Nigerian Army Removes Commander Whose Battalion Revolted Yesterday

The Defence Headquarters on Thursday announced the redeployment of Major General Ahmed Mohammed as the General Officer Commanding, 7 Division of the Nigerian Army, Maiduguri, Borno State.

The redeployment is coming on the heels of the mutiny by soldiers of the 7 Division, who were reacting to the killing of six of their colleagues by members of the dreaded sect, Boko Haram.

The dead officer and soldiers were ambushed by the Boko Haram members during a patrol in the Chibok area of Borno State.

The 234 schoolgirls abducted by Boko Haram were taken in Chibok.

They were of the Government Girls Secondary School, Chibok, Borno State.

Major General Chris Olukolade, the Director of Defence Information, announced the redeployment of Mohammed at a news conference in Maiduguri.

“The GOC has been redeployed based on the decision of the headquarters,” Olukolade said.

He said an acting GOC had been appointed to oversee the affairs of the division.

He promised that the redeployment of the GOC would not affect the ongoing anti-terrorism war of the Nigerian military.

“Let me assure that the military will sustain the current tempo in the fight against insurgents,” he said.

Olukolade, however, denied reports that Mohammed was wounded in Wednesday’s protest by some soldiers, who fired at his official car during a sympathy visit.

He said: “The GOC or his aides were not wounded during the incident.

“Let me say again that nobody was injured during the incident.”

The spokesperson said the Defence Headquarters had instituted a military inquiry into the unruly behaviour by the soldiers, who fired shots during the GOC’s visit.

He said: “On May 13, our troops, who had been on an assignment in Chibok, were returning to Maiduguri when they were ambushed in Dalwa, few kilometres to the city.

“One officer and five soldiers were killed, while a number of others were wounded.

“The division has embarked on the normal recovery processes to recover wounded soldiers for treatment and to evacuate the bodies of those killed to the morgue.

“The General Officer Commanding was touched by the incident.

“So, he wanted to sympathise with the troop by addressing those present.

“In the process, some soldiers became unruly and began to fire some shots into the air.

“The situation was quickly brought under control and normalcy restored as there was calm in the cantonment and normal operational activities are ongoing.”

Olukolade said the inquiry would come out with exact situation of things based on which the military authorities will take next action.

He described the situation as sad, saying: “The Nigerian Army is poised to uphold its principle of discipline and loyalty to service.”

IGI owes staff salary, fails to remit pension, housing funds

High profile insurance company, Industrial and General Insurance Plc, is in arrears of staff salary, The Eagle Online has learnt.

The company last paid some of its staff in March, this newspaper learnt on Sunday.

Those who have been paid their March salary are junior and intermediate staff, it was learnt.

The management staff are yet to earn their March salary.

As at press time, no staff had been paid April salary.

Apart from this, the company has also failed to remit pension and housing contributions made by staff in the last two years.

This is more so for the housing fund.

The Eagle Online learnt that the housing fund has not been remitted for over two years.

The company has only just paid part of the personal income tax of staff, over which the Lagos State Government sealed its premises recently.

It was gathered that the government has only given the company a grace period to pay up or be sealed again.

It was learnt that things went out of hand for the company after its Executive Vice Chairman, Sir Remi Olowude, fell ill about two years ago.

Olowude has been out of the country since then.

A source said that the management that has been in place since the exit of the vice chairman has failed to put the welfare of the staff first as Olowude did.

Soldiers go haywire in Borno, fire shots as commanders address troop

Some soldiers on Wednesday went haywire while they were being addressed by some General Officers Commanding.

Contrary to rules of conduct, the soldiers fired shots during the address.

This led to pandemonium at the Maimalari Cantonment in Maiduguri, the Borno State capital, where the soldiers were being addressed.

The shots were said to have been fired by the soldiers as a reaction to the arrival of the corpses of four of their colleagues who were shot dead during patrol duties in Chibok area of the state.

It was in Chibok that 234 schoolgirls of Government Girls Secondary School were abducted by members of dreaded sect, Boko Haram, on April 14.

The Director of Defence Information, Major General Chris Olukolade, who confirmed the development, said a Board of Inquiry would be set up by the 7 Division of the Nigeria Army to probe the incident.

Olukolade added: “There is calm in the cantonment and all normal operations activities are ongoing.”

We won’t swap Chibok girls for Boko Haram – Jonathan

President Goodluck Jonathan has told members of Boko Haram to perish the thought that his government would swap arrested members of the dreaded sect for the 234 schoolgirls abducted in Chibok, Borno State.

Jonathan was reacting to a video release by the leader of Boko Haram, Abubakar Shekau, that the girls would only be freed if the government released its members arrested during various operations by the military.

In the video, through which some parents of the abducted girls have identified their daughters who were writing their final secondary school examination at the Government Girls Secondary School, Chibok, Shekau said the government should forget seeing the girls again unless the demand of the group was met.

But on Wednesday, Jonathan spurned the offer during a meeting with the Minister for Africa Affairs of Britain, Mark Simmonds.

Speaking with newsmen after the meeting, Simmonds said: “He (Jonathan) made it very clear that there will be no negotiation with Boko Haram that involves a swap of abducted schoolgirls for prisoners.”

The meeting also discussed the planned international rescue mission for the girls.

If I Speak, Heads Will Roll – Gov. Shettima Threatens

Borno state Governor, Governor Kasim Shettima has stated that he is under pressure not to speak the truth. The governor while confirming that 36 of the girls abducted from their school in Chibok, Borno state, have been identified in the video released yesterday by the Boko Haram leader Abubakar Shekau, said there is little a governor can do. The governor stated, “Leadership calls for restraint. Believe me, if I should speak, heads will roll.”

Reports from CNN suggests that not all the girls in the video shown by Boko Haram were taken on April 14 because some of the relatives of the missing girls could not identify most of them in the footage while another report from Human rights lawyer, Femi Falana to CNN, suggests only two parents were able to identify their daughters and other girls may have been taken in abductions which occurred years ago.

Stop Killing Boko Haram Members – Buhari Tells FG

Former Head of Military Ruler and Chieftain of the Congress for Progressive Change, CPC, Major General Muhammadu Buhari has asked the Federal Government to stop the clampdown of Boko Haram insurgents, saying Niger Delta Militants were never killed or properties belonging to them destroyed.

Buhari who spoke on Sunday on a Liberty Radio programme, Guest of the Week monitored said accused the government of killing and destroying houses belonging to Boko Haram members while the Niger Delta militants get special treatment.

The former dictator said that unlike the special treatment given to the Niger Delta militants by the federal government, the Boko Haram members were being killed and their houses demolished by government.

While accusing President Jonathan of failing from the beginning to address the security situation in the country, Buhari said he has never been in support of the state of emergency in Borno, Yobe and Adamawa state.

According to Buhari “what is responsible for the security situation in the country is caused by the activities of Niger Delta militants. Every Nigerian that is familiar with what is happening knows this. The Niger Delta militants started it all.

“What happened is that the governors of the Niger Delta region at that time wanted to win their elections. So they recruited the youths and gave them guns and bullets and used them against their opponents to win elections by force.

“After the elections were over, they asked the boys to return the guns; the boys refused to return the guns. Because of that, the allowance that was being given to the youths by the governors during that time was stopped.

“The youths resorted to kidnapping oil workers and were collecting dollars as ransom. Now a boy of 18 to 20 years was getting about 500 dollars in a week, why will he go to school and spend 20 years to study and then come back and get employed by government to be paid N100,000 a month, that is if he is lucky to get employment.

“So kidnapping becomes very rampant in the South -South and the South -East. They kidnapped people and were collecting money.

“How did Boko Haram start? We know that their leader, Mohammed Yusuf started his militant and the police couldn’t control them and the army was invited. He was arrested by soldiers and handed over to the police.

“The appropriate thing to do, according to the law, was for the police to carry out investigations and charge him to court for prosecution, but they killed him, his in-law was killed, they went and demolished their houses.

“Because of that, his supporters resorted to what they are doing today.

You see in the case of the Niger Delta militants, the late President Umaru Musa Yar’adua sent an aeroplane to bring them, he sat down with them and discussed with them, they were cajoled, and they were given money and granted amnesty.

“They were trained in some skills and were given employment, but the ones in the north were being killed and their houses were being demolished.

They are different issues, what brought this? It is injustice”.

While fielding questions in English in the same programme, Buhari said that the promoters of the All Progressive Congress (APC) were aware of the challenges ahead of them in an effort to get the party registered, saying “the road to merger is quite rough.

“The ruling party, with its enormous resources and its capacity for coercion has seen it as a threat and they have said it. Personally, I came to realise since 2007 that Nigerians believe that the only way to stabilise the system of multi-party democracy is for the opposition parties that have representatives right from Councillors to the National Assembly come together to deliver their constituencies democratically.

This is the only way you can counter PDP’s enormous physical and material influence in the country”

He expressed optimism that the All Progressive Congress will be registered saying “by nature, I am an optimist. If I were not an optimist, I will not attempt to contest the presidency three times and end up in the Supreme Court three times. I believe we are going to be registered.

“There is a law guiding party registration which states that you must have your headquarters in the nation’s capital that can be identified by INEC and you must have a convention. All the three parties involved have held their conventions and have agreed to forsake our existing parties and go for APC.

“At the national level, we must have those who will run the party. As soon as we meet these criteria and INEC acknowledge that, 30 days after the acknowledgement, we are APC whether INEC write us and give us the registration or not”.

- See more at: http://gistpage.com/p/1976/stop-killing-boko-haram-members-buhari-tells-fg#sthash.nKtOgYDA.SjjmsPDf.dpuf

I Know Where The Female Students Are But I Wont Tell Anybody ––Senator Opens Up

Nigeria is at a cross road and that is the explanation for this madness going on. While international community and countries like the USA, France, China, the UK are strategizing on how to rescue the over two hundreds girls kidnapped from their School in Chibok, Borno State, a Nigerian senator representing Borno North, Senator Ahmed Zanna, has said he wont tell anyone where the abducted girls are being kept.
As an insider, he was asked where the girls are, the senator said: “I won’t tell where they are being kept again because I have told the Federal Government where they are likely being kept before the video was released. Now that I saw the video, the vegetation in the clip confirmed what I have told them earlier. 
“If they want to know where they are being kept, then the government should remember what I told them before. What I can tell you is that the girls are no longer here in Chibok.”
Senator Zanna made this declaration on Monday on CNN when he was being interviewed by Isha Sesay.

When the lawmaker was asked by the reporter about what he felt about the latest video released on Monday by the Boko Haram terror group showing some of the abducted school girls, the senator said he experienced mixed feelings when he saw the video.

Sen. Zanna opined that while he was happy to know that the kidnapped girls are still alive, he also informed that he felt sad to realise that the teenagers are being used as ransoms by the terrorists in exchange for some of the members captured by the military.

While saying he was privy to information about the movement of the insurgents when the girls were abducted, the Senator said he told security agents that contrary to their belief that the abducted girls were in Sambisa forest with their abductors, that they have since been split and ferried through Lake Chad to neighbouring countries among which he said were Chad, Niger and Cameroon.

Senator Zanna blamed the military for failure to rescue the girls before the development given that they got all the necessary information about the movement of the insurgents from him personally.

- See more at: http://gistpage.com/p/1973/i-know-where-the-female-students-are-but-i-wont-tell-anybody#sthash.1CZLVTWj.4mqI0p6r.dpuf