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20 Apr 2016

Prepare To Jail 5000 Pastors, CAN Tells El-rufai On Religious Bill

The Kaduna State Chapter of the Pentecostal Fellowship of Nigeria, on Tuesday, said the over 5,000 pastors in the PFN would rather obey God than obey the proposed preaching bill currently before the state House of Assembly when passed into law.

The state PFN chairman, Prof. Femi Ehinmidu, who spoke at a stakeholders’ roundtable conference in Kaduna, expressed concern on the bill being sponsored by the state government.

Ehinmidu told the state government to be ready to jail the over 5,000 pastors in the state’s PFN if the government believed it could muzzle the citizens to pass the bill into law.

He argued that the bill remained a recipe for crisis in the state when passed into law.

Ehinmidu pointed out that unless the government carried out wider consultations among critical stakeholders, the bill, which he claimed started on a faulty note, was bound to fail.

The Kaduna State Governor, Mallam Nasir el-Rufai, has, however, cautioned religious leaders against politicising the bill before the Assembly.

El-Rufai told the stakeholders that the preaching bill he sent to the state Assembly had no intention of banning evangelism in the state but aimed at curbing emerging religious extremism.

Speaking at the Roundtable Forum, organised by a non-governmental organisation, Carefronting Nigeria, with the support of the Canadian High Commission, el-Rufai, who was represented by his Special Assistant on Media and Publicity, Mr. Samuel Aruwan, said the bill was informed by the government’s concern for security of lives and property.

The forum was tagged Kaduna State Religious Preaching Regulation Bill: Intention and Perception.

The governor said the government had no ill feeling towards the views of the Christian Association of Nigeria, the Jama’atul Nasril Islam and other critical stakeholders, who had made genuine positions on the matter.

He added that some people had started politicising the good intention of government to restore peace in the state.

He explained that the bill, when passed into law, would allow the Christian Association of Nigeria and the Jama’atu Nasir Islam to check strange ideological beliefs that were not in tandem with Christianity and Islam.

Check Out The New Naira Exchange Rate Against Dollar, Pound And Euro

By Unknown 22:05 No comments:

Above is today's exchange rate of the Nigerian Naira against the Dollar, Pounds and Euros ,Its obvious the Naira is strenghtening against the US Dollar...

Fulani Herdsmen Attack Soldiers In Agatu, Benue State

By Unknown 21:49 No comments:

Fulani herdsmen have reportedly kidnapped a police man after engaging a joint team of the Nigerian Army and Mobile Police Force personnel in Agatu, Benue state in a gun duel.
One of the policemen, Corporal Ebiakpo Akparakazi, was also reported missing during the attack.
The Benue state police spokesman, ASP Moses Yamu, who confirmed the incident, said that search teams have been sent out to find the missing officer.
Another youth, Inalegwu Chele, was also reported missing during the attack.
It was gathered that the herdsmen opened fire on the security team who were on their way to investigate an alleged killing of two youths, after receiving a distress call.
Reports also say the two youths who were allegedly shot by the herdsmen were rescued, and are now receiving treatment.

Chibok Girls Located By US Forces

By Unknown 21:19 No comments:

The American and African forces sent to Cameroon to fight Boko Haram have, on several occasions, located clusters of the schoolgirls kidnapped by the militant group two years ago, United States officials said.

Rescue operations have not been carried out, the officials said, because of fears that any ensuing battle with Boko Haram fighters would put the captives at risk, or incite some form of retaliation against hostages still being held in other areas.

American officials said a combination of local intelligence, intercepted communications and drone footage had been used to locate groups of the 276 girls abducted from the Government Girls Secondary School in the Nigerian town of Chibok two years ago this month. Some of the girls have since been tracked to Nigeria’s sprawling Sambisa Forest.

Officials insist that efforts to free the girls have not been abandoned. They say that a major concern is the hundreds of other women and girls who are also held by Boko Haram, captives who are often sexually assaulted, forced into marriages with their tormentors, and sometimes killed.

“You’re not just looking for 200 girls,” said Gen. Carter F. Ham, the retired head of the United States military’s Africa Command. “There are many, many others who have been taken hostage, and more thousands killed, and two and a half million people displaced.”

Senior American military officials joined Samantha Power, the United States ambassador to the United Nations, in Cameroon this week to speak with the country’s military and civilian leaders about the fight against Boko Haram and information gleaned by American intelligence.

The talks took place not far from where American Special Operations forces and hundreds of surveillance drone operators are based. Despite the proximity of the troops, Boko Haram’s attacks continued.

On Monday night, three Cameroonian soldiers were killed and five were wounded after Boko Haram fighters ambushed a military convoy near Dabanga, a town in the country’s north, Cameroonian military officials said. The ambush followed intense fighting on the Nigerian side of the border, where Boko militants attacked an army base, wounding 22 soldiers.

United States military officials said that intelligence reports show that the girls have been divided into smaller groups. Gen. David M. Rodriguez, the head of the military’s Africa Command, told reporters at the Pentagon this month that the Chibok girls have been “moved to some very isolated places.” General Rodriguez added that locating them is “not an exact science.”

Because the girls have been dispersed, military forces from Chad, Nigeria and Cameroon might need to mount simultaneous rescues to make sure that Boko Haram fighters do not retaliate for the rescue of one group. Such a multipronged, coordinated operation would be difficult even for highly trained American troops with combat experience in Afghanistan and Iraq to pull off.

An image from a recent video released by Boko Haram that purports to show a number of the girls abducted from a school in Chibok, Nigeria, two years ago.
CNN, VIA AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE — GETTY IMAGES
“So the challenge is, how do you find lots of people held hostage in different places?” General Ham said. “That’s really complex and it stretches the capability of local forces.”

About 100 miles south of Maroua, the city where Brig. Gen. Donald C. Bolduc, top United States Special Operations commander for Africa, met on Monday with Cameroonian military officials, about 200 American drone operators and Special Operations forces worked with local troops to gather intelligence on Boko Haram and the whereabouts of its many hostages.

General Bolduc has recommended that the Pentagon send dozens of additional Special Operations advisers to the front lines of Nigeria’s fight against Boko Haram. Such a move would push American troops hundreds of miles closer to the battle against an extremist group that has killed thousands of civilians in Nigeria’s northeast as well as in neighboring Niger, Chad and Cameroon. The additional Special Operations advisers would serve in noncombat advisory roles, military officials said.

Even if the African forces continue to push back the militants, as they have managed to do in recent months, the hostages issue is not going away.

There has been concern that Boko Haram, perhaps because it is on the retreat, is increasingly using its hostages as suicide bombers. Few observers appear to put much stock in the assertion by Nigeria’s president, Muhammadu Buhari, that the militant group is technically defeated.

Col. Badjeck Didier, a spokesman for Cameroon’s Defense Ministry, said Tuesday that he worried that some of the Chibok girls may have been turned into suicide bombers.

“When we see the kamikaze bombers, they have the same age — 14-15 years — as the Chibok girls,” Colonel Didier said. He said a recent video released by Boko Haram that purported to show proof of life of a number of the Chibok girls — something the Nigerian government had demanded as a condition of negotiations — was a sign that the group wants to negotiate.

Tom M. Sanderson, director of the transnational threats project at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said that the length of the girls’ time in captivity may have contributed to the difficulty in rescuing them.

“These women did not chose to become suicide bombers, but after two years of incarceration and bearing children of these men, some of them had to buy in out of personal survival,” Mr. Sanderson said. “I do think that Boko Haram has considered using these girls to kill their rescuers. And that would cause people to have spasms over what that symbolism meant.”

No United States official has yet made a public assertion that the Chibok girls have been turned into suicide bombers. Ms. Power, at a news conference on Tuesday in the capital, Yaoundé, said that the Special Operations forces sent by President Obama were doing “surveillance, intelligence and reconnaissance” and would continue their efforts to locate the Chibok girls.

“I want to assure the parents of the Chibok girls and the parents of any children gone missing that, indeed, the United States is in this for the long haul,” Ms. Power said.

SOURCE : NY TIMES

Messi Worth €141m, While Cristiano Ronaldo Is Worth €101m – University Report Says

By Unknown 14:27 No comments:

According to a new report by a Spanish University, the Polytechnic University of Valencia (UPV), Lionel Messi has a higher net value than Cristiano Ronaldo. With the Argentine valued at €141m millon while Cristiano Ronaldo is valued at €101million.

The final figures according to the University report were determined by an Analytic Hierarchy Process multicriteria method which acknowledges variables such as number of goals, assists per game, bookings, leadership and marketing generated by the Argentine and Portuguese players.

The study is in collaboration with Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Harvard University.

This isn’t the University’s final report as the report also said that Messi and Ronaldo’s valuation will once again be analysed by the ‘Mooc’ course, which will begin on April 25.

Cristiano Ronaldo last year made a $40 million investment into four ‘CR7’ boutique hotels and also has his own game, perfume line, clothing line, underwear line and has mansions in Manchester, Madrid, Portugal, New York (Trump Towers) and Morroco, plus endorsement deals with Sacoor Brothers, Nike, Emporio Armani, KFC, Coca Cola and motor oil company Castrol.

While Lionel Messi apart from companies allegedly owned by him in tax havens and endorsement deals with Samsung and Adidas, nothing is known of his financial ventures.

Source:- Marca

Senegal Dissolves Of Its Senate To Save Money

By Unknown 07:09 No comments:

Senegalese lawmakers, who are divided between a 150-seat national assembly and a 100-seat senate, voted to do away with the senate, passing a law which dissolves the institution in order to save an estimated $15 million.

Minister of Justice Aminata Toure explained that the suppression Tuesday of the senate is intended to curb government spending, and will provide the cash needed to help the victims of the yearly rains which have left thousands homeless and killed at least 13 people.

Unlike the national assembly, the senate is a relatively recent institution, and has become a symbol of government waste. It's been frequently pilloried and described as an instrument of cronyism, a way to reward loyal party workers who did not get elected to the larger national assembly. Around half the senators are directly appointed by the president.

Congress also voted to abolish the office of vice president, establish in 2009 by then-President Abdoulaye Wade, the BBC reports. It has not ever been occupied.

See Photos Of The 92 Armed Herdsmen Arrested By Soldiers At Check-points

By Unknown 07:01 No comments:

Here are photos of the 36 armed herdsmen who were arrested by troops of the 117 Guards Battalion Keffi along the Abuja-Keffi road on Sunday. Another group of 56 herdsmen was arrested at the Dantata check point between Kuje and the Abuja airport. Items recovered from them include 26 cartridge Dane guns and 49 cutlasses and knives.They were paraded by the Guards Brigade of the Nigerian Army on Monday.