Two female suicide bombers were intercepted at about 8.45 pm on Sunday when they tried to gain access into Dalori 2 Internally Displaced Peoples (IDPs) camp in Borno state – northeast Nigeria.
Spokesperson of National Emergency Management Agency – northeast zone, Abdulkadir Ibrahim, said two other female suicide bombers also detonated their explosives at the adjoining Dalori kofa village at about 8.10 pm where they killed 16 people.
A total of four suicide bombers were involved in the incidents. The injured victims have been administered with first aid and transported to hospitals within Maiduguri for treatment, he added.
Thirty five year old housewife Mary (not her real name) was in labour with her fourth child. She has spent four days in labour at home without been assisted by any health worker or trained birth attendant.
On the fifth day her condition became worse, so her husband’s relatives decided to rush her to a clinic in nearby village, for medical assistance, since there was none in the community.
The nearest community with the health clinic is about 15 minutes ride on motorcycle because of bad road. That is for those whose husbands are fortunate to own one — majority of the men in the community have none talk less of cars.
It was time to take Mary to Rigachikun, which is the nearest community, but because her husband doesn’t own a motorcycle and because she was weak to seat on motorcycle for the journey, she had to be carried on wheel barrow to the clinic like other pregnant women in her condition.
The women of this community are used to been carried on wheel barrow to the local clinic while in labour.
Marry was lucky to get to the clinic on time and she gave birth to a baby girl, but other women were not fortunate to get to the clinic — they either lose the baby, or sometimes their lives, in some cases, both mother and baby are lost on arrival.
” I was lucky to arrive the clinic alive because it was not in rainy season which enables us to cross the bridge easily. This is why our women prefer to give birth in dry season to avoid being stranded at home during labour, ” she said.
The Ungwar Jatau Community
Welcome to Ungwar Jatau community, located behind National Teachers Institute, Kaduna, Northwest Nigeria where pregnant women prefer to give birth in dry season than in rainy season.
The situation in the area is so pathetic that there are no social amenities that one could think of, except primary school constructed by the community itself.
The lack of bridge to link the area to other communities is their major challenge. It was gathered that the moment it rains the area is completely cut off from the rest of the world for days depending on the magnitude of the water in the river.
Unguwar Jatau Traditional ruler, Musa Ayuba, said there was nothing members of the community had not done to persuade both past and present state and local government officials to come to their aid, but to no avail.
“You can see for yourselves what we are passing through in the community in spite of the fact we are just a stone throw to Rigachikun and the National Teachers Institute, Kaduna but without a single social amenities to show for it in this 21st century.
“We have lost a very good number of people who have drown in the river moment it rains in an attempt to cross, and still, our children cannot go to school or our women cannot go to hospital and market.
“We are therefore still appealing to Kaduna State and Igabi local government Area to please provide us with social amenities for a better standard of living,” he said.
Chairperson, Women Foundation of Nigeria, Maryam Abubakar who recently visited the community to render free medical treatment to the members of the community described their condition as pathetic, particularly pregnant women.
She offered to render medical training to youths in the community to take up the challenge facing the area.
Kaduna State is ranked among States with high rates of maternal mortality in the country. Th state lies in the northwest which records 1024 deaths out of every 100,000 live births.
House Intelligence Committee chair Devin Nunes has urged Washington to stop pursuing false accusations of US President Donald Trump’s ties with Russia and concentrate on solving more pressing issues for the country.
Nunes participated in the Congressional investigation into alleged Russian meddling into the US presidential election, but was forced withdraw from the inquiry, following accusations of mishandling classified data.
After looking into possible connections between Trump and Moscow, “I said, ‘OK, I don’t think there’s any collusion here,” Nunes, a California senator, said in a speech at the Orange County Republican Party’s annual Flag Day Salute dinner on Saturday.
“And what happened to me? All the major papers in the country did a total character assassination on me. Why? Because I was telling the truth, that there was never any collusion between Donald Trump and the Russians,” Nunes said, as cited by Politico.
“I have to ask myself, Was this really an investigation in search of a crime? And I will tell you, if that’s what it ends up being, there will be a huge, huge division in this country,” he added.
The senator blamed the Russian investigation for distracting the US authorities from pressing political issues.
Among other things, the House Intelligence Committee chair urged his fellow Republicans to more actively promote their health care overhaul, stressing that before doing so “we have to stop chasing Russian ghosts around the closet and actually get to real work.”
The guests at the dinner applauded Nunes when he was speaking about the false nature of claims of Trump’s ties with Moscow.
The House Intelligence Committee chair also said that the US mainstream media should take part of the blame for the shooting at the congressional baseball practice in Alexandria, Virginia last week.
The attack “didn’t surprise” him, Nunes said, because “every night there’s a news story that runs that… has something in common. It’s anti-Trump, anti-Republican, and promotes this nonsense that you’re seeing with protesters everywhere. And they continue to promote it, which continues to promote violence.”
During the week, there was confusion over Donald Trump’s tweet, in which the president wrote that he was “being investigated for firing the FBI Director by the man who told me to fire the FBI Director.”
Many took the message as a confirmation that Trump is under over firing James Comey, who headed the FBI inquiry into president’s alleged ties with Moscow.
However, Trump’s lawyer, Jay Sekulow, explained on Saturday that his client wasn’t under investigation and that the tweet referred to another matter.
Nunes came under fire and withdrew from the Russian investigation in April after he disclosed data to the public without briefing the Democrats on the intelligence committee.
The move fueled speculation that he was acting on instructions of the president and led to an investigation by the Office of Congressional Ethics.
Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) is to focus discussion on humanitarian situation in countries of interest particularly, Somalia, Nigeria, and countries of the Lake Chad Basin.
This information is contained in a statement by Director Information Department, OIC General Secretariat, Maha Mustapha Akeel, ahead of the 44th session of the OIC Council of Foreign Ministers (CFM) which will be hosted in the Cote d’Ivoire capital, Abidjan, on 10-11 July 2017.
Part of the statement reads, “The Council will also discuss the humanitarian situation in a number of countries, particularly, Somalia, Nigeria, and countries of the Lake Chad Basin as well as the humanitarian and political situation in the Central African Republic.”
Complete Statement Reads
Preparations are ongoing at the General Secretariat of the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) to convene the 44th session of the OIC Council of Foreign Ministers (CFM) which will be hosted in the Cote d’Ivoire capital, Abidjan, on 10-11 July 2017.
The 44th CFM will be held under the theme: “The Role of Youth, Peace and Development in a World in Solidarity.” Some of the prominent issues that will top the agenda of the conference include countering terrorism, extremism and Islamophobia and the latest developments in the regional and international scenes, particularly the Palestinian question and the situation in Syria, Iraq, Yemen, Libya and Afghanistan.
The Council will also discuss the humanitarian situation in a number of countries, particularly, Somalia, Nigeria, and countries of the Lake Chad Basin as well as the humanitarian and political situation in the Central African Republic.
The foreign ministers will also deliberate on the situation of Muslim communities in the non-OIC Member States, particularly the Rohingya in Myanmar and Muslims in the Philippines and Thailand.
There will be meetings of the OIC Contact Groups on Muslims in Europe and on Jammu and Kashmir which will be held on the sidelines of the conference.
The session will also discuss the latest developments at the economic, cultural, and social and media fields, in addition to the domains of youth and women, science and technology, as well as the ongoing efforts to implement the OIC-2025 Ten-Year Programme of Action.
Barring any further hitches, the Nigerian economy will be out of recession in 2018, Statistician-General of the Federation, Dr. Yemi Kale has said.
In an interview with the Economic Confidential in Abuja, Dr. Kale said noted that “If all prices do not collapse including Niger Delta crisis, by 2018 we would have recovered”, he said.
Speaking on the economic situation currently bedevilling the nation, Dr. Kale said “It was an extremely difficult period and we all felt it. I will say that most of the indicators suggest that we are coming out of it.”
“We have not come out of it yet. As if the worst has already happened and it’s a low process of recovery. Now there is what we call technical recovery as different from the recovery Nigerians would prefer”, he said.
“When you tell somebody, the economy is coming out of recession, they would say what do you mean. After all prices are still high. Coming out of recession means positive growth. And your positive growth can be plus zero point one (+0.1). That does not mean everything is fine. It technically means you are no longer in negative again”, said Dr. Kale.
He further posited that the fact that you are no longer in negative does not translate to be buoyant, stressing that there is going to be a gradual process of recovery as things are improving.
“At least all the indicators are suggesting things are getting better. People always make this mistake when we say inflation is slowing down. Slowing down of Inflation does not mean prices are coming down. Inflation by definition is always a rise in price. All we are saying is that increase is not as much as before. Before it went up by 100%, but this time it went up by 50%. Having double digit inflation figure is still huge and a problem. The fact that it went down from 18% to 17% and now to 16% shows improvement. But I can tell you 16% is not good but a huge problem”, he said.
According to him, “If the trend continues, by the end of the year things should have normalized and by 2018 Nigerians would now see the benefit of the recovery. “If all prices do not collapse including Niger Delta crisis, by 2018 we would have recovered fully.”
He told the Economic Confidential that that the year 2016 was extremely difficult for the nation. “I have to speak frankly as I have always done in the past. The economy has been slowing down since 2014. Anybody that has been following the numbers should know that the economy was slowing down. From six it went to five then to four, then to three and went to two before it became negative”.
“The fact that the economy was slowing down did not mean it went from six to zero NO. It was gradual. If you have paying attention to data, you would have known that problem was looming. Since it was an election year, people did not pay that rapped attention. And so 2016 was horrible as we went through a lot of hell. We had an economy in my opinion that is dysfunctional”.
He likened the economy to a house built on three foundations, but two of the foundations are shaky and weak. “You have an oil sector which is one pillar, a non-oil sector dependent on oil, which is the second pillar, and we have a non-oil sector not dependent on oil, like agriculture, which is the third pillar. Two pillars are directly dependent on oil. So when oil decides to collapse, two legs will be gone and remaining one pillar. And that is the problem we had”.
“Rather than diversify the economy, we have an economy solely dependent on oil. The other sectors depend on oil to survive. We have manufacturing, but their production input is dependent on foreign materials. And foreign input depend on foreign reserves, while our foreign reserves depend on oil. And when oil price goes down, and we do not have enough reserves, and manufacturers do not get foreign exchange to get their inputs, they cannot produce and so resort to black market to source for foreign exchange at high price and cost of production goes up. This cost will eventually be passed to consumers. In this scenario, demand goes down while cost goes up.
Speaking on whether the economy can be rebased in a recession, the frontline Economist said the economy is supposed to rebased every five years. “We are supposed to have to done it this year, but no allocation to that effect. Every country does it maximum five years. The United States of America does it once a year. Those ones have more money, so they do it every year, apart from the fact that their economy is more dynamic.
“Technology is changing so many things so they have to upgrade all the time. If you don’t rebase your economy, it is like as if you are using Betamark system. When we rebased the economy, the politicians grabbed it because it favored them. If it were in the negative, nobody will even talk about it. I was surprised to see at the election period that APC went to our website to retrieve all the positive figures and refused to accept the ones tagged negative. PDP too took all the positives and refused the poverty rate figures! Meanwhile all of them are NBS data. I have seen a Minister who agreed with chapter two of our report and said chapter three was not correct. While commending us for a job well done on chapter two, chapter three was tagged not correct. The same document!”, he said.
Chukwuma, a full-grown adult with a wife and three children, lost his mother recently. On the day of his mother’s burial when he was expected to be in a sober mood mourning the woman who bore, suckled and nurtured him from infancy through adulthood, he was busy flooding Facebook with pictures of her lifeless body as she lay in state.
As repulsive as this action was, the posts gathered many likes, with his numerous Facebook friends seizing the moment to, for the umpteenth time, extend their condolences to him. And he found the time to like every comment on the posts and even reply some.
But not everyone liked Chukwuma’s action. Someone wrote on one of the posts, “Some human beings have lost it, I swear. Maybe it’s time to go on our knees and ask Whatever-We-Believe-In to restore our senses to their pre-social media status.”
Growing trend
Chukwuma’s action is just one among numerous anti-social behaviours that are manifesting themselves on social media platforms.
The advent and proliferation of social media has democratized information dissemination and the way people communicate with their loved ones. It has also created jobs for a lot of people and opened up new vistas of opportunities in the technology space. Most entrepreneurs no longer need physical addresses to connect with customers. The fact that pictures can be shared on these sites has made communication more interesting to both the originator and receiver of the posts/messages. Pictures of graduation, wedding, housewarming, childbirth, pregnancy, and much more are shared on these platforms, affording several family members and friends who cannot be physically present at the event to partake real time via these platforms.
On the reverse side, however, social media has brought along with it a new lifestyle that is dangerous as individuals live their daily lives online, flaunting every new purchase, relationship and achievement in the open. But the most disturbing is the near absolute freedom on social media that has made it possible for content that would otherwise be banned in the mainstream media to now find its way into the public domain.
Someone stumbles on an accident scene. Several bodies are littered everywhere, some stone dead, limbs and other body parts scattered here and there; others still oozing fresh blood but conscious nonetheless, with chances of survival if given immediate attention. But that’s not the concern of this young man or lady. Rather than call for help, they pick up their phone, activate the camera and take several shots of fellow human beings, both dead and dying, and post on Facebook, Twitter, WhatsApp, Instagram, and the countless other available platforms.
That was how the picture of the butchered body of Eunice Elisha, a 42-year-old mother of seven and an assistant pastor with the Redeemed Christian Church of God (RCCG), who was murdered while preaching around Gbazango-West area of Kubwa in the Bwari Area Council of the Federal Capital Territory (FCT), circulated like wildfire, just like that of Mayowa Ahmed, an ovarian cancer patient who eventually lost the battle, in her lowest moments.
Reacting to this trend, Jen Ebere, a concerned Facebook user, lamented on her timeline sometime ago, “I don’t understand why Nigerians delight in decorating their timelines with graphic pictures of dead bodies. You wake up to all manner of gruesome pictures of accident victims and victims of vicious attacks. See, listen up, this is not right… Even the dead deserve some respect.”
A psychologist who does not want to be named says these anti-social behaviours are pointers that the society is progressively losing its humanity.
“We have lost that aspect of us that makes us empathise with others in their time of difficulty or need, and we have supplanted it with a callous, unthinking, unfeeling cruelty. We have lost our sense of the sacred. We have no respect for the living; we have no respect for the sick, the dying and the dead,” said the psychologist.
“It is mean, cruel and demeaning to post pictures of fellow human beings in their weakest and most vulnerable state. It is as if death has been demystified before us all, that we have seen so many deaths in the last few years, in the hands of Boko Haram and the herdsmen, in Syria, in South Sudan, in several other places, that we no longer care,” he said.
Fertile ground for criminals
Experts have warned that while it is good to share pictures and other information with friends online, it makes more sense to be cautious and look for more private and intimate ways of sharing such details to those you want to.
They warn that it is not only regular people that live on the internet. Murderers, wife-beaters, scammers, thieves, kidnappers, paedophiles, child-molesters and rapists also use the internet for their sick motives. Robbers and individuals with negative intent have been reported to go online to pick their victims, stalk them, and eventually either kidnap or defraud them. They are able to do this courtesy of the information the victims share online.
On the heels of multiple attacks in the UK, Prime Minister Theresa May called for stricter internet regulations with her government criticizing WhatsApp and other encrypted messaging services for providing terrorists with a “secret place to communicate”.
There is a message currently circulating on social media that the arrested kidnap kingpin, Chukwudi Onwuamadike (aka Evans) confessed that he got all the information he needed for all his kidnaps from Facebook; that all he needed to do was have a good look at the victim’s profile, close friends and family pictures and all the information was set – from children’s school uniform to people abroad taking pictures that they are on the way to Nigeria and family network on Facebook.
The message is accompanied by a note, “Even if you are not a kidnapper, some information some stupid people post and display on Facebook is enough for you to start getting ideas. People are just irresponsible when it comes to the social media. Place of work, home address, phone number, parents’ names, children’s names and pictures. Are you cursed? Easy target you are! Do you know the implication of what you are doing? Be careful what you post on your Facebook.”
Impact on youth population
Ace broadcaster Eugenia Abu, in a 2015 article ‘Pay attention to your children’, lamented that trans-border data flows, globalisation and the challenge of social media had led many children and youths into identity crisis – not knowing who they are, where they are and where they are going.
“The inability and difficulty to regulate the social media can lead to increased citizen journalism, unhealthy trends and false information that can spread like wildfire. It has ensured that in-depth analysis of information which used to be available when multimedia was limited is now no longer en vogue. So it is free entry and free exit,” Abu said.
“Checks and balances are mostly non-existent. Editorial judgment is totally absent; therefore a piece of information which is inherently false arrives on the internet and is propagated as the truth by educated young persons, uneducated young persons, vulnerable persons, emotionally-traumatised persons and psychologically-depraved people. Our children live in a bubble of social media and even when you have the facts of the matter, or the analysis of it for that matter, they challenge you with the falsehood with confidence,” she said.
Need for parental control
Abu said the creators of these social media platforms, apps and other such-related internet matters knew there would be negatives but, however, expected control and discernment which, sadly, is not given to all millennial. She said it was not enough to provide these devices (phones, iPad) for children, but it was critical for parents to manage them, no matter how busy they are.
“In the past when we visited friends and family with one’s parents, we would be expected to conduct ourselves in respectful social manners that made us able to have conversations with uncles and aunties about our wellbeing, our future ambition, likes and dislikes. It allowed us to ask them about their welfare, connect with our cousins and children of our parents’ friends and establish family ties that last forever,” she said.
“Today, those visits make us nervous because today’s children while visiting an uncle are on their phones throughout and completely anti-social. They seem to be floating in and out of two different worlds and distracted by everyday normal conversation. You would have to repeat yourself several times to get their attention. They suffer several bouts of selective amnesia and are not firmly rooted in the real world,” Abu said.
There are indications that Nigeria will pass the Climate Change Bill before the end of the year.
Chairman, House of Representatives Committee on Climate Change, Samuel Onuigbo gave the hint at an interactive session with Journalists in Abuja weekend.
The committee chairman opined that climate change remains one of the major causes of the herdsmen-farmer crisis and Boko Haram insurgency in northeast Nigeria, saying greater understanding and solutions must be proffered to address the challenges.
“Over the years, the cumulative effect of some human activities has provoked climate change and drastic fall of the water level and by extension, fishery and crop farming became difficult while herdsmen are left with the only alternative of migration to other regions of the country in search of greener pasture,” he said.
Onuigbo explained that decades ago nomadic activities were mostly found around the Lake Chad Basin which attracted other huge commercial activities including fishing and crop farming in the North-Eastern of Nigeria.
“While some of these former fishermen and farmers could have ignorantly or consciously found insurgency as a better means of sustenance, herdsmen became threat to their new host communities whose crops and major investments are either eating up by herds or deliberately destroy,” he said
According to him, the legal framework of the Climate Change Bill has been presented to the House of Representatives and passed second reading.
The Bill calls for the ‘Establishment of the National Council on Climate Change and for Other Related Matters’, saying it “will expressly demonstrate our various commitments in the fight against all forms of environmental issues that are affecting the society.
“I have always reiterated that it is important for MDAs to make adequate budgetary provisions to back up our Climate Change commitments with practical and verifiable actions,” he said.
Have you heard the word ‘Desertification’ before? Are you aware of the devastating impacts it could have? Does it make any sense to have a hand in such environmental disaster? Wouldn’t you rather be a solution to this threat?
By way of introduction, Desertification is the process by which a fertile land becomes a desert. It is a land degradation phenomenon common to arid, semi-arid and humid areas resulting from various factors including climatic variations and human activities.
It is not mere speculations that many people outside the “environmental niche” are not (or poorly) enlightened about environment issues. They know nothing about how their actions – deliberately or otherwise lead to great (usually negative) consequences to the world they live in. More discouraging is that the youths lead the pack in this subset of “the environmentally naïve”.
Though statistics reveals that a whopping 63% of the entire landmass of Nigeria across fifteen northern states are presently plagued by desertification, the menace did not start this morning. In 1994, the United Nations General Assembly declared every June 17 as “World Day to Combat Desertification and Drought”, the aim was to promote public awareness of the issue and the implementation of the United Nation Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) in countries experiencing it – Nigeria inclusive.
Northern Nigeria, the largest producers of cereals and a significant contributor to the economy of Africa are most affected by desertification. It is believed that States like Sokoto, Zamfara, Katsina, Kano, Jigawa, Yobe, Borno, Gombe, Adamawa, Plateau, Taraba, Nasarawa, Kaduna, Niger, and Kebbi loses up to 350,000ha of land to desertification annually.
Two other close ties to desertification are drought and deforestation. We have laid a basis for desertification, drought, on the other hand, has been earmarked as a principal cause of desertification. Though seen as a naturally occurring phenomenon that can be attributed to a (drastic) drop in the amount of precipitation over a particular period in a particular place, deforestation – human-induced is an underlying cause.
It has been proven by researchers that activities such as deforestation, bush burning, overgrazing, fuelwood extraction and poor management of irrigation have contributed to this menace. The impact of desertification in Nigeria also include loss of biological diversity, alteration of geo- chemical composition of the soil, global warming, increased erosion, water scarcity, reduced agricultural yield hence, contributing to food insecurity, reduced economic growth among other unfavourable impacts.
“What then is the government doing?” you ask. In fairness, the government of Nigeria has, in the past, put up several combative measures to curb drought and deforestation. Some of such measure is the signing of UNCED in 1994 and the establishment of State Environmental Protection Agencies (SEPA) in the 36 states and the Federal Capital Territory. Unfortunately, rather than the expected rejuvenation, these initiatives have been weakened by socio-economic indices such as poverty, poor cooperation from the governed, lack of political will, institutional weakness and corruption.
A particular study says, and I agree that the best shot at finding a solution to this challenge would be alleviating poverty to reduce forest dependence, embarking on afforestation programmes, sustainable land use and most importantly, raising awareness at local, national and global level.
In conclusion, a majority of adverse human activity on the environment could be mitigated if defaulters are aware of inherent consequences.
An objective approach will be for us to ask ourselves, “What then are we doing as a people?” The least, effortless contribution one can make to support this campaign is to tell someone about it – raise awareness! I just told you; hope you will do the same?
Written by Ogunjobi Oluwamuyiwa Felix from Port Harcourt , Nigeria, Editing by Adebote ‘Seyifunmi and Reporting By Alli Abiola
Two female suicide bombers were intercepted at about 8.45 pm on Sunday when they tried to gain access into Dalori 2 Internally Displaced Peoples (IDPs) camp in Borno state – northeast Nigeria.
