Category: News

Pelumi Olajengbesi, lawyer of the twelve arrested and detained associates of Sunday Adeyemo, has issued a 48-hour ultimatum to the DSS to release his clients owing to their continued detention despite an existing release order for their release.

Addressing the media in Abuja Friday morning, Mister Olajengbesi said failure of the Director General of DSS to release his clients will birth contempt proceedings against him.

He said he looks forward to having the DSS boss locked up in prison for his disregard to the release order of the court for all twelve of his clients.

Mister Olajengbesi told the media that the release order duly signed by a Federal High Court was served the DSS since Monday.

The Defence Headquarters in Abuja has confirmed that bandits breached National Defence Academy (NDA) security fences and kidnapped an officer.

The Director of Defence Information (DDI), General Benjamin Sawyerr, confirmed the incident to our reporter on Tuesday.

But Sawyerr said the bandits sneaked into the NDA complex at about 0215 hours and abducted an officer and killed two other officers.

He said the operation was well planned as the bandits knew exactly who they wanted and went straight to his accommodation.

“Yes the NDA security was breached by bandits, they sneaked in at about 02:15 hours. It must have been a well planned operation. They went straight into the officers’ accommodation. They knew where they were going. They killed two officers and abducted two.

“The NDA is working closely with troops of 1 Division and NAF. So, we expect that we’ll have positive response from there soon. It is unfortunate thing. NDA is a training institution for cadets, it’s not for cadets to be carrying weapons up and down but I can assure you that NDA will address the situation,” the DDI said.

Joe Igbokwe, an aide to the Lagos State Governor, Babajide Sanwo-Olu, has alleged a threat to his life by the Indigenous People of Biafra, IPOB.

Igbokwe alleged that IPOB was threatening his life because he is against the philosophy of the group and the Eastern Security Network, ESN.

In an open letter, the Ohanaeze Ndigbo chieftain described ESN as bandits bullying, threatening, killing, and destroying people of the Southeast.

Igbokwe addressed the letter to the Inspector General of Police, Anambra Police Commissioner, Commander of the Intelligence Response Team, IRT, Igbo governors, House of Representatives members, and other stakeholders in the Southeast.

Benue State Governor, Samuel Ortom, on Friday, warned the president, Major General Muhammad Buhari (retd.), against turning Nigeria into a cow republic.

Governor Ortom, who was reacting to the statement from the Presidency indicating that President Buhari had approved recommendations of a committee to review “with dispatch,” 368 grazing sites across 25 states in the country, “to determine the levels of encroachment,” said that with the latest move, it was crystal clear that the president is planning to plunge the country into crisis.

“In a country where insecurity has reached an all-time high with hundreds being killed by armed herdsmen, bandits, and other terrorists, the Presidency is only bordered about animals and their safety and is deploying all machinery and arsenals of government to impose grazing reserves and cattle routes on Nigerians. This is unacceptable!

“The Buhari administration has turned a blind eye to the unimaginable levels of encroachment on lands belonging to Nigerians by cattle. Mr President has never come out even once to condemn activities of herdsmen and the attacks they visit on innocent people. The only time the President is heard speaking about atrocities of the herders is when he defends them.

“It is now clear that the Presidency wants to plunge the country into avoidable crisis. Otherwise, what is the justification for President Buhari’s insistence that grazing reserves be established across the country when Nigerians have openly kicked against the policy and have embraced ranching in place of open grazing.

International oil companies operating in Nigeria are owing the Niger Delta Development Commission (NDDC) over $4 billion, the Minister of Niger Delta Development, Godswill Akpabio.

Mr Akpabio said this Thursday while briefing journalists at the State House in Abuja at the weekly briefing organised by the presidential communications team.

He said the NDDC law mandates IOCs to pay three per cent of their revenue to the agency, but oil firms have been defaulting for years. The NDDC was set up in 2001 as an interventionist agency to aid the development of the oil-rich Niger Delta.

“All of them have been defaulting and efforts are ongoing to get them to pay,” Mr Akpabio disclosed.

Governor Aminu Masari has urged Katsina State citizens resident in areas prone to activities of bandits to acquire weapons and defend themselves.

Masari noted that it is morally wrong for people to submit cheaply to the bandits without any attempt to defend themselves, according to a statement by his Media Aide, Malam Abdu Labaran,

The governor said this during his visit to Jibia Town to condole with the families of 10 people that were recently crushed by operatives of the Nigerian Customs Service (NCS) through reckless driving.

According to him, security is everybody’s business, pointing out that it is not the responsibility of the government alone.

“It is the people’s meek submission that emboldens the bandits to continue with their heinous activities with murderous frequency.

“People must divorce their minds from the mistaken notion that security is government’s sole responsibility alone,” Masari said.

Meanwhile, the governor assured that those killed by the customs operatives would not die in vain.
“Government is perusing all the necessary legal steps to seek redress for the families of the deceased as well as those who sustained various degrees of injuries.
“Legal experts have already been consulted to advise on the way forward to ensure speedy (legal) resolution of the matter,” he said.

Chief Superintendent of Police, CSP Celestine Umeh, the Nigeria Police Force and the Akwa Ibom State Commissioner of Police have been ordered by the Akwa Ibom State High Court sitting in Uyo to pay the sum of N4 million as compensation to a businessman, Clement Asuquo Etim

There has been a one time reportage of how businessman, Etim , was arrested, detained and tortured for three straight days after catching CSP Umeh in his matrimonial bed with his wife in May 2020, at Aba Ukpo Estate in Uyo.

Etim had filed a case against Umeh and in a 46-page court document, he explained how Umeh who is now the Divisional Police Officer (DPO) in charge of Itu Division in Akwa Ibom State, violated his fundamental right to private and family life guaranteed by Section 37 of the Nigerian Constitution when he evaded his matrimonial home in his absence at Aba Ukpo Estate in Uyo to be with his wife, Mrs Laurentia Asuquo Etim.

Inibehe Effiong, a Lagos-based human rights lawyer representing the Plaintiff, Etim, filed the lawsuit with Suit No: HU/FHR.72/2020 at the High Court of Akwa Ibom State, and asked the court to enforce the fundamental rights of his client to dignity of the human person, personal liberty, private and family lives and freedom of movement.

Delivering judgement on August 16, 2021, the presiding judge, Justice Charles Ikpe, found that the police violated the fundamental right of the Applicant to personal liberty by detaining him for three days without justification. He also confirmed that Mr Etim was tortured thereby violating his right to dignity of the human person.

The court found guilty of violation of the fundamental right of the Applicant to private and family life by intruding into the matrimonial home of Mr Etim without his consent, hence, the compensation judgement was ruled.

Seeing justice take its course, Effiong commended the judge for his industry and the lucidity expressed in the judgment.

A 32-year-old businessman, Ezekiel Igbokwe, has been arrested by the Ogun State Police Command for allegedly killing his wife’s lover, Victor Olatundun.

Igbokwe was said to have killed Olatundun after he caught him having sex with his wife at their matrimonial home.

The suspect allegedly committed the offence at about 12am at Peace Lodge on Itura Street, Awa Ijebu, Ijebu-North Local Government Area of Ogun State.

The suspect, who committed the crime on Wednesday, July 27, was arrested by the police the following day.

Igbokwe and his 28-year-old wife were among the 23 suspects paraded at the Ogun State Police Command headquarters, Eleweran, Abeokuta, on Thursday, for various offences ranging from murder to illegal possession of firearms and ammunition.

Igbokwe, who said he was a businessman, explained that he had returned from his trip to Onitsha and met Victor on top of his wife on their matrimonial bed.

He said he picked a machete in the toilet and cut the victim in the neck and hand.
Olatundun reportedly died on the way to the hospital.
Igbokwe, who deals in electronics, said he was born in Ago Iwoye, Ogun State.

He said, “I travelled to Onitsha on July 25, and when I came back on July 27, I met a man inside my room making love to my wife. Then we started fighting. The man was stronger than me. When I saw he could overpower me, I got a cutlass in my toilet and dealt him blows in the hand and neck. On the way to the hospital, the fuel in the car finished and he died.”
Igbokwe said he committed the crime due to anger, adding that he never meant to kill the victim.
He claimed that he had never met Olatundun before, saying he also never suspected that his wife was having an extra-marital affair with

We learnt that Igbokwe and his wife, Juliet, have three children aged nine, seven and five.
Juliet, who sobbed intermittently, said her alleged lover had been pressurising her for a relationship for some time.

She explained that she had always told him she was married, but the victim never gave up until he ended up at their matrimonial home on that night.

Juliet, who said she sold snuff, said Victor was her supplier and he pestered her for six months before she finally gave in.
She said she suspected that the deceased used a charm on her, as she could not explain how it all happened.
She said, “He had been disturbing me that he wanted to marry me, but I said I was married.

“On the day of the incident, I really can’t say if he used a charm on me. All I know is that he called me that he wanted to see me and I told him not to come; he knew my house and when he came, I didn’t know what happened.

“He used to come and deliver snuff to me in the house. On the day of the incident, he told me he was coming from somewhere and that it was already late. He wanted to sleep in our place till the next day. He didn’t know that my husband was away. He tried to sleep with me, but later he didn’t.”

Juliet, who claimed that she got married to her husband in 2005, said the husband did not take good care of her and the children.
She said their marriage had been turbulent and fraught with fights and quarrels.

The mother of three said each time there was a fight, her husband would leave the house for months.

President and founder of Living Faith Church Worldwide, Bishop David Oyedepo has denied benefiting from any government in Nigeria since he was born on September 27, 1954.

The African richest pastor made the assertion on Sunday during a sermon at the church’s headquarters in Ota, Ogun State.

He restated how God instructed him to warn Nigerians in 2015 against the current government. According to him, he saw trouble befalling the nation by President Muhammadu Buhari’s administration.

He said, “A lot of people were washing their mouths on me, 2015 when I told them, ‘you are heading for trouble’.”

He told me. I saw trouble, I saw Nigeria under stress. He confided in me: warn them.

“I am a zero beneficiary of any political era in my life. Ask them. I have never taken a ballot box in my life. I have grown outside that realm, by grace,” he said.

“When I wasn’t grown, when I was crawling, it was not God’s plan for my life.”

It is not about… I will still tell you whether you want to hear it or not. Now see your trouble since 2015.

“You can’t access His plan because you are experienced in the Faith. You need to be in love. He shows me,” he added.

The Minister of Labour Chris Ngige has urged striking Nigerian doctors to be humble and stop competing with God, lamenting incessant strike by health workers.

National Association of Resident Doctors (NARD) called an indefinite nationwide strike on August 2 to press home their demand for the implementation of a Memorandum of Understanding they signed in March 2021.

The MOU contained issues bothering on the welfare and other issues affecting the doctors.

Mr Ngige, who last friday said he cannot continue to waste his time meeting with striking doctors, said God gave doctors power to save lives and doctors must not compete with God but discharge their duties with humility.

“We don’t create lives, God creates.

We only preserve people’s lives through the act of God.

In doing so, God has given us some powers and those powers are his own to create.

“But there is something God does not want, God does not want when he gives you powers you use it to try to say that you are like him or you are competing with him.

God loves you to do that which he has asked you to do; to use that power with humility,” Mr Ngige said.

Speaking on Thursday at the 2nd Summit of Medical Elders Forum (MEF) held in Abuja, Mr Ngige said the medical profession is in great danger and doctors must learn to be humble and not play God while discharging their duties.

“At no time in the history of medical association am I seeing our association and our profession in danger as I am seeing now.

Many people will not see it but from where I am sitting and standing, I can see danger ahead,” he said.

The minister lamented incessant strikes by Nigerian medical doctors, saying “Doctors should ask themselves questions; why is it that it is when your colleagues are in government that you go on the greatest number of strikes.

Some of these colleagues were Presidents, Secretary Generals of NMA and even NARD.”

“Dr Onyebuchi Chukwu, Dr Isaac Adewole faced plenty of strikes, since our government came I have consolidated four strikes.

Something is wrong.

We must start by telling ourselves the truth,” he added.