Nigeria News
Margaret Thatcher, Iron Lady Dies
British former prime minister Margaret Thatcher, the controversial “Iron Lady” who dominated a generation of her country’s politics and won international acclaim for helping to end the Cold War, died following a stroke on Monday. She was 87.
World leaders paid tribute to Britain’s only woman prime minister, whose years in office from 1979 to 1990 saw her take on trade unions, go to war in the Falklands and wield her signature handbag against the European Union.
Margaret Thatcher: the lady not for tuning
Britain’s Queen Elizabeth II said she was saddened by Thatcher’s death and Prime Minister David Cameron cut short a European trip, although mining leaders and Irish republicans said she left a bitter legacy.
Red white and blue Union flags flew at half mast over Buckingham Palace, the Houses of Parliament and the prime minister’s Downing Street official residence in a sign of mourning while mourners left flowers outside Thatcher’s house.
Britain announced plans for a ceremonial funeral with military honours, although it is a step short of the full state funeral of the kind accorded to monarchs and World War II premier Winston Churchill.
“It was with great sadness that I learned of the death of Lady Thatcher. We have lost a great leader, a great prime minister and a great Briton,” Cameron said.
“She didn’t just lead our country, she saved our country.”
Thatcher suffered from dementia in recent years — her illness becoming the subject of a biographical film starring Meryl Streep — and appeared rarely in public. She was last in hospital in December for a minor operation to remove a growth from her bladder.
The former Conservative Party leader was the 20th century’s longest continuous occupant of Downing Street.
Right-wingers hailed Thatcher as having hauled Britain out of the economic doldrums but the left accused her of dismantling traditional industry, claiming her reforms helped unpick the fabric of society.
Her health worsened in the years after she was forced out of office in 1990 and the former premier had to be repeatedly reminded that her husband Denis had died in 2003, her daughter Carol once revealed.
Thatcher was told by doctors to quit public speaking a decade ago after a series of minor strokes.
“It is with great sadness that Mark and Carol Thatcher announced that their mother Baroness Thatcher died peacefully following a stroke this morning,” her spokesman Lord Tim Bell said, referring to Thatcher’s children.
Bell said she died while staying at the Ritz Hotel in London.
Britain’s 86-year-old queen, who shared weekly chats with Thatcher during her 11 years in power, was “sad to hear the news of the death of Baroness Thatcher,” Buckingham Palace said.
Downing Street said that with the queen’s consent Thatcher would receive a “ceremonial funeral with military honours” at St Paul’s Cathedral in central London. A date has not yet been announced.
A private cremation would follow later, it said, adding that the arrangements were at the request of Thatcher’s family. British newspapers reported that the former premier had herself requested that she did not receive a state funeral, knowing that it would prove divisive.
Cameron was meanwhile flying back to London from Madrid where he had been in talks with Spanish premier Mariano Rajoy on reforming the European Union, while a visit to Paris to meet President Francois Hollande had also been cancelled, Downing Street later said.
Reaction was mixed in Britain.
“It’s a crying shame, she’s a good woman,” said law firm employee Alan Whiteford in London.
Margaret Thatcher- at the height of her power. AFP
But David Hopper, regional secretary of the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) in northeast England, said few tears would be shed in his industry, one of the hardest hit by Thatcher’s policies.
He said: “I’m having a drink to it (her death) right now. It’s my 70th birthday today and it’s one of the best I’ve had in my life.”
On the world stage, Thatcher built a close “special relationship” with US president Ronald Reagan which helped bring the curtain down on Soviet Communism. She also fiercely opposed closer political ties with Europe.
President Barack Obama said the United States had lost a “true friend” and the world “one of the great champions of freedom and liberty.”
German Chancellor Angela Merkel, whose country was divided by the Iron Curtain, said Thatcher was an “extraordinary leader” while Hollande said she left a “profound mark” on Britain.
Gorbachev, whose good relations with Thatcher played a part in ending the Cold War, said she would live on in “memory and in history.” Poland’s former president and anti-communist icon Lech Walesa said she did a “great deal for the world”.
European Commission head Jose Manuel Barroso meanwhile hailed her “contributions” to the growth of the EU, despite her famous reservations about continental European integration.
Thatcher was born Margaret Hilda Roberts on October 13, 1925 in the market town of Grantham, eastern England, the daughter of a grocer.
After grammar school and a degree in chemistry at Oxford University, she married businessman Denis in 1951 and two years later had twins, Carol and Mark.
She was first elected to the House of Commons in 1959 and succeeded former prime minister Edward Heath as opposition Conservative leader in 1975 before becoming premier four years later.
Her enduring legacy can be summed up as “Thatcherism” — a set of policies which supporters say promoted personal freedom and broke down the class divisions that had riven Britain for centuries.
Pushing her policies through pitched Thatcher’s government into a string of tough battles, while she also had to deal with unexpected setbacks.
When Argentina invaded the remote British territory of the Falkland Islands in 1982, Thatcher dispatched troops and ships, securing victory in two months.
In 1984 Thatcher survived an Irish Republican Army bombing.
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The Kano State Government on Saturday said it has transferred 1,098 ‘almajiris’ to different states of the country.
The commissioner for local government, Murtala Garo, disclosed this while presenting a report before the state’s task force on COVID-19 at the government house, Kano.
Almajiris are children who are supposed to be learning Islamic studies while living with their Islamic teachers. Majority of them, however, end up begging on the streets of Northern Nigeria. They constitute a large number of Nigeria’s over 10 million out-of-school children.
Mr Garo said the Kano government transported 419 almajiris to Katsina, 524 to Jigawa and 155 to Kaduna. He said all of them tested negative for coronavirus before leaving the Kano State.
Despite the coronavirus test done in Kano for the almajiris, the Jigawa government earlier said it would quarantine for two weeks all the almajiris that recently arrived from Kano.
Mr Garo said another 100 almajiris scheduled to be taken to Bauchi State also tested negative to COVID-19.
In a remark, Governor Abdullahi Ganduje said the COVID-19 situation in Kano was getting worse. He appealed for a collaborative effort to curtail the spread of the virus in the state.
Mr Ganduje, who commended residents for complying with the lockdown imposed in the state, said the decision was taken to halt the spread of the virus.
Kano State, as of Saturday night, has 77 coronavirus cases, according to the Nigeria Centre for Disease Control.
The decision to transfer the Kano almajiris is part of the agreement reached between Northern governors that almajiris in each state be transferred to their states of origin.
However, even before the latest agreement by the governors, the Kano government had been transferring almajiris to other states and neighbouring countries after it banned street begging in the state, most populous in Northern Nigeria.
Despite the transfers, however, no concrete step has been taken to ensure such children do not return to Kano streets as there is freedom of movement across Nigeria although interstate travel was recently banned to check the spread of the coronavirus.
Sourced From: Premium Times Nigeria
By Ugochukwu Alaribe
Operatives of the Abia State Vigilante Service, AVS, popularly known as ‘Bakassi Boys’ have arrested 24 market women hidden in a container truck, at Ekwereazu Ngwa, the boundary community between Abia and Akwa Ibom states.
The market women, said to be from Akwa Ibom State, were on their way to Aba, when they were arrested with the truck driver and two of his conductors for violating the lockdown order by the state government.
Driver of the truck, Moses Asuquo, claimed he was going to Aba to purchase stock fish, but decided to assist the market women, because they were stranded.
A vigilante source told Sunday Vanguard that the vehicle was impounded while the market women were sent back to Akwa Ibom State.
Commissioner for Home Land Security, Prince Dan Okoli, who confirmed the incident, said that smuggling of people into the state poses great threat to the state government’s efforts to contain the spread of COVID- 19.
Sourced From: Vanguard News
Operatives of the State Criminal Investigation and Intelligence Department (SCIID), Yaba of the Lagos State police command have arrested one Mrs Nene Steve for allegedly killing her maid, Joy Adole
The maid was allegedly beaten to death by Nene for requesting for her salary at their residence located at 18, Ogundola Street, Bariga area in Lagos.
Narrating the incident, Philips Ejeh, an elder brother to the deceased said that he was sad when they informed him that his sister was beaten to death.
He explained that the deceased was an indigene of Benue State brought to Lagos through an agent and started working with her as a maid in January 2020.
‘’She reported that her boss refused to pay her and anytime she asked for her salary she will start beating her.
She was making an attempt to leave the place but due to the total lockdown she remained there until Sunday when her boss said she caught her stealing noodles and this led to her serious beating and death,’’ Ejeh said.
He called on Lagos State Government and well- meaning people in the country to help them in getting justice for the victim.
The police spokesman, Bala Elkana, stated that the woman and her husband came to Bariga Police Station to a report that their house girl had committed suicide.
Detectives were said to have visited the house and suspected foul play with the position of the rope and bruises all over the body which confirmed that the girl had been tortured to death and the boss decided to hang up the girl to make it look like suicide.
He said: “The police moved on with their investigation and found a lot of sign of violence on her body that she has been tortured before a rope was put on her neck.’’
He added that the police removed the corpse and deposited it in the mortuary for autopsy to further ascertain the cause of the death.
Elkana said the matter has been transferred from Bariga police station to Panti for further investigation while the couple have been arrested and will be charged to court.
Ostensibly alarmed by the latest killings of dozens of soldiers by Boko Haram insurgents, President Muhammadu Buhari has summoned an urgent meeting of Service Chiefs to find ways to stop the trend.
He has also dispatched the Minister of Defence, Mansur Dan Ali, to the neighbouring Republic of Chad for an urgent meeting with President Idris Deby and his defence counterpart.
Knowledgeable sources said in Abuja on Friday that the president is worried by on the deterioration of security situation on the Nigeria – Chad Border that has led to the recently increased Boko Haram terrorism in the area.
The sources which did not want to be named in Abuja said: “Nigeria has a Chad problem in the Multi-National Joint Task Force (MNJTF) put together to secure the Lake Chad basin areas and repeal the Boko Haram terrorist attacks against all the countries neighbouring the Lake.”
The sources noted that Chad is believed to be having their own internal security challenges and this has reportedly led to their pulling away their own troops manning their own border around Lake Chad, saying: “That lacuna is being exploited by the Boko Haram terrorists, who go in and out of Nigeria, Niger and Cameroon to launch terrorist acts. This is a clear illustration of the fact that terrorism is beyond national borders.”
When contacted, the Senior Special Assistant to the President on Media and Publicity, Garba Shehu, confirmed that the Defence Minister is going to Chad but said he is unaware of the purpose.
Meanwhile, the military authorities are said to be in the process of identifying the families of the latest victims with a view to making contact with them.
Credible sources revealed that it is the reason the president is yet to make any pronouncement on the matter.
“The President has called an urgent meeting with the Service Chiefs, as well as the fact that families of the latest victims of the Boko Haram are being identified and contacts made before a government pronouncement on the tragic attacks. This, it is understood, is the reason for the silence of the government over the incident,” the source said.
Sourced From: Tribune
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