A photojournalist with Naij.com, an online news portal, earlier reported missing, Adeyinka Adeparusi, has been confirmed killed in an accident in Abuja.
The online newspaper in a statement released Tuesday afternoon said that Adeparusi was involved in a motorcycle accident and that he died on the spot.
He had earlier been reported missing by the management of the newspaper which said that he was last seen alive at about 1.00 pm on Sunday leaving his house in Kugbo area of Abuja.
The Editor – in – Chief of Naij.com, Bayo Olupohunda, who spoke to our correspondent on the phone on Tuesday afternoon said that the photojournalist’s body was traced to a hospital mortuary in Abuja where it was learnt that he had been hit while on a motorcycle, presumably the popular transportation mode called okada. He was rushed to the hospital where he died, it was learnt.
Naij.com in a news story on its website said friends and colleagues of the late journalist got worried after he became unreachable on Sunday.
An award-winning photojournalist who graduated from Lagos State University School of Communication, where he bagged double honours in Photojournalism and Cinematography, Yinka was the winner of the photojournalism award of the 6th Wole Soyinka Award for Investigative Reporting in 2011.
In 2013, he received the People’s Choice Award for Human Rights Photography in Africa and the German Development Media Awards.
The Paris-based medical charity, Medicines San Frontieres, MSF has again raised the alarm over the humanitarian crisis in the North east of Nigeria, saying that thousands of children below the age of five are dying daily of starvation and disease.
The group, more commonly referred to as Doctors Without Borders, said this on Tuesday in reaction to a recent survey which it said has forced the Nigerian authorities to stop denying the crisis.
Natalie Roberts, the emergency program manager for MSF in the North east Nigeria, told journalists that the group hopes that the official recognition of the calamity by the Nigerian government will help bring urgent aid “before older children also start dying.”
According to the new survey which was conducted in two refugee camps in the city of Maiduguri, “a quarter of the expected population of under-5 children is missing, assumed dead.”
“Northeastern Nigeria’s under-5 mortality rates are more than double the threshold for declaring an emergency,” Roberts said in an interview.
“We only saw older brothers and sisters. No toddlers are straddling their big sisters’ hips. No babies strapped to their mums’ backs. It’s as if they have just vanished,” she added.
The MSF, UNICEF and various other humanitarian agencies in the North east had issued several warnings about looming disaster in the region, caused by malnutrition.
However, the leadership of the National Emergency Management Agency, NEMA, had consistently denied the claims.
Coordinator of NEMA in the northeast, Mohammed Kanar even alleged that the MSF were using claims of malnutrition in the region as a ploy to get more money from international donor agencies.
At another instance, Chairman of the Borno State Emergency Management Agency, Satomi Ahmed, announced that the state government was treating over two thousand malnourished children at a centre in Maiduguri.
All these denial were in spite of a publication by the Associated Press, Showing severely malnourished children being taken care of at an intensive feeding centre run by the MSF in Maiduguri.
“The difference now is that our figures have been checked by the statistician general, and we have official recognition from the government that they believe this is happening,” Roberts told journalists.
She noted further that an estimated 75,000 children could die within a year due to the fact that only a third of the requested funding have been received.
The United Nations says that about $1 billion is needed to provide adequate nutrition for malnourished children for the rest of the year and into 2017.
A US-based charity, Save the Children, said that an important funding conference in Geneva, Switzerland, in December could yield the desired result, otherwise “it won’t be long before we could be in the painful position of having to turn away sick and starving children.”
Some 2.6 million people including more than 1 million children have been displaced by the Boko Haram insurgency that has claimed more than 20,000 lives, and destroyed farms and properties that may never be appropriately valued in monetary terms.
The humanitarian crisis has been worsened by reports of diversion and stealing of food items donated for the wellbeing of victims of the insurgency, by IDP camp officials as well as security agents.
President Muhammadu Buhari has set up a presidential committee, headed by Theophilus Danjuma, a retired army general, to coordinate aid and the rebuilding of the northeast.
Meanwhile, there has been an increase in the rate of attacks by the Boko Haram terrorists in recent weeks with a number of suicide bombings recorded in various parts of Borno State.
Barely one week after the burial of five Nigerian soldiers, including Muhammed Abu-Ali, a lieutenant colonel and commanding officer in Borno state, who were killed by the Boko Haram Terrorists, another senior army officer has been killed by the insurgents on Tuesday.
Reports have it that the officer, B.U. Umar, a lieutenant colonel and commanding officer of 114 TF battalion of the Nigerian Army was ambushed alongside his troops on Monday morning between Bita and Piridang.
According to the PREMIUM TIMES, the army officer’s vehicle stepped on an improvised explosive device, IED, but he was not hurt, however, as he came out of the vehicle to assess the level of damage, the terrorists fire and killed him in the process.
The late Umar and his men were said to be traveling to Yola in Adamawa State from Bita in Borno State when the incident occurred.
The full casualty from the attack is not yet clear.
Umar was a member of the 48 Regular Course in the Nigeria Defence Academy, NDA, and had only took over as commander of the 114 battalion about three weeks ago,
Army spokesman, Sani Usman, said he was not aware of the incident, adding that he would seek confirmation from appropriate authorities.
There have been renewed attacks by the Boko Haram recently as cases of bombings and suicide attacks have become regular within the last two months.
Over the weekend, there emerged reports on some online platforms suggesting that the Boko Haram terrorists had reinforced and bought better arms using the money purportedly paid to them by the federal government as ransom for the release of the twenty-one Chibok girls.
The reports were however refuted by the acting Director Defence Information, Rabe Abubakar, who described it as a figment of the writer’s imagination.
He reiterated government’s stance that no ransom was paid for the release of the 21 girls, rather it was an effort involving the International Committee of Red Cross as well as the Swiss Government.
The Niger Delta Avengers militant group has said that it has blown up three pipelines belonging to Agip, Oando and Shell oil companies.
Mudoch Agbinibo, the group’s spokesman, made this known in a statement on Tuesday.
“At about 11:45 pm on November 15, 2016, our elite Strike Team 03 struck Nembe 1, 2 and 3 truck line operated by Agip, Oando and Shell.”
Agbinibo stated that the blown pipelines had a “supply capacity of 300,000 barrel per day to Bonny export terminal in Bayelsa State.”
According to him, the action “was in response to the so-called ‘Operation Sharkbite’, an act of terrorism commissioned by the tyranny of the Nigerian Navy establishment and orchestrated by some elements of the ruling class to continuously undermine any effort by the Nigerian State to address the legitimate demands of the people of the Niger Delta.”
The group warned that “time is running out” for the Nigerian government to show that it is committed to finding lasting solution to the crisis, adding that “there is doom ahead”.
The statement read in part: “We are determined to continue this war by all means necessary, until that environment prevails for a genuine dialogue and negotiations within the framework of the sixteen-point key demands presented to President Muhammadu Buhari by PANDEF on the 1st of November, 2016.
“We want Peace with honour, we don’t want the peace of our time. Since that moment the military was drafted into the Niger Delta as an instrument of suppression to our fatherland against all peaceful protests and legitimate demands, the fear had gone.
“The message is getting stronger with more messengers,” the statement concluded.
The Senate has rejected a list of 46 non-career diplomats forwarded to it for confirmation by President Muhammadu Buhari.
Chairperson of the Senate committee on foreign affairs, Monsurat Sunmonu, suggested that the list be returned to the President for ‘re-presentation’.
“I suggest we return the list of non-career ambassadors to the executive so that they can re-present it,” he said during the Senate plenary session on Tuesday.
Sunmonu said that there were more than 200 petitions against the nominees and “we don’t even know where to start.”
However, the committee approved the president’s earlier nomination of 47 career ambassadors.
The foreign affairs committee chairperson added however, that some of the ambassadorial nominees did not meet the requirement for the job.
For instance, Sumonu said that 14 of the nominees have less than 30 months to retire from the civil service, while four others could not recite the National anthem or Pledge.
“The Problem is that some of them did not meet the 30-month requirement,” the committee chairperson said.
“Some have 20, 25, 18 months to retire.”
The committee recommended that their appointments be confirmed nevertheless.
This is the third instance that a presidential request would be turned down by the upper Legislative chamber.
Recall that in October, the Senate rejected a proposal sent by the president, seeking for approval to go ahead with an external borrowing of approximately $30 billion, saying that the presidency had not attached details of the proposal.
Few days later, the red chamber of the Nigerian legislature also refused to consider the Medium Term Expenditure Framework, MTEF, document, on which the 2017 budget will be premised.
According to Senate Leader, Ali Ndume, the document was “empty” and lacked any detail.
He blamed the minister of Budget and National Planning, Udoma Udo-Udoma, and his Finance Counterpart, Kemi Adeosun, for refusing to furnish the senate with details of the MTEF document for consideration.
Last week, the Senate President, Bukola Saraki, was seen at the Aso villa more than once, suggesting that he has been meeting with President Buhari, perhaps to iron out the frosty relationship between the Executive and Legislative arms of government.
Russia’s main anti-corruption body, the Investigative Committee, SK, has accused the country’s Economy Minister, Alexei Ulyukayev, of taking a $2 million bribe in order to endorse a state takeover.
Ulyukayev is the highest-ranking Russian official held since the 1991 coup attempt in what was then the USSR.
According to the spokeswoman of the SK, Svetlana Petrenko, “Ulyukayev was caught red-handed”, receiving a $2m bribe on 14 November for giving a favourable assessment of the Rosneft deal.
The SK said the minister had “threatened” to create obstacles for Rosneft’s operations when it took a 50% stake in another state oil company, Bashneft.
Officials said the apparent sting operation came after months of electronic surveillance, including phone-tapping.
The arrest was big news on Russia’s state-run TV channels, under the headline “Battle against corruption”.
If found guilty, Ulyukayev could face a prison sentence of between 8 and 15 years.
The 60-year-old was an economic liberal in the 1990s and later became deputy chairman of Russia’s Central Bank in 2004 before he was appointed Economy Minister in 2013.
It was only in October that Rosneft, an oil giant controlled by the Russian government, bought 50% of Bashneft for 330bn roubles ($5bn). Bashneft itself was one of Russia’s largest state oil companies.
Russia is in the middle of an economic slump, largely because of the fall in crude oil prices, and had lined up several state companies for privatisation to replenish state coffers.
But the sell-off of Bashneft had been shelved in August, reportedly by the Kremlin because of a dispute over who would take it over.
The controversial privatisation returned to the agenda early in October, apparently because the government needed to raise money.
Ulyukayev promised last month that the entire sum paid by Rosneft would go to the Russian budget.
Economic liberals had fiercely opposed the idea of a state-owned company acquiring the government’s share in another state oil firm. It was seen as a victory for Rosneft’s chief executive, Igor Sechin, who has long been a close adviser to President Vladimir Putin.
The president said last month that he had been “rather surprised” by the government’s earlier position to delay the deal as Rosneft was “strictly speaking” not a state firm as part of it was owned by BP.
A Rosneft spokesperson told the Tass news agency it acquired the Bashneft stake “in accordance with Russian law, on the basis of the best commercial offer made to the operating bank.”
Egypt’s highest court has overturned the death sentence against ousted Islamist President Mohammed Mursi.
Mursi had been condemned to death for his part in a mass prison break during the 2011 revolution.
He was the first president to be democratically elected in Egypt after the revolution, but was removed by the military a year later after street protests against his administration.
Tuesday’s court ruling means he is no longer under threat of execution, although he is serving three lengthy jail sentences.
He was sentenced to 20 years in prison without parole on charges arising from the killing of protesters in December 2012.
The former president was also sentenced to 40 years on charges of spying for Qatar and handed a life sentence on charges of spying for the Palestinian Islamist group Hamas.
The court also annulled death sentences for five leaders of his banned Muslim Brotherhood movement, including its supreme guide Mohammed Badie, convicted in the same case.
Twenty-one life sentences for other members were also overturned.
Mursi escaped from Wadi Natroun jail in January 2011 and was convicted of colluding with foreign militants in a plot to free imprisoned Islamists.
The death sentences were approved earlier this year by Egypt’s highest religious authority, the Grand Mufti Shawqi Allam.
Since overthrowing Mursi in 2013, current Egypt’s President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi has tried to crush the Muslim Brotherhood, which he says is part of a terrorist network that poses an existential threat to the Arab and Western worlds.
However the Muslim brotherhood, Egypt’s oldest political movement, says its activities are entirely peaceful and denies using violent methods.
The Senate President, Bukola Saraki, has been mandated to wade into the looming crisis in the nation’s education sector following the decision of the Academic Staff Union of Universities, ASUU, to embark on a one-week warning strike, starting from Wednesday.
Barau Jibrin, a Kano State senator, raised the motion when the upper legislative chamber resumed sitting on Tuesday.
He said that it was important that the Senate intervenes in the matter in order to avoid a full-blown crisis.
The motion was supported by majority of the lawmakers who also mandated Saraki to lead the way in the dialogue between the lecturers and the federal government.
Recall that the National President of ASUU had announced that the union was embarking on the warning strike to protest government’s non implementation of agreements reached with the government since 2013.
Issues like improved funds for schools, university autonomy, improved welfare and many others.
They also want the President to scrap the use of the Treasury Single Account,TSA, for tertiary institutions, saying that the policy impedes the smooth running of the Universities.
Former Chief of Defence Staff, Alex Badeh, has permanently forfeited $1 million to the Federal Government as he continues to face corruption trial before a federal high court in Abuja.
The Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, EFCC, while investigating the arms deal scam during the administration of ex-President Goodluck Jonathan, had searched Badeh’s mansion located at 6 Ogun River Crescent, Maitama, Abuja on March 6, 2016 and found cash totaling $1 million.
The house, a N1.1 billion mansion, was also taken over by the EFCC and the cash was seized as evidence.
Badeh was later arraigned before Justice Okon Abang of a Federal High Court for an alleged N3.7bn fraud and the mansion and the cash were listed as evidence against Badeh in court.
But the former air chief denied ownership of the mansion and its contents.
The mansion has since been converted to government’s use; it is now being used by the Presidential Committee on the North-East Initiative headed by Theophilus Danjuma, a retired army general.
Sources privy to the investigation told newsmen that the $1 million has been deposited into the Consolidated Revenue Account of the Federal Government since Badeh had denied ownership of everything.
According to experts, even if Badeh is found not guilty in court, he cannot turn around to demand the $1 million or the property as this will amount to perjury which is a criminal offence and carries a jail term.
When contacted on the telephone, Badeh’s lawyer, Samuel Zibri, SAN, insisted that the property did not belong to his client.
“I have checked through my records. The property is not Badeh’s property. I am not aware of any interim order of forfeiture, neither am I aware of it being converted to a Federal Government office,” he said.
In the charges brought against Badeh, he was accused of buying a plot of land at Plot 1386, Oda Crescent, Cadastral Zone A07, Wuse II, Abuja, for N650 million, as well as constructing a shopping mall on the said plot at the sum of more than N1 billion.
The EFCC said that the money was sourced from the treasury of the Nigeria Air Force, in contravention of various sections of the Money Laundering Act.
In the wee hours of 4 November 2016, I got a pop up on my handset alerting me that Pa Olaniwun Ajayi had passed on.
My mind raced quickly towards Pa Ayo Adebanjo, wondering how he would receive the breaking news at his age. All along, I had known the two as inseparable “twins”.
Pa Olaniwun and Pa Adebanjo were close political disciples of Chief Obafemi Awolowo. I had admired their closeness a great deal, studying them at close range.
At every meeting, the two would appear in style, a reason I sometimes got tempted to tag them the ‘Musketeers’.
Papa Awo was very fond of the duo. A day hardly passed without them paying homage to him at his Ikenne home. Without mincing words, the two disciples were functional members of Papa Awo’s kitchen cabinet; some think-tank of sort.
It is a mystery how the two managed to solidify their relationship in the face of oddities in the politics those days.
Pa Adebanjo has always been ebullient, being an extrovert. He is very cerebral and outspoken. On the other hand, Pa Ajayi had the nature of a dove. He was a bundle of intellect, all the same.
I had long concluded that his intelligence quotient was unassailable. I tried to decode the chemistry that bound them together to no avail until I read Pa Adebanjo’s tribute to Pa Ajayi in an interview.
He explained, ” Now I am now alone. I am left with my God.” He was a reliable, dependable and loyal friend. As an Awoist, I can confidently say that he was an Awoist to the core. He really understood what Awoism stands for and practiced it as Chief Awolowo taught us.”
Indeed, the unflagging love for Papa Awo was the secret that kept the duo going. They were both undiluted Awoist. They slept, dreamt and embraced Awoism all through.
Unknown to many, the Awoist philosophy was the brain child of the two and a few others. I knew so much about Pa Ajayi and Adebanjo in my days as a young reporter way back in the 70s. I was assigned to cover the political activities of Papa Awo who, along the line, drew me closer.
I can proudly say that I helped in promoting Awo and Awoism from 1976 till 1987 when he passed on, a factor that endeared me to the family.
I intend to reveal more in my memoir of what really made me an admirer of both Pa Adebanjo and Pa Ajayi.
Mama HID Awolowo had confided in me the kind of respect the husband had for the duo. She told me how the two were so attached to Papa Awo, that she had to allocate rooms adjacent to Papa bedroom during political meetings.
She recalled also how she bought same dresses for them and Papa on many occasions. Mama agreed that Pa Adebanjo and Pa Ajayi were part of the family such that in any of their visiting days, they required nothing other than a vehicle to convey them to places.
They stood physically and emotionally with Pa Awolowo most especially in the days of travails and turbulence that the family passed through.
I had memorable moments with the committed Awoists during electioneering campaigns, most especially from 1978 to 1983 when we all traversed the nooks and crannies of Nigeria, marketing the progressive ideology to Nigerians.
Pa Ajayi fondly called me Olamiti! Olamiti!!. Regrettably, the last time I saw him was in November 25, 2015. That was the day the remains of Mama Awo were committed to mother earth.
He was one of the first Awoists to arrive at the Saint Saviour Church Ikenne. He beckoned to me and asked that I accompanied him to the rest room. Age was already having a telling effect on him. He held on to me as we descended the 20 steps to the rest room. He did not need my assistance as we started climbing back.
All through, he was not panting, but was instead engaging me in political talk. He expressed concern on the deplorable state of the nation, while he blamed the Yoruba on being lethargic on national questions.
And, as if exasperated, he averred, “We have done our best and I hope that those coming behind us will acknowledge our contributions. Nigeria is a complex entity”.
Pa Olaniwun Ajayi was born in Isara on 8 April 1925. He ran one of the leading law firms in Nigeria with a broad financial, corporate, energy and national resources.
Over the years, the firm has consistently provided legal services to some of the biggest corporations in Africa and across the globe, equipping the firm with a good mix of local knowledge and international expertise.
He was one of the few Nigerians who travelled abroad for the Golden Fleece.
On his return, he worked with the UAC where he rose to the position of the Assistant Group Legal Adviser with Chief Ernest Shonekan as his junior in legal department of UAC and later resigned.
Pa Ajayi became a commissioner of Education and later Health under Governor of Western State Brigadier General Oluwole Rotimi after five years of service.
He authored five books including House Of Oduduwa Must Not Fall, Odunola, In Retrospect , Nigeria Africa’s Failed Asset, his autobiography, and Isara Afotamodi: My Jerusalem .
May His Gentle Soul Rest In Peace.
* Folu Olamiti, a Media Consultant, resides in Abuja
