PDP describes Buhari's US trip 'fruitless'

13:37 27/07/2015
Abuja - The Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) has described President Muhammadu Buhari's trip to the United States as 'pointless and fruitless', Punch reports.

The PDP’s National Publicity Secretary, Olisa Metuh, at a media briefing in Abuja on Sunday, said events after Buhari’s visit to the US indicated that neither the President nor his party, the All Progressives Congress, had learnt anything from the trip.

He said he is disheartening that rather than secure any sort of tangible gain for the fight against terrorism, which has lost steam under the APC watch, with insurgents, who were pushed to the verge of surrender by the Goodluck Jonathan administration, now surging back and spreading into the country, the country got nothing but exchanges and disagreements between the Presidency and their American hosts.

He urged the government to face the business of governance and the fight against insurgency with every sense of seriousness.
Read more at Punch

Obama leaves US for Africa trip to Kenya, Ethiopia

07:46 24/07/2015
Washington - President Barack Obama left Washington for Kenya on Thursday in a trip that will also include a stop in the Ethiopian capital and a visit to the home of the African Union.

The landmark trip to Obama's ancestral homeland of Kenya, where his father was born, is his first as president and is also the first time a sitting US president will visit Ethiopia and the AU's headquarters in Addis Ababa.

The first African-American president of the United States is expected to address regional security issues and trade, and also touch on matters relating to democracy, poverty and human rights in the region.
Joining him on the trip is National Security Advisor Susan Rice, foreign policy aide Ben Rhodes and White House spokesperson Josh Earnest.

Before heading off on the trip - Obama's fourth time to Africa since taking office - he spoke about the promise, and difficulties, on the continent.

Incredible dynamism
"Despite its many challenges - and we have to be clear-eyed about all the challenges that the continent still faces - Africa is a place of incredible dynamism, some of the fastest-growing markets in the world, extraordinary people, extraordinary resilience," Obama said ahead of the trip.

He said Africa "has the potential to be the next centre of global economic growth", speaking at an event for the African Growth Opportunity Act, US trade legislation which aims to help bolster Africa's prosperity.
Obama has travelled to Africa more than any other sitting US president, and talked about the "deep" ties between Africa and the United States before setting off on the trip.

"There have been times where there have been misunderstandings, and there have been times where there have been suspicions. But when you look at every survey, it turns out that the people of Africa love the United States and what it stands for," he said.

Rights row
Obama has not yet been to Kenya during his White House tenure, with a previous trip delayed by Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta's indictment for war crimes by the International Criminal Court.
Those charges were suspended last year - in part, prosecutors say, because the Kenyan government thwarted the investigation.

His trip has also come under fire by rights groups, and more than 50 African and global human rights organisations have called on him to publicly meet democracy activists on the trip.

They voiced concerns about "grave and worsening" rights challenges in both Kenya and Ethiopia.
The charges against Kenyatta, and the fact Ethiopia's government won 100% of parliamentary seats in a recent disputed election, has raised questions about whether Obama should have made the trip at all.
In Kenya, Obama will attend a Global Entrepreneurship Summit, aimed at promoting businesses that promise to lift many more Africans out of poverty and help insulate societies against radicalisation.

In Addis Ababa, Obama is expected to address leaders of the African Union, remarks that may touch on Africa's democratic deficit.

There are no official visits scheduled for Obama to see his relatives while in Kenya, officials said.
Obama has said he had "never truly known" his father, was born in Kenya's far west, in a village near the equator and the shores of Lake Victoria.

A pipe-smoking economist, he walked out when Obama was just two and died in a car crash in Nairobi in 1982, aged 46.

Obama has previously made personal visits to Kogelo, the home of many of his Kenyan relatives, most recently in 2006.

- AFP

PDP cries out over murder of six chieftains in Benue

18:12 23/07/2015
Makurdi -  The Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) in Benue State has raised an alarm over the murder of six of its chieftains in the state, reports Vanguard.

The party said the heinous crimes against its members has so as far gone largely unchecked as security agencies had no tangible evidence of arrests of perpetrators of the crimes.

Godwin Ayihe, the Publicity Secretary of the PDP in the state in a statement on Wednesday, said it is unacceptable to leaders of the PDP that six of the top party's members have been murdered in cold blood while security agencies seem to have no answers to the situation.

He called on security agencies and Governor Samuel Ortom to unravel the masterminds of the heinous crimes.

However, in a swift reaction, the All Progressives Congress (APC) in a statement by its state Chairman, Abba Yaro, absolved the party from the killings and blamed internal wrangling in the PDP for the development.

Read more at Vanguard.

APC chieftain assures Igbos

21:53 23/07/2015
Abuja - A chieftain of the All Progressives Congress (APC) Mr Osita Okechukwu, on Thursday assured that President Muhammadu Buhari would not neglect the Igbos in appointments.
Okechukwu, who is the spokesman of the party in the South-East, gave the assurance in an interaction with journalists in Abuja.
He said that the president still had more than 500 appointments to make and that the Igbos would be carried along fully.
He said the appointments made so far were based solely on professional competence, but expressed confidence that Igbos won't miss out in Buhari's government.
''My message for my people is that in the next one or two years, they will have nothing to complain about because the Federal Government of Nigeria is a big elephant.

''He has more than 500 appointments to be made and the juicy ones are also there, and even the sensitive ones are also there; we cannot miss out,'' he said.
The spokesman urged the people to be patient as the government had just spent one month out of its 48-month mandate.
''My people from the South-East are complaining over the appointments made so far; yes, that's a valid argument but the arguments could be accessed on two grounds.
''One, the president has 48 months mandate; he has just completed one or two which falls below five per cent of the mandate he was given.
''On the other hand, he has over five hundred appointments to be made no matter the delay, to be made between now and December or by this time next year.
''I personally feel it is very much on the side of impatience to assess the president with less than 30 appointments, because there are other crucial appointments still waiting,'' he said.
He explained that the appointment of service chiefs should not be politicised, considering the current level of insecurity in the country.
He expressed confidence in the president's disposition to fairness.
''I do not see President Muhammadu Buhari whom I have worked with for over 12 years neglecting or trying to breach that area of the Constitution that says appointments must reflect federal character,'' he said.

- NAN

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Boko Haram holds territories in the NE: governors

06:52 24/07/2015
Abuja - Boko Haram Islamists are still holding on to some territories in the troubled northeast, state governors from the region said on Thursday, after the military claimed a series of major victories against the Islamists.
Borno and Yobe governors told a monthly national economic council meeting in Abuja that the rebel group -- whose insurgency has claimed more than 15 000 lives since 2009 -- still controlled five municipalities within their states.
"On Boko Haram issues, governors of Yobe and Borno raised the alarm of five local government areas of the two states still being in possession of the insurgents," an official document made available to reporters after the meeting said.
Borno, Yobe and Adamawa states in the northeast have suffered the brunt of the Boko Haram insurgency.

A regional military coalition of Nigeria, Niger, Chad and Cameroon has claimed a series of major victories against Boko Haram since launching sweeping offensives against the jihadists in February.
But the Islamist fighters, who recently pledged allegiance to the Islamic State extremists who have captured swathes of Iraq and Syria, have been pushing back.
The Borno and Yobe governors called for an "increase in military deployment and provision of sophisticated military equipment in those areas", the three-page document said.
"Insurgents are still hiding in the Sambisa forest," it added.
It is widely believed that many of the more than 200 school girls kidnapped from their school in Chibok, Borno state, by Boko Haram jihadists in April last year are being held in the sprawling forest.
Gunmen killed eight people in a raid on a village in Borno state on Wednesday, in the latest violence blamed on the Islamists, a local resident and a vigilante said.
The attack was unleashed the same day as twin suicide bombings in Cameroon and a series of blasts at two bus stations in Nigeria that left at least 50 dead.

- AFP

Nigeria marks polio-free year, raising global eradication hopes

06:52 24/07/2015
London - Nigeria marked its first year without a single case of polio on Friday, reaching a milestone many experts had thought would elude it as internal conflict hampered the battle against the crippling disease.
It means the country could come off the list of countries where polio is endemic in a few weeks, once the World Health Organization (WHO) can confirm that the last few samples taken from people in previously affected areas are free of the virus.

This achievement turns up the pressure on Pakistan, where most of the few polio cases in the world remain, to follow suit.

Nigeria's polio-free period, dating from July 24, 2014, is the longest it has gone without recording a case. The hope is that next month the entire African continent will have gone a full year without a polio infection, with the last case recorded in Somalia on August 11, 2014.

All this brings tantalisingly closer the prospect that polio will soon become only the second human infectious disease after smallpox to be eradicated.

"It's an extraordinary achievement. It really shows the value of government leadership and taking ownership of the programme," said Carol Pandak, the director of Rotary International's polio program.

A disease that until the 1950s crippled thousands of people a year in rich and poor nations alike, the poliomyelitis virus attacks the nervous system and can cause irreversible paralysis within hours of infection.
It often spreads among young children and in areas with poor sanitation - a factor that gives it freedom in areas of conflict and unrest. But it can be halted with comprehensive, population-wide vaccination.

Nigeria had struggled to contain polio since some northern states imposed a year-long vaccine ban in mid-2003. Some state governors and religious leaders in the predominantly Islamic north alleged the vaccines were contaminated by Western powers to spread sterility and HIV/AIDS among Muslims.
Traditional leaders throughout the country pledged in January 2009 to support immunisation campaigns and push parents to have their children vaccinated. But at about the same time Boko Haram militants began a bloody insurgency to carve out an Islamist state in the northeast.
Driving the project
In 2012, Nigeria still seemed to be losing the battle against polio, recording more than half of all the world's cases.
But Oyewale Tomori, Nigeria's chairman of the Expert Review Committee on Polio Eradication says Abuja's prioritisation of the polio fight, including establishing emergency operations centres to coordinate vaccination campaigns and reach children in previously inaccessible areas, helped drive the project on.
Tactics such as engaging the traditional and religious leaders, and polio survivors in immunisation campaigns and using thousands of voluntary workers to build trust, were also vital, as will be the continuation of high levels of vaccine coverage to keep the virus at bay.

"We're well on the way," Tomori told Reuters. "It's a time of great happiness, but we don't want to celebrate prematurely."

Since the Global Polio Eradication Initiative was launched in 1988, there has been a more than 99 percent reduction in polio cases worldwide.

Back then the disease was endemic in 125 countries and caused paralysis in nearly 1,000 children a day. By contrast, so far in 2015, there were only 33 new cases worldwide - 28 of them in Pakistan, with the rest in Afghanistan.

Nigeria still has two more years before it, along with the whole of Africa, can be certified officially polio-free by WHO, but health experts say its achievement bodes well for wiping the disease out. Global health experts still hold out hope for an end to polio worldwide by 2018.

Pandak says it's now Islamabad's turn to feel the huge international pressure Abuja came under to commit itself to finding every last polio case and vaccinating every last child.

"When you're the last country in a region to still have polio, there's a lot of pressure from the global community and from your neighbours," she said.

"Everybody spurs you on, polio gets talked about at the highest levels of government, and that pressure is something Pakistan is acutely politically aware of."

While Pakistan has more polio cases than anywhere else this year - neighbouring Afghanistan has recorded five - it is doing better, with 70 percent fewer cases this year than last.

- Reuters

Union decries killing of Nigerian in South Africa

08:46 24/07/2015
Johannesburg - The President of Nigeria Union in South Africa, Ikechukwu Anyene, on Thursday, decried the killing of a Nigerian in Hillbrow, Johannesburg.

The Nigerian, Nonso Odo (30), from Amangwu-Nkwerre in Imo state, was allegedly tortured to death by South African Police officers on Thursday.

Emeka Ezinteje, Public Relations Officer of the union, disclosed in Johannesburg that the union decried the incident after receiving the report.

Ezinteje said reports indicated that the deceased, who was a barber, quarreled with a fellow Nigerian in their business centre.
"After the quarrel, the fellow Nigerian stopped a police patrol team. The barber ran when he saw the patrol team."

According to Ezinteje, the police patrol went after Odo; 30 minutes later, the police brought back the lifeless body of the barber.

"Not satisfied with the police report, some members of the union went to see the corpse in hospital."
He said Sergeant Nengobeni, a South African police officer at the hospital, denied that the police killed him.
The officer said the police were flagged down by somebody while the victim took to his heels.

Nengobeni said by the time the police got to the victim, he was tired and gasping for breath and was pronounced dead on getting to the hospital.

Ezinteje said the union suspected foul play and would get to the root of the case.
"We have also received reports by eyewitnesses that Odo was beaten to death.
"We have ordered a post mortem to ascertain the cause of Odo's death. The union will also take this case to the Independent Police Investigative Department, for more investigation.

"The department is responsible for investigating wrong doings by police officers," he said.
He also said the incident had been reported to Nigeria's Consulate General in Johannesburg and Hillbrow Police Station, also in Johannesburg.

- NAN