NAF denies locating missing Chibok schoolgirls
The Nigerian Air Force has denied reports that it’s operatives had located the missing girls of Government Girls Secondary School, Chibok.
The Director, Public Relations and Information of the NAF, Group. Capt. Ayodele Famuyiwa, said in an electronic mail on Saturday that the claim misrepresented an interview he granted Channels Television on February 12, 2016.
According to him, what was said was that the NAF had the capacity to identify possible areas where the girls might be held.
Famuyiwa said that while the NAF had not identified the specific location of the missing secondary school girls who were abducted in April 20, 2014, the service had been working hard with surveillance aircraft covering a wide area in the search for the girls.
The girls were abducted from the Government Girls Secondary School, Chibok, Borno State.
Watch Group Captain Ayodele Famuyiwa of the Nigerian Air Force, below:
King Turner petitions DSS over invasion of his home
King Amalate Johnnie Turner, the Obanema of Opume Kingdom in Bayelsa State, in the Niger Delta region of Nigeria (photo: above), also a close associate of former President Goodluck Jonathan, has petitioned the Department of State Security (DSS or SSS). In the petition, King A. J. Turner said that agents of the DSS invaded his private residence on Maitama district of Abuja on February 8 in what he described as a violation of his constitutional rights.
King Turner said:
“The incident was so disturbing to our client particularly when there is no allegation that warrants the invasion of the officers from your department against him,” Mr. Turner said in the petition through his lawyer, Kayode Ajulo, and dated February 10th.
More specific is that there was no time formal and/or informal invitation was extended to him at any point in time whatsoever to report at your office for questioning in any capacity nor was any valid search warrant presented to him, his agent, privies or any one whatsoever acting on his behalf ordering the search of the said residential premises.”
– King A. J. Turner, The Obanema of Opume Kingdom, Bayelsa State
Armed SSS operatives stormed Mr. Turner’s Maitama home last Monday and reportedly carted away some vital documents.
King A. J. Turner is a close associate of former president Goodluck Jonathan.
FG sacks 13 University Vice Chancellors
The Federal Government has sacked the Vice Chancellors of 12 federal universities established by the Goodluck Jonathan administration.
Also affected by the sack is the Vice Chancellor of the National Open University of Nigeria, Prof. Vincent Tenebe.
In the statement announcing the sack, the government gave no reason for the action.
A short statement by the Minister of Education, Adamu Adamu in Abuja, on Saturday, simply said President Muhammadu Buhari, had approved the appointment of new Vice Chancellors for the Universities.
But the decision is already generating ripples, with some members of the intelligentsia claiming that it is only the Governing Council of NOUN of which Mr Tenebe is a member, that could only remove him.
Photo: Rivers State Acting Chief Judge, Justice Daisy Okocha presenting publications of the state judiciary to Governor Nyesom Ezenwo Wike on Thursday in Port Harcourt during the opening of the 2015:2016 Legal Year
Wike became governor over dead bodies – Prof Itse Saga
Governor Nyesom Wike climbed into the governorship seat over dead bodies. This was the contention of the Head of Presidential Anti-corruption Committee, Prof Itse Sagay. Sagay voiced his concern over some recent rulings of the Supreme Court on election petitions, particularly those held in Rivers and Akwa Ibom states.
Sagay, who spoke with newsmen at the Olu Palace, Warri on Saturday, warned that the rulings, which allow people who were declared winners without elections in spite of copious evidences of irregularities and heavy human and material casualties, set a dangerous precedent in the history of elections.
“The judgements are very perverse, particularly relating to Akwa Ibom and Rivers. Everybody knows that there were no elections in those two states.
“Everybody knows that people like Wike climbed into the governorship seat over dead bodies and over bloods of human beings. There were no elections, they wrote the results; the evidence is there,” he said.
According to Sagay (photo: left), what the Supreme Court has done is to set the clock of electoral excellence and fairness and credibility back by, ” I do not want to say a thousand years, but certainly it is taking us back to where we were before Jega came in and sanitize the system.”
“We are going to have primitive and barbaric electoral culture; ‘kill as much as you can, destroy as much as you can, create as much catastrophe, but if you can find yourself on that seat, you are confirmed, regardless of the means by which you got there’.
“That is a very major setback to democracy and the rule of law,” he said.
We’re like orphans – Fr. Mbaka’s former parishioners
The exit of Enugu Catholic fiery priest and Director of Adoration Ministry, Rev. Fr. Ejike Mbaka from the Christ the King’s Parish, GRA, has not only left a vacuum in the church, the large compound of the church now looks empty.
Reports say that majority of the parishioners might have also left with him, adding that the church is about to embark on house-to-house visitations to members to convince them to return to the parish.
The Sun reporter source said a member of the church who would not want his name in printvclaimed that many of those attending church services since Mbaka was posted are majorly people from the Matre Day Parish, Trans Ekulu where his successor, Rev. Fr. Theodore Ozoamalu, was transferred from.
Said the source: “It is a pitiable situation in our church; many of our people have moved with Fr. Mbaka; I can confirm to you that over 80 per cent of the parishioners have not been attending services here.”
He further revealed that many of the parishioners who sold olive oil and other items at the Adoration ground have lost their jobs as a result of the transfer. The large crowd that thronged the church every Sunday and Wednesday has suddenly disappeared, giving way to near desolation and quietude.
“Even the blind can see that the place has lost its bubbling self,” said a parishioner. Evidently so; it no longer appears the same activity-filled CKC Catholic Parish. The big space with stadium-like stand used for adoration in the church, has suddenly become empty.
After about 20 years as a parish priest, Rev. Fr. Mbaka finally left the church a fortnight ago on transfer to Our Lady of Rosary Parish, Emene, a suburb of Enugu. The circumstances that preceded his transfer appeared controversial. While the church claimed it was a routine transfer, some people within and outside the church saw it as punitive, attributing it to his political stance and comments since the last general elections.
Nigerian News Desk 