Nigeria News
Egypt Coup: Morsi supporters in street protests
CAIRO (AFP) – Supporters of ousted Egyptian president Mohamed Morsi took to the streets in their tens of thousands Friday, defying the army that deposed him and triggering violence that killed at least 14 people nationwide.
Gunfire was heard as Morsi supporters and opponents hurled rocks at each other on the October 6 bridge leading to Cairo’s Tahrir Square, symbol of the 2011 revolt that toppled dictator Hosni Mubarak.
Supporters of ousted Egyptian president Mohamed Morsi evacuate a man who was shot during a gun battle outside the Cairo headquarters of the Republican Guard on July 5, 2013. At least three supporters of Morsi were killed and many others were wounded as they gathered for a protest. AFP
In North Sinai, armed supporters stormed the provincial headquarters in the town of El-Arish on Friday after a gunfight and raised the black banner of Islamist militants, an AFP correspondent said.
He said the armed protesters entered the building after it was finally abandoned by security forces, as supporters of the president overthrown Wednesday in a military coup also clashed with opponents elsewhere in the country.
In Cairo and elsewhere, as the running battles raged late into the night, the death toll mounted, with two people killed near Tahrir, and the military told AFP it would deploy to separate the rival crowds.
“We are not taking sides. Our mission is to secure the lives of protesters,” said Colonel Ahmed Ali. “The military is going to intervene to separate the protesters.”
The clashes left six dead in Cairo, six more in the Sinai peninsula, one in second city Alexandria and another at Assiut in central Egypt, officials said.
They came after the supreme guide of Morsi’s Muslim Brotherhood, Mohammed Badie, vowed members of the Islamist movement would stay on the streets in their millions until his presidency is restored.
Badie appeared at Cairo’s Rabaa al-Adawiya mosque to screams of joy from jubilant supporters, following reports he had been detained after Wednesday’s ouster of the president.
“Millions will remain in the squares until we carry our elected president, Mohamed Morsi, on our shoulders,” Badie told the crowd, before leading chants of “Military coup!” and “Invalid!”
His impassioned speech came just three hours after at least three protesters were killed outside the Republican Guard headquarters after breaking away from the demonstration outside the mosque.
The bodies of two people were covered with sheets, said an AFP correspondent, adding that another protester was shot in the head.
The health ministry gave the same toll, while the official MENA news agency said four were killed.
The Islamists accuse the military of conducting a brazen coup against Morsi, Egypt’s first democratically elected president, after millions called for his ouster on the June 30 anniversary of his first turbulent year in power.
The armed forces have already sworn in an interim president, however, and Adly Mansour issued his first decree on Friday, dissolving the Islamist-led parliament and appointing a new intelligence chief.
Before Friday’s rallies, around a dozen low-flying military jets screamed across Cairo, but the show of force failed to deter Morsi’s supporters.
Shots rang out after one supporter tried to hang a picture of the ousted leader on barbed wire outside the headquarters, said the AFP correspondent.
Despite being warned twice not to approach the building, the man did so, and members of the Guard started shooting.
Bursts of gunfire were then heard from both sides, triggering panic, before security forces used tear gas to disperse the crowd.
Morsi, who has not been seen since Wednesday, had issued a defiant call for supporters to protect his elected “legitimacy”, in a recorded speech aired hours after his removal.
The military had said it supported the right to peaceful protest, but warned against violence and acts of civil disobedience.
Violence also gripped other parts of Egypt, including the Sinai where gunmen killed five policemen, and Islamists killed a soldier in a machinegun and rocket attack.
On the eve of Friday’s rallies, Mansour had called in a television interview for unity.
“All I can say to the Egyptian people is to be one body. We had enough of division,” he told Britain’s Channel 4.
Prominent liberal leader Mohamed ElBaradei defended the military’s intervention, saying “the other option was a civil war.
“We were between a rock and a hard place, and people need to understand that,” the former UN nuclear watchdog chief told the BBC.
Army chief General Abdel Fattah al-Sisi announced Morsi’s overthrow on Wednesday night, citing his inability to end a deepening political crisis.
Military police rounded up senior Brotherhood members, although two were later released.
Morsi himself was “preventively detained”, a senior officer told AFP.
A judicial source said the prosecution would on Monday begin questioning Brotherhood members, including Morsi, for “insulting the judiciary”.
Morsi’s rule was marked by accusations he concentrated power in the hands of the Brotherhood.
His supporters argue Morsi was confronted at every turn with a hostile bureaucracy left over by Hosni Mubarak, overthrown in the Arab Spring-inspired uprising of 2011.
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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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