African Union Commission gets first female boss

The African Union has chosen South Africa’s Home Affairs Minister Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma, 63, as its Commission’s chairman, making her the first woman to hold the post in a hotly contested election.


The election took place in the Ethiopian capital, Addis Ababa after a stalement in January that left 69-year-old incumbent Jean Ping of Gabon in office for another six months after neither side could secure the necessary two-thirds majority. Ms Dlamini-Zuma, ex-wife of President Jacob Zuma, beat Jean Ping. The dispute had overshadowed other issues, especially security and trade.


Voting had been broadly split along linguistic lines, with English-speaking countries tending to support Ms Dlamini-Zuma and French-speaking countries lining up behind Mr Ping. Senior officials had warned that failure to resolve the leadership deadlock would divide the AU and undermine its credibility.


Ms Dlamini-Zuma won the leadership of the AU commission in a third round of voting. She got 37 votes at the 54-member body, giving her the 60% majority she needed to be elected. She is currently South Africa’s home affairs minister, and has also had spells as minister of health and of foreign affairs.


She is one of her country’s longest-serving ministers. But critics said her candidacy had broken an unwritten tradition that the chairmanship should not be occupied by one of Africa’s major nations. Earlier this week, Mr Ping denied a South African media report speculating he was going to withdraw from the race.


His use of the AU’s website and letterhead for his statement prompted the southern African regional bloc SADC to accuse him of misusing AU resources for his re-election bid. Ms Dlamini-Zuma’s election came at a summit in Addis Ababa, the organisation’s home city. As in January, the official theme of the summit was boosting intra-African trade. It is also due to focus on the continuing instability in Mali, mounting violence in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo and tension between Sudan and South Sudan.

Cultists Die In Bayelsa State Of Nigeria as Cult groups Clash

Suspected cultists in the early hours yesterday disrupted the peace in Yenagoa, Bayelsa State capital, shooting two middle-aged men. The two men identified simply as Orlando and British were said to be natives of Ekeremor Local Government Area of Bayelsa State.


The shooting, which occurred at about 8.45am fuelled the suspicion of resurgence of cult-related killings and was already sending residents of Yenagoa into panic.


According to an eyewitness, the victims were driving in a black colour Infinity SUV with registration number GBJ 154 AA along Goodnews Street, close to the new House of Assembly quarters, when a Mazda car suddenly blocked it before it could negotiate a road bend The gunmen numbering five were said to be armed with AK47 and dressed in plain T-Shirts with bulletproof vests.


They shot their two victims from the side windshield and moved to the front of the car where they further sprayed the car with bullets. Another car, which was driving in the same direction, was affected by the bullets but the owner escaped unhurt.


The gunmen, after the shooting, waited a while to ascertain that their victims were dead before they made a detour and drove off. Immediately the Divisional Police Officer (DPO), Azikoro, Mrs. Rita Green was alerted on the incident, she moved to the scene with a detachment of policemen and found the vehicle still emitting steam but the occupants were already dead and their blood and brain tissues littering the dashboard.


The Police Public Relations Officer (PPRO), Mr. Fidelis Odunna who confirmed the incident said investigation was on to establish if it was a case of armed robbery or assassination.


According to him, the gunmen were said to have ransacked the vehicle conveying the victims and made away with unspecified items. He assured Bayelsans of their safety, stressing, they should go about their normal business, as the Nigerian police would not allow crime to thrive in the state.


Checks indicated that the two middle-aged men gunned down yesterday morning in Yenagoa were working with the Bayelsa State government in the fight against cultism. One of them, identified as British was said to be a security aide of the governor.


The two victims were said to have been responsible for the clamp down on some cultists in the state and their killing was a reprisal attack against the move by the state government to stamp out cultism in the state.


Meanwhile, the Bayelsa State Police Command had beefed up security along the waterways, over the reported cases of two separate pirates’ attacks along the Akassa waterways. Though no life was lost, the pirates were said to have robbed all the passengers in the two attacks of all their belongings. Read More

BOKO HARAM DEPLOY NEW STRATEGIES(BUILD BOMBS IN CHURCHES)

Boko Haram may have changed tactics in a bid to shield its bomb factories from the prying eyes of securitymen. The sect has resorted to using mosques and churches as a decoy to manufacture Improvised Explosive Devices (IEDs).

This is even as police in Kaduna State yesterday recovered some bombs and weapons during a raid on a terrorists’ hide-out at Rafin-Guza, a suburb in the metropolis, barely 17 hours after brave youths arrested gun-totting Boko Haram members.

The development followed the discovery on Sunday by the Kogi State police command of a bomb factory at Okaito area of Okene in a building which bore a signpost of a church with a giant size Bible and the photograph of Jesus Christ pasted on the wall.


The Commissioner of Police,Alhaji Mohammed Musa Katsina, who disclosed this while parading a suspected bomb manufacturer, said the discovery was made possible after interrogation of the suspect arrested in connection with the failed bombing attempt of the Winners’ Chapel on Sunday morning.

Katsina explained that on Sunday at about 10.30 am, the vigilant police guard at the church in Okene sighted two young men in a Rover salon car marked Kogi LKJ 919 AA being driven around the church premises, but they could not gain access due to the tight security arrangement on ground.

Sensing that they might not be able to hit their target , he said the driver moved some metres away in a bid to offload the IEDs, stressing that in the process, one of the explosives was detonated. He stated that his men overpowered one of them and arrested a suspect, while the other fled into the bush.

He noted that through the co-operation of the expanded strategic network, the police later got intelligence report on the factory where explosives were being manufactured in the area. The police commissioner said that with the help of a joint operation with the Army, the factory was located.
But Mr. Katsina said, to the dismay of the patrol team, the four-bedroom flat which turned out to be the bombs’ factory, was also used as church and mosque respectively to deceive the public. He noted that one of the buildings was decorated like a church with the Bibles and the photograph of Jesus, while another was used for a mosque with mats and Moslem rosary adorning the place.. The police boss said that there was a large inscription of biblical quotation: “No weapon fashioned against me shall prosper,” inscribed on the wall to deceive the people living around the vicinity.


He said that police are investigating to ascertain those behind the factory, warning that all culprits will be brought to book no matter how highly placed. The items recovered are 46 IEDs, 15 capacitors, 15 fuses, three bottles of potassium chloride, five litres of acid, one electric detonator and a roll of firing cables.


Others are 250m detonating cord, three remote-controlled siren, 25kg of ammonium nitrate, three GSM sets, box of nails, 54 amunuition of 56 caliber, one motorcycle and other house items. He later paraded one of the suspects .The discovery of this bomb factory now makes five in Kogi State with one in Kabba and the three in the central axis of the state.

In Kaduna, the state police command said it has arrested 27 terror suspects within the last two months. Police Commissioner, Muhammed Jinjiri Abubakar, while briefing newsmen in his office yesterday, said in its continued clampdown on criminal elements, the command yesterday raided a terrorists’ hideout.


He said, “a confessed terrorist led detectives at about 0200hrs (2am) on Monday from our anti-robbery squad to Rafin-Guza area, where a hideout was raided and exhibits like cans of explosives, a bomb making powder, four khaki uniforms, two bags of chemicals used in making bombs, two masks, one AK-47 magazine with 27 rounds of live ammunition, among others, were recovered from the criminals”.


The commissioner, however, did not disclose the name of the suspect, who led the policemen to their hideout at Rafin-Guza, saying, investigations were still ongoing. Abubakar, who also gave the names of the suspected terrorists that invaded Mahuta as; Nura Abubakar and Mohammed Kabir, said the police would continue raiding criminals. He said that the two suspects and the two AK47 rifles, three magazines, ammunition and some IEDs recovered from them were all in the Army’s custody.


According to him, the police have arrested 27 suspected terrorists within the last two months in Rigasa area of the city, while 147 were apprehended during the recent Kaduna crisis. Assistant Public Relations Officer, 1 Division, Nigerian Army, Colonel Sani Kukasheka Usman, confirmed to Daily Sun that the two suspects arrested on Sunday were in Army’s custody.


Usman said investigations were still ongoing and that the Army may soon release the suspects to a sister agency for further investigation. He, however, said soldiers assisted the Mahuta youths in the arrest of the suspects on Sunday by shooting at them.

This is even as he denied an allegation by some members of the community that soldiers prevented the youths from going after the fleeing suspect, saying the soldiers only took over the search for the suspect at large, in consideration of the safety of the brave youths.


However, Daily Sun gathered that, members of the community who were shot by the suspected terrorists were responding to treatment, as two of the seven people rushed to the hospital have already been discharged as at Press time.


Meanwhile, the Comptroller-General of Nigeria Immigration Service (NIS), Mrs. Rose Uzoma, yesterday denied reports that foreigners are behind Boko Haram. Addressing the House of Representatives’ joint Committee on Petroleum Resources (Upstream) and Navy, yesterday in Abuja, Uzoma said it was wrong to conclude that the violent campaigns of the sect were fuelled by foreigners.

She said: “I’m not aware as of today, if any case of foreigner entering this country through the seaports that have been proved to be sympathetic to Boko Haram. “Let me use this opportunity please to say this fact, it has become commonplace that whenever there is an attack, it is usually assumed that the people involved are foreigners. “The Nigerian Immigration Service (NIS) is the only security agency statutorily empowered to make public pronouncements on personality of persons,” he said.


“When people see dead bodies on the ground, they say they are illegal immigrants, any attack is attributed to illegal immigrants. I will like to inform that we have come across on a very few cases of involvement of nationals of neighbouring countries in these incidents,” she added.


The NIS boss recalled the story of 68 Chadians arrested in the wake of bomb attacks in Kano, saying investigation by her agency confirmed none of them was Chadian.

“There was no single Chadian amongst them rather we came across one Malian and a Ghanaian. Those two ECOWAS nationals did not have anything whatsoever to do with the bomb attack.

KESHI NOT UNDER PRESSURE TO INVITE MIKEL

This latest affirmation was in the context of an interview granted by Austin Okocha, a former captain of the team, where he said that Obi was still relevant to the national team and should be recalled for the matches against Liberia in September and October. “We may have played some games without Mikel but he has always been part of the team and I must tell Nigerians that I have been in touch with the player,” Keshi told reporters. “On the day of the Nations Cup draws in South Africa, I and Mikel spoke for over 40 minutes on various aspects of football and I was impressed with his patriotism for Nigeria and the success of the national team. “We must be careful not to bring division and hero worship into the national team. Mikel [Obi] has said again and again that he has no problems with the national team technical crew and I don’t have any problems with him either, so calling for his recall to the team is unnecessary, because he has always been a part of the team,” Keshi added. He also used the occasion to say that other players like Obinna Nsofor, Chinedu Obasi and Emmanuel Emenike are all in his plans. “We have a lot of players who were not part of the last games like Obafemi Martins, Obinna Nsofor, Ogbuke Obasi, Emmanuel Emenike and more. “These players are as important and very good to our ambition of building a strong national team for Nigeria and I have been in touch with all of them, so we must avoid division in the national and respect the decision of the coach. Keshi then added the fillip that he will not be pressured in inviting players he deems unnecessary for upcoming games.