Buhari’s message to Nigerians as he safely arrives Nigeria today
My message to you: I'm glad to be back home, & grateful for your prayers. The best way to repay you is to rededicate myself to serving you. http://pic.twitter.com/vy03y6Nap1
— Muhammadu Buhari (@MBuhari) March 10, 2017
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Some applicants into the Nigerian Police Force
The Police Service Commission (PSC), says it will consider applicants on the reserve list for an interview for recruitment into the Nigeria Police Force.
A statement issued by Mr Ikechukwu Ani, Head, Press and Public Relations of the commission on Thursday, said that candidates for specialists cadre would also be invited for an interview at the appropriate time.
He said that the clarification became necessary because the 2016 successful candidates were already in various Police training schools across the country.
“The applicants on the reserve list will be considered in line with available vacancies from the Training Colleges.
“The commission is awaiting reports from the Police Staff College, Jos, and the Police College, Ikeja, Lagos, where candidates for ASPs and Inspectors respectively are undergoing training,” he said.
Ani explained that reports from the Training Colleges were expected to contain the status of the trainees, state by state after the required screening at the Colleges.
He said that vacancies would be filled from the shortlisted reserve list from the states where they occur based strictly on their placement on the reserve list.
The spokesman said that interview for specialists scheduled for Dec. 21, 22 and 23, 2016 could not hold because of a letter from professional bodies questioning qualifications of some candidates on the list.
He said the letters came from the Association of Medical Laboratory Scientists of Nigeria and National Secretary and Medical Laboratory Science Council of Nigeria.
Ani explained that the bodies insisted that the applicants must be registered and licenced because the profession was regulated.
“In order to meet the 2016 recruitment schedule and resolve issues raised by the bodies, the commission decided to suspend the interview and allow the selected candidates in both General duty and Specialists to proceed on training which began on Dec.31, 2016,“ he said.
He said candidates scheduled for an interview would be invited along with candidates for the 2017 recruitment after resolution of the issues raised by the bodies. Ani warned that anybody smuggled into the colleges outside the approved list would be arrested and punished accordingly.
He said the commission would protect the integrity of the exercise and would stop at nothing at punishing anybody caught.
“Anybody who has given money to be recruited should come forward with verifiable complaints to enable the commission to take appropriate action,“ he said.
The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that President Muhammadu Buhari in 2015 had approved the recruitment of 10,000 policemen.
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Harry Kane hit a first-half hat-trick as Tottenham stormed up to second in the Premier League with a 4-0 home demolition of Stoke on Sunday.
Kane’s treble took his tally to 17 league goals this season, while his first of the day at White Hart Lane was his 100th club goal.
The England forward, 23, who also scored three against Fulham in the FA Cup a week ago, capped an outstanding all-round display by setting up Dele Alli for the fourth.
That helped Alli to draw a line under his dismissal against Gent that contributed to Spurs’ Europa League exit on Thursday.
Tottenham’s victory took them above Manchester City and closed the gap on runaway leaders Chelsea to 10 points.
The damaging failure to beat Gent marked the latest disappointment for Spurs in a frustrating month that also saw their title challenge fade significantly.
The challenge confronting Mauricio Pochettino’s side was to produce a performance and result that would help put the midweek embarrassment behind them.
It quickly became clear this game would provide the ideal platform for Spurs and Alli to redeem themselves after a testing 72 hours of soul-searching.
Within three minutes, Christian Eriksen had flashed a shot across the face of goal, provoking an angry reaction from Pochettino, who was infuriated at the Dane’s failure to pick out a better-placed team-mate.
The manager need not have worried. Stoke could barely manage to rouse themselves and after Joe Allen hit the side netting for the visitors, Kane produced the 14th-minute opening goal that put the home side firmly in control.
– Technique –
The chance came when Stoke’s Ryan Shawcross failed to clear Eriksen’s threaded pass, but Kane’s finish was ruthless, with the striker latching onto the loose ball and producing a first-time shot that flew across keeper Lee Grant.
The technique Kane demonstrated in claiming his second in the 32nd minute was even better.
Eriksen’s right-wing corner was played out to Kane, who had positioned himself on the edge of the area, where he hit the bouncing ball on the full, left-footed, inside Grant’s right-hand post.
Prior to that, Stoke threatened when Peter Crouch slid in to meet Erik Pieters’ low cross, only to be denied by the boot of Spurs Keeper Hugo Lloris, while Charlie Adam collected a booking for a foul on Alli.
But their response quickly faded and Tottenham’s third came when Adam again fouled Alli to concede a free-kick 30 yards out.
Eriksen rolled the ball to Kane, whose low shot deflected off the defensive wall, wrong-footing Grant and securing the striker’s hat-trick.
Stoke boss Mark Hughes was clearly angered by his side’s display but worse was to come in first-half stoppage time when Kane out-paced Bruno Martins-Indi on the right and burst into the box before squaring for Alli, who slid in for the fourth.
Injury to Toby Alderweireld at the start of the second half provided Spurs’ first setback of the game, while the sight of Kane colliding with a post was also a momentary cause for concern.
That aside, the only frustration for Spurs and Kane was that they failed to add to their first-half tally, with Grant producing an excellent save to deny the striker his fourth goal.
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These are just pictures but they tell stories that will either Educate, Entertain or Motivate you…
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A UN Security Council resolution bans Iran from developing missiles that can carry nuclear warheads. PHOTO: AFP
Iran on Thursday rejected a warning from US President Donald Trump’s administration over its latest missile test as unfounded and “provocative”.
“Claims made by US President Donald Trump’s National Security Advisor are baseless, repetitive and provocative,” Iranian foreign ministry spokesman Bahram Ghasemi said, quoted by state news agency IRNA.
President Donald Trump himself tweeted earlier on Thursday that the Islamic republic was now formally “on notice” after Sunday’s missile test.
“Iran has been formally PUT ON NOTICE for firing a ballistic missile.Should have been thankful for the terrible deal the U.S. made with them!” Trump tweeted, echoing similar comments by National Security Advisor Michael Flynn on Wednesday.
Trump was referring to the nuclear accord between Tehran and world powers that took effect in January 2016, lifting international sanctions in return for curbs on Iran’s atomic programme.
Flynn insisted that the missile test was “in defiance of UN Security Council Resolution 2231,” which calls on Iran not to test missiles capable of delivering a nuclear weapon.
Iran confirmed on Wednesday that it had tested a ballistic missile, but denied that it had violated the terms of the nuclear deal.
Tehran says its missiles do not breach UN resolutions because they are for defence purposes only and are not designed to carry nuclear warheads.
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A UN Security Council resolution bans Iran from developing missiles that can carry nuclear warheads. PHOTO: AFP
Iran on Thursday rejected a warning from US President Donald Trump’s administration over its latest missile test as unfounded and “provocative”.
“Claims made by US President Donald Trump’s National Security Advisor are baseless, repetitive and provocative,” Iranian foreign ministry spokesman Bahram Ghasemi said, quoted by state news agency IRNA.
President Donald Trump himself tweeted earlier on Thursday that the Islamic republic was now formally “on notice” after Sunday’s missile test.
“Iran has been formally PUT ON NOTICE for firing a ballistic missile.Should have been thankful for the terrible deal the U.S. made with them!” Trump tweeted, echoing similar comments by National Security Advisor Michael Flynn on Wednesday.
Trump was referring to the nuclear accord between Tehran and world powers that took effect in January 2016, lifting international sanctions in return for curbs on Iran’s atomic programme.
Flynn insisted that the missile test was “in defiance of UN Security Council Resolution 2231,” which calls on Iran not to test missiles capable of delivering a nuclear weapon.
Iran confirmed on Wednesday that it had tested a ballistic missile, but denied that it had violated the terms of the nuclear deal.
Tehran says its missiles do not breach UN resolutions because they are for defence purposes only and are not designed to carry nuclear warheads.
Vía The Guardian Nigeria http://ift.tt/2kwlUgb
(FILES) This file screengrab taken on November 9, 2014 from a Boko Haram video released by the Nigerian Islamist extremist group Boko Haram and obtained by AFP shows the leader of the Nigerian Islamist extremist group Boko Haram, Abubakar Shekau preaching to locals in an unidentified town. AFP PHOTO / BOKO HARAM / HO
Nigeria’s government and military have maintained the narrative for more than a year: Boko Haram, whose bloody insurgency has devastated the country’s northeast, is a spent force.
In December 2015, President Muhammadu Buhari said the Islamist militants were “technically defeated”. Twelve months later, he said troops had run them out of their final enclave.
Last month Major General Lucky Irabor, who heads the Nigerian counter-insurgency operation, told reporters the Islamic State group affiliate was “in disarray and… desperate”.
Throughout January, however, there were repeated attacks in Nigeria as well as in neighbouring Niger and Cameroon, raising questions about the extent of the claims of success.
In the latest incident, rebel gunmen on Tuesday ambushed police vehicles on the main road between the Borno state capital, Maiduguri, and the town of Damboa, killing an officer.
Last Saturday, as many as 24 people were feared dead when a convoy of civilian buses and trucks with a military escort was ambushed on the same road.
There have been hit-and-run attacks against “hard” military targets such as bases while suicide bombers have struck at “soft” civilian targets such as mosques and camps for the displaced.
Nigeria’s government and its commanders on the ground have repeatedly attributed these recent attacks to the actions of a weakened rebel group lashing out.
Last month, reporters were flown in a surveillance plane over the Sambisa forest in Borno state to be shown the military’s apparent success in flushing Boko Haram out of its main base, “Camp Zairo”.
“Each time we are on surveillance mission, we used to see the activities of terrorists here with their vehicles parked under the trees,” one air force officer explained on the flight.
“But now you can’t see such things. We have captured and taken over the place from them.”
Certainly, Boko Haram holds nothing like the territory it did in 2014, when its leader Abubakar Shekau declared a caliphate from the Borno town of Gwoza, threatening Nigeria’s sovereignty.
But there are fears that instead of defeat and capture, rebel fighters have merely been dispersed throughout the remote region around Lake Chad and are biding their time to regroup.
That happened previously in 2013 when emergency rule was declared in three northeast states, including Borno, and Boko Haram was forced out of urban centres.
Security analysts tracking the conflict have warned about complacency and underestimating the group’s ability to adapt and revert to classic guerrilla tactics.
One civilian vigilante leader in Rann, where last month a botched Nigerian air strike may have killed up to 236 civilians, said huge numbers of rebels may have moved in to the area recently.
“One of those arrested confessed that around 6,000 fighters had moved into villages in the area,” he told AFP after a Boko Haram attack on the same town, a day after the bombing.
Another militia member in Biu, near the site of Tuesday’s ambush, added: “Boko Haram are still around, although they have been badly weakened.”
Both attacks appear to back up Shekau’s claim in a video message in December where he proclaimed: “We are safe. We have not been flushed out of anywhere.”
– Claims ‘diluted’ –
Africa security analyst Ryan Cummings said the spate of attacks in January “at the very least dilutes any claims that Boko Haram may be a spent force and thus defeated”.
“It still comes down to the government erroneously conflating territorial capture with the defeat of Boko Haram, which is incorrect,” he told AFP in an email exchange.
“It is obvious the sect continues to possess the operational capacity to engage in armed incursions against a wide array of targets and is seemingly being more strategic in its employment of violence.”
Mass casualty attacks against civilians, using suicide bombers, may be designed to draw out security forces from counter-insurgency operations, he suggested.
The group appears to be again targeting the military to restock weaponry — as it did in 2013 and 2014 — and camps for the displaced for much-needed supplies.
The publisher of the sub-Saharan Africa defence and security forum Beegeagle’s Blog said Boko Haram’s capacity to launch large-scale hit-and-run attacks was clearly diminished.
But they still posed a threat to the military, civilians and humanitarian aid convoys.
“BH can only be factually described as being in disarray,” he told AFP on condition of anonymity.
“It would be hasty for anyone to proclaim their defeat at this stage,” he said, adding that a response to the switch in tactics was needed.
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PHOTO:AFP
Mexican drug lord Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman, one of the world’s most notorious criminals, is demanding to appear in person at his next US court hearing and not by video link.
Judge Brian Cogan last week ordered that 59-year-old Guzman, who spectacularly escaped from prison twice in Mexico, appear by video link for the brief procedural hearing to “minimize disruption from physical transportation.”
But in a five-page letter dated Monday, his American public defenders told Cogan that Guzman “objects” and requests to “be physically present in the courtroom” on Friday and at other future hearings.
Guzman, accused of running one of the world’s biggest drug empires, was extradited to the United States on January 19 and appeared without handcuffs and without incident to plead not guilty to a raft of firearms, drug trafficking and conspiracy charges during a brief hearing on January 20.
Since then, he has been held in solitary confinement at the Metropolitan Correctional Center in Manhattan, unable to make telephone calls or communicate directly with his family or lawyers in Mexico, his lawyers said.
“He is locked in a cell 23 hours a day and only allowed to leave to meet with his attorneys and for one hour of solitary exercise,” they wrote in the letter.
“His absence from the courtroom would necessarily lead to the public impression that Mr Guzman is too dangerous to be brought to the courtroom.”
The letter complained that Guzman’s extradition, which his lawyers had strenuously resisted, came “suddenly and without warning to his attorneys.”
In New York he is charged on a sweeping 17-count indictment that spans decades of alleged criminal enterprise, drug importation, illegal use of firearms and money laundering conspiracy.
The MCC is a two-mile (three-kilometer) drive from Cogan’s federal court room in Brooklyn and has stringent security measures. In the past, a handful of inmates have nonetheless managed to escape.
Guzman escaped from prison in Mexico for the first time in 2001 in a laundry cart and through a tunnel under his shower in 2015.
If found guilty at trial in New York, he stands to spend the rest of his life in a maximum security US prison.
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