Terrorism : I survived several bullets Fulani herdsmen fired at me - School principal

A secondary school principal, Ojodale Philip, has recalled some of the sad events of last week’s attack in parts of Kogi East, by suspected Fulani herdsmen.

Philip, the Principal of Community Secondary School, Oganenigwu, said that the school came under herdsmen’s attack around 8.30 am and many people were killed.

He said: “I personally was shot at several times but nothing happened to me. In my hands are some of the bullets that were meant to kill me,” he said.

This is coming as fears continue to mount in parts of Kogi East over what appears an undeclared war by suspected Fulani herdsmen, following attacks that left scores dead.

While the number of those that died from the carnage remains uncertain, some of the residents of the affected areas said that no fewer than 30 people lost their lives while several others were yet unaccounted for during the latest attack on Oganenigwu in Dekina Local Government Area by suspected herdsmen.

Reports yesterday claimed that people from some of the affected places, including Abejukolo and Agbenema communities, were relocating to neighbouring Anyigba, Egume and other areas for safety.

According to the Oganenigwu Community Development Association, over 200 people had been displaced.

They added that over 50 houses were razed by the suspected Fulani herdsmen while residents of the villages around Oganenigwu continue to move away in droves to places like Ologba, Etulutekpe and Iyale.

“At present, nobody can say the exact number of casualties on both sides, because many families are yet to locate their relatives,” said a source.

The source added that the presence of security agents drafted to the troubled areas was yet to contain the situation.

Philip, the Principal of Community Secondary School, Oganenigwu, said, “My school was under attack by Fulani terrorists at about 8.30am, but to God be the glory, no life was lost in my school, but many people were massacred in the village.

“I personally was shot at several times but nothing happened to me. In my hands are some of the bullets that were meant to kill me.”

Meanwhile, the spot assessment of Governor Yahaya Bello to the troubled communities on Friday did not hold.

The governor has however expressed shock over the attack carried out on the people of Oganenigwu and other communities in the Kogi East Senatorial district by bandits suspected to be herdsmen.

This was contained in a press statement issued on Friday by the Director General on Media and Publicity to the Governor,  Mr. Kingsley Fanwo.

The statement reads: “The Kogi State Government ensured that the military, the police and other relevant security agencies, including members of the Kogi State Vigilante Services were immediately mobilised to the affected areas following the initial reports.

“The violence has since been contained and brought under control. The incident however remains under investigation while efforts are ongoing to apprehend the attackers and bring them to justice.

“His Excellency, Alhaji Yahaya Bello, the Executive Governor of Kogi State will conduct on the spot assessment of the distressed communities today.

“He will meet with security chiefs and community leaders after which more information will be forthcoming, based on available facts. - The Nation

End of legislooting !!! Wakili, senator representing Bauchi south, dies at 58

Ali Wakili, an All Progressives Congress (APC) senator from Bauchi state, is dead.

Yusuph Olaniyonu, spokesman of Senate President Bukola Saraki, confirmed this to TheCable on Saturday.

“I can confirm that the lawmaker is dead but we don’t have the details at the moment,” Olaniyonu said.

TheCable gathered that the lawmaker, who was one of the guests at the wedding of the daughter of Aliko Dangote, billionaire businessman, died in Abuja on Saturday.

He reportedly slumped at his residence in Gwarimpa, Abuja, and was taken to a hospital where he was attended to immediately.

The senate president said he received the news while on his way to the wedding ceremony of one of the daughters of Vice-President Yemi Osinbajo, and that he stopped over at the residence of the deceased before continuing the journey.

Yakubu Dogara, speaker of the house of representatives, who hails from the same state with Wakili, described the death as devastating and heartbreaking.

He said the late lawmaker was a “personal friend, true brother and dependable ally”.

“The death of Sen. Ali Wakili is a personal loss to me. I’m short of words to describe how devastated and heartbroken I am over the passing away of this true friend, brother and confidant, with whom I had excellent brotherly relationship and association,” he said in a statement.

“We in Bauchi state and in particular, Bauchi south senatorial district, have lost a worthy ambassador and a distinguished gentleman. But we’ll take solace in the fact that his humanitarian services and other accomplishments will continue to be a source of inspiration to us all.”

Aged 58, the lawmaker served as chairman, senate committee on poverty alleviation until his death.

He joined politics after retiring as comptroller in the Nigeria Customs Service (NCS).

Wakili obtained his bachelor’s degree in arts in 1982 from the Bayero University Kano (BUK). - Cable Nigeria

I’ve killed over 100 people – Ade Lawyer

Thirty-nine-year old Adeola Williams, popularly known as Ade Lawyer, has confessed to killing over 100 people in the past 10 to 20 years.

Williams was arrested by the Lagos State police few weeks back.

He was the personal assistant to Azeez Adekunle Lawal, the National Union of Road Transport Workers’ chairman in Idumota, Lagos

He noted that assassinating people was his source of livelihood for over 10 years. “But now I’m born again,” he said.

The suspect, who is a father of three from Ijebu Igbo in Ogun State, was recently arrested by the Inspector General of Police Intelligence Response Team over the killing of one Ganiyu Ayinla, aka Pinero.

Vanguard quoted him as saying, “Assassination has been the source of my livelihood for more than a decade now and I know I have taken many lives that I can’t even count but God knows I am a new person now.

“If I get a chance to regain my freedom in this life, I will never go back to crime again. I also advise the millions of youths out there that crime does not pay. I was into crime for over 20 years and despite the risk involved and lack of rest of mind, I have nothing to show for it except the uncompleted three-bedroomed bungalow in Ibadan.

“I have nothing on ground to fall back on despite taking the lives of more than 100 Nigerians as an assassin. May God forgive me.

“A fight broke out when he was about leaving the hall and I found my way to the front where I succeeded in snatching his watch from his wrist. People saw me struggling with his bouncers and the next day, they brought policemen to arrest me in my mother’s house.

“I thought about my predicament because my wife was heavily pregnant and the money I was getting from Oluomo wasn’t enough and I wasn’t ready to use my gun for armed robbery, so I decided to end the life of the man who refused to help me mend my relationship with Agbede.

“I decided to rope in Olorunwa because he was the one who ruined my life. It was my support for him during his fight with MC Oluomo that made me to lose my position at the union. After he was removed from office, he had so much money but he was wasting it on women and movie actors and he refused to help me.

“If he had given me good money after he left office, for staking my life for him, I won’t have been roaming about looking for who to kill. I was just so bitter, so I framed him. I made up the story that he paid me N500,000 to kill Kunle Poly and I also lied that I seized his vehicle because he was owing me a balance of N1m.”

He said he also decided to rope MC Oluomo as the person who sent him because he expected him (Oluomo) to come to his aid but that he didn’t show up, until he “finally decided to come clean and say the truth and give my life to Christ. I also lied earlier that I worked for Prince Kazeem Aletu during the fight between him and Oba Elegushi.”

“Though I didn’t know Prince Kazeem before, I have heard his name very well before and I asked for assistance from him several times through somebody who knows him but he refused to help me, and that was why I mentioned his name too. But now I am a born-again Christian and I will always say the truth and stand by the truth.”

Meanwhile, police sources said efforts were on to arrest the remaining gang members still at large - Daily Post

SAD !!! Seven people die as plane crashes into house

No fewer than seven people have died after a plane crashed into a house while trying to take off.

The incident happened outside the Philippine capital on Saturday.

Police and aviation officials said the twin-engine aircraft crashed into a house just after taking off in Plaridel town.

All five passengers aboard as well as at least two others on the ground died.

The Piper PA-23 Apache was operated by a local charter company.

The cause of the crash has not been disclosed by officials.

The death toll could rise as rescuers were still going through the ruins of the house, police told Daily Star.

Boko haram : Fayose blasts Buhari for walking on red carpet in Dapchi

Ekiti State governor, Ayodele Fayose has slammed Presdient Muhammadu Buhari for walking on a red carpet during his visit to Dapchi, Yobe State where over 110 students were recently kidnapped.

However, during the visit to the school, where the school children were were kidnapped, Buhari was seen walking on a red carpet.

President Buhari on Wednesday arrived Yobe State for his official visit, alongside the Borno State Governor, Kashim Shettima and the presidential spokesman, Garba Shehu.

In a tweet, the governor said, no President would walk on Red Carpet during a visit to a State where 110 school girls were abducted.

Fayose tweeted, ”In saner climes, no President will walk on Red Carpet during a visit to a State where 110 school girls were abducted by insurgents and their whereabouts is unknown.”

Hacker Adrian Lamo who turned WikiLeaks' source Chelsea Manning in to the FBI dead at 37, says father

Adrian Lamo, the prolific hacker who turned Chelsea Manning in to the FBI, has died, according to a Facebook post by a family member.

In the post, Mr Lamo's father Mario wrote: "With great sadness and a broken heart I have to let know all of Adrian's friends and acquaintances that he is dead.

"A bright mind and compassionate soul is gone, he was my beloved son."

The coroner for Sedgwick County, where Lamo lived, confirmed his death, but provided no further details, according to a report by ZDNet.

Adrian Lamo became a controversial figure in the hacker community after he tipped off authorities about Manning providing the controversial combat video that became 'Collateral Murder' and 260,000 classified diplomatic cables to WikiLeaks.

The pair met after Manning read about Mr Lamo's previous role in several high-profile security breaches, including at the New York Times in 2002.

Mr Lamo defended his decision to turn Manning over to the FBI in an interview with the Guardian in 2013: "There were no right choices that day, only less wrong ones. It was cold, it was needful, and it was no one's to make except mine.

"I couldn't just not do anything, knowing lives were in danger, it's classified information, and when you play Russian roulette, how do you know there's not a bullet in the next chamber?

"Making the choice to interdict a man's freedom knowing it could mean his life, is something that's easy to judge but can only really be understood by living it."

He made the decision to inform US military intelligence and the FBI of Manning's leak.

She was later arrested and sentenced to 35 years in prison, which was commuted by Barack Obama as one of his final acts as President.She was released last year.

Adrian had defended his decision to hack into various corporations saying he had "an insatiable desire to see how things worked".

He famously was known as the homeless hacker - travelling across the US on public transport and hacking corporations from inside abandoned buildings.

In July 2010 he was diagnosed with Asperger syndrome and briefly hospitalised. - UK Mirror

How pregnant woman escaped rampaging killer herdsmen by CLIMBING A TREE

AFTER some respite from years of bloody communal and sectarian clashes, the dark days of bloodshed returned to Plateau State during the week with attacks launched by killer herdsmen on hapless residents of Bokkos and Bassa local government areas of the state.

At the last count, no fewer than 23 villages had been attacked in Bassa and five others in Bokkos, leaving no fewer than 35 people dead and rendering thousands of others homeless.

The tragic incidents, whose one of the highpoints was a pregnant woman who escaped death by a whisker after she climbed a tree, had been heralded last week with the killing of a 17-year-old student of Government Secondary School Jebbu, Bassa LGA. Lumumbah Chayi was attacked and killed by some gunmen suspected to be Fulani herdsmen while returning from a tin mining site near Gero village in Jos South Local Government Area of the state.

Chayi was said to be preparing for his Junior Secondary School Examination (JSSE) at the time the incident occurred. He was said to be returning home from the tin mining site with a friend in the evening when they were attacked by the assailants. Chayi was said to have given up the ghost before he could be rushed to the hospital, while his friend named Ntoro Duh managed to survive the attack. Reliving the ugly incident, Duh, who was rushed to Enos, a private hospital in Miango, said: “Lumumbah (Chayi) and I were on our way home around 3:30 pm on Monday when some Fulani herdsmen attacked us. They attacked my head with a machete, but I managed to escape while they pursued Lumumbah and ensured that they killed him.”

Speak ing at the Chayi’s burial, the head of Kpachudu village in Bassa LGA, Ngwe Gado Dahma, appealed to the federal and state governments to take proactive steps to protect his people’s lives and property. Ngwe Dahma said: “We want to appeal to President (Muhammadu) Buhari and Governor (Simon) Lalong to please take proactive steps to ensure the protection of lives and property of the citizens of Irigwe chiefdom. Since the beginning of this year, we here in Kpachudu have lost more than 30 people.”

But sad as it may, the incident was only a dress rehearsal for the bigger attacks that occurred in the two aforementioned local government areas on Monday after initial ones on March 7 and 8, shortly after President Muhammadu Buhari’s visit to the state.

For the pregnant woman named Ruth Samson, it was a miracle that she escaped the rampaging killer herdsmen, having to climb a tree for the first time in her life, to avoid the killers’ sword. She said: “God rescued me by forcing me to climb a tree while the Fulani men were pursuing us in the bush. I noticed that shortly after they started pursuing us, they diverted their attention away from me and went after the other people. That gave me an opportunity to climb a tree willy-nilly.

“I had never climbed a tree in my life. So, how I got the courage to climb the tree is still baffling me. When the gunmen were through with the others, they came back and started looking for me, but I was at the top of a tree, watching them. Luckily for me, none of them looked up, probably because they never thought I could climb a tree in my condition. It was God that saved me.”

Thousands of residents in the affected communities in Bokkos and Bassa local government areas have been rendered homeless following the destruction of their homes, leaving many to ask: “Where is government in all this?”

Israel Akwu, a resident of Kwall in Bassa LGA, wondered why government no longer seemed to care for the lives of its citizens, saying: “Our people are being killed every day by armed men, but government, whose primary responsibility is to protect lives and property, is not living up to its responsibility. We have a democratic government in place in the state. The people being killed are the people that voted the government, and they are the same people that will vote in 2019. Why is it that difficult for government to protect its own people?”

Joshua Kawu, whose younger brother was killed in the last attack, said: “We are facing the most terrible situation in our lives at the moment. Our villages are under siege. Even on the day Mr. President visited the state last week, we were under severe attack by gunmen, but the governor gave Mr. President the impression that there was normalcy in the state. Who do we cry to now?”

National President of the Irigwe Youth Movement, Chinye Dodo Ayuba, called on President Buhari to take a drastic action towards safeguarding the lives of Irigwe people, saying that farmlands were being destroyed on a daily basis.

He said: “We are calling on President Muhammadu Buhari to know that the security arrangement in place is not working. Most of the attacks take place not far from security checkpoints, and we all know that the first responsibility of government is protection of lives and property. Government should wake up.”

After the killings of 8th and 9th March during the visit of President Buhari to Plateau State, Governor Lalong, in a statement, said he would not sleep until everyone was secured in the state. But two days after, gunmen stormed the same Bassa and killed no fewer than 25 people.

The said attack occurred while the community was preparing a funeral service for about eight people killed during the visit of President Buhari. This provoked the people so much so that they decided to protest the killings on the streets of Jos on Tuesday morning. The protesters, comprising Irigwe women and youths, dressed in black, took their protest to the state’s House of Assembly and the Government House.

The killing also attracted a reaction from Bassa LGA chapter of Plateau Youth Council. Its chairman, Francis Stephen, who issued a statement in Jos on Tuesday, said: “It is with grave pain that we discovered the killings of more than 30 people in Miango and Kwali in Irigwe chiefdom in Bassa LGA within a week by suspected Fulani herdsmen. It is most unfortunate, regrettable and unacceptable.

“Indeed,   attacks   and   killings   of community members in Bassa have continued untamed and seemingly uncontrolled. Unfortunately, it is sufficiently evident that the act of killing and destruction of lives and property in Nigeria is no longer news because of the scandalous dimension it has taken. “We hereby register our deep-seated, heart-felt sympathy for the victims of this heinous crime. We also wish to strongly commend the Irigwe youths for their exhibition of maturity and show of civility by refusing to take the law into their hands by way of reprisal attack. “Consequently, we will not hesitate to remind the government of its constitutional obligations to protect the lives and properties of its citizens to avoid the collapse of our country.

We also wish to call on the security agencies to make sure that the culprits and their sponsors are arrested and charged to appropriate courts for prosecution to serve as deterrent to others and instill confidence in the minds of citizens.” In a state-wide broadcast on Wednesday, Governor Lalong reassured the people of his government’s commitment to protecting the lives and property of its citizens. Lalong said: “Let me also assure you of the unwavering commitment of our administration to deliver on the promise of peace and security. Although this emerging conflict trend has affected our collective effort to further consolidate the gains of our post-conflict peace-building process, our commitment to ensure the security of lives and property remains unshakable.

“As part of measures to in the interim arrest the vicious cycle of violent attacks, we are poised to immediately review our state security architecture while working closely with security agencies to arrest and prosecute the perpetrators of these heinous crimes. Let me assure our citizens that some arrests have already been made and the suspects will be arraigned before the relevant authorities in no distant future. “Meanwhile, beyond these interim measures, we have developed a sustainable policy response to the protracted conflict in the state as contained in the road map to peace document recently launched by Mr President.

“This document contains sustainable solutions to the challenges of peace and security in Plateau State. The Rescue Administration is determined to implement the details of this plan, considering the potential it holds for the future of our state in terms of peace and security.” He called on all citizens to remain calm and volunteer useful information to security agencies about any suspicious movement of persons around their neighbourhoods. “I call on all citizens to shun rumours and inflammatory speeches capable of disturbing the peace. At a very critical moment like this, let us work together to lend support to those directly affected by these unfortunate incidents,” he added.