PDP predicts Atiku, Kwakwanso’s return from APC

The Peoples Democratic Party has expressed the confidence that their former  members who are now in the opposition party, including former Vice President Atiku Abubakar will be brought back to the party before the general election holding in February.

The National Secretary of the PDP, Prof. Wale Oladipo, who said this in Ile Ife on Friday, at a press conference, said that the party had begun moves to bring back its former members back.

He said that the PDP was working hard in all the states to ensure that President Goodluck Jonathan emerge victorious in the presidential election, where he would face stiff opposition from Gen. Muhammadu Buhari (retd.) of the All Progressives Congress.

He said, “The PDP has started efforts  to bring back some of our  former chieftains who are now in opposition party, All Progressives Congress, including former Vice President Atiku Abubakar.  The Kano State  Governor, Dr. Rabiu Kwakwanso, and others will also be brought back very soon.

“The reconciliation  committee of the PDP recently set up by the National Working Committee  of the party will meet with all former members of the party in the APC and other political parties before the next general elections.

“The move is not limited to these politicians alone, the PDP will bring back all former leaders of the party who have defected due to one misunderstanding or another. They will be welcomed back to their base.”

Oladipo, who urged Nigerians to support President Goodluck Jonathan to continue in office beyond 2015, said that the president had achieved a lot despite the security challenge confronting the nation.

Islamic State targeted in 23 air strikes by U.S., allies

The United States and allies staged 23 air strikes on Islamic State targets in Syria and Iraq on Thursday, the Combined Joint Task Force said on Friday.

A dozen strikes near the Syrian cities of Kobani, Ar Raqqah and Al Hasakah destroyed Islamic State vehicles, buildings and fighting positions and also hit a large Islamic State unit.

Eleven strikes in Iraq targeted Islamic State units, buildings, vehicles, equipment, a shipping container and a weapons cache near the cities of Taji, Al Asad, Fallujah, Baiji, Al Qaim and Mosul.
Islamic State fighters have taken parts of Syria and Iraq in a bloody campaign to establish an Islamic caliphate.

Chibok schoolgirls’ parents blast Jonathan

Two-hundred and sixty-two days after their daughters were kidnapped from school, some of the distraught parents of the students of Government Secondary School, Chibok, Borno State, on Thursday criticised President Goodluck Jonathan for not fulfilling his promise to rescue the girls from the custody of Boko Haram.

The abduction of the 219 girls from their hostel at night on April 14, 2014 has attracted global outrage and the President had promised several times that the girls would be rescued alive.

Nine of the abducted girls’ parents, during their meeting with the BringBackOurGirls group on Thursday in Abuja, carpeted the President for failing to bring back the schoolgirls.

The leader of the parents, Rev. Mark Enoch, accused the government of having a hand in the abduction of the girls, noting that the principal of the school in Chibok had, few hours before the abduction, locked the girls in their hostel and warned them not to leave.

Enoch explained that the relatives of the principal and the school matron were able to rescue their daughters from the sect, leaving other girls in captivity.

“This is intentional, the hand of government is in the kidnapping; we want the government to bring back our girls. If they cannot do it alone, they should seek the assistance of the United Nations and some advanced countries, the distressed father said.

The cleric, who appreciated the BBOG for not giving up on the girls, noted that but for the activities of the coalition, the issue of the girls would have been forgotten given the remote location of the Chibok community.

Another parent, Mrs. Samuel Abana, asked the President to fulfil the promise he made in July, 2014, when he met with the parents at the Presidential Villa, Abuja. The President had told the parents that the government would secure the release of the girls.

Abana, who broke down in tears while speaking, recalled that the Federal Government had initially denied the abduction before Jonathan met with the parents and pledged to rescue their daughters.

“I want to remind the President of his promise when he met with us; he promised to rescue our daughters, he said he would bring the girls back, but six months later, there is no result. Mr. President, will you fail to rescue them, if your daughter is abducted? If you can’t do it alone, invite the United Nations to come and rescue our daughters,” she said.

Another parent, Bulama Jonah, recalled how the school principal sent his daughter home because she had not paid N300 for testimonial certificate, adding that the girls had just two subjects to do in their examinations before they were taken away by their abductors.

“The saddest thing was that my daughter was sent home because of N300 just a day before she was kidnapped; I gave her the money for her testimonial and she went back to school only for her to be abducted,” he said.

Mrs. Martha Enoch said she was tired of government’s failed promises, and urged it to take whatever action was necessary to rescue the seized girls.

“Government kept saying they would bring back the girls, but if they can’t bring them alive, they should bring their dead bodies,” she stated.

The BBOG lamented the failure of the President to mention the issue of the Chibok girls in his New Year broadcast, stressing that it showed that the government did not care about them.

Few days after the girls were abducted, Boko Haram claimed responsibility for the kidnapping. It released a video of the girls while the sect’s leader, Abubakar Shekau, boasted that the young girls, most of who were said to be Christians, had been converted to Islamic religion and that they would be given out in marriages at a token.

While unconfirmed reports said that some of the girls had died of snake bite in the forest where they were kept, a handful had escaped from the insurgents’ captivity.

The United Nations in August had announced rehabilitation facilities for the escaped Chibok girls.

In a statement on the UN website, the United Nations Population Fund had said that it was working in collaboration with the World Health Organisation and the United Nations Children’s Fund to set up clinics to provide health screening for any of the girls coming back, as well as educating those who had escaped.

The representative of the UNFPA in Nigeria, Ms. Rati Ndhlovu, had also been quoted as saying, “The girls are running from home and they have no menstruation pads and have nothing to use. They need water. They need the basic things that keep a woman dignified.”

Scores died in Yobe outside Church Attack

Several people were injured on Thursday outside an evangelical church in Gombe, the Gombe State capital, when a suicide bomber set off his explosive vest amid the country’s ongoing battle against an Islamist insurgency.

“There was an explosion outside the ECWA church this morning. A suicide bomber who was restrained from getting into the church blew himself up,” Abubakar Yakubu, who heads the Nigeria Red Cross in Gombe, told the AFP.

“Luckily no one was killed but some people were mildly injured.”

A witness told AFP that the man arrived during the service at the Evangelist Church of West Africa in Gombe and refused to park his motorcycle outside a security barrier set up by volunteers.

“He insisted on riding through the barrier,” said Dahiru Badamasi, who lives in the neighbourhood.

“It was while he was arguing with the volunteers that his suicide belt exploded.”

Another witness heard an explosion and rushed outside.

“I saw a man leading three children with their new dresses stained with blood,” said Jummai Maifada.

The North-East has seen a relentless string of attacks blamed on Boko Haram militants.

Gombe, capital of the eponymous state, has until recently been spared the violence that has shaken the neighbouring states of Yobe, Borno and Adamawa, where Boko Haram has taken around 20 towns.

But attacks have increased in recent weeks.

Meanwhile, there was panic on New Year eve in Gombe as a large explosion was heard at the Army barrack in the town.

It was learnt that two suicide bombers tried to smuggle their ways into the Mammy Market at the Army barracks but were asked to be frisked by soldiers.

They refused and they were turned back by the soldiers on guard.

However, the explosive devices they strapped on their bodies went off killing the two suicide bombers and injuring those within the vicinity including the soldiers who just turned them back.

An eyewitness, who preferred anonymity, told our correspondent on the telephone from Gombe that, “Two suspected suicide bombers arrived the scene at about 8pm local time on a motorcycle but vehemently refused to be searched by the security men at the gate.

“Just moments after they were refused passage by the soldiers, they detonated the bomb strapped on them right there at the gate.”

He said the two corpses of the suicide bombers laid on the floor on Wednesday night and the soldiers sustained varying degrees of injuries but there was no death on the part of the security men.

He said the entire place had since been cordoned off by the military.

Seven people had died in a bus explosion Wednesday in a village close to Potiskum, in Yobe State.

Search teams battle rough weather in hunt for AirAsia wreck

Ships and aircraft criss-crossed the seas off Borneo on Friday hunting for the wreck of an Indonesia AirAsia passenger jet, but bad weather again hindered the search for the plane and the black box flight recorders that should reveal why it crashed.

An official said 30 bodies had been recovered, along with pieces of the broken-up plane, in the Indonesian-led search for Flight QZ8501 that is concentrated on 1,575 square nautical miles of the northern Java Sea.

Strong winds and heavy seas have stopped divers from looking for the fuselage of the Airbus A320-200, which plunged into the water on Sunday while en route from Indonesia's second-biggest city Surabaya to Singapore with 162 people on board.

"Waves were between 3 and 4 meters today, making it difficult to load bodies onto ships and between ships," Fransiskus Bambang Soelistyo, head of Indonesia's search and rescue agency, told reporters in Jakarta, adding that some vessels would search through the night.

"Tonight we are sending tug boats which should make the (body) transfers easier."
He said two of the 30 bodies found were strapped to their plane seats.

The multinational search operation based in Pangkalan Bun, the town in southern Borneo closest to the search area, was bolstered on Friday by experts from France's BEA accident investigation agency, which attends all Airbus crashes.

Officials said the French team's hydrophones - sophisticated underwater acoustic detection devices - and towed sonar equipment brought by other international experts could not be used on Friday because of high waves.

But naval vessels from Indonesia, the United States and Singapore with in-built anti-submarine capabilities were using sonar to sweep the sea floor.

STALL THEORY
The cause of the crash, the first suffered by the AirAsia group since the budget operator began flying in 2002, is unexplained. Investigators are working on a theory that the plane stalled as it climbed steeply to avoid a storm about 40 minutes into a flight that should have lasted two hours.

Officials earlier said it may take up to a week to find the black boxes, which investigators hope will unravel the sequence of events in the cockpit during the doomed jet's final minutes.
"After the black box is found, we are able to issue a preliminary report in one month," said Toos Sanitioso, an investigator with the National Committee for Transportation Safety. "We cannot yet speculate what caused the crash."

Even in bad weather, the search for the AirAsia plane is less technically challenging than the two-year search for an Air France jet that crashed into deep Atlantic waters in 2009, or the fruitless hunt for Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 that disappeared last year.

Given Flight QZ8501 crashed in shallow seas, experts say finding the boxes should not be difficult if its locator beacons, with a range of 2,000 to 3,000 meters (6,560 to 9,800 ft) and a battery life of about 30 days, are working.

Bodies plucked from the sea are being taken in numbered coffins to Surabaya, where relatives of the victims, most of whom were Indonesian, have gathered. Authorities have been collecting DNA from relatives to help identify the bodies.

The first funeral of one of the crash victims was held on Thursday, and on Friday officials said the remains of three more had been identified, including a flight attendant.
AirAsia boss Tony Fernandes tweeted that he would accompany the body of one victim home from Surabaya.

"I'm arriving in Surabaya to take Nisa home to Palembang," he wrote. "I cannot describe how I feel. There are no words."

"UNBELIEVABLY" STEEP CLIMB
The plane was traveling at 32,000 ft (9,753 meters) and the pilots had asked to climb to 38,000 ft to avoid bad weather just before contact was lost. When air traffic controllers granted permission to fly at 34,000 ft a few minutes later, they got no response.

A source close to the investigation said radar data appeared to show the aircraft made an "unbelievably" steep climb before it crashed, possibly pushing it beyond the A320's limits.

Hadi Mustofa Djuraid, a Transport Ministry official, told reporters that authorities were investigating the possibility that the pilot did not ask for a weather report from the meteorological agency at the time of takeoff.

He added that pilots were required to do so before flying.
Indonesia AirAsia's president director, Sunu Widyatmoko, said in a text message: "We will make a release shortly" on that aspect of the investigation.
The Indonesian captain, a former air force fighter pilot, had 6,100 flying hours on the A320 and the plane last underwent maintenance in mid-November, according to Indonesia AirAsia, 49 percent owned by Malaysia-based AirAsia.
Three airline disasters involving Malaysian-affiliated planes in under a year have spooked travelers.
Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 disappeared in March en route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing with 239 passengers and crew and has not been found. On July 17, the same airline's Flight MH17 was shot down over Ukraine, killing all 298 people on board.
On board Flight QZ8501 were 155 Indonesians, three South Koreans, and one person each from Singapore, Malaysia and Britain. The co-pilot was French.

Wall St. gains on first day of trading in 2015; energy dips

(Reuters) - U.S. stocks rose on Friday, kicking off the new year with a broad rally, though crude oil prices continued to be pressured and kept energy shares in negative territory.

The day's gains were widespread, with nine of the 10 primary S&P 500 sectors climbing. The only group to fall was energy .SPNY, the weakest sector of 2014, which lost 0.4 percent. Marathon Oil (MRO.N) fell 0.9 percent to $28 while Newfield Exploration (NFX.N) sank 2.4 percent to $26.47.

Crude oil CLc1 fell 0.7 percent in a volatile session that saw it rise as much as 3.5 percent then fall as much as 2.3 percent, as a supply glut outweighed investor positioning at the start of the new year for a possible recovery. Oil is set for its 13th negative week out of the past 14, and is at levels not seen since 2009.

Wall Street ended 2014 with solid gains for the year and fourth quarter, though a broad decline Wednesday pushed the S&P 500 into negative territory for December. Still, the market has had an upward bias since mid-December, with the S&P rising in seven of the past 10 sessions.

"Last year was a tough year for active managers and hedge funds, and this year, people are determined to not get left behind. It's a New Year's resolution for some people to jump into the market," said Joshua Brown, vice president of investments at Fusion Analytics in New York.

The S&P 500 is about 1 percent away from its record close, and despite the day's advance, market participants will be questioning whether current levels are justified.

"I'd be a lot more comfortable if the market was, say, 20 percent lower," Brown said.
Despite the day's rise, major indexes remained on track for a negative week, with the Dow down 0.6 percent, the S&P off 1 percent and the Nasdaq off 1 percent.

On Thursday, when the stock market was closed for the New Year's holiday, General Motors Co (GM.N) announced three new vehicle recalls, the biggest involving the ignition-switch design of several SUV and pickup truck models. Shares fell 0.5 percent to $34.73.

In the latest economic data, construction spending unexpectedly fell in November by 0.3 percent, while the pace of growth in the U.S. manufacturing sector slipped to a six-month low in December, according to the Institute for Supply Management.

At 10:03 a.m., the Dow Jones industrial average .DJI rose 88.36 points, or 0.5 percent, to 17,911.43, the S&P 500 .SPX gained 5.86 points, or 0.28 percent, to 2,064.76 and the Nasdaq Composite .IXIC added 17.06 points, or 0.36 percent, to 4,753.11.

Advancing issues outnumbered declining ones on the NYSE by 1,631 to 1,198, for a 1.36-to-1 ratio; on the Nasdaq, 1,390 issues rose and 972 fell for a 1.43-to-1 ratio.

The benchmark S&P 500 index posted 8 new 52-week highs and 6 new lows; the Nasdaq Composite recorded 40 new highs and 7 new lows.

Army to court-martial Brig-Gen., 21 others in Lagos

The Nigeria Army will on January 16, 2015 arraign one brigadier-general and 21 other officers before a General Court Martial in Lagos, Mr. Femi Falana, SAN, who is a defence lawyer to some of the soldiers confirmed to The PUNCH on Wednesday.

While the army authorities have yet to release the charges preferred against the accused, The PUNCH learnt that the officers would go on trial for offences they allegedly committed in line of duty while battling insurgents in the North-East zone of the country.

Falana said he had yet to receive the charges against his clients.

The GCM is to hold at the 9 Brigade Officers’ Mess, Ikeja Cantonment, Lagos.

The accused officers include Brig.-Gen. J.O. Komolafe; Colonels A. Laguda, V. Ebhaleme, V.O. Ita, and I.B. Maina.

Others are Colonels I. A Aboi, I.M Kabir, M.H. Abubakar, A. A. Egbejule, N. N. Orok, C. A. Magaji, A.O. Agwu, A.J.S. Gulani, O.O. Obolo and A.M. Adetuyi.

The only Major among the accused officers is M. M. Idris and the others include Captains M Adamu, O. A. Adenaike, M. Gidado, M.M. Clark and S. Raymond.

S.O. Olowa is the only second lieutenant among the officers.

Their arraignment comes on the heels of the amendment of the convening order for the General Court Martial by the General Officer Commanding 81 Division of the Nigeria Army, Maj. Gen. T.I. Dibi, on August 6, 2014.

The amendment of the convening order replaces Brig.-Gen. I. O. Rabiu with Brig.-Gen. A. M. Sabo as the President of the court.

Other members of the panel are four other brigadiers-general – C. O. Ayara, J. C. Egbudom, S. A. Yaro, and J. Sarham.

The order indicated that Brig.-Gen. A. M Aliyu was on the waiting list.

It also nominated Lt. L.B. Berepiki and Warrant Officer Peter Ahmadu as additional prosecution counsel.

Meanwhile, the GCM set up by the Nigerian Army to try three officers and 13 soldiers of the 331 Artillery Regiment, Biu, Borno State, in relation with the April 14, 2014 abduction of the students of Government Secondary School, Chibok, has freed one of the officers, Capt. O.O. Ogunrinde.

Ogunrinde, who was arraigned on a two count of conduct prejudicial to service discipline and relaying information without verification was found to be innocent by the court and was discharged and acquitted.

The Army Captain was the second-in-command at the 331 Artillery Regiment, Biu, when the Chibok girls were abducted by the insurgents.

The abduction of the girls has provoked global outrage but most of the girls remain in custody of the violent Ismaic sect, Boko Haram, trill date.

Ogunrinde was said to have been arraigned for allegedly relaying information without verification concerning the number of girls abducted.

The defence counsel to Ogunrinde, Mr. A.I. Omachi, said that the trial court decided the case in favour of his client, having found him not guilty of the charges levelled against him.

Ogunrinde was the only Army personnel who escaped a jail sentence by the court, which sentenced two officers and 13 soldiers in relation with the Chibok incident on December 23, 2014.