Assistant Inspector-General, AIG Suleiman Abba, has emerged as the new Inspector-General of Police. He will succeed the outgoing IGP, Mohammed Abubakar, who retires today from office after 35 years of service.
Senior government officials confirmed to Nigerian Pilot last night that AIG Abba’s appointment was made public at the Federal Executive Council, FEC meeting yesterday. The meeting was presided over by President Goodluck Jonathan.
Abba is currently in charge of Zone 7 of the Nigeria Police. The incoming IGP was the Aide-de-Camp, ADC to Maryam Abacha when the late head of state, Gen. Sani Abacha was in power.
Indication that AIG Abba would take the plum job emerged during the Sallah celebrations when IGP Abubakar took him to visit President Jonathan.
It was learnt that the Presidency was well disposed to his choice having served in the Strike Force of the former Chief Security Officer, CSO, to Abacha, Major Hamza Al-Mustapha .Abba is seen as the officer needed to curb the Boko Haram insurgency since he did well under the Strike Force.
It was however not clear whether AIG Abba will be automatically confirmed as the substantive police boss when the outgoing IGP Abubakar leaves.
Our sources confirmed that Jonathan settled for the Jigawa-born police officer on the recommendation of the Police Service Commission under an ex-IGP, Mike Mbama Okiro.
According to sources, the decision to announce AIG Abba was taken last Tuesday in Abuja, following a meeting of Police Council chaired by President Goodluck Jonathan, with the 36 state governors as members and the Chairman PSC, Mike Okiro.
The choice of Abba, according to a senior police officer at the Force Headquarters, Abuja, who pleaded anonymity, said is causing a lot of bad blood among the high ranking officers particularly among the Deputy Inspectors General, DIGs, who are members of the management team of the force.
Consequently, there are strong indications that the current DIGs may take the option of bowing out of the force, hence they may not want to salute Suleiman Abba as their new boss.
Abba, Nigerian Pilot gathered had served as the Commissioner of Police in charge of Rivers State, Deputy Force Secretary, Deputy Commissioner of Police (Deputy Force Sec), Assistant Commissioner of Police in charge of State CID, FCT Police Command.
AIG Abba is currently commanding the FCT, Niger and Kaduna states with a police strength of 34,515 officers and men.
There were also speculations that DIG Michael Zuokumor, who is currently the man in charge of Force operation’s department and AIG for Force Intelligence Bureau, FIB, Solomon Arase are also strong contenders, it was gathered that since the appointment of the IGP is political, seniority does not count in this case.
It was also gathered that at least about 60 senior officers would be retiring by July.
Zuokumor hails from Ojobo community in Burutu Local Government Area of Delta State, Arase is a native of Edo State. Abba hails from Jigawa State.
Until his elevation to the rank of DIG on January 15, 2014 by the Police Service Commission, Zuokumor was the AIG in charge of Zone 4, Makurdi, and would be retiring next year while DIG Fakai has about six years to stay in service.
A high-level Nigerian security source told SaharaReporters that Nigeria’s intelligence agencies have received “credible reports that Boko Haram has
developed an ambitious plan to overwhelm and take over Kano, Kaduna, Niger, Kogi and Nasarawa states.”
The source said the Islamist terrorist group plans to carry out its design by intensifying its bombings and choosing locations that would yield high casualty
figures.
“Their move is to encircle [Nigeria’s capital city of] Abuja and increase the level of political instability in the
country,” our source revealed.
The high-level intelligence agent disclosed that the shape of the terror group’s plans have emerged from
the confessions of some Boko Haram insurgents who were captured recently.
“We have also acquired a lot of
information about their [Boko Haram’s] plans through our interrogation of Aminu Sadiq Oguche.” Mr. Oguche,
who was recently extradited to Nigeria from Sudan, is accused of masterminding some of the recent high-
profile bomb blasts in Nigeria, including explosions at a bus station in Abuja that claimed more than 100 lives.
In addition, security agents have gleaned “significant and useful intelligence” from interrogating one
Mohammed Zakari, described as “the chief butcher” of Boko Haram. Mr. Zakari was recently arrested in Bauchi, capital of Bauchi State.
Our source said that Nigeria’s security agencies are stepping up counter-insurgency measures to forestall Boko Haram’s plans to spread its tentacles to the states they are targeting.
“Apart from information we have gathered from interrogating suspects, we are also tracking critical
conversations by the group’s hierarchy and examining sensitive documents recovered after recent raids on their bases in Bauchi, Jigawa and Borno states,” the source said.
Our source added that President Goodluck Jonathan and a few other government officials had been briefed
about the new threats by Boko Haram as well as the outline of the plans to counter the group’s ambitious push.
A senior Islamic scholar in Northern Nigeria, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said his group was
cooperating with the government to defeat Boko Haram. “We discussed with President Jonathan when we met during the end of the Ramadan fast and told him that we are ready to help stop Boko Haram. But we also told him that this is something the government must take action on. We’re doing our own, but we have limitations,” he said.
The Police in Taraba on Thursday confirmed the arrest of 14 suspects following the eruption of violence in Ibi, the headquarters of Ibi Local
Government Area of the state.
The Police Public Relations Officer (PPRO), Mr Joseph Kwaji, told the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) in Jalingo that the problem came about from what looked like a religious conflict.
He said it had all started in the early hours of Thursday in the area which had been witnessing persistent conflicts in recent times.
Kwaji said reports reaching the police showed that trouble started at about 5 a.m. when groups of youths engaged each other in gun battles.
He said these had led to the destruction of property worth millions of Naira, with many of the youths sustaining severe injuries.
“Apart from the arrest of the 14 youths, police have also recovered two AK 47 rifles and several other dangerous weapons from those arrested. “But calm has been restored in the area after the deployment of a detachment of mobile policemen and the military to maintain the peace,” the PPRO said.
Kwaji said investigation into the cause of the trouble and those behind it were ongoing, adding that those who have questions to answer among the arrested would be charged to court.
There was no official casualty figure as at the time of filing this report, even though Kwaji confirmed that many have been injured.
Ibi town has remained a trouble spot in Taraba in recent times, behind Wukari, with both located in the Southern Senatorial District of the state.
THE United States Consul General to Nigeria, Mr Jeffery Hawkins, has, again, noted the threat Boko Haram poses to Nigeria and the African continent as a whole and restated the efforts of the United States to curb the activities of the
dreaded Islamist sect.
Hawkins made this known in Lagos, on Wednesday, at a media platform monitored by the Nigerian Tribune, where he also noted that the President Barak Obama-led US government remained keen in helping Nigeria to rescue the abducted Chibok girls.
He, however, noted that “the US government’s interest in assisting Nigeria with Boko Haram predates the abduction of Chibok girls,” adding that the US had an extensive engagement with the Nigerian government on security.
He further noted that the security engagement had been extended in terms of intelligence that would assist Nigeria in tackling the insecurity posed by Boko Haram in the North-East.
He also pointed out that the engagement was not limited to intelligence, revealing that “we are working with the security forces on professionalising them and in dealing with human rights issues.”
Hawkins, however, declined to speak on the intelligence sharing operation but was quick to note that “we are truly interested in providing the Nigerian government with the information they
can use to appropriately respond to the Boko Haram threat.”
Yet-to-be-identified gunmen have abducted Florentina, the mother of Senator Emmanuel Paulker, in Bayelsa State (South-South) Nigeria.
The 90-year-old Florentina was abducted on Wednesday morning at her residence in Opolo-Epie, Yenagoa area of the state.
Neighbours of the nonagenarian were angry that the kidnappers forcibly took the woman away despite her
age. Their anger also came against the backdrop that Florentina was being kidnapped for the second time in four years.
It was learnt that the abductors called about 3am on Wednesday when the victim and other residents were
sleeping to execute their sinister plot.
A security source said the kidnappers were five in number and were fully armed with AK47 and other rifles.
The source, who did not want his name mentioned, said, “They came through the main road. They drove a vehicle into the community and immediately started shooting sporadically into the air to create apprehension among neighbours who were already asleep.
“They forced the door open, seized the old woman and whisked her away to an unknown place. Some residents
thought the kidnappers were armed robbers.
“Some of the residents later came out and started shouting ‘thieves, thieves’ only to discover later that the woman had been abducted.”
When contacted the Commissioner of Police, Mr. Hilary Opara, confirmed the development and said one of the
suspected kidnappers had been arrested.
He said the suspect was helping the police in their investigations.
The commissioner said, “Although the report got to the police after the kidnappers had gone, we immediately
swung into action and arrested one suspect who is already assisting the police in investigation and we believe that in no distant time, the victim would be rescued.”
He urged members of the public to go about their normal businesses, vowing that the police would continue to protect their lives and property. Mr. Opara said the state special security outfit, Operation Doo Akpo, and other anti-crime outfits were on top of the situation.
He also lauded the state government for providing logistics to the command and commended members of the public for their cooperation.”
Al-Qaeda is increasingly funding terror
operations thanks to at least $125 million in ransom paid since 2008, largely by European governments to free western hostages, The New York Times reported.
The payments totaled $66 million in 2013 alone, according to an investigation by the newspaper
published Tuesday.
While Al-Qaeda's network was first funded by wealthy donors, "kidnapping for ransom has become today’s most significant source of terrorist financing," said David S. Cohen, the Treasury Department’s under secretary for terrorism and financial intelligence, in a 2012 speech.
"Each transaction encourages another transaction." The organization has openly acknowledged the windfall, the paper reported.
"Kidnapping hostages is an easy spoil," wrote Nasser al-Wuhayshi, the leader of Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, "which I may describe as a profitable trade and a precious treasure."
Al-Wuhayshi said ransom money — reaching around $10 million per hostage in recent cases— accounts for up to half his operating budget.
The paper listed more than $90 million paid to Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb since 2008 — by a Switzerland, Spain, Austria, and state-controlled French company and two payments from undetermined sources.
Somalia's Al-Shabab insurgents received $5.1 million from Spain, while Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula received nearly $30 million in two payments, one from Qatar and Oman, the other of undetermined origin.
Austria, France, Germany, Italy, and
Switzerland each denied ever paying ransoms for hostages. French nuclear company Areva also denied paying ransom.
However, last year a former senior French intelligence official told AFP, speaking on condition of anonymity: "Governments and companies pay in almost every case."
"There is always a ransom or an exchange of some sort: money, the release of prisoners, arms deliveries."
The Times article cited former hostages, negotiators, diplomats and government officials in 10 countries in Europe, Africa, and the Middle East, and it said the payments were sometimes hidden as development aid.
The U.S. and Britain have notably refused to pay to free kidnapped nationals, the paper reported, with the result that just a few have been
rescued in military raids or escaped.
However, the U.S. has been willing to negotiate in some cases, including the recent trade of five senior Taliban prisoners held at Guantanamo in
exchange for captured U.S. soldier Bowe Bergdahl.
"The Europeans have a lot to answer for," Vicki Huddleston, the former U.S. deputy assistant secretary of defense for African affairs, who was the ambassador to Mali in 2003 when Germany paid the first ransom, told The Times.
"They pay ransoms and then deny any was paid," arguing the policy "makes all of our citizens vulnerable."
G8 leaders last year signed a deal to
"unequivocally reject the payment of ransoms to terrorists" but did not impose a formal ban.
The nonprofit New America Foundation released a new report this week that summarizes the impact of Edward Snowden’s NSA revelation on U.S. tech firms.
Within weeks of the first NSA revelation last year, companies like Dropbox and Amazon Web Services reported immediate drops in their sales, the report said. Citing a previous report, it
said the NSA’s PRISM program could cost cloud-computing companies from $22 billion to $180 billion over the next there years.
“This erosion in trust threatens to do the most immediate damage to the cloud computing industry, which would lose billions of dollars in the next three to five years as a result,” it said.
In particular, U.S. tech firms are being severely hit in overseas markets, the report said.
Companies such as Cisco, Qualcomm, IBM, Microsoft, and HP have all reported declines in sales in China following the NSA revelations. In fact, according to The Wall Street Journal, Cisco said it’s expecting roughly a 10% loss in
quarterly revenue because of the "Snowden effect." A web-hosting company called Servint reportedly lost more than half of its overseas clients following the revelation.
American firms are also losing the trust of foreign governments because of this. The German government said it would end its contract with Verizon last month, while Brazil picked Swedish firm Saab over Boeing for a deal to replace its fighter jets, according to the report. It said more and more foreign competitors are benefiting from the perceived
image of being “NSA-proof” or “safer” than U.S. firms.
As a result, countries like Germany, Brazil, and India are close to enacting a new law that would require companies to use local data centers. For example, German Chancellor Angela Merkel,
after refusing to visit the U.S. for months after the NSA disclosures, has called for data localization laws. Brazil and India are proposing IT companies to either set up or keep their data centers within local boundaries, while Greece,
Brunei, and Vietnam are following suit with similar measures, the report said.
All of this could slow the growth of the U.S. tech industry by as much as 4% and seriously undermine America’s credibility around the world, the report concluded.
KADUNA, Nigeria (Reuters) - In classrooms facing a sandy courtyard in the northern Nigerian city of Kaduna, Maska Road Islamic School teaches a creed that condemns the violent ideology of groups like Boko Haram.
Not everyone has got its message. Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, known as the "Pants Bomber", spent his youth in this school - and ended up trying unsuccessfully to blow up a U.S. airliner on Christmas Day 2009 with explosives hidden in his underwear.
But the school is steadfast in preaching tolerance to its pupils, and the government is about to adopt this
message in a new strategy for containing Boko Haram, which has killed thousands in a five-year campaign for an Islamic state.
"We teach them that what they (Boko Haram) are doing is a total misunderstanding of the Islamic religion, that Prophet Mohammed was compassionate, he even lived together with the non-Muslims in Medina," said headmaster Sulaiman Saiki.
"We teach them tolerance," he told Reuters as girls in the next room softly recited Koranic verses in Arabic
melodies.
Abdulmutallab was radicalised in an Al Qaeda camp in Yemen, but his case shows that even youths given a
relatively liberal Muslim education can be seduced by radical Islam. This is something the new government program is aiming to combat.
Koranic schools like Maska Road will be a pillar of the strategy being launched in September to counter Boko Haram's ideology. The aim is to win over the "hearts and minds" of young Nigerians.
They will also challenge Boko Haram's claim that secular teaching is "un-Islamic" - Boko Haram means
"Western education is sinful" in Hausa, the dominant language in Nigeria's mainly Muslim north.
Maska Road teaches only Koranic verses and other tenets of Muslim faith, and encourages its 300 students to take classes such as science and literature outside its walls.
"We want them to get a Western education and combine it with ... religious learning," Saiki says.
Classes are held between 4 and 6 p.m., after secular schools shut.
Fatah Abdul, who studies at Maska Road, scoffs at the idea of violence in the name of Islam.
"Our religion doesn't entertain killing. Boko Haram is absolutely different from what our religion advocates,"
she said. "And it's not true what they say that we need an Islamic state. The leadership doesn't have to be Islamic".
"DECEIVED"
Saiki was a neighbor of Abdulmutallab when the future Pants Bomber was at school. He says Abdulmutallab didn't learn to hate the West there but "was deceived afterwards".
Abdulmutallab, a loner from a well-to-do northern family, showed how easily youths can be radicalised.
Add poverty into the mix, as in Nigeria's troubled northeastern Borno state, and it's not hard to see how Boko Haram finds young recruits.
Boko Haram is suspected of being behind suicide bombings that killed 82 people in Kaduna last week,
including one against a Muslim cleric about to lead a public prayer.
Kaduna, the capital of the north in colonial times, is richer than anywhere in the northeastern region where Boko Haram is based. But it shares many of its problems such as high youth unemployment, attested by the many children begging and hawking phone credit on its rubbish-filled streets.
President Goodluck Jonathan's administration has been pilloried for its apparent powerlessness to crush the rebels or protect civilians, including more than 200 schoolgirls kidnapped in April and who remain in captivity. But he has also faced censure for neglecting the insurgency's underlying causes.
So when Jonathan's National Security Adviser (NSA) Sambo Dasuki announced a new "soft approach to terrorism" in March, many instantly dismissed it as lacking in substance.
But officials in the office of the NSA say imams in mosques and traditional elders will be co-opted to preach tolerance, while measures will be taken to ensure Koranic schools teach "correct" interpretations of sacred texts.
The drive will also include educational programs, especially increased sports and music in northern schools, plus reform programs for convicted Boko
Haram detainees.
"A lot them don't have much Islamic knowledge, so they tend to believe what the mullahs say," Fatima Akilu, director of behavioral analysis in the office of the NSA told Reuters. "We want to teach what the Koran actually says in a language they understand."
A parallel economic program, also funded by the NSA's budget, will address the chronic poverty seen as a major driver of the insurgency.
It may be too late to bring back hundreds of youths already fighting for Boko Haram, but the idea is to prevent more from joining. Northern Nigeria has much lower levels of education than the south, a legacy of British colonialism, which protected the caliphates of the north from the activity of Christian missionaries who set up many schools in the south.
"The aspects of education Boko Haram don't like are the ones that allow you to think," Akilu said. "Keep people in the dark and you can control them with a singular narrative."
Undoing this partly involves showing how "Western" ideas, such as mathematics and some physics and
astronomy, are rooted in mediaeval Islamic thought, which was making strides while Christians in Europe
were busy burning witches.
"UN-ISLAMIC"
At the Sultan Bello mosque in Kaduna's busy downtown market area, local imam Ahmed Gumi takes an unusual step to illustrate his openness to the non-Islamic world: he invites four Reuters journalists in to see, film and photograph his sermon.
Three are non-Muslim, including two Westerners. He introduces the team to his congregation of about 350
packed into a main hall, and after a chorus of "welcome" he offers a live interview about his views on Boko Haram in front of the faithful.
"It's not right to call what those boys are doing Islamic," he later told Reuters privately. "They hide
behind Islam."
Gumi, one of northern Nigeria's most popular clerics, sees the idea of an Islamic state dear to extremists as
a throwback.
"They want to bring back the golden age of Islamic triumph in this modern time." he says. "For a state to survive you need a strong civilization, education, money, lawyers, doctors. You don't create a civilization with AK-47s in the bush."
He knows his outspoken views carry a risk he'll be targeted by Boko Haram. His mosque, a towering structure spread between four sand-colored turrets with turquoise-green domes, is guarded by scores of unarmed volunteers checking cars and bags.
Boko Haram fighters have killed dozens of clerics. One of the targets of the Kaduna bombs was a Sheikh Dahiru Bauchi, an imam whose mystical Sufism is a far cry from the austere al Qaeda-style type of Islam. Bauchi survived.
Though a government critic, Gumi approves of the soft approach, "but it needs local Borno (leaders) more than
people like us who are already openly opposed to them".
"ROOT CAUSES"
Taking issue with Boko Haram's ideology will work only if the government can draw disaffected youths away from the AK-47. The NSA's economic program aims to do this, starting with 2 billion naira ($12.3 million), but with a further 60 billion that can be made available from other agencies for projects, said Soji Adelaja, NSA special adviser on economic intelligence.
They include mobile medical trucks, cash for the orphans and widows of Boko Haram's victims, and a program employing 150,000 youths to fix roads and rebuild police stations.
Parts of Nigeria that are completely besieged by the insurgents are off-limits, but there are other vulnerable areas where the program can be rolled out, Adelaja says. "We are deploying in areas that are safe, and where the community has some resilience against Boko Haram."
The death of Boko Haram's founder Mohammed Yusuf in police custody transformed what had been a clerical
movement into an armed rebellion in 2009. Akilu says Yusuf disliked "Western" science which he saw as
contradicting the Koran, especially evolutionary theory, the fact that the world is round and the process of
evaporation, because "rain is a gift from God".
Getting schools to show how science and religion can co-exist, she says, is essential to combating such ideas.
Down a dirt track with crater-like potholes on the outskirts of Kaduna lies the iron-roofed Focus 1,2,3
International School. Twelve classrooms packed with desks take 25 children each.
Secular education is between 7.30 a.m. and midday. After lunch, Islamic schooling is between 1 p.m. and 5.30 p.m.
Muhammad Saleh, who runs the school, believes strongly in science, although he has doubts about evolutionary theory - as do many conservative Christians in the West.
Even so, his school teaches it. "I teach them evolution myself, and the parents never complain," he told Reuters. "It's education. Once children have an education they can decide for themselves what to think."
YAOUNDE (Reuters) - President Paul Biya on Tuesday dismissed two senior army officers in Cameroon's far north following Boko Haram attacks in which at least seven people were killed and the wife of a senior official was kidnapped.
Militants of the Nigerian Islamist group seized the wife of Cameroon's vice prime minister and killed at least three people on Sunday in an attack in the northern town of Kolofata involving more than 200 assailants. At least four soldiers were killed in two separate raids late last week.
According to the decree, announced over state radio, Colonel Youssa Gedeon, commander of the Gendarmerie Legion in the north, and Lieutenant-Colonel Justin Ngonga, commander of the 34th motorised infantry battalion in the same region, were both dismissed.
Both officers were at the forefront of Cameroon's response to the rising number of Boko Haram attacks in the region. Nigeria says the militants are using Cameroon as a rear base.
Cameroon has already introduced measures to increase security on its long, jungle border with Nigeria, deploying more than 1,000 soldiers, but has failed to stop the raids.
For the fourth time in less than a week, a female suicide bomber on Wednesday detonated explosive devices on the campus of the Kano State Polytechnic, killing herself and no fewer than six students.
The victims were students who had gathered in front of a notice board to check for information concerning results and the National Youth Service scheme.
Earlier in the week, a suicide bomber had struck at the NNPC Mega Station along Hotoro Quarters while a church and a shopping mall in the city were also hit on Sunday.
While confirming the incident, spokesman of the Kano State Police Command, Magaji Majiya said ” a female teenager blew herself up at about 2:30pm and she was targeting the students of Kano state Polytechnic. The area has been cordoned off and investigation has commenced”, he said. Majiya said the bomber and two students died while seven others were injured and have been taken to the hospital.
