Returning officer dissociates self from Abia North result

Umuahia -  Dr Ihekwaba Chukwugoziem, Returning Officer for Abia North Senatorial District in the March 28 National Assembly elections, has disassociated himself from  results emanating from the election.
Chukwugoziem said in an interview with newsmen in Umuahia on Friday, that he could not announce the results because of ''irregularities and massive fraud.''

He claimed that the irregularities and fraud were perpetrated in all the five local government areas of the constituency comprised of Ohafia, Arochukwu, Bende, Isuikwuato and Umunneochi.
The returning officer said that it was discovered from the field that fake documents were used to record the results and later transferred into the original result sheets.

He also said that hoodlums later besieged the collation centre in Ohafia local government headquarters and threatened to kill him, if the verdict was not in their favour.

Chukwugoziem claimed that the attack by the hoodlums and sporadic shootings made him to become apprehensive as to which result to announce.

 "My concern was how we will escape from the place alive,’’ he said, adding that they were later rescued by security operatives.

According to him, he had made recommendations in a report to the Resident Electoral Commissioner, Prof. Selina Oko for the conduct of a re-run in the area.

Chukwugoziem said that Oko had constituted a committee to review the results.
He also told reporters that he refused to sign the result document because ‘’those who were the collating officers at a point were not sure of what they were doing.''

"As the returning officer, it is my duty to announce the results but I have not done so,’’ he said.
The returning officer called for a re-run to be strictly supervised by security operatives from the polling units to the collation centres.

He said that he had been receiving threat calls and messages in his cell phone since the end of the elections.

- NAN

Weeping families await bodies of slain Kenyan students

2015-04-04 12:03
Nairobi - Quietly weeping, families desperate for news of sons and daughters feared killed at the Kenya university massacre by Islamist gunmen wait for hours at a morgue in the capital Nairobi.
Cargo planes carrying corpses flew on Friday afternoon from the northeastern town of Garissa to Nairobi after the day-long killing spree on Thursday by Somalia's al-Qaeda-linked al-Shabaab insurgents.
"I cannot talk," were the last whispered words from Salome, a 20-year-old economics student, to her father Peter Wainaina, about an hour into the attack. Then she hung up.
Wainaina, 72, called her after receiving a terrible text message: "Al-Shabaab is killing us. Goodbye. If we don't make it, I loved you all.
"After that I tried later, but her phone was off," he said sadly. "Since then I have no news - I called the registrar of the university, but he could not give any information."
He waits beside around a hundred others, sitting in tents erected on the morgue car park, waiting in sombre, dignified silence, some quietly weeping.
Inside, 20 bodies lie on on stretchers on the ground, in front of the doors of refrigerated cabinets.
Draped with a sheet, their faces are revealed: 11 men on one side, nine women on the other.
'I still have hope' The attack on Thursday at the university in Garissa was Kenya's deadliest attack since the 1998 bombing of the US embassy in Nairobi, and the bloodiest ever by the al-Shabaab.
"I tried to call him, but the phone was out of contact. I tried to contact him all day," said John Nyang'au Masiria, a 36-year old casual labourer, describing his desperate hope that he may still find his younger brother Josh alive.
Josh was a mathematics student at Garissa University.
In small groups, families enter a room, looking at images of the faces of the bodies, screened on a television, to see if they recognise the dead.
For some, the long wait ends in screams and tears, breaking the heavy silence outside.
In small tents, Kenya Red Cross workers and church groups try to comfort those relatives who collapse.
Felix Barasa, 49, an accountant, waits for news of his 21-year old daughter Diane, who was studying to be a teacher.
He rushed to the morgue after a relative thought she saw the body of Diane - but Barasa said they had made a mistake, and still remains hopeful.
"I talked to her the night before the attack... when I woke up in the morning, I tried to call her but it was not ringing," he said.
"I'm still having hope - she may be in the hospital or somewhere in the bush."

- AFP

Nigeria bus station bombed

2015-04-04 12:04
Kano - The death toll from an explosion near a bus station in Gombe, northeast Nigeria, has risen to 10, a doctor and nurse at the hospital treating the injured said on Friday.

"We received 10 dead bodies from the blast at the Bauchi motor park [bus station]," a doctor at the Gombe Specialist Hospital said, requesting anonymity as he is not authorised to speak to the media.

"Five of the dead were claimed by relatives. We still have five others in the morgue. Eight people are now in the emergency ward being treated for wounds sustained during the blast."

The blast happened at about 18:30 on Thursday after a woman enquired about the destination of a bus leaving for the central city of Jos at the terminus, witnesses said.

It bore the hallmarks of the Islamist militant group Boko Haram, who have hit a number of bus stations and crowded markets in recent weeks, including with suicide bombers.

A nurse at the Gombe Specialist Hospital, who also asked to remain anonymous, confirmed the death toll and said of the injured: "Eight people are now responding to treatment.

"The wounds are mostly cuts and burns."

- AFP

Jonathan moves personal effects from Aso Rock

Abuja - President Goodluck Jonathan and his family members have started moving their personal belongings out of the Presidential Villa, Abuja, few days after the President lost his re-election bid, Punch reports.
Some buses loaded with travel bags were seen moving out of the President’s official residence at about midday on Friday.

A source said the early removal of the personal effects of the first family might have been necessitated by the need for the renovation of the residence ahead of the May 29 handover date.
For renovation work to commence on time, the President may have to be operating from outside the residence in the days ahead.
Read more at Punch

Jonathan, Buhari meet after election

Abuja - President Goodluck Jonathan and the President-elect, Muhammadu Buhari, have met for the first time after last week’s presidential election, Premium Times reports.

The two leaders met behind closed-doors at the Aso Rock presidential villa Friday.
Also read: Ex-President Shagari congratulates Buhari

Both sides are expected to commence transitional processes ahead of the May 29 date for the transfer of power.

Jonathan lost Saturday’s election ?to Mr. Buhari, ?and conceded defeat, the first time an incumbent Nigerian leader would do so.

In a telephone call to Mr. Buhari ahead of his official declaration as winner, President Jonathan urged the incoming president to make time for their teams to meet and? commence transitional processes.
Read more at Premium Times

Mimiko, Fayose shun meeting with Jonathan

President Goodluck Jonathan. (File: AFP)

 

Abuja -  Gov. Olusegun Mimiko of Ondo, his Ekiti state counterpart, Ayodele Fayose have boycotted a meeting between President Goodluck Jonathan and Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) governors in Abuja, reports PM News

Other PDP governors that shunned the meeting which took place at the Presidential Villa on Wednesday were Governors Sule Lamido of Jigawa, Isa Yuguda (Bauchi), Babangida Aliyu (Niger), Gabriel Suswam (Benue) and Ibrahim Shema (Katsina).

The meeting was attended by chairman of the PDP Governors’ Forum and Akwa Ibom State Governor Godswill Akpabio, Governors Emmanuel Uduaghan (Delta), Ibrahim Dankwambo (Gombe) and Ramalan Yero (Kaduna).

Other governors in attendance were Lyel Imoke (Cross River), Seriake Dickson (Bayelsa), Sullivan Chime (Enugu), Jonah Jang (Plateau), Martin Elechi (Eboyin) and Idris Wada (Kogi).

Of all the governors who shunned the meeting, only Fayose delivered his state to Jonathan in the Saturday’s presidential poll.
Read more at PM News.
Read more on: 2015 elections

Boko Haram uses children as human bombs

By: Magdalena Mis  
2015-04-02 07:20
London - Boko Haram Islamist militants in northern Nigeria are using children as human bombs and targeting women and girls for particularly horrific abuse, including sexual slavery, the UN human rights chief said on Wednesday.

Zeid Ra'ad Al Hussein told a special session of the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva that his office had received reports of Boko Haram using children as its first line of attack, as "expendable cannon fodder".

"Bodies of children around 12 years old have been found strewn across such battlefields," Zeid said. Boko Haram has been attacking towns and villages in northern Nigeria and border regions of neighbouring Cameroon, Chad and Niger.

"The group has also repeatedly used young children as human bombs, including a case of a 14-year-old girl carrying a baby on her back who detonated a bomb in a marketplace," Zeid said.

The council condemned "the heinous terrorist activities of Boko Haram", including the abduction of more than 200 girls from a school in Chibok, northeast Nigeria, a year ago, and called for "drying up all possible sources of financing" for the group.

It called for those who have committed crimes on behalf of Boko Haram to be brought before competent courts of the affected states and held accountable.

Boko Haram has killed thousands and displaced about1.5 million people during a six-year campaign to carve out an Islamic state in northern Nigeria.

A joint offensive by Nigeria and its neighbours has succeeded in driving the group from most of the positions they controlled earlier this year, reversing militants' gains that forced Nigeria to delay its February presidential election.

Zeid said that appalling atrocities committed by the group had created a critical human rights situation not only in Nigeria, but in the whole Lake Chad region.

Girls enslaved
Both children and adults have been abducted by the group on a massive scale, he said.
Women and girls have been enslaved and subjected to sexual violence, forced labour and compulsory conversion, he said, citing reports from witnesses and survivors.

Retreating Boko Haram militants have murdered their so-called "wives" - women and girls they held as slaves - and other captives as military offensives by Nigeria and its neighbours advanced, Zeid said.
He said he had received information suggesting that the security forces of Nigeria and other nations combating the insurgency had also committed human rights violations, and called for a thorough and transparent investigation.

"Such violations intensify the suffering of the people - and [...] this can only create resentment, facilitate recruitment of new insurgents, and foster vicious cycle of greater extremism," he said.

The insurgency has sharply reduced farming activity and many people are facing severe food shortages, Zeid told the Council.

"Because the farms of northern Nigeria provide produce across the Sahel, this also means that the price of several basic foods has risen sharply across the region," he said.

The current dry season has intensified Boko Haram incursions into Cameroon, Chad and Niger, spreading bloodshed and desolation even more widely, the rights chief said.

"What was initially a localised crisis is fast growing to very disturbing regional dimensions," he added.

- Reuters