This man is a warrior. Despite the beatings, torture, dehumanisation, abuse, and possibility of death, he won't give up. This man has more 'balls' than all of his detractors and their ancestors put together. He will learn , come and win.
The rearrested leader of the Indigenous People of Biafra, Nnamdi Kanu is not negotiating the agitation of the Biafra nation which he began in 2014, his lawyer, Aloy Ejimakor, has clarified.
Speaking with SaharaReporters, Ejimakor insisted on how the Nigerian government had continued to prevent the IPOB leader from signing the consular forms seeking to assist him.
Recall that Ejimakor, last week, had said in his tweets that Kanu preached unity and tolerance in the custody of the Department of State Services.
“UPDATE: Today, I met with Onyendu at the DSS. We spent nearly four hours. My interaction with him was fulfilling. He’s cheery and looks forward to overcoming this predicament sooner than later. Again, he stressed UNITY and tolerance on all sides. He has you all in his thoughts,” his tweet had read.
But clarifying the statement on Monday in an interview with SaharaReporters, the lawyer said, “Mazi Nnamdi Kanu is not compromising the actualisation of Biafra. He’s not giving up. He was speaking of the unity of his followers and well-wishers.”
When Sarah (not real name) was five, her father died after a prolonged battle with HIV and AIDS. At 15, her mother was killed during an attack on their compound in north-eastern Nigeria by Boko Haram militants. The same group returned to the compound a year later, seized Sarah and eight of her friends, and took them to Sambisa Forest, the sect’s main hideout, where they took turns raping the abducted girls. The girls escaped after 21 days in captivity and ended up in an Internally Displaced Persons (IDP) camp in Madinatu, near the north-eastern Nigeria city of Maiduguri.
In Madinatu, Sarah, like so many girls in the town’s main IDP camp, became a target of a sex trafficking ring that often approaches young girls on their way to fetch water, firewood or food, promising them a better life abroad. A middle-aged woman working for a trafficking cartel told Sarah that she will be taken across the Sahara Desert, and across the Mediterranean Sea, to Italy where she would be given a job as a hairdresser.
“She first asked about my parents and I told her I had lost them,” Sarah tells Equal Times. “Then she said she wanted to help me because I was an orphan.” The teenager eventually got trafficked out of the camp but was abandoned in Niger, following a Nigerien government crackdown on smuggling gangs in the central city of Agadez.
Sarah found her way back to the IDP camp in Madinatu where approximately 1000 displaced persons are taking refuge, including over 100 orphaned children whom human traffickers prefer to target.
“This first thing one man who said he wanted to give me a job in Niger asked me was: ‘Do you have parents?’” Falmata, age 17, tells Equal Times. “When I said yes, he walked away from me.”
A huge and difficult task
Nigeria is facing the huge and difficult task of combating human trafficking. Every year thousands of Nigerian women and children are trafficked out of the country, mainly to Europe and the Middle East. Most of these women and girls end up as sex workers or domestic workers in conditions of modern slavery which often include extreme violence and forced labour.
For many years, Nigeria’s southern state of Edo has been the hub of most trafficking cases, but in recent years, the Boko Haram insurgency has seen trafficking in persons become more prevalent in the country’s north-east.
The 2017 Trafficking in Persons (TIP) Report published by the United States Department of State noted that more than three dozen women and children were exploited “in sex trafficking among seven IDP camps in Maiduguri” and that government officials managing the camps are alleged to be complicit in these activities.
Nigeria’s National Agency for the Prohibition of Trafficking in Persons (NAPTIP), which is responsible for fighting human trafficking in Nigeria, says its officials have been “working seriously” in IDP camps to protect women and children from exploitation that amounts to human trafficking, and that it recently arrested and charged two persons with sexual exploitation.
“We are currently collaborating with camp managers, camp officials and actors to combat trafficking in IDP camps,” Mitika Mafa Ali, commander of NAPTIP’s Maiduguri office, tells Equal Times. “We have given them our toll-free numbers and have told them that if there are any cases of human trafficking, they should call us.” “If my parents were alive, this would never have happened to me”
The vast majority of victims of trafficking out of IDP camps are orphans who unaccompanied by close family members. Of the dozen or so cases of human trafficking out of open camps around Maiduguri in the last 18 months, about 80 per cent involve children without families, according to activists campaigning against trafficking in the region.
“The trafficking of displaced women and children is a problem, not just in and around Maiduguri, but across Borno State,” says Yusuf Chiroma, a member of the Borno Community Coalition, a group of aid workers assisting survivors of the Boko Haram insurgency through skills acquisition programmes. “These traffickers take advantage of the fact that orphans are desperate to make money, and they have no one to open up to.”
About 50,000 orphaned children, the majority of whom are girls, live in IDP camps in and around Maiduguri, according to the Borno State government. Child rights campaigners have warned that unless children are moved away from these camps and raised in families, they may continue to be victims of exploitation.
“Decades of research has shown that children in institutions, which includes IDP camps, suffer not just physically, but also emotionally and intellectually,” Dollin Holt, director of Caprecon Foundation which supports vulnerable children in north-east Nigeria, tells Equal Times.
“These kids need to be moved away from these camps to families or to a community-based system of care.”
This January 16-year-old Fatima returned to Maiduguri after spending in a year in Niger. Her trafficker had told her that she would be trained to become a tailor, but she ended up working without pay as a cleaner on a Nigerien poultry farm. Fatima says that she was often sexually harassed by men, including those she worked for. Now, she regrets ever making the trip abroad.
“I didn’t want to travel, but my friends pressured me to go and become a tailor,” says Fatima, who lost her parents during an attack by Boko Haram in Bama. “If my parents were alive, they would never have allowed me leave with a man I knew nothing about.”
Fatima is now one of the growing number of campaigners calling on the Nigerian government and civil society organisations to take action in moving orphaned children away from IDP camps and allow them to be raised in families.
“I once had parents and I know that no-one protects children better than they do,” she says. “Having a family is the best way children can be protected from traffickers.”
oluztx: As soon as they got Nnamdi kanu in custody, Yorubas abandoned Igboho; he has been on the run since a month now, Yorubas don't care but interested in namdi kanu and Cubana's wealth. Just to tell you they never cared about him or the movement, just doing it out of dick measuring they have their own Nnamdi Kanu.
appishani1: If you are writing about Nnamdi kanu never put Jesus there. Jesus is never like Nnamdi kanu please. I know you are in pain but calm down. Nnamdi kanu mouth kill him. He kill many innocent people and you expect God not to repay him back? That blood must come back to haunt him.
White Jesus is a figment of the white man's imagination.
IGBOSON1: These Brits are still under the mistaken impression that they're dealing with a responsible gov't! Buhari, being the hateful and vindictive person he is, will rather take a bullet than allow the British gov't take his prisoner, Mazi Kanu, back to the UK!
For Buhari to yield, western gov'ts have to throw away the rule book and go medieval on his skinny ass!
If the House of Parliament gets involved which it will, it may force the hand of the government to take action against Nigeria.
The British High Commission and a law firm in London, Bindmans, have sought the consent of the leader of the Indigenous People of Biafra, Nnamdi Kanu, to take up his case.
The PUNCH gathered on Thursday that Kanu’s Nigerian lawyer, Aloy Ejimakor, delivered two forms to the IPOB leader on Wednesday during a visit to the office of the Department of State Services, where he is being detained.
Ejimakor told our correspondent that the development would open up a new chapter in the trial of Kanu, adding that the Nigerian government would be served with summons to bring him to the United Kingdom, where another case would be heard over the manner of his rendition to Nigeria.
He said, “I went to visit him on Wednesday and went with two forms. One was the consular consent form that the British High Commission required that he signs to consent to consular assistance. There was also a form from his counsel in the UK. The firm is known as Bindmans, one of the largest law firms in the UK.
“The forms will open a whole new chapter of legality, including the filing of a Writ of Mandamus, against the Nigerian government in a UK court to compel it to produce Kanu, because his detention is illegal under the British law. It was an extraordinary rendition, which is an international crime by which a state kidnaps a suspect or a fugitive without the due process of law.
“They will be filing all these processes in the UK and there is a prospect of a UK court assuming universal jurisdiction or extra-territorial jurisdiction and reaching into Kenya so that they can arrest every Kenyan official, either authorised or not, and every Nigerian official involved in this case.”
The lawyer noted that the DSS collected the forms, saying they must first go through the vetting of its legal unit.
He said despite being told that he would collect them on Thursday, he had yet to be contacted by the government agency.
Ejimakor said during his three-hour meeting, the IPOB leader gave a vivid account of how the Nigerian government hired agents, who abducted and flew him into the country.
While quoting Kanu, he said the IPOB leader was blindfolded and flown on a private jet without any extradition hearing or immigration process.
He stated, “Kanu said he was flown to Abuja in a private jet on Sunday, June 27, 2021, from the Jomo Kenyatta International Airport, Nairobi, and that he was the lone passenger.
He was blindfolded and driven to the tarmac very close to the plane without passing through the airport immigration.
“The plane departed Nairobi around 12pm and arrived in Abuja in the evening.
“Kanu was tortured and subjected to untold cruel and inhuman treatment in Kenya. He said his abductors disclosed to him that they abducted him at the behest of the Nigerian government.
The people that abducted him said they were told by their sponsors that Kanu was a Nigerian terrorist linked to Islamic terrorists in Kenya, presumably Al-Shabab. But after several days when they discovered his true identity, they tended to treat him less badly.
“Despite that, they told him they felt committed to hand him over to those that hired them.
“According to Kanu, no warrant of arrest was shown to him or even mentioned to him. And for the eight days he was held incommunicado, nothing of presenting him before a court or transferring him to an official detention facility was ever mentioned. He was held in a nondescript private facility and chained to a bare floor.
“Kanu was interviewed for the first time in my presence by three DSS officers. The interview was revealing as it contained certain new allegations that were never heard of before. But all the questions relate directly or indirectly to his status as the leader of IPOB.”
The counsel said despite his client’s ordeal, he was in high spirit.
Seven persons have sustained fatal injuries and are feared dead at Dangote Sugar Company, in Gyawana, Adamawa State owned by Africa's richest man, Aliko Dangote.
Reports from the area, which is about 70 kilometers from Yola, the capital of Adamawa State, indicate that the soldiers opened fire on the protesters around 5pm today.
A resident of Gyawana told SaharaReporters that soldiers, despatched for the illegal operation, were hired by the management of the sugar company to chase the protesters away.
The soldiers, who reportedly came to the sugar company in four Toyota Hilux vans, allegedly left their duty post at Numan bridge.
presidency: The first batch of 6 A-29 Super Tucano aircraft have departed the United States of America on Wednesday, 14 July 2021 enroute Nigeria. The 6 aircraft will be leapfrogged through 5 countries including Canada, Greenland, Iceland, Spain and Algeria before arriving their final destination in Nigeria towards the end of July 2021. An official induction ceremony of the aircraft into the inventory of the Nigerian Air Force is already being planned at a later date in August 2021 to be announced in due course. The Office of the Director of Public Relations and Information remains open to any inquiry regarding the arrival and induction of the aircraft.
Thank you.
Edward Gabkwet Air Commodore Director of Public Relations and Information Nigerian Air Force
Gireiboy: Seriously! eh! the level of destruction no be here woo! it also had a psychological effect on northerners like delusion of grandeur, chestbeating on cyberspace, lying in order to sleep well at night, of which i commend them for that you know. It is a coping mechanism to help them come to terms with reality. " Sometimes people believe a lie not because they don't know that it is a lie, but because they wanted it to be true".
My brother it’s a mess , northern Nigeria has become worse than Somalia and still loading . Don’t worry, it will get better .
Royal55: [i]my dear, read the NEWS RELEASE and also check the headline of the source of the post you will know that this is just another propaganda by the Op[/i]
Gireiboy: Exactly! it reminds me of the endsars destruction that happened in the North last year, very disturbing! the killing, the looting! seriously is embarassing, so called educated human beings behaving like savages, the north has not recovered since then.
Yes ooo, thousands dead , trail of blood, misery, mutilated bodies, IDP camps and shut down schools . Not to talk of terrorists roaming free all over the place.
Royal55: Nothing in your post suggests your headline
The families however said images of the presentation of a framed Shiviti made in Jerusalem presented to Igbo leader Eze Chukwuemeka Eri and a “Torah scroll whose cover was designed by British-Israeli street artist Solomon Souza presented to an Igbo community were used by separatist groups to push their selfish agenda and thus distort the intention of the filmmakers as being sympathetic to their separatist agenda
TUANKU: Crap. There are no jews in Nigeria, if Igbos were Jews the Nigerian government won't be fvcking around with them like these. Try same with jews in Ethiopia and see if you won't get a response from the Israeli government. I support the Biafra cause but this Jewish-Igbo connection is false. The Israeli government and the jewish people will never abandon any single jew not to talk of millions of jews, it is clearly stated in the constitution of the Jewish state of Israel.
The families of three Israeli arrested in southeast Nigeria have called for the release of their children.
In a press statement released by the family on Tuesday, the families of the Israelis, Rudy Rochman, a Zionist activist, filmmaker Noam Leibman and French-Israeli journalist E. David Benaym said they were in Nigeria “as part of a documentary filmmaking effort to explore the lives and customs of Jewish communities around the world”.
The documentary series titled, “We Were Never Lost” (www.wewereneverlost.com) according to the family is designed to educate viewers about the religious and cultural experiences of lesser-known Jewish communities.
“Their goal is to interview members of Jewish communities across multiple African countries, along with Jewish communities in China, India, Afghanistan, and elsewhere,” the family said in the statement.
But on Friday, July 9th, the boys were arrested and detained at a synagogue during night services in Ogidi village by Department of State Security Service, DSS over an alleged connection with the Biafra separatist group, They were then taken to Abuja later.
The filmmakers had been aware of the separatist tension in the region and last Thursday, they wrote in the ‘We Were Never Lost’ Facebook page: We do not take any position on political movements as we are not here as politicians nor as a part of any governmental delegations.”
This claim was also stressed in the Tuesday’s press statement by the families who stated that “the filmmaking crew does not have any political intentions, that their visit is purely for educational filmmaking purposes, and that the filmmakers do not support the actions of any local groups that have tried to assign their own political meaning to the activities of the filmmaking team”.
The families however said images of the presentation of a framed Shiviti made in Jerusalem presented to Igbo leader Eze Chukwuemeka Eri and a “Torah scroll whose cover was designed by British-Israeli street artist Solomon Souza presented to an Igbo community were used by separatist groups to push their selfish agenda and thus distort the intention of the filmmakers as being sympathetic to their separatist agenda. “These politically-motivated actors have taken a simple gesture of kindness and twisted it in an attempt to create an alternate meaning,” it said.
The family further said they are working with “the U.S., Israell and French Embassies on the matter and have urged “that the team should be released from custody as soon as possible”.
Separatist groups in the southeast region have claimed to be a lost tribe from Israel. And Nnamdi Kanu, the recently extradited leader of a proscribed separatist group, Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB) had at different times said that he “believes in Judaism” and considers himself a Jew. Oftentimes, he had led his Biafran people to various Jewish prayers and religious observations.
MadamVanessa: I feel that South Africa is been overrated and overhyped with civilization . Truth be told, this people are so backward , they sometimes act like Northern Nigerian people, just that the northern Nigerian people are little worst than them.
Politics › Re: How Did Indigenous People Fall For The Fulani Oligarchy In Nigeria? by SeeThisLoser: 10:19am On Jul 21, 2021
