By Richard Akintade, Osogbo

Due to vandalization of both government and private business and property by hoodlums in the state in the early hour of Saturday, the Osun state Governor, Gboyega Oyetola, has imposed another curfew in the state starting from 3 pm today.

Gov. Oyetola imposed the curfew due to high rate of looting across osun for COVID palliatives.

By Bode Olushegun

The All Progressives Congress (APC) has called for an end to the protests in some parts of the nation, insisting that Nigerians should protect the collective and corporate interest of the country.

Chairman of APC Caretaker/Extraordinary National Convention Committee, Alhaji Mai-Mala Buni in a statement on Saturday said the party was “saddened by the unfortunate tragedy that had enveloped some parts of the country in the last few days by hoodlums who took over what was supposed to be a peaceful protest against the Special Anti-Robbery Squad (SARS) of the Nigeria Police.”

He pleaded with Nigerians to halt the #ENDSARS protests for the collective, corporate interest of our dear country, insisting that, “we have no other country than Nigeria.”

He said the ruling party was committed to the ideals of democracy and recognize the inalienable rights of the citizens to demand for changes “in conditions which trample on their liberties, freedom of association, freedom of speech and wellbeing through peaceful means and rule of law.”

Buni said: “We acknowledge the peaceful commencement of the protests until it became violent, destructive and disorderly as hoodlums regrettably seized the opportunity in the protests and virtually took over.

“On behalf of the leadership and membership of the All Progressives Congress (APC), we solemnly condole with the families of our countrymen and the families of policemen who lost their loved ones and pray that Almighty God will grant them the fortitude to bear the loss.

“We also extend our empathy to all those whose properties were torched and pray that Almighty God will replenish it. We pray we never experience such avoidable and unnecessary horrendous carnage in our dear fatherland.”

He added that: “It is gladdening that President Muhammadu Buhari GCFR, had quickly responded and disbanded the Special Anti-Robbery Squad of the Nigeria Police (SARS) as demanded by the protesting youth.”

He said: “The party also welcomed the decision for comprehensive reforms, including the review of salaries of the Nigeria Policemen as announced by Mr President.”

He appealed that: “Our dear Compatriots, let us reflect and embrace peace; at a time of national tragedy such as this, it should not be a time for playing politics, it is no time to dance to the gallery to score cheap political points. It is a time for introspection and Nigeria first. Lets come together irrespective of our political, religious and ethnic differences we should rally around the government to build sanity and strengthen peace and unity to ensure the corporate existence of our country.

“To our youth, your message has been heard loud, clear, and well understood. The next stage that must follow is the needed engagement with all the structures of government to address all the concerns around the protest and effectiveness of government in general. It is imperative for the youths to extricate themselves from the activities of the criminal elements who have taken over the protests and perpetrating violence, destruction of property and attacking innocent Nigerians.

“As a party, we will take every step to support the government to bring this unwholesome situation to an immediate end. We will make sure that all those found culpable will face the wrath of the law. For it is the desire of all Nigerians that a peaceful atmosphere return to the country for the good of greatest number of our dear countrymen.”

He said: “The party therefore join President Muhammadu Buhari GCFR in appealing to our youths to call off the protests for peace and normalcy to return to our dear country.

“The more united we are as a people, the more peace we have and the more secured we are in our country; the more progressive we all become and the more abundant shared prosperity for our children.”

Ordinarily, Nigerians have an admirable level of solidarity when it comes to their citizen engaging in any contestation at a regional of global level for recognition, honour or indeed public office. At such regional or global level contest, the citizens usually bond together, jettisoning ethnic or religious cleavages despite the well documented division of the country along ethno-religious lines during national discourse or political contestations.

In recent times, there has been a successful unified national clamour by Nigerian citizens, with one voice, to lobby international support for the second term re-election of Dr Akinwumi Adesina as President of African Development Bank (ADB) and the on-going support for Dr Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala for the office of Director General of World Trade Organisation (WTO). In both cases, their nomination was backed by the government and people of Nigeria. And while Dr Adesina has been successfully elected, Dr Okonjo-Iweala is in the final lap of the race with bookmakers tipping her to clinch the top job. No Nigerian raised questions as to tribe, tongue or religion in these instances.

Unfortunately, when President Muhammadu Buhari nominated the Chief Judge of the Federal Capital Territory (FCT), Justice Ishaq Bello to represent Nigeria as a Judge at the International Criminal Court (ICC) in the Hague, he did not receive the same solidarity that the above named duo enjoyed and still enjoy. Some wondered why Buhari must nominate a northerner, accusing him of always giving advantage to the north in terms of appointments. While one cannot dismiss that with a wave of hand, given Buhari’s clannish nature evident in his political appointments in the last five years, it does come across as an unfair basis to deny Justice Ishaq Bello the national support, which he deserves and obviously would have received had his name been anything close to Adesina or Okonjo-Iweala.

As qualified and competent as Bello may be, the track records of the lopsidedness of Buhari’s political appointees have clearly become an albatross to him, triggering a false narrative, which the people at The Hague cannot and could not have ignored in reaching a decision. No court will welcome a brilliant judge to its bench if there are discordant tunes from his country’s nationals. Yet another group condemned the nomination of Justice Bello and cast aspersions on the nominee as not being a judge sound and competent in criminal law. They said he lacked knowledge of criminal law, citing his judgment in the Apo 6 killings, whereof he freed Deputy Commissioner of Police (DCP), Danjuma Ibrahim, for the failure of prosecution to prove a case of conspiracy and culpable homicide. Indeed, this verdict by Bello was completely against the public sentiment that greeted the dastardly killings of six young Nigerian traders in 2005 and the attendant call for the conviction of their killers.

While the verdict of the Chief Judge has become his albatross, it is noteworthy to recall that during the trial and delivery of the considered decision of the judge on the Apo 6 killing trial, Justice Ishaq Bello painstakingly x-rayed graphically the shoddy investigation conducted by the police, which made it difficult for the judge to acquiesce to the will of the people – the conviction of all the police men and officer accused of complicity in the gruesome murder of the six innocent Nigerians from the same tribe. In his verdict, Justice Bello discharged DCP Danjuma Ibrahim, Nicholas Zakaria and Sadiq Salami “for absence of sufficient evidence linking them to the crime” while convicting and sentencing Emmanuel Baba and Ezekiel Acheneje to death based on their confessional statement and Evidence-In-Chief, wherein they admitted that it was the fleeing Divisional Police Officer (DPO), Abdulsalam Othman that directed them to shoot the victims.

There is no gainsaying that the Nigerian people and particularly families of the victims have repeatedly described the judgment as a travesty of justice since it freed the Police chief. However, for someone, who meticulously followed the processes and proceedings during the trial, it is my considered view that the real blame must be placed at the door step of the police leadership, whose investigators bungled the whole process ab-initio by failing to be diligent and thereby leaving lee ways for the “killer cops” to get away with murder. How do you accuse policemen of killing the victims with their guns and yet fail to audit the guns, count the bullets, establish which gun and whose gun was used to kill each of the victims?

This ploy does not just smack of incompetence; it reeks of a high level conspiracy to bungle the trial from the outset. This much Justice Ishaq Bello said when he lampooned the police for a shoddy investigation, which has become pretty characteristics of the police whenever they have vested interest in a matter.

Again, it is curious that following the street protests that trailed Bello’s judgment, the Attorney General of the Federation and Justice Minister, Abubakar Malami (SAN), said he was reviewing the judgment of the trial court. However, no appeal has been filed to test the strength of Justice Bello’s verdict with a view to assuaging families of the victims and getting them closure of some sort. While all of these are pointers to how the case was compromised by government and the police hierarchy, one cannot but sympathise with Justice Bello, who had the onerous task of dispensing justice based on the weight of evidence before him without prejudice to the weight of sentiment in the court of public opinion, which he is not deaf to. He delivered his verdict in March 2017 and one thing is sure – the verdict has become his albatross; an albatross that has made people describe a very sound and courageous jurist as a dull one, not fit to be on the bench of the International Criminal Court (ICC).

The love hate relationship is so strong that some persons want to jeopardise the chances of an eminent jurist to sit on the bench of the ICC despite his many laudable contributions at the FCT High Court where he introduced the fast-track court system to speed up the hearing and dispensing of cases, enhanced the welfare of judicial officers and created the enforcement procedure rules for the Child Rights Act. The African Bar Association (AfBA) had recently warned against the negative comments from the region against Justice Bello and other nominees from the region, saying it would work against the continent’s interest at the ICC and called for a sheathing of swords. Nigerian may do well to heed that advice if we are not to cut our nose to spite our face.

▪︎ughegbe, rights activist and journalist, contributed this piece from Abuja.

There was tension in and around the popular UTC market, Area 10, Garki, Abuja as traders and residents of the area were thrown into pandemonium by the sporadic gunshots by security operatives.

The combat-ready security men moved in swiftly to foil a planned looting of a government  warehouse in the area.

They fired both gunshots and tear gas to disperse hoodlums who conveged on the entrance of the warehouse, preparatory to breaking in and looting the COVID-19 ppalliatives stored in there on Saturday morning.

The warehouse is located close to the Cyprian Ekwensi building and the UTC market.

According to a witness account, the UTC market and the big shopping plaza in the area had been shut down.

According to the witness who made availanke a video clip, “Many people were injured while trying to escape attack by the hoodlums.”

The Federal Capital Territory police spokesperson, ASP Mariam Yusuf, reportedly confirmed that the police were deployed in the UTC market and other public infrastructure to prevent suspected hoodlums from looting them.

See Video Here:

Some youths in Ibadan, capital of Oyo State, on Saturday broke into Senator Teslim Folarin’s house @ Oluyole Estate, Ibadan and made away with several motorcycles.

See Video Here:

The spate of looting and orgy of violent attacks on government and private property spread to Cross River State on Saturday with former Senate Leader, Senator Victor Ndoma-Egba as a victim.

The hoodlums and irate youths looted, vandalised and burnt vehicles on the premises of the mansion in Calabar.

There were no security operatives to rescue the mansion.

See Videos Here :

The Edo State Government has said that the government warehouse breached in Medical Stores Road, Benin City, storing palliatives materials and medical supplies, served as a strategic reserve to mitigate eventualities in the state.

In a statement, Special Adviser to the Governor on Media and Communication Strategy, Mr. Crusoe Osagie, said upon receipt of relief materials, there has been an ongoing process of distribution for the past seven months to the vulnerable and poor population to mitigate the impact of the COVID-19 crisis in the state.

Explaining that the vandalised warehouse stored some strategic medical assets, he said the items looted include vaccines, high-end equipment and other supplies.

He noted that the government has distributed most of the palliative materials sent to the state and what was stored at the warehouse, which has now been breached in Medical Stores Road, was strategic to mitigate eventualities.

According to him, “It is unfortunate that critical medical supplies, including vaccines meant for children, were vandalised, which is most condemnable.

“The other warehouses for food supplies in Edo State are empty as the relief materials that were earlier housed in them have all been distributed.

“In the analysis of the trend of coronavirus pandemic by scientists across the globe, studies have shown that there was going to be a second wave of the pandemic. This has been proven to be true in most parts of Europe, where there has since been a second round of shutdown, with its attendant economic implications.

“With this and other possible eventualities, it is only wise for government to have a strategic reserve,” he said.

He added that it was important to note that in the past few weeks, the government has been able to fall back on this strategic reserve in response to the plight of people displaced by flooding in parts of Etsako Central, Etsako East and Esan South East Local Government Areas (LGAs)

There is an agenda to violence — the state’s agenda. The biggest beneficiary of violence in most cases is the government which controls every apparatus of terror. Nothing happens in isolation of executive conspiracy. The infamous connoisseur of terror, Sani Abacha was once quoted as saying: “If insurgency lasts for more than 24 hours, the government has a hand in it.” Who could have put it better than the grim reaper himself?

During the military era, ‘’unknown soldiers and unknown policemen’’ were the agents who executed violence on behalf of the state. Assassinations, bloody clampdowns and even riots – all have their provenance from the ‘’unknown soldiers’’. They were capable of anything.

Fela put a characteristic tune to these emissaries of horror in his song, ‘Unknown Soldier’. ‘’Unknown soldier; unknown police; unknown civilian; equal to unknown government’’. It is the same circle under the disguised military regime of President Muhammadu Buhari. The regime has been ingenious in branding terror and its liaisons.

While it is clear by verifiable reports that the kidnapping of and attacks on citizens on Abuja-Kaduna road and elsewhere across the country have been the instrumentality of fringe Boko Haram elements, the Buhari regime elected to dub them ‘’bandits’’ instead of terrorists, subconsciously minimising their capacity for evil. It even reduced cases of mass killings in certain places to ‘’farmer-herder clashes’’.

With the mass action (EndSARS) against police brutality and essentially the regime, there is the emergence of a new epithet for the proxies of state terror – ‘hoodlums’. If I were an Afrobeat singer I would put the lyrics to this new envoy of violence this way in a song entitled: ‘Political hoodlums’: ‘’Dem no loot shop; dem no wan jolly; dem go courtroom go remove documents; dem go TVC, go burn the place; dem go the Nation newspaper, go burn am; na which kain hoodlums be this; — ‘’na political hoodlums’’. I hope Fela forgives me.

I wrote tersely on this new agency in my last article which sadly was taken over by controversy surrounding the Lekki shootings. I will restate it here for emphasis. ‘’The Buhari regime is one which deliberately creates anarchy to suppress dissent. It has metaphorically set up a ‘National Thug Corps’ (NTC) for the discharge of grimy state duties. The NTC is the quasi-security arm of the regime. They are always on reserve; ready to be deployed for mayhem. They escape accountability, identification, outrage and culpability. This is why they are deployed when police clampdowns will stir a storm. We have seen how they were deployed in Abuja and Lagos.

‘’In Abuja, security agents were providing cover for hoodlums and bandits as they unleashed attacks on protesters and other citizens. Some of these bandits were freighted from neighbouring states to the nation’s capital. At least, five citizens have been killed by these state-sponsored vermin in the FCT. This is all because the president is skittish about citizens’ power; he is more concerned about securing his seat than the lives of Nigerians.’’

Really, by what divination will a collection of ‘’hoodlums’’ go to courtrooms and cart away files – and even target media houses? That is the machination of ‘’political hoodlums’’.

I read the eyewitness account of one Mark Odigie on the onslaught on TVC in Ketu, Lagos, on Wednesday. Mark who is the husband of Tope, co-host of TVC’s ‘Your View’, said he was within the premises at the time of the blitz waiting for his wife. He said it was clear to him that the attackers were not ‘’miscreants’’.

Odigie: “I couldn’t call these guys miscreants. They were pretty much educated, and spoke good English. They were very organised, and chanted; No killing, just destroy, we have our targets. It was at that point that I began to wonder what was really going on. They were very clear about what they came for.”

Also, on the menacing of EndSARS protesters in Abuja by ‘’hoodlums’’, Dennis Amachree, an ex-DSS director, said it was a senator who hired the hoodlums to attack the peaceful demonstrators and not the secret service. The DSS also publicly denied complicity.

But why has that senator not been named and arrested by the DSS, if really he was acting by his own design?

As a matter of fact, we are witnessing the rise of new squads of terror who subsist above the law. They escape culpability owing to their facelessness. Mass atrocities could be committed but the crime will be dismissed with a blame on ‘’hoodlums’’. Who are these hoodlums? Are they from Mars?

We have to tame and section this new monster. It is the government’s job to show, in all sincerity, that it is not the piper.

Na political hoodlums dey spoil our country.

Fredrick Nwabufo is a writer and journalist

Twitter: @FredrickNwabufo

By Peter Okolie

Onitsha (Anambra), Oct. 24, 2020 (NAN) Hoodlums in Onitsha, Anambra, have destroyed the statue of Nigeria’s first president Dr. Nnami Azikiwe, erected in the city.

The hoodlums are suspected to be some of those who hijacked the #EndSARS protest to wreak havoc.

The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that the statute, located at Denis Memorial Grammar School roundabout in Onitsha, was erected months ago by Gov. Willie Obiano to further beautify the city.

While vandalising the statue, the hoodlums, armed with dangerous weapons including machetes, were heard venting their anger against the late Nigerian statesman.

“You are the cause of our trouble,’’ was one of the uncomplimentary remarks the hoodlums chanted.

One of Azikiwe’s kinsmen, Mr Victor Ononye, described the incident as “heresy and sacrilegious’’.

He said Dr Azikiwe must be expressing regrets at the action as the deceased statesman was one of the architects of independent Nigeria.

“What happened at the DMGS Roundabout, Onitsha, which I saw with my own eyes, evoked tears,’’ he said.

He called the hoodlums, who hung a disused tyre on statue before dousing it with petrol and torching it, many unprintable names.

“They decapitated the hand and went away with his title staff. That is the height of ingratitude by ignorant people who know nothing about history,’’ he said.

Ononye said the hoodlums destroyed all the ornaments used in beautifying the site of the statue.

“They were few in number. Why the police, a stone throw away to the roundabout, could not intervene, was a mystery.

“All the iron bars erected round the site were removed. All the decorative lights and materials around the site were vandalised.

“I saw two vigilante men brandishing rifles and riding on a motorcycle. They stopped and the boys hailed them and they rode off.

“It is a pity! Zik of Africa; the sage, who facilitated the end of the Nigeria civil war; Zik who built Nigeria’s foremost University for excellence in the education, doesn’t deserve this,’’ he lamented. (NAN)

Men of the Oyo State joint security task force, Operation Burst, have arrested seven people in connection with invasion and carting away of empowerment materials worth N200 million at the residence of Senator Teslim Folarin.Some residents of the area had reportedly alerted officers of the security outfit to the development.They moved to the scene to stop further looting and plundering.

Most of the equipment had been looted before the security men got to the house.Seven of the the looters, identified by the residents,  were arrested in situ.

The lawmaker’s elder brother, Mr Yinka Folarin, who spoke with journalists, confirmed the development.

He said the equipment carted away were empowerment materials  meant for 11 local government areas that constituted Oyo central senatorial district.

He explained that the empowerment programme was shifted due to the state of the nation.

According to him the distribution of the materials  had been scheduled for November 6th before the unfortunate incident. (With additional reports from Oyo Insight)