Crime Facts

Boko Haram Member Who Escaped After Kuje Prison Break Recaptured

  The Nasarawa State Police command says it has recaptured Hassan Hassan, a member of the Book Haram terrorist who recently escaped from the Kuje correctional centre. Terrorists on Tuesday attacked the Kuje medium custodial centre and freed over 800 inmates including members of the Boko Haram and Islamic State West African Province (ISWAP). Subsequently, the Federal Government on Friday declared 64 of the inmates who had terror-related charges wanted with their names and other details published. A statement by the Nasarawa State Police Public Relations Officer, DSP Ramhan Nansel said the Boko Haram escapee was nabbed early hours of Saturday. The statement reads, “Sequel to the attack on Kuje Maximum Custodial Centre and subsequent escape of inmates, on July 9th, 2022 at about 0130hrs, one Hassan Hassan ‘M’ whose name and picture was amongst the escaped inmates with Boko Haram/Terrorism Case was recaptured by the Eagle-eyed Police operatives of the Nasarawa State Police Command at Keffi. “The Commissioner of Police, CP Adesina Soyemi has ordered for the transfer of the suspect to a safer location while an intensive search for other escapees and handing over process of the arrested inmate progresses. “The Commissioner of Police, however, appreciated the efforts of the Police operatives for a job well done and assured members of the public of the Command’s unrelenting efforts at making the public space safer for all”.

Labour Party, Coalition To Deploy 15 Agents Per Polling Unit To Stop Rigging, Says Prof Utomi

  Professor Pat Utomi, the Convener, The Big Tent of the Third Force, says the coalition and the Labour Party (LP) plan to deploy at least 15 agents each to polling booths in the country to help safeguard votes in 2023 general elections. Mr Utomi, the Chairman, National Consultative Front (NCFront) and a leader in the Labour Party, disclosed this in a statement on Friday in Lagos on Election Agenda. According to him, the coalition has worked and made much sacrifice to get Nigeria to move from state capture by aging oligarchs and to make the nation overcome its numerous security and economic challenges. “The broad coalition of women, youth, professionals and the intellectuals which has adopted the leadership of the Labour Party and Peter Obi is serving notice that in addition to its agents which will number up to 15 in each polling booth in the country, it will use technology to guard the votes of Nigerians in 2023. He said the organisation would, in the next week, unveil the details of Mass Polling Booth education programmes and the retreat for the gubernatorial candidates and ideology workshops for all Third Force candidates. The convener, who expressed delight that Nigerians’ political awareness had continued to rise, said “People have awoken. They want to take back their country.” He said that the coalition and LP were planning to counter all electoral manipulations and violence in 2023 that could throw up bad leaders. “The last frontier before liberation for the people is in checkmating the traditional ways and means by which they thwart the will of the people. “These include Election fraud or rigging, vote buying, manipulating of electronic voting, equipment and voter intimidation, as well as abuse of emotions around ethnicity, religion and region,” Mr Utomi added. According to him, the coalition will inaugurate the Big Tent Think Tank to harmonise the original manifesto of the Labour Movement with the production focused philosophy of its presidential candidate, Peter Obi. He said this would include the production and value chain-based ideas of a competitive economy, based on the latent comparative advantage of the different parts of Nigeria aimed at sustainable manufacturing espoused for years. Mr Utomi said contrary to claims about the governance capacity, structure, and manifesto of the Big Tent of the Third Force (which has the Labour Party and its Presidential Candidate, Obi as arrow head of a collegial leadership initiative), the coalition was ready to provide needed leadership. According to him, leadership has networks reaching down to every polling booth through the 36 political commissions of both the Nigeria Labour Congress and the Trade Union Congress. Mr Utomi said the structure of the Big Tent had been deepened by the passion with which the people, young and old were motivated to buy into the reform pointed to by Peter Obi.

No Politician Can Rig 2023 Elections – INEC Declares

  The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) Friday insisted that no politician can rig the forthcoming general election in the country. The outgoing Resident Electoral Commissioner in Oyo State, Dr. Mutiu Agboke, said this while delivering a lecture in Ibadan as part of activities marking the 83rd birthday anniversary of the chairman and founder of an Ibadan-based radio station Splash FM, High Chief Adebayo Akande. He alleged that some university lecturers who served as collation officers in the previously conducted elections in some states were guilty of aiding and abetting electoral related offences in the country. Agboke stated that an electoral officer who was supposed to serve as an unbiased umpire put on the gab of a politician by querying the decision of the electorate to vote for a particular candidate in Oyo State. He disclosed that his co-travellers came to his office to mount pressure on him not to announce the result in order for the entire state not to be engulfed in flame. Responding to the presentation by a former Vice-Chancellor of the University of Ibadan, Professor Femi Bamiro, on his experience as a Returning Officer, Agboke said, “some of your colleagues were destructive and are still destructive with no interest of state at heart.” The commission said with over 700,000 Permanent Voters Cards yet to be collected in Oyo State, the residents of the state were not ready for the elections.

Igbo still at the bottom of national politics –Kwankwaso

  Rabiu Kwankwaso, the presidental candidate of New Nigeria Peoples Party for the 2023 general elections has said that Igbos are still at the button of the national politics. Kwankwaso said this during an interview with the Punch. According to him, this is the golden opportunity they have. If they lose this opportunity, it will be a disaster even for the country because the young men and women there think they are being sidelined. ” I have attained my current position because I worked very hard based on thinking, planning and projection of things. That’s why I am relevant to my local government area, state, etc. “What the South-East doesn’t know is that if they miss this opportunity, it will be a disaster for them because they will continue to say they are been marginalised but no one is marginalising them. Leaving the APC and the PDP was a strategy, and the South-East must learn how to play politics. If I decide to become vice president to anybody in this country, the NNPP will collapse. Speaking further, Kwankwaso said the best for the South-East is for them to come and partner, maybe after eight years, after our term, they will say, ‘This man is the best for the country because he has stopped the security challenges of the country’. Nigerians will say ‘these are the people’, and eight years is just like two years. Eight years will come but if you are not prepared for it, it will come and meet you worse than eight years ago. They (South-East) have to be strategic.

How Abba Kyari, Others Survived Kuje Prison Attack

  Fresh facts have emerged on how embattled Deputy Commissioner of Police (DCP) Abba Kyari, as well as ex-governor Joshua Dariye of Plateau State and his Taraba State counterpart, Jolly Nyame, and others in the VIP wing of the Kuje Custodial Centre in Abuja escaped death when members of the Islamic State West Africa Province blew up the facility. The former commander of the Inspector General of Police (IGP) Intelligence Response Team (IRT) and four members of his team were remanded in the facility pending the determination of their ongoing trial over drug related offences levelled against them by the National Drug Law Enforcement Agency (NDLEA. Dariye, Nyame, a former chairman of the defunct Pension Reform Task Team (PRTT), Abdulrasheed Maina, and a former Chairman of the House of Representatives’ Ad-hoc Committee on Petroleum Subsidy, Farouk Lawan, are among the VIPs serving jail terms in the correctional centre. The terrorists, who stormed the Custodial Centre on Tuesday night, freed over 800 inmates, including Boko Haram fighters held in the facility. A personnel of the Nigerian Security and Civil Defence Corps (NSCDC) lost his life while a policeman sustained severe injuries during the attack. Daily Trust Saturday reliably gathered from sources including a senior officer of the correctional service and one of the VIP inmates that the terrorists targeted the VIP wing of the facility after they succeeded in setting free their members. “The gunmen knew what they came for and where to locate their members. They surely understood every part of the prison and where their members were kept,” one of the sources disclosed. The prison source revealed that after releasing their members, one of the terrorists started shouting the names of Abba Kyari and his men. The source said the criminals headed towards the isolated area, saying in Hausa; “Abba Kyari you are dead, we will kill you now.” The source said the terrorists rained bullets on the VIP wing of the facility but couldn’t gain access before some gunshots were heard outside the prison facility, which deterred the terrorists. “We took cover under tables as the terrorists fired several rounds of ammunition,” one of the VIP inmates said. The source said what saved the day was the shootings from military men from outside the building.

Bandits Kill 4, Abduct 15 Villagers In Kaduna

  Bandits have attacked Iburu village under Kufana district of Kajuru Local Government Area of Kaduna State, killing four villagers and abducted 15 others, Daily Trust Saturday reports. A community leader of Kufana, Daniel Garba, who confirmed the incident to our correspondent Friday, said the attack happened on the night of July 4. “The bandits stormed the community at night and killed three people while the fourth person was killed on his way to offer assistance. So far, they (bandits) kidnapped 15 of our people,” he said. He decried the incessant attacks being carried out by bandits around the area, but commended the efforts of the government and security agencies operating in the local government area towards tackling insecurity in the area. He said government and security agencies needed to do more to end the killing of innocent villagers in the area and other parts of the state. He said the bandits were yet to contact the families of the people they abducted. When contacted, the police public relations officer in the state, DSP Mohammed Jalige, said the command had not received the report. He, however, promised to find out the details.

REVEALED: Kuje prison attackers were led by ex-terrorist inmates who knew every location

  Famous for accommodating rich and wealthy suspects and other VIP criminals, the Medium Security Custodial Centre in Kuje Area Council of Abuja, Nigeria’s capital city, is under fresh scrutiny. Anxieties escalated last Tuesday when terrorists stormed the custodial centre in a night-time attack that featured the detonation of several bombs and the deployment of Rocket-Propelled Grenades (RPGs), General Purpose Machine Guns (GPMGs) and an assortment of AK-49 assault rifles, AK-47 assault rifles, and service pistols.   Armed to the teeth, the audacious attackers overcame the might of the security agents, setting free more than 800 inmates held at the custodial centre. They killed one operative (a personnel of the Nigerian Security and Civil Defence Corps (NSCDC) identified as Iliyasu) and four inmates. A security agent, who witnessed the attack, told Saturday Vanguard in an exclusive chat that he took cover to save his life when he saw how the custodial centre fell so cheaply into the terrorists; creating the opportunity for them to have a field day. According to operative, he had to put his phone in silent mode and clutched the screen tightly to his belly to prevent the low intensity blue light from shining through, because he kept on receiving calls from his comrades and didn’t want his cover to be blown by any distraction. He explained, “I received a call that night to come around the main entrance to the Custodial Centre because there was a problem. So, I asked a colleague who was around at that time to accompany me to the place. “As we were about to start the car, we heard the bang of a detonated bomb and two more explosives were activated in a quick succession. At that point, we knew that letting the attackers catch a glimpse of us would be suicidal, so we took cover immediately. “I threw away the car key and the armoury key that was with us at that time, because we feared that would be looted without mercy, if we were caught by the terrorists. “Expectedly, phone calls started pouring in from many of my contacts. I had to put the handset in silent mode and clutched the screen tightly to my stomach so that the light wouldn’t expose my hiding place. “I believe the attackers were led by some of the ex-terrorists who had been released from custody, because they seemed to have a perfect knowledge of the location of everything as they carried out their attacks. They were even calling-out the nicknames of some officers and asking for their whereabouts. “After about two hours of the rampage, I started hearing ‘Let us go! Let us go! Let us go!’ However, I didn’t feel very comfortable coming out of my hiding place just yet. So, I stayed put. “After about 30 minutes, the terrorists made a return to the Custodial Centre. This time more reinforced than the first time. However, they couldn’t find any security operative on the ground so they left and didn’t return again.” Asked what he would have done, if the terrorists had nabbed him, the security agent responded, “I thank God I was wearing a three-quarter shorts and a T-shirt. I would have told them that I was only an inmate running for his dear life.” That is an embarrassment to the Nigerian state, because the highly successful jailbreak in Abuja, the seat of the country’s federal power, raises serious concern over the competence of those tasked to run the security agencies and the custodial centers. In all, the attackers who have been identified as members of the Islamic State West Africa Province (ISWAP) freed 64 of their fellows who were still detained at the custodial centre. In addition to these high profile enemies of the State, hundreds of other suspected criminals also escaped detention and made their way back into the society. That’s unleashing bandits into the society again. From time-to-time, violent crimes have been traced to these escapees in different parts of the country. Recall the case of 35-year-old Emmanuel Joseph, an ex-convict, who was nabbed barely two weeks ago for allegedly raping an 80-year-old woman, Mrs Alice Mogbonjubola, on Lotogbe Street, in Ondo State. Curiously, the ISWAP terrorists who attacked the Kuje custodial centre did not attack homes in the neighbourhood. However, while some terrified residents fled to “safe” places like church and mosque buildings, others locked up themselves and their family members at home, waiting for the worst to happen. Sharing her experience with Saturday Vanguard, Ms. Mercy, a 25-year-old woman from Akwa Ibom, who resides within the estate directly behind the medium security custodial centre, said she was having her bath about 10:00pm when the attack began. She said: “Not long after I returned home from my business, I entered the bathroom to have a bath when all of a sudden I heard the bang that followed the detonation of bombs in the neighbourhood. The impact shook many of the buildings in the area including mine. “So, I fled the bathroom with soap bubbles all over my body, grabbed a wrapper and headed to the room where my children were sleeping. I mounted the youngest child on my back and held the other one tightly in my right hand. “The sporadic gunshots where too much. I couldn’t flee my house because my children are too young. So, I stayed back waiting for the terrorists to attack us and kill me and my children. I was determined to die with them in my house than leave them behind and run. Fortunately, we were not attacked. So, I thank God for everything.” This occurrence is not a coincidence, but a huge clue that the attackers were on a mission to set free some of their affiliates, who had been arrested for terrorism and kept in the Kuje custodial centre. After 24 hours, only about 430 inmates have been recaptured, the Nigerian Correctional Service said. So, this means that an estimated 50 percent of escapee inmates; some of

Malami marries Buhari’s daughter

  The Attorney-General of the Federation, Abubakar Malami (SAN), on Friday, got married to Nana Hadiza, the daughter of the President, Major General Muhammadu Buhari (retd.). A Spokesman for the President, Garba Shehu, confirmed this to our correspondent on Friday. “It is true. The AGF got married to the President’s daughter,” he said. Hadiza is Buhari’s daughter from a previous marriage and now the third wife to the AGF. She is said to have been previously married and has six children. It was gathered that the private Nikkai ceremony took place at the Presidential Villa, Aso Rock.

ISWAP Intercepts Food Meant For IDPs In Borno, Loots 4 Trucks

  Members of the Islamic State in West Africa Province (ISWAP) have attacked a convoy of 40 trucks of food meant for Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) and resettled communities in Borno and intercepted four of them, Daily Trust Saturday learnt exclusively. The attack, which occurred Thursday night around Layi village in Mobbar Local Government Area of the state, came barely 48 hours after terrorists launched a heavy attack on Kuje Medium Security Prison in the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) freeing at least 69 Boko Haram suspects and hundreds of others. The ISWAP on Wednesday claimed responsibility for the attack. Top security sources who were briefed about the Borno attack told Daily Trust Saturday that the food and nutritional products consignment was on its way to Damasak. It was part of the palliative by the World Food Program (WFP) for IDPs from Abadam and victims of the Boko Haram violence returning to their homes in Mobbar. “The attackers were in four gun trucks. After heavy attacks on the convoy, they succeeded in intercepting four of the vehicles and emptied nearly everything from the vehicles,” the source said. It was also gathered that the terrorists are now firming up their control of major roads and strategic areas in the southern and northern parts of Borno. Intelligence sources in the area have reported that ISWAP members in four trucks have been deployed to Kareto village in Mobbar Local Government Area. DailyTrust

President Buhari Arrives Katsina To Celebrate Sallah

  President Muhammadu Buhari on Friday arrived Katsina State to celebrate this year’s Eid-del Kabir (Sallah) in his hometown, Daura. This year’s Eid-El Kabir is scheduled to hold on Saturday across the world. On arrival at the Umaru Musa Yar’adua Airport at about 5:20 pm on a presidential jet, the president was received by the Katsina State Governor, Aminu Masari, in company of his deputy, Mannir Yakubu, Speaker of the Katsina House of Assembly, Tasi’u Maigari Zango, State APC Chairman, Muhammad Sani Daura and other senior government officials as well as heads of security agencies and other dignitaries in the State. The president, after receiving the guard of honor from the troops of the 17 Brigade of the Nigerian Army and officers of the 213 Operational Base of the Nigerian Air Force under the “Operation Hadarin Daji’’ at the airport left for Daura on a helicopter at about 5:38 pm. Eid-ul-Adha also referred to as the festival of sacrifice, is celebrated worldwide by Muslims and is marked with the slaughtering of rams, cows, and sheep. In Muslim parlance, the festival is the most important feast in the Muslim calendar as it is an occasion to celebrate the willingness of Prophet Ibrahim to sacrifice his son, Isma’il, in submission to Allah’s command. In commemoration of this intervention, an animal, usually a ram, is sacrificed ritually and divided into three parts. One share is given to the poor and needy, another is kept for home and the third portion is given to relatives.