Armed gangs killed 57 people in a string of attacks on villages in northwest Nigeria, residents said on Wednesday, as security forces struggle to curb violence in the region.

Roughly 150 gunmen on motorcycles opened fire on residents before looting shops and stealing cattle in a series of assaults on Tuesday in six remote communities in Katsina state, the sources said.

“We lost a total of 57 people in the attacks across the six villages,” a local leader told AFP on condition of anonymity as he feared for his safety. 

In the worst-hit village of Kadisau the assailants – dubbed “bandits” by locals – shot and killed 33 people, local resident Mohammed Salisu said.

Salisu said he escaped by abandoning his motorcycle and hiding in a ditch before crawling into a nearby house where he hid among dirty laundry for the five hours the attack and looting lasted.

“They looted every shop in the village and took away over 200 cattle,” said Salisu, who lost seven cows to the attackers.

The attackers opened fire on a football pitch where young men were watching a local match, said Sada Audi, a resident of nearby village said.

Residents said 24 more people were later killed across the villages of Hayin Kabalawa, Garke, Makera, Kwakwere and Maiganguna.

The assailants left two dozen people with bullet wounds, inhabitants said.

Nigeria’s northwest has been wracked by years of violence, involving clashes between rival communities over land, attacks by heavily armed criminal gangs and retaliation strikes from vigilante groups.

The unrest, which experts say has been spurred by overpopulation and climate change, has seen an estimated 8,000 people killed since 2011 and 200,000 flee their homes.

Nigeria’s military last month said it had launched air raids to halt a spike of attacks in President Muhammadu Buhari’s home state of Katsina.

Authorities have carried out several security operations and local peace negotiations in the region but have failed to end the bloodshed. 

Source: AFP

Gunmen killed 47 people in attacks on villages in the northwestern Nigerian state of Katsina in the early hours of Saturday, local police said.

“Armed bandits”, some of whom wielded AK 47 guns, carried out the attacks, Katsina police said in a statement on Sunday.

Hundreds of people have been killed in the last year by criminal gangs carrying out robberies and kidnappings in northwest Nigeria.

Such attacks have added to security challenges in Africa’s most populous country, which is already struggling to contain Islamist insurgencies in the northeast and communal violence over grazing rights in central states.

Gunmen, some with AK 47 guns, carried out the attacks in three local government authorities in the state in the early hours of Saturday between 12:30 a.m. (2330 GMT) and around 3 a.m., Katsina police said in its statement.

“There was reports of organised and simultaneous attacks in villages in Danmusa, Dutsenma and Safana by groups of armed bandits,” the statement said of some of the attacks.

“Detachments of Police, Nigerian Army, Nigeria Airforce, Civil Defence and DSS (Department of State Services) have been drafted to the area,” it added.

President Muhammadu Buhari, in a statement, said he would not tolerate large scale killing of innocent people by criminal gangs.

“In line with my commitment to security of the people, these attacks will be met with decisive force,” said Buhari, who is from Katsina.

(REUTERS)

Africa’s largest city Lagos was deserted Tuesday after Nigeria locked down its economic hub and shuttered its capital, in the continent’s latest effort to brake the juggernaut of coronavirus.

Businesses were closed, markets abandoned and streets empty as the usually chaotic megacity of 20 million, along with the capital Abuja, shuddered to a halt on the first full day of a two-week shutdown.

Police in protective equipment manned checkpoints, trucks carrying non-essential items were turned back and youths were spotted playing football on a usually traffic-clogged highway.

“It is like putting people in prison,” minibus taxi driver Mutiu Adisa told AFP.

“I don’t know how people can survive for two weeks without working to make money.”

Nigeria embarked late Monday on one of Africa’s most ambitious efforts at social distancing after recording 135 confirmed cases and two deaths.

Enforcing the stay-at-home order in the overcrowded slums of Lagos will be a mammoth challenge as millions of poor depend on their daily earnings to survive.

Officials insist the draconian measures are needed urgently to ward off an explosion in infections that could easily overwhelm the weak health system in Africa’s most populous nation.

“To reduce the number of people with coronavirus, we know they need to stop movement,” 60-year-old engineer Ogun Nubi Victor told AFP.

“But there in no money for the citizens, people are just sitting at home, with nothing to eat.”

In an attempt to ease the pain, Lagos state authorities have pledged to supply basic food rations to some 200,000 of the city’s neediest households.

– Lockdowns and brutality –

Across all of Africa, countries have recorded more than 5,300 cases and 170 deaths, according to a tally compiled by AFP.

Tanzania on Tuesday became the latest nation to record its first fatality from the novel coronavirus.

The numbers have lagged behind those of other continents, and as of Monday, there were still six countries out of 54 in Africa — South Sudan, Burundi, Sao Tome and Principe, Malawi, Lesotho and the Comoros — that had yet to detect a single case.

But experts have repeatedly warned of Africa’s vulnerability, describing its many conflicts, poor sanitation, packed urban slums and under-equipped hospitals as sources of potential catastrophe.

Dozens of countries across the continent have imposed restrictions from night-time curfews to total shutdowns to try to halt the disease.

Uganda on Tuesday was also waking up to lockdown after President Yoweri Museveni ordered his east African nation to shut up shop immediately.

The Republic of Congo was gearing up to follow suit later in the day and Botswana’s president ordered a state of emergency from midnight on Thursday.

But growing reports of brutality from security forces in some nations have highlighted the challenges of enforcing the draconian measures.

The police watchdog in South Africa, on lockdown since last week, said Monday it was investigating an officer for allegedly killing a man who defied the regulations.

The country’s defence minister also condemned “any type of abuse” by security forces after videos on social media showed civilians forced to squat or roll on the ground.

The regional powerhouse, which has the highest numbers of confirmed infections on the continent, will start mass door-to-door screening and testing for infections, President Cyril Ramaphosa said Monday.

The “unprecedented” exercise will be launched in the next few days, with at least 10,000 field workers deployed across the country of 57 million people, he said in an address to the nation.

“We are now entering a new phase in the fight against the coronavirus pandemic,” Ramaphosa said.

Source:  AFP

At least 70 Nigerian soldiers were killed in a jihadist ambush, military and security sources said Tuesday.

Insurgents fired rocket-propelled grenades at a lorry carrying troops as it travelled near Gorgi village in Borno state on Monday, two military officers told AFP without giving their names.

“It was a huge loss, at least 70 soldiers have perished in the ambush,” one of the officers said.

“The terrorists specifically targeted a truck loaded with soldiers with RPGs and incinerated the vehicle, killing all on board,” a second officer said.

“So far 70 bodies have been recovered but the toll is certainly more than that as rescue operation is still underway.”

Several soldiers were injured and some others taken captive by the jihadists, the two officers said.

A spokesman for the Nigerian army told AFP that he was unable to comment on the reported attack.

The convoy had left regional capital Maiduguri on its way to launch an offensive on a camp belonging to jihadists affiliated to the Islamic State group in the area, a member of a government-backed militia fighting the insurgents told AFP.

The Islamic State West Africa Province faction split from Boko Haram insurgents in 2016 and has focused on attacking troops, raiding bases and laying ambush on military convoys.

The group has been accused of increasing attacks on civilians and taking hostages at bogus checkpoints on main roads in the region.

The decade-long conflict has killed 36,000 people and displaced 1.8 million in the northeast of Nigeria.

Fighting has also spilt over the border into neighbouring countries, prompting the formation of a regional military coalition to fight the insurgents.

(AFP)

Former President Olusegun Obasanjo has again criticised President Muhammadu Buhari’s leadership of Nigeria. Obasanjo condemned the current state of affairs in his speech on Saturday at the Frederick Fasehun 1st Memorial Lecture. Fasehun was a Yoruba leader and founder of the Oodua People’s Congress (OPC).

Obasanjo stated that Nigeria belongs to all Nigerians on the basis of freedom, equality, equity, justice, fairness, peace, security, cooperation, mutual dignity, respect, shared values and shared prosperity.

“If these factors are removed, Niagara falls to pieces. But for now, we can still make hay while the sun shines”, he warned.

Obasanjo, in his lecture, who pointed out several calls by groups and prominent Nigerians on insecurity in Nigeria, the gave “apologists” of Buhari’s administration six questions to answer.

He quipped: “Are all these people speaking the truth enemies of the government? Are apologists just telling the President what they believe he wants to hear? Do they believe that they are being fair to Nigerians and indeed to President Buhari? Do they remember that there is a day of judgement when they have to render account before God? I know for sure that God has the best in stock for Nigeria. And do they consider the present situation as the best for Nigeria?”

The former leader regretted that President Goodluck Jonathan’s efforts of a National Conference did not even get to the National Assembly.

“Today, the agitation has moved up to restructuring. Thanks to Buhari’s administration and its impunity and all. With the fractional political division, poor management of the economy, the non-protecting security and the politics of uncertainty in the land, we should not allow the restructuring agitation to degenerate to self-determination agitation.

“There is still a window of opportunity for us to nip in the bud a possible and indeed likely agitation for self-determination that will be violent, destructive and all-empowering. We have descended to lack of civility bordering on uncivilisation, indignity, mutual disrespect and crudity in the language of our debate, dialogue, discourse, address, comments and remarks across tribe, section, religion, region, ethnicity and community. If not halted, it will degenerate and poison the atmosphere to the tipping point or point of no return. If the issue becomes conceptualised as an issue of freedom or liberation, there will be no wall or gate to effectively prevail against it. Some well-meaning Nigerians are worried and understandingly so.

“Threats and intimidation do not build a community, they rather destroy. The language of love, knowledge, understanding, appreciation, consideration, compassion, cooperation, forgiveness and accommodation should be the language to build our nation. We should be honest and courageous enough to tell ourselves home truth for self-education and for the edification of our country. If we shirk our duties to our country because we are afraid of threats, intimidation, blackmail or being called names, we are not worthy of being called patriots or nationalists.

“While the unity and integrity of Nigeria will be defended with all that I can muster but surely not at the expense of my liberty, human dignity, freedom of choice, and human rights. I will not relent by exerting effort, ability and capability to make a contribution to the development and progress of my land of birth. If I allowed myself to be enslaved in Nigeria, I would have left a shameful legacy for my children and their succeeding generation forever. May God forbid!

“In that way, my existence in life would amount to naught. “If the hands cannot be swung”, the saying goes, “they are better held above the head perpetually”. My services to my country and to humanity would have ended in total failure as I would have lived not to carry out the divine mission of making better what I found. If I fought racial and tribal injustice and oppression in South Africa, Angola, Mozambique, Namibia and South Sudan tenaciously and successfully, it would be remiss of me to do any less in Nigeria. It is a divine duty and responsibility which must be attended to, if necessary.

“It would appear that the National Assembly is fully aware of the lurking danger and wants to be proactive which is commendable. But the Nigerian Constitution does not give the National Assembly the power to write a new Constitution but the power to amend existing one. What is required is a new Constitution to meet the agitation and aspiration of all Nigerians and to allay all fears.

“The Executive and the Legislature need to work together to establish a Constituent Assembly. The exercise must not be compromised like the present Constitution; it must have full legitimacy of ‘we the people’. Talking of a new Constitution, maybe we should try a hybrid Constitution of President and Prime Minister sharing executive power in a Presidential cum Parliamentary system. And before we descend any further, let me warn, from experience, those who are beating the drums of war and domination from all quarters. I joined late Bisalla, under General Hassan Katsina, to write the appreciation and the operational instruction for the Civil War.

“We estimated that Federal Government would suppress the Biafran rebellion within three months. To make allowances for the unforeseen, we allowed six months. But it took us thirty months, five times what we allowed for, and what is more, we nearly lost the war. And as a Field Commander at the end of the war, I can attest that we fought with all Nigerian tribes including Igbos against Biafra.

“And if after over ten years of fighting Boko Haram, the terrorist group is still waxing strong, let nobody out of self-delusion think that a war of self-determination by one or more geopolitical zones of Nigeria with the present disenchantment would be easily suppressed by the rest of what may remain of the country. Some will fight to the last drop of the blood of their group rather than suffer the indignity of slavery, oppression, domination and atrocious injustice in the land of their birth and the only one that they can call their country.

“If Boko Haram can get an outside support, any geo-political zone opting for self-determination may equally get an external support. War may not necessarily go as planned, estimated and predicted. Everything must, therefore, be put in place to avoid a war, the end of which no one can precisely predict. There is no assurance that Nigeria can survive a second civil war. But rather, we should seek political solution and avoid a destructive civil war. “

Source: Dailypost.ng