CAMEROON SENDS 12,000 NIGERIANS PACKING

About 12,000 Nigerians are being repatriated over the next three to four days after seeking refuge in Cameroon from attacks by Islamist militant group Boko Haram, Nigeria’s state emergency agency said on Wednesday.

A National Emergency Management Agency spokesman said the returnees would be accommodated mainly in the town of Mubi in Adamawa state, close to the border.

“We already cleared about 1,150 people but border officers projected that 12,000 people would be arriving,” spokesman Manzo Ezekiel said.

Cameroonian authorities expelled about 2,800 Nigerians over the weekend following a series of suicide bomb attacks in July.

The six-year-old insurgency waged by Boko Haram to establish an Islamist state in the northeast of Nigeria has displaced around 1.5 million people internally and forced thousands to flee into neighbouring Cameroon, Niger and Chad.

A multi-national joint taskforce combining 8,700 troops from Nigeria and its neighbours is being set up in Chad’s capital N’Djamena to combat the militants.

A similar-sized repatriation occurred in May from the Lake Chad islands in Niger when Nigerien authorities told residents, many of them Nigerians, to evacuate before military operations.

About 25,000 people were forced to leave, sometimes brutally. Some died en route due to inadequate evacuation assistance.

NYSC SCHEME PARTICIPATION WILL SOON BECOME OPTIONAL

The Director-General of NYSC, Brigadier-General Johnson Olawumi, told President Muhammadu Buhari on Wednesday that there were plans to make the scheme voluntary and reduce the corps population to make the programme more sustainable.

The NYSC Director General spoke during the briefing of the President by officials of the Federal Ministry of Youth Development led by the Permanent Secretary, Mrs. Rabi Jimeta to the President at Aso Rock presidential villa.

Jimeta had earlier told the President that the increasing number of NYSC participants posed a challenge to the scheme due to the dwindling revenue, from the national budget, to cater for their needs.

She told the President that the annual enrolment of corps participants had increased from 2,364 at inception in 1974 to 229,016 in 2014.

“Given the increasing number of tertiary institutions, our projection is that the number of corps participants may rise to 300,000 by year 2020,” she said.

However, Buhari who spoke after the briefing pledged that his administration will take all necessary actions to maintain and improve the National Youth Service Corps (NYSC) programme as a functional vehicle for the promotion of national unity and integration.

The President affirmed his confidence and trust in the programme, saying that the objective for which the scheme was established in 1973 was still very relevant for national development now.

“I firmly believe in NYSC and I think it should remain a national programme to promote integration.

“Whenever I go home to Daura, I look out for Corps members from Lagos, Aba and other parts of the country.

“I am always thrilled to learn that except for the NYSC, some of them have never left their states of origin to visit other cities in the country,” President Buhari said.

PROSTITUTES STAGE PROCESSION IN OGUN STATE

There was mild drama in Abeokuta, Ogun State, Monday night, as scores of commercial sex workers staged a candlelight procession in honour of their colleagues, who were allegedly killed by suspected ritualists, weekend.

Dressed in black apparels, the sex workers, who stormed the state secretariat of Nigeria Union of Journalists, NUJ, Oke-Ilewo, Abeokuta, wailed as they mourned their colleagues.

One of the dead, who was simply identified as Sitira, was found dead at a refuse dump site at Olomoore junction in Abeokuta on Sunday morning.

Suspected ritualists were said to have abandoned the corpse of the 23-year-old prostitute after severing some flesh from her body.

The late Sitira was said to have been thrown off a moving Sport Utility Vehicle, SUV, along Abeokuta-Lagos Expressway.

Speaking with reporters, the protesters claimed that beside Sitira, another colleague was killed by suspected ritualists.

They said the mutilated remains of the second sex worker was discovered in a ditch at Olomoore, Abeokuta.

During the procession, about 50 commercial sex workers, plying their trade in Abeokuta, converged on the NUJ secretariat and also at the nearby residence of former Head of Interim National Government, Chief Ernest Shonekan.

They identified Sitira with different names: Titi and Folake.

Bearing candle sticks, they chanted solidarity slogans and rained curses on the killers of their colleagues.

The sex workers momentarily barricaded the NUJ secretariat and later departed for the MKO Abiola International Stadium, Kuto, Abeokuta, where they continued their mourning.

They chanted: Oro nla leda, oro nla leda, eyin tepa Titi, t’eje odagba, oro nla leda. Omo yin maku, eeeheee omo yin maku, eyin tepa Titi t’eje odagba, omo yin maku.

It means: You have done something grievous, you have done something grievous. The killers of Titi (Sitira) have done something grievous. Their children will die, their children will die, those that killed Titi will lose their children.

PDP STAFF TO DRAG PDP NWC TO EFCC

The financial crisis bedevilling the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) has assumed a new dimension Friday when the staff of the national secretariat of the party urged the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) and other anti-graft agencies to quiz members of the party's National Working Committee for embezzlement of over N13 billion.

The party's NWC had on Thursday issued a circular in which it literally sacked all the staff of the party in a reorganisation of the secretariat, asking "the few retained" to obtain letters of confirmation of loyalty to the party from their respective state party chairmen.

However, the angry workers apart from making allegations of sleaze against the NWC members, asked for the immediate resignation of the current PDP-NWC led by Prince Uche Secondus, insisting they have lost all moral right to remain in office and that they allegedly were dragging the PDP to extinction.

But, national secretary, Prof. Adewale Oladipo and national publicity secretary, Chief Olisa Metuh has dismissed the allegations as baseless and nonesense, saying such were not unexpected.

Oladipo and Metuh at separate telephone interviews,  wondered why it took the staff so long to come up with their allegations, adding that it was curious it came at a time they were asking for the removal of the Director-General of the Department of State Security (DSS) and the chairman of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) as well as putting the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) on its toes.

According to Chief Metuh, "they are free to make allegations. We have asked them to bring letters from their state chairmen to prove they are loyal to the party. All these ones and diversionary and we are not bothered".

BOKO HARAM APPROACHES BUHARI FOR PEACE TALK

The federal government of Nigeria has been approached by a group that says it is a faction of the Islamist Boko Haram with an offer to hold peace talks, a spokesman for President Muhammadu Buhari said on Monday.

The suspected members of the militant Islamist group have killed more than 600 people in Africa’s most populous nation in a spate of bombings and shootings since Buhari was inaugurated as president on May 29, according to a Reuters tally.

Efforts to reach an agreement to end the violence, including a 2014 deal fostered by Chad, have repeatedly failed during the six-year insurgency waged by the group in its bid to set up a state in the northeast adhering to strict Islamic laws.

“A faction of the Boko Haram group came forward claiming to have the mandate to negotiate with the government,” said presidential spokesman Garba Shehu, adding that efforts were under way to “verify their claims” of having such authority.

Buhari’s administration has previously said it was not averse to negotiating with the group which has killed thousands and left around 1.5 million people displaced during its insurgency.

“It is now left for them to show proof that they have the mandate, but they made it clear that they are representing a faction of Boko Haram that wants peace,” said Shehu.

RESURGENCE

Earlier this month, a human rights activist said fresh talks had started with the militants for the release of more than 200 schoolgirls kidnapped by the group last year, but said the government was not involved in those discussions.

Boko Haram controlled territory around the size of Belgium at the end of 2014 but were pushed out of most of that land by Nigerian troops in the last few months, with military help from neighbouring Chad, Niger and Cameroon.

Since then, the militants have undergone a resurgence, carrying out attacks across northern Nigeria and neighbouring countries.

Buhari, who has worked with regional counterparts to set up a multinational force, will visit Cameroon on Wednesday and Thursday as part of efforts to collaborate with countries with which Nigeria shares borders.

REUTERS

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