is not a crime.”

Police bundled around 17 protesters into a black truck and some other people drove past shouting “End SARS”, referring to Nigeria’s police unit accused of committing the deadly abuses.

“Picked up because I was walking, in my country. Picked up because I was walking,” said Christopher Emmanuel Ogboji, another arrested protester,

#EndSARS

Many view the reopening of the tollgate as ill-timed and inconsiderate to victims of the Lekki shootings.

The huge highway tollgate became the centre of the protest movement against police brutality by the SARS unit, which has been disbanded.

The demonstrations ended abruptly after the shooting in Lagos and a wave of looting and unrest followed.

The government promised reforms in response.

An investigation into last year’s violence at Lekki has stalled with representatives of the armed forces failing to appear before the panel.

Security forces say they only used blank rounds to break up protesters who had defied a curfew, though Amnesty International said soldiers shot dead at least 10 people

Nigeria’s government this week had warned against holding new protests at Lekki, saying the rallies could descend into violence in the name of justice.

“We are calling on all Nigerian authorities to demonstrate commitment to protect the right to peaceful protest,” watchdog Amnesty International said on Twitter.

Source: Africa News

Security forces on Thursday rescued nearly 350 schoolboys who had been kidnapped by suspected Islamist gunmen in northern Nigeria and taken into a vast forest, the governor of Katsina state said.

The abduction last Friday night had been claimed by Islamist militant group Boko Haram in an unverified audio recording.

Gunmen raided the Government Science Secondary School in Kankara town, Katsina state, on motorbikes and carried off the boys in the biggest such incident in the lawless region in recent years.

Governor Aminu Bello Masari said in a televised interview with state channel NTA that a total of 344 boys held in the Rugu Forest in neighboring Zamfara state had been freed.

“We have recovered most of the boys. It’s not all of them,” he said.

In the rescue operation, security forces had cordoned off the area where the boys were being held and had been given instructions not to fire a fire a single shot.

“We had already established indirect contact to try to make sure that we secure the release of the children unharmed,” Masari said. “We thank God that they took our advice and not a single shot was fired.”

The boys were on their way back to Katsina state and would be medically examined and reunited with their families on Friday, Masari said.

The abduction gripped a nation already incensed by widespread insecurity, and evoked memories of Boko Haram’s 2014 kidnapping of more than 270 schoolgirls in the northeastern town of Chibok.

Abduction of schoolboys shows ‘a very dangerous trend’ toward radicalisation of crime groups in northwest Nigeria

News of the release came hours after a video started circulating online purportedly showing Boko Haram militants with some of the boys.

The video, which featured Boko Haram’s emblem, showed a group of boys in a wood pleading “Help us, help us.” Reuters was not able to immediately verify the authenticity of the footage, the boys, or who released it.

The father of one of the missing boys, who gave only his first name Umar, said his son, Shamsu Ibrahim, was one of the boys who is heard speaking in the video .

“All the armies that have come here to help us, please send them back. They can do nothing to help us,” the boy says.

Boko Haram has a history of turning captives into jihadist fighters. If its claims were true, its involvement in northwestern Nigeria marks a geographical expansion in its activities.

Earlier on Thursday, protesters marched in the northwestern city of Katsina under a banner reading #BringBackOurBoys as pressure mounted on the government to improve security.

“Northern Nigeria has been abandoned at the mercy of vicious insurgents, bandits, kidnappers, armed robbers, rapists and an assortment of hardened criminals,” said Balarabe Ruffin of the Coalition of Northern Groups (CNG), which focuses on the welfare of northern Nigerians.

Armed gangs that rob and kidnap for ransom, widely referred to as “bandits”, carry out attacks on communities across the northwest, making it hard for locals to farm, travel or tap rich mineral assets in some states such as gold.

Criminal gangs operating in the northwest have killed more than 1,100 people in the first half of 2020 alone, according to rights group Amnesty International.

In the northeast, Boko Haram and its offshoot, Islamic State West Africa Province, have waged a decade-long insurgency estimated to have displaced about 2 million people and killed more than 30,000. They want to create states based on their extreme interpretation of sharia law.

Buhari, who comes from Katsina, has repeatedly said that Boko Haram has been “technically defeated”.

A former military ruler, Buhari was elected in 2015 in large part due to his pledge to crush the insurgency. Under his predecessor, Goodluck Jonathan, Boko Haram grew in strength and controlled territory around the size of Belgium.

Source: REUTERS

Gunmen have raided a government secondary school in northern Nigeria’s Katsina state, police said Saturday, in an apparent kidnapping attempt for ransom.

The Nigerian military had located and exchanged fire with gunmen who kidnapped scores of secondary school students in northwestern Katsina state, according to a statement from the president on Saturday.

The gang, armed with AK-47s, stormed the Government Science secondary school in Kankara district at about 9:40 p.m. on Friday, police and locals said. A parent and school employee told Reuters that roughly half of the school’s 800 students were missing.

President Muhammadu Buhari said in a statement that the military had located the kidnappers in a forest and was exchanging fire with them, aided by air support.

In the statement, Buhari condemned the attack in his home state. Police and the military were still working to determine how many were kidnapped and missing.

Police at the scene on Friday exchanged fire with the attackers, allowing some students to run for safety, police spokesman Gambo Isah said in a statement.

Police said they would deploy additional forces to support the search and rescue. One officer was shot and wounded in the exchange of fire with the gang, they said.

Hundreds of students missing after gun attack on Nigerian school

Katsina is plagued by violence the government attributes to bandits – a loose term for gangs of outlaws who attack locals and kidnap for ransom. Attacks by Islamist militants are common in northeastern parts of the country.

Violence and insecurity across Nigeria have enraged citizens, particularly after scores of farmers were killed, some beheaded, by Islamist militants in northeast Borno state late last month.

Buhari, who arrived on Friday for a week in his home village some 200 km (125 miles) from Kankara, was scheduled to brief the national assembly on the security situation last week, but cancelled the appearance without official explanation.

Source: REUTERS

The Jesuit Refugees Service (JRS) has assisted no fewer than 50, 000 refugees and Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) in Nigeria from 2018 to date.

Its Head of Programmes in Nigeria, Tamara Hart, disclosed this yesterday at the launching of Protection and Health Services for Camerounian refugees in Taraba State.

Hart said the group was not only working in 56 countries across the world but has also pursued its mission to accompany and serve other forcibly displaced people to enable them to heal, learn and determine their own future.

While presenting the overview of the JRS Bureau of Population, Refugee, and Migration (BPRM), she said the group commenced operations in Nigeria in 2018 and has since assisted over 50,000 refugees and IDPs through its field offices in Adamawa, Borno, and Taraba states, as well as its Abuja office.

In addition to the ongoing High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) funded project in the state, the BPRM project, which she described as a “gift from the United States Government” would provide relief to the Camerounian refugees and members of the host community in four council areas of the state.

Besides the protection and health services, the project would also promote peaceful coexistence and reconciliation skills for the Cameroonian refugees and their host communities to enhance social cohesion.

Also speaking, JRS Nigeria Project Director for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), Sylvester Kenneth, stated that JRS has been implementing the UNHCR-funded “Protection and Educational Services for Camerounian Refugees since 2019.”

He said the idea of the project was to assist the displaced persons from the neighboring country of Cameroun and host communities in Takum, Ussa, Kurmi, and Sardauna council areas of the state.

Commending the state government for its support for the refugees, he acknowledged that the state was the most accommodating state for Camerounian refugees in the country.”

Corroborating Kenneth, JRS Country Director, Rev. Father Patrick Etamesor, commended the state government for providing an enabling environment for the group to implement its projects.

“JRS has enjoyed enormous support from the government and people of the state, hence the implementation of the project. JRS has assisted refugees and displaced persons in various ways,” he said

On his part, the Project Director, Abang Egbe, said the project team would constantly consult relevant stakeholders on issues bordering on the successful implementation of the project in the state.

Impressed by JRS efforts in assisting the refugees who fled from Cameroun to the state following skirmishes in that country that had led to the destruction of lives and property, the Commissioner for Health, Dr. Innocent Vakkai, assured of the state government’s support for successful implementation of the project.

Source: Guardian.ng