₦airaland Forum

President Muhammadu Buhari says efforts were ongoing to ensure safe return of captives being held by bandits who attacked the Abuja-Kaduna train.

Buhari said he had directed security agencies and the Nigerian Railway Corporation (NRC) to provide more regular and detailed information to families.

The President said the government would explore every opportunity to secure the captives, alive and unhurt.

The Nigerian leader gave the assurance when he received some FCT residents at State House on Sallah homage Monday,

“Many families are in a state of fear and anxiety on account of the many captives held by terrorists against their will, including those taken away after the tragic bombing of the Abuja – Kaduna train.

“I have directed security agencies to ensure quick and safe recovery of all victims of kidnapping.

‘I urge the railway management to immediately set up a situation room for the coordination of the rescue mission and for a minute by minute engagement with the families of the captives.

“This should ease their pain and anxiety as we push the military to find a safe return to their families. My aim is to see all those in captivity safely rescued.”

Buhari said the bandits “are just pushing their luck, but this is only for a while before they are finally crushed.”

He told the visitors that the enemies are using civilians as human shields, thereby making it difficult to confront them directly.

The President added that bandits don’t respect the rules of engagement and could resort to harming hostages when attacked.

Buhari said a stronger synergy between security agencies and communities will make a huge difference in defeating banditry and terrorism in the country.

United States-based Nigerian social critic, Prof Farooq Kperogi says former Senate President, Bukola Saraki won’t pay Nigerian workers if elected as President.
In a lengthy article via his social media page on Sunday, Kperogi, a professor of Journalism and Emerging Media at Kennesaw State University in Georgia accused the former Senate President of being “arrogant, corrupt, unfeeling wretch who as a governor and later a governor general hardly paid workers’ salaries.”

Saraki was governor of Kwara State from 2007 till 2011.
According to Kperogi, the only thing the PDP presidential aspirant is good at is paying people to "propagandize for him".
He said, “Bukola Saraki is one of the strongest contenders for PDP’s presidential nomination. On paper, his identity agnosticism (i.e., his capacity to be simultaneously a northerner and a southerner) is a great selling point, but he is, in reality, the most treacherous reprobate the party would have the misfortune to present.
“As a Kwaran I feel a moral obligation to warn the nation about what kind of person Saraki is outside his cunningly packaged media image. Saraki is an arrogant, corrupt, unfeeling wretch who, as a governor (and later a “governor general”), hardly paid workers’ salaries but who expended enormous resources to unleash sponsored media fury on workers who dared to tell the world that they were owed salaries.
“People who have followed me on Facebook since 2015 will remember that in October 2015, I publicized the plight of the lecturers in Kwara State’s colleges of education who hadn’t been paid salaries for months and who, before the complete stoppage of their salaries, had endured making do with only 70 percent of their salaries for several months.
“I followed up the status update with a full-length column in the Daily Trust titled “Who Will Save Kwara COE Lecturers from Saraki’s Deadly Grip?”. In the column, I wrote: “Senate President Bukola Saraki is called Kwara State’s ‘Governor- General’ for a reason: He is, for all practical purposes, the state’s de facto governor, and Governor Abdulfatah Ahmed is merely his impotent, obsequious caretaker. Ahmed must dutifully take orders from Saraki or risk losing his cushy surrogate governorship. This isn’t a flippant, ill-natured putdown of Governor Ahmed, who seems like a nice person; it’s an uncomfortable truth that many Kwarans know only too well.
“While Saraki and Ahmed sponsored infantile media attacks against me because of this, I did a Facebook fundraiser for the lecturers. One Dr. Nura Alkali kickstarted the fundraiser with a N200,000 donation. Several others followed. The money I helped raise gave the lecturers some reprieve, and the publicity the gesture generated at the time shamed Saraki and his flunkey into paying the lecturers’ salaries.
“But that was after many lecturers had died from starvation, after some of them had lost their children during childbirth because they couldn’t pay hospital bills, and after many of them had suffered the humiliation of not being able to send their children to school. This was also the story of Saraki’s tenure as a two-term governor. Salaries and pensions were never guaranteed.
“Memories of Saraki’s 16-year reign of terror for workers are still so enduringly traumatizing that when I wrote a critical article against Governor Abdulrahman Abdulrazaq sometime ago (I called him a “third-rate governor”), my paternal uncle, who's a retiree, called to tell me that my critical opinions of the governor won’t resonate with workers or retirees because the governor had never owed salaries or pensions since he has been in power, which he said was a comforting departure from Saraki’s and Ahmed’s tenures.
"Imagine the depth of despair and misery people must have experienced in the past for them to celebrate a governor just because he pays salaries, which is their just and legal entitlement.

The Troops of the Multinational Joint Task Force (MNJTF) have killed about twenty-two Boko Haram/Islamic State of the West African Province (ISWAP) terrorists during a fighting clearance operation on the fringes of Lake Chad.

The Chief of Military Public Information of the MNJTF N’Djamena, Chad, Lt. Col. Kamarudeen Adegoke, disclosed this in a statement on Saturday.

Adegoke reported that the terrorists were nutrialised at Tumbun Rabo, in Abadam Local Government Area of Borno State on April 27.

He said: “After the operational engagement, which was firmly supported by the Air Task Force of Operation Hadin Kai and the MNJTF, a battle damage assessment clearly revealed at least 20 BHT were neutralised, 12 AK 47 rifles, 1X Mortar 60mm and large catches of ammunitions of different calibers were recovered.

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“Likewise, carefully concealed 5x Gun Trucks and a truck laden with supplies meant for the criminals were destroyed.

“Also, an MRAP fighting vehicle was recovered by the troops; it was carted from a Nigerian Army position in the past.”

Adegoke explained that the troops of combined Taskforce Mallam Fatori/Damasak at Forward Operations Base Arege drawn from MNJTF Sectors 3 and 4 (Nigerian and Nigeriene troops) have continued with aggressive patrols to dominate and put pressure on the criminals.

“With multiple sorties against the terrorists’ positions, Air Taskforce gave effective close air support and attacked the criminals to enable ground forces to access the hitherto well defended terrorists’ strongholds in the vicinity of Tumbun Rago.

“Despite strong resistance by the Boko Haram terrorists, the ground troops charged through several obstacles and cleared the mined routes, which made them come in contact with elements of the insurgents.

“Relatedly, troops of Sector 1 Taskforce Wulgo (MNJTF troops from Cameroun) continued aggressive dominance of their assigned areas with a clearance patrol to the general area of Chikingudu, areas were seen to be deserted, but troops came in contact with two Boko Haram logisticians who attempted to flee but were neutralised by the vigilant troops.

“Two motorcycles were recovered from them. Meanwhile, the Amphibious Taskforce Darak of the same Sector 1 have continued their maritime patrols to dominate their areas,” the spokesman said.