Chukwuma Soludo, governor of Anambra, says eight LGAs in the state were under siege by hoodlums when he assumed office. Soludo spoke on Tuesday at the induction organised by the Nigeria Governors’ Forum for governors-elect at the presidential villa, Abuja. In recent years, the south-east has been grappling with insecurity characterised by killings and abductions linked to the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB), a proscribed separatist group. However, IPOB has repeatedly denied being responsible for the attacks, insisting that its self-determination agenda is done peacefully.   Soludo said he corrected the “dysfunctional” security system in the state and librated the LGAs. He said governors need a strong and independent security system to tackle insecurity in their domains. “I think for those of us who are governors and the governors-elect, a major concern that we need to get onto is the national security architecture,” he said.   “How do we hope to survive in a dysfunctional system because the architecture is dysfunctional? And it is such an architecture that the problems we face are very local, requiring our local actions, but the instrument is out there. “The other thing is funding in the whole architecture. The federal government, which has a near monopoly on these agencies, cannot fund them. And then they have to foist on the states to be the ones to provide the funding but which is also not a very accountable system. “For me, I’m just a one-year-old baby on the job. Before I assumed office, it was so clear to me about the nature of the functionality and how we must cope to survive. “We got to revive and recreate our state strike force vigilante service which had become awesome in terms of their work and then set up approaches to the non-kinetic approaches by calling on all those in the bush. Because when I assumed office, eight local governments in Anambra were totally under siege taken over by these hoodlums in the bushes, criminals, kidnappers and so on masquerading under the guise of agitation and all of that.” Soludo said his administration has been decisive in going after criminals who commit havoc on the pretence of agitation. “And part of what we had to do very decisively with a multilateral approach, was to challenge the thesis. The main argument that was fueling people hiding under this agitation was to commit all kinds of criminality. We have to call them out as plain criminals, kidnappers who are kidnapping for ransom. And until that was called out, you can’t solve a problem you haven’t identified,” he said. “We set up what we’ll call the truth, justice, and peace commission. We had even a security trust fund which mobilises the masses and well-meaning individuals donating very massively to it. We launched an operation getting everybody involved.“ ‘SECURITY AGENCIES NEED MORE FUNDING’ Also speaking, Hope Uzodimma, governor of Imo, said security agencies need improved funding to adequately tackle insecurity. “I took time to study various security challenges and the type that is prevalent in the south-east, particularly in Imo state where I come from, may not be the same thing as the kind of security challenges in Anambra state, upto Enugu state and Ebonyi,” he said.   “But the common problem I have been able to see is the funding gaps among the agencies. So, in order not to waste our time on too much monitoring of the state governments, if we can tackle the funding gap that exists among these security agencies and fund them early enough, I think as a matter of fact, the idea of having a general without a troop will disappear.” Uzodimma also said the federal and state governments must synergise in addressing insecurity. “So there’s a need for a constructive partnership and operational relationship between the federal government, sub-national and local authorities. As long as we’re able to forge this relationship, I am very sure that the current insecurity will disappear,” he said.

  The Ebonyi State Police Command on Tuesday paraded four suspects allegedly involved in the murder of Eze Christopher Ewa, the traditional ruler of Umuezeokaha community in Ezza North Local Government Area (LGA) in the state.   The monarch was killed in his compound on February 27 by men armed with AK-47 rifles believed to be members of a confraternity. The Police Public Relations Officer (PPRO) in the state, SP Onome Onovwakpoyeya, told journalists that the command had been on the trail of all the criminals involved and that four key suspects had been arrested while others remained at large. Onovwakpoyeya further disclosed that four other criminals were also apprehended for belonging to a gang stealing from unsuspecting members of the public. Two locally made guns were recovered. The police said efforts were ongoing to apprehend other suspects still on the run, assuring Ebonyi residents the accused would be arrested and made to face the law.

  Plateau State Governor-elect Caleb Mutfwang says foreign mercenaries are behind attacks in the state. Recently, over 20 persons were killed in the North Central State, prompting the imposition of a curfew in two communities of Fungzai and neighbouring Kubat in the newly created district of Bwai in the Mangu Local Government Area. But the governor, who was on Channels Television’s Politics Today, blamed foreign mercenaries for the incident and the incessant attacks in the state. While admitting he is not in the best position to speak about the crisis since he is yet to be sworn in, Mutfwang said “I can assure you that these people are brought in from outside those communities”. When asked if they are Nigerians, he said, “I don’t have exact details to give you at the moment. But all the years down the line, a lot of their identities have been revealed that these are not Nigerians and they have been brought in as foreign mercenaries”.   According to him, these mercenaries are being sponsored but he does not know those behind it. “The purpose of those who perpetrate the attack may just be because they are hirelings. I want to ask: who is the person that is sponsoring them? Who is instigating them? What is his aim? “Sometimes, it is difficult to disabuse your mind that this is not about land grabbing. The communities that have been displaced by now, it is not as if they are vacant. Some people are occupying them,” he argued. Trimmed Appetite He does not also rule out the demarketing of the state as part of the reasons for the attacks in the North-Central State. “We think it has a lot to do with land grabbing. It has a lot to do with demarketing of the state because I can tell you that the security situation in the Plateau is not the worst in the north,” the newly-elected governor said. “But there has been a lot of demarketing of the Plateau.” The governor-elect also promised to work for the people, maintaining he won’t loot the state’s resources. “My appetite for greed has been trimmed and I can assure you that I am not going there for stealing,” Mutfwang added. “I am only going there to make sure that Plateau works.”

  Justice Emeka Nwite of the Federal High Court Abuja has granted the request of the National Drug Law Enforcement Agency (NDLEA) to protect the identity of witnesses in a suit against the suspended deputy commissioner of police, Abba Kyari.   At the day’s proceedings, Counsel to the NDLEA, Sunday Joseph, asked the judge to restrict lawyers, litigants, visitors and journalists, who are not parties in the suit, from accessing the court during the testimony of the witness. The NDLEA lawyer said the application was to give protection to witnesses who are intelligence officers. Emeka Nwite, the presiding judge, granted the application and stood down the matter to allow non-parties in the suit to exit the court. The judge, however, pleaded with lawyers who were not involved in Kyari’s matter to bear with the court, assuring them that their cases would be heard as soon as Kyari’s trial was over for the day. When asked about his reaction to the opinions of other lawyers in court, Joseph said the application was made in the interest of national security. He said it had been observed that members of the inspector-general of the police Intelligence Response Team (IRT), who were loyal to Kyari, were still coming to court and one cannot fathom who is who. “We are now going into the nitty-gritty of the matter and there have been allegations that we are just witch-hunting them.” Kyari is standing trial alongside four members of his team — Sunday Ubia, Bawa James, Simon Agirigba, and John Nuhu — on an eight-count charge of drug trafficking.

  The Federal Government has warned members of the National Association of Resident Doctors to shelve their planned five-day warning strike, describing it as illegal. The Minister of Labour and Employment, Chris Ngige, issued the warning today shortly after receiving a letter from the NARD executive notifying him of the impending industrial action, billed to commence midnight today, May 16, 2023 Reacting to the letter, dated May 16, 2023 and delivered to his office at about 5pm same day, Ngige said on receiving the letter, he contacted the Minister of Health, who informed him that a meeting has been scheduled by his office with the resident doctors on Wednesday, May 17. He therefore advised the doctors to avail themselves of the opportunity for social dialogue with their employer, rather than embark on a warning strike, which is unknown to the law. He said, “I will advise them to attend the meeting with the Minister of Health tomorrow. I will also advise them very strongly not to go on five-day warning strike. There is nothing like warning strike. A strike is a strike. “If they want to take that risk, the options are there. It is their decision. They have the right to strike. You cannot deny them that right. But their employer has another right under Section 43 of the Trade Dispute Act, to withhold their pay for those five days. “So, if the NARD has strike funds to pay their members for those five days, no problem. The Health Minister will instruct the teaching hospitals to employ adhoc people for those five days and they will use the money of the people who went on strike to pay the adhoc doctors. That is the ILO principles at decent work, especially for those rendering essential services. Lives should be protected. One of my sons is a resident doctor. I will advise him to go to work and sign the attendance register. The people seen at work are the ones to receive their pay. If you don’t work, there will be no pay.” Commenting on the five demands of the doctors, Ngige said the Federal Government lacks the powers to compel the states to domesticate the Medical Residency Training Fund, since health is in the residual list, where both the federal and state governments have the powers to legislate. According to him, the job of the Federal Government is to make policy and where the states disagree, they are at liberty to make their own policy. He added that the federal government cannot bully the states into domesticating the MRTF if they do not want to. Regarding the issue of immediate payment of the MRTF to their members, he said it was appropriated in the 2023 budget, but has not been released, as the 2022 budget was still running, adding that those in 2022 have all been paid. He denied the claim by NARD that the Federal Government did not pay minimum wage consequential adjustment arrears to their members, saying that all workers in the Education and Health Sectors, and even the defence agencies benefited from the adjustment. He noted that the doctors cannot declare nationwide strike because some states were owing their members, pointing out that the federal government cannot also dabble into the issue, being a state matter. Similarly, he said the Federal Government as the Executive arm of government cannot intervene in the bill at the National Assembly to bond doctors for five years, as it is a private member’s bill. According to him, any intervention by the executive on the matter impinges on the autonomy and independence of the legislative arm of government. Ngige said although the bill has passed through first and second reading, he was sure it would be shot down at the public hearing, since the law prohibits forced labour. He advised the doctors not to talk about 200 percent pay rise, as it was not feasible, adding that besides all the government has done for doctors and other workers in the health sector, such as upward review of hazard allowances, the Nigeria Medical Association was already negotiating with the Federal Ministry of Health, National Salaries, Incomes and Wages Commission and the Presidential Committee on Salaries on pay rise for doctors. “It is incongruous for student doctors to embark on strike when consultants training them were already negotiating with the Federal Government.”

  A recent report by UK media giant, BBC, has revealed a new dimension in the fraud that allegedly marred the February 25 presidential election in Nigeria. According to the report which is currently trending on the media space, the returning officer for Oyigbo local government area; one the LGAs in Rivers State who gave his name as Dr Dickson Ariaga and a staff of Federal College of Education in Omoku seems to be a ghost. The BBC report said a reporter was sent to the school to unravel the identity of the man who announced miraculous figures for the APC in the local government after INEC wasn’t forthcoming with his identity.   “We asked the electoral commission if we could speak to Dr Ariaga, but they would not give us his details or reach out to him for us. “We spoke to the election official seated next to Dr Ariaga, but she told us she wasn’t authorised to talk to the press. “So we sent a reporter to the Federal College of Education in Omoku, about two hours drive north of Port Harcourt, where he’d said he worked when introducing himself.   “The Deputy Provost Moses Ekpa told the BBC: ‘From our records, both from our payroll and from our human resources, there is no such a name in our system and we don’t know such a person.’ “Moses Ekpa says the Federal College of Education in Omoku has never heard of Dr Ariaga   “We tried tracking him down on social media and eventually came across another Facebook account for someone in Port Harcourt, whose profile details had the name Dickson Ariaga. “When we compared an image from this account to the television pictures of Dr Ariaga using Amazon Rekognition software, we achieved a match of 97.2%, indicating a very high probability they’re the same man. “Dr Ariaga did not respond to messages sent by us to this account. “By reaching out to his Facebook friends we did finally manage to speak to a man who said he was a relative, who was at first willing to help us but then didn’t return our calls. “We put these findings to Nigeria’s Independent National Electoral Commission (Inec). Johnson Sinikiem, Inec’s regional spokesman in Port Harcourt, told us that due to a ‘gross shortage of time and personnel’ they had needed to take on some people without verifying their identity documents. “Referring to Dr Ariaga, he said: ‘If he had presented himself as a lecturer from [the college in Omoku] and it’s otherwise, then he is dishonest.’ “We also approached Inec’s headquarters in Abuja for a response to our findings of discrepancies in the results in Rivers state. We were told that they were unable to comment due to ongoing legal challenges. “This is just one case in one state in southern Nigeria where the evidence points to the results having been manipulated. “We’re still looking for Dr Ariaga to respond to the findings in this report.” The report also revealed how the figures announced for Peter Obi of the Labour Party and Bola Tinubu of the All Progressives Congress didn’t match what was tallied from INEC’s result Viewing Portal, IReV. “Dr Ariaga then read out the results for each party in alphabetical order, including for all the smaller parties. They all matched those on the collation sheet the BBC had obtained. But when he reached Mr Tinubu’s APC, instead of saying 2,731 as written on our photograph of the sheet, he read out “16,630”. “Then for Mr Obi’s party (LP) the figure changed again – instead of the 22,289 seen on the sheet, he announced “10,784”, more than halving his vote. “The second local government area where we found major discrepancies was in nearby Obio/Akpor: “The official result for Mr Tinubu was 80,239 votes, but we counted just 17,293 votes from polling station tallies “The count for Mr Obi was announced officially as just 3,829 votes, but the BBC counted 74,033 votes for him on the tally sheets.”

  The Police have given more updates on the attack on US embassy staff in Anambra State. Daily Trust had reported how the convoy of the officials came under attack in Ogbaru Local Government Area of the state on Tuesday. According to sources, four persons were killed in the tragic incident. Giving further insight of the attack, DSP Ikenga Tochukwu, Police Public Relations Officer, said two policemen and two officials of the US Consulate were murdered. In a statement, the command spokesman said the incident occurred along Atani, Osamale road in Ogbaru LGA around 3:30pm. “The Joint Security Forces have embarked on a rescue/recovery operation in Ogbaru LGA, following an attack on a convoy of staff of U S Consulate today 16/5/2023 by 3:30 pm along Atani, Osamale road. The hoodlums murdered two of the PMF operatives, and two staff of the Consulate, and set their bodies ablaze and their vehicles. “Also, the arsonist/murderers on sighting the responding joint security forces abducted two Police operatives, the driver of the second vehicle and took to their heels. No U S citizen was in the convoy. “The Command, while reacting to the situation regrets that a convoy of such or any related will enter the state without recourse to the police in the area or any security agency, assured that the battle against the insurgents in the State is focused and it will remain sustained until such a time security stability is fully restored,” the statement read.