Information reaching 247ureports.com indicates that an explosion has rocked the city of Kano at a junction along the popular textile market in the commercial city this morning at 9am. The explosion struck the junction where the operatives of Joint Task Force [JTF] had set up a security checkpoint. The checkpoint is located near a Mosque.

The checkpoint was set up last week against the protest of the textile merchants.

The bomb explosion was said to not pack the gravitas of a major explosion. Unofficial statement by eyewitness account indicate that three people may have died as a result of the bombing.

The textile market comprises of predominantly northern traders.

Stay tuned.

The Kaduna State Local Government Area [LGA] elections held over the weekend of December 1, 2012 – which saw the Congress for Progressive Change [CPC] sweep the election against its chief opponent, the Peoples Democratic Party [PDP] – also saw the victory of a PDP candidate, Kawu Ibrahim Yakassai,  at the Sabo LGA located within the Kaduna metropolis but domiciled within the Kaduna north senatorial district – under the Zaria Emirate. Yakassai defeated his closest rival – the CPC candidate, Hassan Abdullahi by 62,170 to 20,143.

However a twist appears over the landslide victory – as the winner has gone underground into hiding – following the issuance of a bench warrant by a magistrate on Thursday November 29, 2012 – two days before the election. The warrant was issued following the failure of Yankassai to appear before the magistrate court – following allegations of certificate forgery filed at the court. He was not in the court to defend himself after several court adjournments.

Also, sources in Kaduna indicate that agents of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission [EFCC] are reportedly investigating Yankassai – who was formerly employed at the Accounts Department of the LGA. The extent of the investigation is not certain.

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Some of the political watchers in Kaduna point to the treatment meted to Yakassai as witch-hunting against the PDP.

Information reaching 247ureports.com through a source stationed in the Nigerian north western State of Borno indicate that the Joint Task Force [JTF] carried out an operation that began late night of yesterday [December 2, 2012] lasting into the early morning hours of today.

The raid by the agents of the JTF was reported to have netted the JTF a high target kill. According to the source who spoke on the telephone from the field, a top boss of the Boko Haram was gun down in last night’s operation.

The identity of the Boko Haram official was said to be Abdukareem Ibrahim and two his commanders. They were killed after four hours of gun battle. His hideout was discover around Damboa in Maiduguri after a tipoff. A bounty was placed on his head by JTF.

Yesterday morning, gunmen believed to be operatives of Boko Haram burnt churches and security posts as they rampaged Borno. Ten people were reported beheaded.

Stay tuned

Egypt’s highest court joined a judicial rebellion against President Mohammed Morsi on Sunday by declaring an open-ended strike on the day it was supposed to rule on the legitimacy of two key assemblies controlled by allies of the Islamist leader.

The strike by the Supreme Constitutional Court and opposition plans to march on the presidential palace on Tuesday take the country’s latest political crisis to a level not seen in the nearly two years of turmoil since Hosni Mubarak’s ouster in a popular uprising.

Judges from the country’s highest appeals court and its sister lower court were already on an indefinite strike, joining colleagues from other tribunals who suspended work last week to protest what they saw as Mr. Morsi’s assault on the judiciary.

The last time Egypt had an all-out strike by the judiciary was in 1919, when judges joined an uprising against British colonial rule.

The standoff began when Mr. Morsi issued decrees on Nov. 22 giving him near-absolute powers that granted himself and the Islamist-dominated assembly drafting the new constitution immunity from the courts.

The constitutional panel then raced in a marathon session last week to vote on the charter’s 236 clauses without the participation of liberal and Christian members. The fast-track hearing pre-empted a decision from the Supreme Constitutional Court that was widely expected to dissolve the constituent assembly.

The judges on Sunday postponed their ruling on that case just before they went on strike.

Without a functioning justice system, Egypt will be plunged even deeper into turmoil. It has already seen a dramatic surge in crime after the uprising, while state authority is being challenged in many aspects of life and the courts are burdened by a massive backlog of cases.

“The country cannot function for long like this, something has to give,” said Negad Borai, a private law firm director and a rights activist. ‘We are in a country without courts of law and a president with all the powers in his hands. This is a clear-cut dictatorial climate,” he said.

Mohamed Abdel-Aziz, a rights lawyer, said the strike by the judges will impact everything from divorce and theft to financial disputes that, in some cases, could involve foreign investors.

“Ordinary citizens affected by the strike will become curious about the details of the current political crisis and could possibly make a choice to join the protests,” he said.

The Judges Club, a union with 9,500 members, said late Sunday that judges would not, as customary, oversee the national referendum Mr. Morsi called for Dec. 15 on the draft constitution hammered out and hurriedly voted on last week.

The absence of their oversight would raise more questions about the validity of the vote. If the draft is passed in the referendum, parliamentary elections are to follow two months later and they too may not have judicial supervision.

The judges say they will remain on strike until Mr. Morsi rescinds his decrees, which the Egyptian leader said were temporary and needed to protect the nation’s path to democratic rule.

For now, however, Mr. Morsi has to contend with the fury of the judiciary.

The constitutional court called Sunday “the Egyptian judiciary’s blackest day on record.”

It described the scene outside the Nile-side court complex, where thousands of Islamist demonstrators gathered since the early morning hours carrying banners denouncing the tribunal and some of its judges.

A statement by the court, which swore Mr. Morsi into office on June 30, said its judges approached the complex but turned back when they saw the protesters blocking entrances and climbing over its fences. They feared for their safety, it added.

“The judges of the Supreme Constitutional Court were left with no choice but to announce to the glorious people of Egypt that they cannot carry out their sacred mission in this charged atmosphere,” said the statement, which was carried by state news agency MENA.

Supporters of Mr. Morsi, who hails from the Islamic fundamentalist Muslim Brotherhood, claim that the court’s judges remain loyal to Mubarak, who appointed them, and accuse them of trying to derail Egypt’s transition to democratic rule.

In addition to the high court’s expected ruling Sunday on the legitimacy of the constitution—drafting panel, it was also expected to rule on another body dominated by Mr. Morsi supporters, parliament’s upper chamber.

Though Mr. Morsi’s Nov. 22 decrees provide immunity to both bodies against the courts, a ruling that declares the two illegitimate would have vast symbolic significance, casting doubt on the standing of both.

The Brotherhood’s political arm, the Freedom and Justice party, sought to justify the action of its supporters outside the court as a peaceful protest. It reiterated its charge that some members of the judiciary were part and parcel of Mr. Mubarak’s autocratic policies.

“The wrong practices by a minority of judges and their preoccupation with politics … will not take away the respect people have for the judiciary,” it said.

Its explanation, however, failed to calm the anger felt by many activists and politicians.

“President Morsi must take responsibility before the entire world for terrorizing the judiciary,” veteran rights campaigner and opposition leader Abdel—Halim Kandil wrote in his Twitter account about the events outside the constitutional court.

Liberal activist and former lawmaker Amr Hamzawy warned what is ahead may be worse.

“The president and his group (the Muslim Brotherhood) are leading Egypt into a period of darkness par excellence,” he said. “He made a dictatorial decision to hold a referendum on an illegal constitution that divides society, then a siege of the judiciary to terrorize it.”

Egypt has been rocked by several bouts of unrest, some violent, since Mubarak was forced to step down in the face of a popular uprising. But the current one is probably the worst.

Mr. Morsi’s decrees gave him powers that none of his four predecessors since the ouster of the monarchy 60 years ago ever had. Opposition leaders countered that he turned himself into a new “pharaoh” and a dictator even worse than his immediate predecessor Mubarak.

Then, following his order, the constituent assembly rushed a vote on the draft constitution in an all—night session.

The draft has a new article that seeks to define what the “principles” of Islamic law are by pointing to theological doctrines and their rules. Another new article states that Egypt’s most respected Islamic institution, Al—Azhar, must be consulted on any matters related to Shariah law, a measure critics fear could lead to oversight of legislation by clerics.

Rights groups have pointed out that virtually the only references to women relate to the home and family, that the new charter uses overly broad language with respect to the state protecting “ethics and morals” and fails to outlaw gender discrimination.

At times the process appeared slap—dash, with fixes to missing phrasing and even several entirely new articles proposed, written and voted on in the hours just before sunrise.

The decrees and the vote on the constitution draft galvanized the fractured, mostly secular opposition, with senior leaders setting aside differences and egos to form a united front in the face of Morsi, whose offer on Saturday for a national dialogue is yet to find takers.

The opposition brought out at least 200,000 protesters to Cairo’s Tahrir Square on Tuesday and a comparable number Friday to press demands that the decrees be rescinded. The Islamists responded Saturday with massive rallies in Cairo and across much of Egypt.

The opposition is raising the stakes with plans to march on Morsi’ palace on Tuesday, a move last seen on Feb. 11, 2011 when tens of thousands of protesters marched from Tahrir Square to Mubarak’s palace in the Heliopolis district to force him out. Mubarak stepped down that day, but Morsi is highly unlikely to follow suit on Tuesday.

Students of Imo State origin in the various secondary and tertiary institutions of learning in the country under the aegis of the National Association of Imo State Students (NAISS) have threatened to drag Gov Rochas Okorocha to court over complications following the new free education policy of his administration.

Rising from an extra-ordinary Senate meeting of the representatives of all the students nationwide at the Whiteview Hotels in Awka, at the weekend, the President-Comrade Celestine Uzoma told journalists that they have resolved to take the governor and the state Assembly to court for deceit and misinformation that cheques for the free education programme have been given to traditional rulers of all the communities in the state.

The directive had urged the students to get in touch with their monarchs, but was dismayed to learn that no such monies were given to them to disburse.

They noted that all efforts to have audience with the governor had been frustrated by the director’s General Students Affairs to the Governor, hence passed a vote of no confidence on the officer. They consequently called for the creation of Bureau on Students to tackle issues and matters affecting students in the state.

The meeting with representatives from different institutions in the country directed the national president and his executive to convoke a general assembly and world press conference within three weeks to address them on the state of affairs.

Another representative from Federal polytechnic Oko, Comrade Achuonye Nnanedu said that if Gov Okorocha has forgotten his campaign promises, they would remind him in the courtroom.

They lamented that some of their members who traveled home for the bogus bursary got involved in road accident.

Zimbabwe President Robert Mugabe on Sunday denounced Pentecostal Christians as “false prophets,” according to the official government website.

“Traditional churches – among them Methodist, Catholic and Anglican – conducted their services as instructed by Jesus,” the president said but Pentecostal claims of a gift of prophecy are false.

Mugabe taunted Pentecostals, challenging them – if they are true prophets – to offer solutions to AIDS and cholera.

“There (are) too many people who claimed to be prophets in Zimbabwe yet in the Bible they were not that many.”

It is not clear which group of Pentecostals Mugabe was referring to. Denominations generally considered Pentecostal do not always agree with each other on what the term “prophet” means.

“Since the New Testament does not provide for establishing the prophet in a hierarchical governing structure of the church, the Assemblies of God disapproves of formally naming or declaring individuals as prophets in the church,” according to the Assemblies of God website.

He accused some Pentecostal churches of “extorting gifts from their followers by making it mandatory for them to ‘give’ to their leaders.”

Mugabe is a Roman Catholic.

“Zimbabweans enjoy freedom of worship,” according to the government website. “Christianity and African Tradition are the dominant religions though other religions such as Islam, Buddhism and Hinduism among others enjoy a significant following.”

Several Egyptian political parties and groups have issued a joint statement announcing their intention to peacefully march to the presidential palace in Cairo at 5pm on Tuesday to voice opposition to President Mohamed Morsi’s recent decisions and the date that has been set for a nationwide popular referendum on Egypt’s draft constitution.

“The constitution project that Morsi wants to put before a referendum is in fact a project for tying down the political, civil, social and economic freedoms of Egyptians,” read the statement, published on the Egyptian Popular Current’s official Facebook page.

The statement went on to question the draft charter’s constitutionality, stressing its rejection of the date set – 15 December – for the upcoming referendum.

Egypt’s High Constitutional Court had been expected to issue a ruling on the constitutionality of Egypt’s Constituent Assembly (which wrote the draft constitution), but the ruling was postponed indefinitely after large numbers of pro-Morsi protesters gathered outside the court’s downtown headquarters on Sunday.

Groups opposed to Morsi, which have been occupying Cairo’s Tahrir Square for over two weeks, accuse the president of working in the interests of the Muslim Brotherhood and its Freedom and Justice Party.

“This is a final warning to Mohamed Morsi, who was democratically elected president: his policies, which favour his party and group, will cause the dissolution of his legitimacy,” read the statement.

On Saturday, despite continued protests against Morsi’s recent constitutional decree, which protects the Constituent Assembly from legal challenge, the president announced that the draft constitution would be put before a nationwide referendum in two week’s time.

The statement was signed by eighteen political parties and groups, including the Constitution Party, the Egyptian Social Democratic Party, the Free Egyptians Party, the National Front for Justice and Democracy, the 6 April youth movement, the Democratic Front and the Kefaya movement.

Anti-Morsi forces have threatened for several days to march on the presidential palace in Heliopolis if constitutional declaration was not withdrawn.

Veteran journalist Abdel-Halim Qandil, a fierce critic of the president, and the Mubarak regime before the revolution, has called in a tweet “on the judges, workers, and underground metro drivers to strike and to march on the presidential palace” to defeat the president’s decrees.

Many judges, who are on strike against the decree, have already threatened not to monitor the referendum if the president did not rescind his decisions.

Meanwhile, shortly after the president finished his speech on Saturday night calling for a vote on the draft constitution, Mohamed El-Beltagy, the Muslim Brotherhood main operative in the Constituent Assembly, called on the opponents of the draft to fight it – if they disagreed with it – by mobilising a NO vote not to protest.

El-Beltagy, a leading member also in the Brotherhood’s Freedom and Justice Party, told Ahram Online that if the opposition defeats the draft at the referendum set for 15 December, a new Constituent Assembly will be chosen via direct elections.