Owoeye Azazi, the retired army general who was last night removed as national Security Adviser (NSA) by President Goodluck Jonathan, had threatened to resign at least on two occasions.
Disclosing this to Transport & Business Express this afternoon, a source close to Aso Rock, the Nigerian seat of power, said: “He was frustrated by President Jonathan’s practice of directly taking briefs from the heads of the various military and security agencies, which he felt undermined his authority and made his work difficult.”
The source said that President Jonathan on both occasions prevailed on Gen. Azazi to stay on and help stabilise his government.
“Unfortunately, he has been disgraced by a man he fondly referred to as his younger brother,’ the source further stated.
Both Jonathan and Azazi are Ijaws and from the oil-rich Bayelsa State in the Niger Delta.
In settling for Sambo Dasuki as the new National Security Adviser (NSA), President Goodluck Jonathan has tactfully put the search for a solution to the Boko Haram menace on the laps of the Nigerian Muslim leadership.
The position of NSA is a sensitive one usually held by very senior military chiefs and their counterparts from the Department of State Security (State Security Service).
Sambo is a retired army colonel who once served as Aide de Camp (ADC) to former military president, General Ibrahim Babangida (rtd). He is the son of Alhaji Ibrahim Dasuki, who deposed as Sultan of Sokoto by late military dictator, General Sani Abacha. His uncle, Alhaji Muhammad Sa’ad Abubakar III, is the incumbent Sultan of Sokoto and head of the Nigerian Muslim community.
Apart from being a northerner, Sambo is well connected to the northern power blocs both by birth and by association. It is therefore believed that he would be able to solve the Boko Haram crisis since the terrorist group is believed to enjoy the support of the northern leadership despite to regain political control of the control.
“Don’t also forget that Sambo is from Sokoto, which is the head of the Caliphate and has remained a no-go area for Boko Haram,” said one analyst.
A former Managing Director of Security Printing & Minting Company Limited, Sambo attended both American Universities, Washington DC and George Washington University where he obtained a BA in International Relations and MA in Security Policy Studies respectively.
He had his military training in several institutions in Nigeria and abroad including the Nigerian Army School of Artillery, Oklahoma, US Army Command and General Staff College, Ft. Leavenworth Kansas.
Sambo was last night announced as the replacement for Owoeye Azazi, a retired army general and President Jonathan’s Ijaw kinsman who took office in October 2010 but never found a solution to the Boko Haram attacks, which have claimed over a thousand lies and put a huge question mark on Nigeria’s unity.
The man who was alleged to have been arrested about 6pm last week Wednesday in one of the offices at the U. J. Esuene stadium in Calabar during Nigeria’s athletics Olympics trials is touted according to the AFN: “Most of the Nigerian athletes who have tested positive have always mentioned his name and we have been searching for him for years,” Dr Ken Anugweje said.
Anukwuje, the current NUGA Chairman is also of the Medical Committee of AFN.
The suspect’s name was given as simply Chimezie by one of the athletes who just tested positive to steroid in AFN’s Golden League in Warri three weeks ago.
Dr. Anukwueje has recalled that many of Nigerian athletes who tested positive to doping fingered him and said he always told them he was administering vitamins and that they would never be caught.
“This man is like spirit. Anytime we close up on him he disappears. He comes for almost all athletics events but he ran out of luck this time around. IAAF will be happy that we have made this catch,” AFN President Solomon Ogba said.
”What I saw in the man’s bag was unbelievable. I found drugs I have never seen in my life, the types I only read about in books and on internet,” Dr. Anukweje said, adding “he is well equipped with laptop which contains a lot of information. I’m happy the police took the laptop and his phone because particulars of his clients will be there.”
The man is said to own a chemist shop in Mushin, Lagos.
Certain questions remains to be asked. What has been the link of this man to athletics? Does he not have his hands inside the sport? Dr. Ken Anukweje should go back to some of the official reports he had written the federation some years back, what name is known popularly with the athletes caught in the drug web who presently is one of their coaches?
A small criminal is being made into a giant to probably close their own favourite who is globally known amongst the Nigerian community of athletes and officials as the major drug courier. Is this chemist now caught the same one who goes abroad to administer the same drugs to our athletes? Many more questions. This is not the man we are waiting for surely. The truth is still being hidden.
Sequel to what she described as incessant unwarranted harassment by some police officers for her to come to the station over alleged forgery of some documents pertaining to the last general election, the wife of late former Senate President, Dr Chuba Okadigbo, Margery, has dragged the Inspector General of Police, Alhaji Mohammed Abubakar; the Assistant Inspector General of Zone 9-Umuahia, Mr Solomon Olusegun and the Anambra State police Commissioner, Alhaji Ballah Nassarawa to court for the enforcement of her fundamental human rights.
Mrs Okadigbo who told reporters in an interview yesterday in Awka that she was earlier invited over an undisclosed matter by the police in the midst of her father’s burial last week, but became apprehensive when the police declined to intimate her on why they were desperately looking for her.
So sensing an unwholesome and apparent subterranean move to violate her rights vide an illegal agenda, she then moved to enforce her fundamental human rights as enshrined in the Constitution.
Accusing the Anambra state police command of harassing her with the name of the Inspector General, wondered “how can the same police that assigned officers to protect me when I reported of threats to my life by some faceless persons turn around to say they are looking for me for an undisclosed isssue”.
Apparently giving snippet to the issue, Mrs Okadigbo said that those alleging that she forged affidavits should know that she did not depose to any document whatsoever and is not a Commissioner of Oaths who signs affidavits. More so, that the matter of her candidature for the 2011 Peoples Democratic Party(PDP) Anambra North Senatorial election was still in court and hence she could not comment on it. But she was quick to point out that she became the PDP candidate in that election by virtue of her victory at the party’s primaries as was recorded and returned vide PDP Form 004 and not as a result of any affidavit whatsoever.
PDP, she emphasized does not base its nominations on affidavits, but on the result of its validly conducted primaries.
The Public Relations Officer of Anambra State Police Command, Mr Emeka Chukwuemeka told journalists that the matter was already being addressed by the Commissioner through the Legal Department of the command, and that in due cause, it will make its stand public.
However, Prince John Emeka, the former Minister of Transport, who is one of the parties in the battery of suits for determination of who was the actual PDP candidate in the 2011 Senatorial election failed to speak after repeated calls. But Senator Alphonsus Igbeke, who was seeking a re-election to the seat, another of her opponent in the suits urged Mrs Okadigbo to go to the police to answer to any charges against her.
The Supreme Court has reserved judgment in the final determination of who was the validly nominated candidate of the PDP in the election which had been subject of many litigations since after the elections in April 2011 for July 6, 2012. The seat had so far remained vacant in the Upper Legislative chambers since.
NEMA has confirmed that an Improvised Explosive Device IEDs exploded yesterday at the Popular Abuja Night Club Kryxtal Lounge, a white male was arrested, no human casualty, but Six luxury cars, including two jeeps and a saloon car, were badly damaged early this morning. The Nightclub is located in Wuse 2 district of Abuja. However, witnesses and officials the National Emergency Management Agency however said there were no casualties in the explosion, which went off right in front of Hanan Plaza, beside the Etisalat office in the Wuse 2 district of the capital, though it didn’t happen inside the Nightclub.
247ureports gathered that the Club is being patronized by Night crawlers who are top government officials and also children of top Government officials. The area is also said to housing buildings of top echelon of the past and present governments which includes houses of former CBN governor Professor Chukwuma Soludo, former EFCC boss Farida Waziri and even the current CBN governor Sanusi Lamido is said to have an investment within that axis. More so a wife of a former governor is said to own a club within that area.
The 21-year-old college student allegedly told detectives that he hadn’t just killed the man who’d lived with his family for months, but had eaten his heart and portions of his brain. The victim’s severed head and hands were found in the men’s Harford County home; more remains were left in a trash container outside a church.
Authorities outlined the macabre circumstances Thursday in charges against Alexander Kinyua, an electrical engineering major at Morgan State University and member of his school’s ROTC program, of first-degree murder in the death of 37-year-old Kujoe Bonsafo Agyei-Kodie, a Ghanaian national and a former master’s degree student.
Kinyua’s father reported that Agyei-Kodie went missing last Friday after going for a jog, but the investigation eventually led back to the family home. Kinyua was being held Thursday without bond, and authorities were exploring whether others participated in the crime or knew about it, based on what they called inconsistencies in statements made by the suspect’s family.
Harford authorities said the killing was among the most brutal — and bizarre — they’d seen. The case comes on the heels of grisly incidents in Miami — where a naked man believed to be high on synthetic drugs known as “bath salts” ate another man’s face — and New Jersey, where a man disemboweled himself and reportedly threw his intestines at police officers.
Harford County Sheriff Jesse Bane said of the allegations against Kinyua: “I’ve been with the agency 40 years, and I would say this is the first time I can remember … where someone was placed under arrest in Harford County and as part of his crime he consumed the victim.
“I’ve not encountered that in this county, and I hope we never encounter it again,” he added.
Despite Kinyua’s alleged confession, which a spokeswoman described as “matter-of-fact,” police said they did not know of a motive for the crime and said they would not speculate on his mental state or whether drugs played a role. They were consulting with the FBI’s behavioral analysis unit for guidance.
But accounts from Morgan officials and classmates, as well as social media postings by Kinyua, suggest he was growing increasingly troubled as his third year of school came to a close. In January, he was dismissed from the ROTC program after an outburst, and in May he was arrested for allegedly fracturing the skull of a classmate with a baseball bat. The classmate was blinded in one eye as a result of what campus police called a “random” attack.
His Facebook page includes commentary about the “destruction of the black family” and “mass human sacrifices.”
“THIS IS THE BRUTAL BASIS, AN EVIL & TERRIFYING METHOD OF THIS DEATH CULTS,” he wrote in one message.
Students familiar with Kinyua said he was well known around campus but regarded as odd. Jasmine Bloomfield said he was “always in his own little world, preaching everywhere he went and talking about how he was writing a book.”
Natalie Fabien, 21, who had mutual friends with Kinyua, said his behavior was often unusual and he was prone to outbursts, but also showed genuine concern for others. “If anything ever happened to me, he’d be like, ‘Who did it and why?’ He always wanted to protect people from bad stuff,” Fabien said.
Word of Kinyua’s arrest was a hot topic Thursday around Morgan’s campus, even though most of its 7,000 students are on summer break. “If you’re part of the Morgan family, it’s a big family, so word goes around fast,” said Stephen Copeland, 28, a senior. “Everybody’s in shock.”
The victim, Agyei-Kodie, had also attended Morgan State on a student visa. He was dismissed by the university after a 2008 conviction in Baltimore County for a fourth-degree sex offense, harassment and stalking, resulting in an 18-month jail term. He also had attended Towson University for a time, a spokeswoman for that school confirmed.
Agyei-Kodie had lived with Kinyua’s family in the 500 block of Terrapin Terrace in Joppa for about six months and did not know anyone else in the area, according to police reports. Kinyua’s father, Antony, told police that Agyei-Kodie had recently been “depressed” after being apprehended on an immigration warrant and was facing likely deportation.
Police issued a public appeal Monday for help in finding Agyei-Kodie, who was said to have left for a jog at 5:30 a.m. on May 25 wearing a T-shirt and black athletic shorts. Monica Worrell, a county police spokeswoman, said investigators had concerns about statements made by Kinyua’s family.
Late Tuesday night, Antony Kinyua notified police that his son, Jarrod Kinyua, had found what they believed were human remains in the basement of the house, according to charging documents. Upon their arrival, Jarrod Kinyua told police he found a human head and two human hands inside metal tins under a blanket in the laundry room.
When he asked Alexander Kinyua about the remains, Jarrod Kinyua said, his brother denied that they were human and said they were animal remains, according to charging documents. After calling his father downstairs, Jarrod and Antony Kinyua discovered that the remains had been moved and Alexander Kinyua was washing out the metal tins.
They also interviewed Alexander Kinyua, who allegedly admitted that he had killed Agyei-Kodie by cutting him up with a knife and then eating his heart and portions of his brain.
Kinyua also directed police to Towne Baptist Church, about a mile away in the 500 block of Trimble Road, where the rest of the remains were found in a trash container on the property, according to charging documents.
Bane said the remains were being sent for further analysis, to assure investigators that “we’re dealing with one victim,” Bane said. But officials said they did not have any reason to believe there were additional victims.
At Kinyua’s first court appearance Thursday at Harford District Court in Bel Air, defense attorney Lynne McChrystal requested reasonable bail in the case, adding that Kinyua has been in Harford County for six years and in Maryland for nine years. She said he was self-employed, performing “consulting work.”
Appearing via live video feed from prison, Kinyua wore a Harford County Detention Center uniform: a black-and-white striped pair of pants and matching T-shirt. Upon questioning by Judge John L. Dunnigan, Kinyua said that all of his family members lived in Maryland and that he was originally from Nairobi, Kenya.
Assistant State’s Attorney Trenna Manners cited those out-of-country ties, as well as the “grisly” nature of the crime, when she asked for Kinyua to be held without bail, and the judge agreed.
Before May, Kinyua had no prior criminal record. In January, he was dismissed from the ROTC program after 2 1/2 years of participation, said Lt. Col. James Lewis, a professor of military service who oversees the program. Officials said it followed a disciplinary incident.
Then on May 20, Kinyua was charged with first-degree assault and reckless endangerment. In that case, according to police, Kinyua attacked another Morgan student in a doorway of the on-campus Thurgood Marshall apartment complex with a baseball bat, then fled into a nearby wooded area.
The victim, listed as Joshua Ceasar, suffered fractures to his skull, arm and shoulder, as well as blindness to his left eye. The first responding officer saw Ceasar stumbling toward her with blood coming from his forehead, and the officer noted a large amount of blood in the doorway.
Fabien, who said she knew Kinyua, said she saw him in the moments before the attack. She said he was sitting in a chair, clutching the bat. “He kept saying, ‘Somebody has to protect the kids. I gotta protect the kids,'” she said.
Kinyua was ordered held on $220,000 bond in that case, and university officials said the school was in the process of expelling him. According to court records, two Baltimore residents posted property to secure bond for his release on May 23.
On May 25, what appeared to be a plea from his parents for help paying Kinyua’s legal fees in the case was posted on Mwakilishi.com, a Kenyan news website. The post, which has since been removed, said Kinyua had been arrested for “being involved in a fight in his dormitory room at Morgan State University.”
The online plea said, “In order to get him the best defense possible, we need to secure an attorney who will take his case and leave no stone unturned.”
It also stated that a fundraising event was scheduled at the International Christian Community Church in Baltimore. The church was locked Thursday afternoon, and nobody answered a knock on the door.
Pictures on Facebook taken before this past semester show Kinyua with a wide grin at a laser tag event and showing off a blue jacket for the National Society of Pershing Rifles, a fraternal group for students in ROTC programs. Another shows him in military fatigues, standing at attention.
More recent posts to the social networking site reflected a shift. In the two most recent posts, Kinyua uploaded “QR Codes,” bar code images that, when scanned with a smartphone, lead to a Web page. They both led to a message about something called “Project Crack the Code,” promising “more information on survival of the human family.”
Attempts to reach Kinyua’s family have been unsuccessful. A man who answered the phone Wednesday night at a number listed for Antony and Beatrice Kinyua said they were resting and that the family did not wish to speak to the news media without an attorney present. On Thursday, no one answered the door of the Joppa townhouse.
On tidy, well-kept Terrapin Terrace near Joppatowne High School, Mary Ellen Murray, who lived several houses down from the Kinyuas, said the parents, Beatrice and Antony, were quiet, “wonderful” people.
“They would give you the shirt off their back,” Murray said. “Nobody has anything bad to say about them.”
Harry Olson, the family’s next-door neighbor and a physics professor at Morgan who once taught Kinyua, said police squad cars and two hazardous-materials vehicles were stationed on his street Wednesday, and investigators brought “lots of stuff” in bags out of the home.
Investigators also took an entire toilet from the home and dug up a garden in the front of the house, Olson said.
“It’s shocking,” another neighbor, Kenny Day, said of the allegations of cannibalism. “You don’t want to hear about that stuff, but you certainly don’t want to hear about it in your neighborhood.
“You can’t be scared of stuff like that, though, because you can’t run from crazy, and that’s total crazy,” Day added.
Baltimore Sun reporter Alison Knezevich contributed to this article. Aegis reporter Bryna Zumer also contributed.
Baltimore Archbishop William E. Lori enters the Basilica of the Assumption for the mass to start the Fortnight For Freedom campaign
Catholic leaders launched a nationwide campaign challenging the Obama administration’s health policies with a Mass at Baltimore’s Basilica of the Assumption on Thursday evening, filling the 200-year-old stone structure with supporters.
The standing-room-only crowd stood and applauded when Baltimore Archbishop William E. Lori, leader of the Roman Catholic bishops’ “Fortnight for Freedom” initiative, entered.
A separate crowd of people outside, most of them Catholic, held signs protesting the event, one of which read, “Bishops! YOU DON’T SPEAK FOR ME! Freedom For All!”
In his homily, Lori mainly touched on the major theme of the two-week effort: that President Barack Obama’s policies are “morally objectionable” and an attack on religious freedom. The campaign focuses on a policy requiring religious institutions to offer birth control and other reproductive health care in employee health plans.
“On Aug. 1, less than six weeks from now, the Health and Human Services mandate will go into effect. This will force conscientious private employers to violate their consciences by funding and facilitating through their employee health insurance plans reproductive ‘services’ that are morally objectionable,” Lori said, according to the text of his remarks released earlier in the day.
“Religious freedom includes the freedom of individuals to act in accord with their faith but also the freedom of church institutions to act in according with their teachings and to serve as a buffer between the power of the state and the freedom of the individual conscience.”
Outside the Basilica, about 40 people protested Lori’s message, saying variously it is too political a stand for the church or that it clashes with their beliefs about women’s or minority rights.
“We love the church, but we hate the politics,” said James Salt, executive director of Catholics United, a Washington-based group that pushes for Catholic commitment to social issues. “We think that the decision to have a ‘Fortnight for Freedom’ really is a political attack on President Obama, and it doesn’t reflect the moral priorities of Catholics sitting in the pews, who are really more concerned about bread-and-butter issues.”
The “Fortnight for Freedom” campaign was developed after the Department of Health and Human Services mandated reproductive health care opposed by the church.
Polls show many Catholics support the mandate and don’t feel threatened by it. But a backlash arose, and protests against the requirement were organized around the country.
In his homily, Lori asked Catholics to oppose the mandate and others like it, urging them to take on the role of being an “obstacle” to what he described as the nation’s increasing secularization.
Lori’s words follow similar messages issued by Catholic bishops in recent months, but they carry some added weight. As archbishop of Baltimore, a city considered to be the birthplace of American Catholicism, and as chairman of the U.S. Conference of Bishops’ Ad Hoc Committee for Religious Liberty, the outspoken Lori commands attention in Catholic circles, much like his predecessor, Cardinal Edwin F. O’Brien, who was at the Mass.
O’Brien, who handed the oldest bishop’s cross in the nation to Lori after being called to Rome this year, had also railed against Obama-era health policies, particularly the mandate that religious institutions offer birth control coverage to employees through insurance plans.
“We cannot — we will not — comply with this unjust law,” O’Brien wrote in a letter in February. “The Administration has cast aside the First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States, denying to Catholics our nation’s first and most fundamental freedom, that of religious liberty.”
Lori echoed O’Brien in his homily at the Basilica on Thursday.
“The freedom of conscientious and like-minded individuals to conduct such businesses in accord with the teaching of the Church now hangs in the balance,” Lori said in the advance text of his statements.
Michael Ruck, a parishioner at the Basilica from Hunt Valley, called the Mass “a real indication of how the Catholic Church supports these issues of religious freedom,” and said he was happy Baltimore was the site of the campaign’s launch.
“The fact it is right here in Baltimore, America’s first cathedral, a symbol of religious freedom, is just so appropriate,” he said.
According to recent polling by the Public Religion Research Institute, a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization that researches religious values in public life, about 57 percent of American Catholics do not feel their religious freedom is being threatened, and 65 percent believe publicly held corporations should be held to the mandates of the Obama administration’s health reform law.
Protesters outside the Basilica said they wanted to show that opposition to the church hierarchy exists.
“I just think they are wasting their energies and resources on an issue that does not really speak to the issues in people’s lives,” said Nancy Assero, a Baltimore resident and parishioner of St. Francis of Assisi parish in the city’s Mayfield neighborhood. “I could walk into any church in the country, and I would bet my [retirement plan] that 90 percent of the women there have practiced contraception.”
Salt, of Catholics United, said his group is made up of Democrats and Republicans, and skews toward younger Catholics but has many older members as well. The group wants to see Catholic bishops focus on “justice and the common good,” issues that “most American Catholics are talking about at the dinner table.”
The bishops’ decision to focus on “sexual politics” shows “just how out of touch they are with most American Catholics,” Salt said.
“This is embarrassing,” he said of the bishops’ campaign. “We want the leadership of the church to focus on what matters, not on these manufactured controversies.”
Phil Attey, executive director of the group Catholics for Equality, which supports equality for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people in the Catholic Church, said the bishops’ initiative is “election-year posturing.”
“We need pastors, not politicians,” he said. “Their political antics are hurting the church.”
The “Fortnight for Freedom” campaign continues through July 4, when a closing liturgy will be celebrated by Cardinal Donald Wuerl at the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception in Washington.
Lawmakers Take Public HIV Tests in Awareness Campaign
President Robert Mugabe together with Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai and other senior government executives must get HIV tested, it was suggested Thursday as MPs began taking public HIV tests in a campaign seeking to raise awareness and fight the stigma associated with Aids.
At least 60 parliamentarians from across the political divide will have tested when the three-day program, which is also offering counseling services, ends Friday.
A number of male lawmakers will also be circumcised, a method clinically proven to reduce the risk of men contracting the Aids virus during sex.
Speaking to journalists outside a makeshift clinic near Parliament, House Speaker Lovemore Moyo challenged senior government officials, including President Robert Mugabe and Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai to also go for voluntary public tests.
This, he said, would help the country deal with stigma that has long been associated with the pandemic in most communities, adding if the country’s leaders played an exemplary role, the fight against Aids could be easily won.
“I’m happy that MPs responded to the call, all what is left perhaps is to see our counter parts in the executive and judiciary also take a leaf from what we have done,” Moyo said.
The lawmakers, however, said it is their right to disclose their status after testing.
The Zimbabwe Parliamentarians Against HIV/Aids, a voluntary organization formed early this year to promote awareness and fight stigma in communities, is leading the campaign.
Group chairperson Blessing Chebundo, who was tested Thursday said more lawmakers are expected to join the program.
UK-based Zimbabwean gender activist Betty Makoni recently got tested and revealed her status on Facebook.
She told VOA lawmakers should reveal their results, adding holding back would perpetuate the stigma that surrounds the pandemic.
“We should not do things for window-dressing, so if you go for HIV and Aids and you don’t reveal your results, it means you are still stigmatizing yourself and also perpetuating the stigma,” said Makoni
Critics are questioning whether the drive will positively affect ordinary Zimbabweans.
For perspective VOA reporter Tatenda Gumbo spoke to Community Group Health Coordinator Itai Rusike and Masvingo Central lawmaker Jeffreyson Chitando, the first ZIPAH member to be tested.
Chitando said the program is geared to inform people that it is their right to know their status regardless of the result.
But Rusike questioned how the program would translate to the ordinary Zimbabweans, who may be unable to access testing centers and treatment.
“It is important that parliamentarians also make an effort to take this initiative to the people, to their constituencies so that these services are available within the villages,” said Rusike.
Former mobilizer/youth leader of Princewill Political Associates, PPA Mr. Norisia Pepple who recently resigned from PPA has lashed out furiously at the leader of the group and self acclaimed Prince of theNigerdelta, Prince Tonye Princewill describing him as a self seeking, greedy, deceitful business man milking politicians dry under the guise of a huge followership base.
Making this known through a resolution reached after an emergency meeting of the youth wing including the twenty (23) local government area youth coordinators of PPA, Pepple explained that having worked for Prince Tonye Princewil as youth leaders of Action Congress, (AC) from 2006 through when the party joined the unity government and later joined the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Princewill had nothing compared to what is attainable today.
He observed that inspite of the sudden changes in his fortunes largely brought about by the joint efforts of the youths who are always on hand to give him the needed support, Princewill has not been able to give the youths any job opportunity inspite of the variety of job opportunities he is benefiting from for joining forces with the unity government, etc. “We have suffered persistent deceit, hunger, constant frustration and lack of human face from Tonye Princewil leaving a gory picture of a man without conscience”, the resolution reads.
Pepple alleged that Chief eze Chukwuemeka Eze, the media consultant to the PPA leader was employed to deceive and lie to Rivers people, he revealed how Eze sent a text to them, describing their situation as monkey they work bamboo they chop. He said the G17 and G19 agenda for Osima Ginah, former Commissioner for urbam development was for his House of representative ambition that failed.
He alleged that Princewill’s excesses was instrumental to the polarity in the then Action Congress and was even in a bigger proportion responsible for the walk out of great and vibrant politicians within the rank of PPA.
Temple Joshua Ahoada East PPA Youth Coordinator, Deinma Tamunokuro Okrika PPA Youth Coordinator and Richard Ukaegbu Oyigbo Youth Coordinator among others were part of the emergency meeting held. As part of the resolutions, the youths have now formally resigned their membership of Princewill Political Associate (PPA), however they will still remain valid members of the |Peoples’ Democratic Party PDP.
They also resolved to henceforth stop supporting any of Prince Tonye Princewill’s political activities stressing that they see Tonye Princewil as a self seeking, greedy, deceitful business man rather than a politician. According to the statement “we are disassociating ourselves from him and advice PDP to tread carefully when dealing with him”.
An announcement from the Ugandan government Wednesday stated that at least 38 nongovernmental agencies would be banned for allegedly promoting gay rights and recruiting children into homosexuality.
“We have investigated them thoroughly and we have found their sponsors,” said Simon Lokodo, the country’s Ethics Minister. “We will ask them to step aside and stop pretending to work in human rights.”
“Some NGOs, under the pretext of providing social services, are receiving funds to promote homosexuality,” he added.
These organizations, both domestic and international, will no longer be allowed to operate in Uganda after losing their registrations. The official list of these organizations has yet to be released.
“The sooner they are phased out, the better,” Lokodo said.
Homosexuality is highly taboo in Africa and in many countries is formally outlawed. Uganda’s parliament is reviewing legislation that could make punishments for gay citizens found within the country even harsher. The pending bill once included sentences as severe as life in prison or the death penalty, but were removed under extreme pressure from donor countries. Still, the bill has backing from a number of Ugandan politicians.
“We are resolutely opposed to the bill,” said U.S. State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said the day before Uganda’s announcement. “We think it’s inconsistent with Uganda’s international human rights obligations, and this just sets a bad, bad precedent in the neighborhood.”
The announcement follows a police raid earlier in the week that broke up a gay rights activists’ workshop in Kampala, the country’s capital. A number of involved organizations, including Amnesty international, blasted the raid as “illegal.” Though the involved activists were detained for several hours, they were all released without charge.
“This continued harassment and intimidation of human rights activists must stop and the police need to start adhering to the laws they are supposed to protect and enforce,” said Michelle Kagari, Amnesty’s deputy director for Africa.
Ugandan authorities have yet to comment on the incident.
