Catholic Priest Assassinated in Imo State!

Rampaging hoodlums in Imo State, weekend, murdered a Claretian priest of the Catholic Church in Owerri.

The priest, whose full identity could not be ascertained at press time, was an academic staff of Imo State Polytechnic, Umuagwo, in Ohaji/Egbema Local Government Area of the state.

Confirming the incident yesterday in a telephone interview, Police Public Relations Officer, Mr. Andrew Enwerem, a Deputy Superintendent of Police, said the priest was murdered by assassins on a bush path.

Enwerem said: “The police are suspecting that it was a clear case of assassination. The priest was gruesomely murdered along a very lonely bush path that would have led him into Port Harcourt Road.”

While noting that whatever happened to the priest might be connected with the bickering and happenings in Imo Polytechnic, Enwerem, however, wondered why the Catholic priest chose to use such a lonely bush path.

He said: “The police are suspecting that whatever happened to the priest cannot be far from the ceaseless bickering emanating from the polytechnic.

“Again, I wonder why the priest chose to use the lonely bush path on his Toyota SUV.”

He confirmed that although the police have recovered the vehicle, no arrests had been made in connection with the crime.

The PPRO said that police patrol teams were despatched to the area as soon as the information was passed on to them.

He said: “The youths of the community joined the police in combing the surrounding bushes. The hoodlums simply perfected and carried out their damnable act before vanishing into the thin air.”

Enwerem confirmed that the command had not only expanded its dragnet to all corners of the state, but were following all available leads.

Enwerem said: “There is the likelihood that the assassins carefully monitored the priest’s movement and laid ambush for him on his track. Honestly, it was a gruesome murder.”

Source: Vanguard

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STOVE WAHALA! JONATHAN'S N9.2BILLION STOVE CONTRACT, CONTRACTOR SUES FEDERAL GOVERNMENT

The contractor handling the N9.2billion worth of clean cook stoves and wonder bags awarded by the administration of former President Goodluck Jonathan has dragged the Federal Government to court.

The Permanent Secretary, Ministry of Environment, Fatima Mede, disclosed this to State House correspondents on Tuesday shortly after briefing President Muhammadu Buhari of the ministry’s activities inside the Presidential Villa, Abuja.

Mede said the contractor approached the court to order the government not to terminate the contract following the emergence of the present administration.

The Jonathan-led Federal Executive Council had on November 26, 2014 approved N9.2billion inclusive of Value Added Tax for the procurement of 750,000 units of clean cook stoves and 18,000 wonder bags.

The contract was awarded in favour of Messrs Integra Renewable Energy Services Limited.

There have been calls on the present administration to terminate the contract.

Confirming the legal action, Mede said the ministry had briefed the Office of the Attorney General of the Federation on the development.

She said the government would appear before the court to argue its case.

She however did not say if there were plans to terminate the contract.

She said, “The matter is in court right now, so there is a limit to how I can talk about the issue of cooking stoves.

“The contractor took government to court asking the court to grant an injunction for government not to terminate the contract.

“We will go there and argue our case, the government will go, we have briefed the Attorney General’s office.

“We will present our case on the issue that led to the contractor taking us to court, it will be explained and the court will decide.”

MAN(24) FORCES HIS MANHOOD INTO 4YEAR OLD GIRL'S MOUTH, REMANDED IN COURT

A 24-year-old man has been arrested and charged before Isolo Magistrates’ Court for defiling and engaging a 4-year-old girl in sexual activity in Lagos State, western Nigeria.

The suspect, Nwanagbaihu Chinonso, was allegedly caught by one of his neighbours after he had already forced his penis into the little girl’s mouth to suck.

The incident happened at Fakeye Street, off Isuti Road, Egan where the suspect resides with the victim’s parents.

What would have been the attraction for a 24-year-old man to engage a 4-year-old girl in sexual activities was the question on the lips of residents of Egan where the incident happened.

Chinonso was handed over to the police at Igando Division by the residents for prosecution. At the station, he allegedly confessed to committing the crime and blamed it on temptation.

He is now facing a two-count charge of defilement and engaging in sexual activity with a minor before the court.

When he was arraigned in court, the presiding Magistrate, Mrs A.O. Adedayo, ordered him to be remanded in prison custody pending when he will be granted bail.

P.M.NEWS gathered that Chinonso’s journey to prison started one afternoon when the victim strolled to his apartment and he closed his door without locking it from inside.

The police alleged that he carried the victim and inserted his finger into her private part and thereafter forced his penis into her mouth to suck.

While the act was going on, a neighbour who suspected a foul play suddenly opened the half locked door and saw what Chinonso was doing with the victim.

The woman raised the alarm which attracted other neighbours.

Having been caught in the act, Chinonso could not deny what he had done. Rather, he started pleading with the neighbours for forgiveness.

The neighbours rebuffed his pleas and handed him over to the police.

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.