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The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) has fixed August 30 as deadline for the submission of applications by observer groups interested to observe Bayelsa and Kogi governorship elections.

The commission announced this in a statement on its website on Friday.

It invited interested registered civil society organisations, non-governmental organizations and other stakeholders which activities focus on democracy, governance and elections, to visit its website for application forms.

“Interested observer groups are required to download and complete the application form(s) EC14A (I) indicating the preferred state for observation.

“The forms should be submitted along with other necessary documents, including evidence of past election observation at the Election and Party Monitoring Department, INEC Headquarters, Maitama, Abuja," it stated.

It noted that successful observer groups for the two states elections would be subsequently published in newspapers  and on the commission’s website.

It advised organisations wishing to apply to be truthful in their submissions, saying “any falsification of documents in the submission will lead to automatic disqualification and possible prosecution”, News Agency of Nigeria reports

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The escalating crisis between members of the Islamic Movement in Nigeria (IMN) and the Federal Government of Nigeria appears to have come to a head following a violent clash between members of the sect and the police in Abuja, on Monday, in which live ammunition was used against the protestors and at least one journalist—a Channels TV—reporter was reportedly shot dead. A senior police officer—of the rank of a deputy commissioner—was also killed alongside at least six others. The latest protest in Abuja is not the first to take a violent turn; in late October 2018, more than 49 members of the religious organization were killed when the police and army opened fire on them during a protest match.

About two weeks ago, at least two protestors were murdered when members of the group stormed the National Assembly to demand the release of their leader. The latest crackdown has happened in the light of an allegation by members of the Islamic sect that Sheik Ibraheem El-Zakzaki, the leader of the sect, who is being held by the government, has been poisoned and that the health of his wife too is in critical condition. There is a growing concern too about a gradual lose of vision to his eyes. The last time the Sheikh and his wife appeared in court in Kaduna, he looked truly unwell and frail and would definitely do with some medical attention. 

For a while now, protest matches by members of the sect has gathered considerable momentum, especially in Abuja, where, almost on daily basis, there has been an open confrontation between protesting members of the sect and the police. While it seems that the government may be trying to wear down the sect by attrition, the sect too appears determined that their leader must be released, and by allowing the sound of their protest to go up several decibels higher than before, there is a suggestion that we may be headed for a truce in the face-off. Muhammadu Buhari, Nigeria’s president, said last week that only the courts could determine when and whether or not El-Zakzaki would be freed from detention.

Confrontations between members of the sect and security operatives have been perennial, often resulting in violence of massive proportions, the most devastating of which arguably occurred in December 2015 when over three hundred members of the sect—including three of the Sheikh’s children—were murdered by the military during a brutal crackdown in Zaria, Kaduna state. Here is Human Rights Watch report of the incident:

The army carried out attacks at the Hussainniya Baqiyyatullah mosque and religious centre, at the home of the Shiite leader, Sheikh Ibrahim Al Zakzaky, in the Gyellesu neighbourhood and at the sect's burial ground, Daral-Rahma, over the course of two days. At least 300 Shia sect members, and likely many more, were killed and hundreds more injured, according to witnesses in at least two of the sites and a hospital source. Soldiers quickly buried the bodies in mass graves without family members' permission, making it difficult to determine an accurate death toll. Although some people threw stones and had sticks, there has been no credible information that any soldiers were injured or killed. (www.hrw.org).

The military had claimed that the sect members were, by erecting a roadblock, scheming to assassinate the chief of army staff, but an independent investigation by Human Rights Watch and the testimony of several IMN members who spoke to me during the course of an academic fieldwork in the wake of the incident in Zaria debunked this allegation. According to Human Rights Watch.

The Nigerian military’s version of events does not stack up. It is almost impossible to see how a roadblock by angry young men could justify the killings of hundreds of people. At best it was a brutal overreaction and at worst it was a planned attack on the minority Shia group. (www.hrw.org) 

In October last year when members of the sect were set upon by security operatives, the brutality of that action was also excused as an act of defence and the Nigerian military justified its actions by including a video clip of Mr Donald Trump’s remarks about migrants heading towards the American border, in which he warned: “They want to throw rocks at our military, our military fights back.”

It’s almost four years after the Zaria massacre and Sheikh El-Zakzaki and his wife remain in detention while security operatives, especially the Nigerian military, continue to use lethal force against members of the IMN. And this is in spite of the fact that a judicial commission of inquiry set up by the Kaduna State Government has clearly established that there was no plan by the Shiites to assassinate the chief of army staff and that the killings by the army was in flagrant violation of the Army Rules of Engagement and the Geneva Convention. The Federal Government has also refused to obey other court rulings directing that the Sheikh be released and his members be allowed to exercise their rights to religious freedom and peaceful assembly. 

The violent enactment against the Shiites is, undoubtedly, an act of state terror—some sort of political violence. The anthropology professor, Carol Nagengast, writes that “Political violence encompasses overt state-sponsored or tolerated violence…(coercion or the threat of it, bodily harm, etc.) but may also include actions taken or not by the state or its agents with the express intent of realizing certain social, ethnic, economic, and political goals in the realm of public affairs…” States are primarily responsible for ensuring the human rights of their own citizens, including the right to life.

However, in certain circumstances or contexts, a state could tolerate a violent action against its own citizens or a section thereof. And “…insofar as [such an action] is tolerated or encouraged by states in order to create, justify, excuse, explain, or enforce hierarchies of difference and relations of inequality”, they are “acts of state violence, even though states themselves may not appear on the surface to be primary agents.” It is impossible to exculpate the Nigerian state or government from the crime—for it is nothing short of a genocidal crime—of mass killing of the Shiites.

The military are state agents and whether or not they acted based on directives from the government is irrelevant; what is more, the failure of the Nigerian state, as Femi Falana pointed out last week, to properly bring to book men of the Nigerian armed forces responsible for the mass killing in Zaria, is an indication of its culpability. More importantly, the Nigerian president should be seen as the chief culprit since, as Commander-in-Chief of the nation’s armed forces, the buck stops at his desk.

Why is Sheikh Ibraheem El-Zakzaki (and wife) still being detained and his followers—often while protesting peacefully—visited with indiscriminate violence? One of the charges often brought against the Islamic Movement in Nigeria is that the organization is an extremist group and that it is a threat to the Nigerian state. Indeed, many have called for its proscription, often citing its regular rallies as indication of what a certain opinion contributor in ‘The Tribune Newspaper’ called ‘rabidity.’

It has even been suggested that Muhammadu Buhari might be considering proscribing the organization in Nigeria. I do not share this opinion, and I am deeply wary of people, especially the majority Sunni Muslims, demonising the group and calling for its proscription while condoning the killings of its members. The Shiites in Nigeria are a minority sect—an example of what Arjun Appadurai describes as ‘a small number’—whose beliefs and practices represent a contamination in the Muslim umma, in a country that has Sunni as the dominant Islamic sect.

The emergence and activities of the Islamic Movement of Nigeria and the relationship of the sect to the dominant Sunni Islamic order should be apprehended in the context of a wider understanding of Islamic culture in Northern Nigeria. Although Sunni Islam is the dominant practice within Islamic religious culture in Northern Nigeria, radical movements of different stripes have always figured in the religious life of the people and are perhaps the singular factor in the frequent ethnoreligious unrest in the region. Since the late 1970s, there has been a recrudescence of Islamic reformation initiated and pursued by different reform groups in that region of Nigeria. These reform groups share broadly stated goals of promoting a purist vision of Islam based on Sharia; eradicating heretical and anti-Islamic practices and innovations; and, for the more radical ones, establishing an Islamic state in the north.

The debate over religion and politics in the north has been generally shaped by these calls for reform, often generally in favour of legalistic interpretations of religious texts. Although the traditional Sufi orders remain predominant, the Jama'at Izalat al-Bida wa Iqamat al-Sunnah (Society for the Eradication of Evil Innovations and the Reestablishment of the Sunna), better known as the Izala Movement, in particular, has contributed to a general religious revival and a much greater public and political role for Islam. It was later joined by other reform movements, including the Muslim Students Society of Nigeria (MSS), widely regarded as a platform for young radical preachers, and the Islamic Movement of Nigeria, which is an offshoot of the MSS and which is also known as the Muslim Brotherhood.

The Muslim Brotherhood, which was established by Ibrahim El-Zakzaki, was itself part of a radical Islamic movement that started in Borno state among a group of radical Islamist youths who worshipped at the Al-Haji Muhammadu Ndimi Mosque in Maiduguri in the 1990s. Boko Haram, also known as Jama’tu Ahlis Sunna Lidda’awati wal-Jihad (People Committed to the Propagation of the Prophet’s Teachings and Jihad), also grew out of that group of radical Muslim youths worshipping at the Mosque.  

The radical stance of the Islamic Movement of Nigeria, from the foregoing, can, therefore, be seen as part of a wider Islamic movement that is both reformist and programmatic. The ostensible reason for the periodic attack on and criticism of the sect, as I have said, is that they are unruly, violent and scheming to establish a parallel state within the Nigerian nation-state, but anyone with sufficient discernment would readily see that this is a smokescreen to hide the bigotry of the aggressor—the Nigerian state. It is difficult to see how they are a subversive political threat to the Nigerian state.

In interviews after interviews, many Sunni Muslims have expressed concern that the Shiites were not true Muslims and that many of their practices were un-Islamic. In fact, one of the Muslims I interviewed after the massacre in Zaria, a senior cleric and a Sunni in Tudun Wada, Kaduna, pointedly stated that the killing of members of the sect in Zaria was deserved and justified because the sect was “not portraying Islam in a good light.” For many Sunni, Shiites represent ‘an incompleteness’ in Islam and should be purged. Making them the target of violence is, therefore, something of a community service too, or a service to the Muslim umma. In visiting violence on the Shiite group, it has been necessary, on the part of the dominant Sunni sect, to develop a predatory identity by marking off the spaces and intersubjective phases of association with them.

Thus, Shia and Sunni Muslims will hardly, as is well known, pray together or listen to the same sermon or clerics. The Shiites had marked off an area of Zaria city where they conduct many of their religious activities, and in many parts of northern Nigeria they often maintain a sense of sectarian divide by building their own mosques, instituting their own madrasa with different pedagogical approaches and emphasis in regard to the production of Islamic knowledge, and generally defining themselves away from the Sunni sect through, sometimes, their mode of dressing, among other social practices. Their repeated persecution and killings are, in the opinion of some of the people I interviewed in the wake of the incident in Zaria, a necessary step towards the protection of Islamic integrity which, historically, the sect had desecrated by choosing Ali, Prophet Muhammad’s cousin and son-in-law, as the first successor, or caliph, to lead the Muslim state. The oppression of the sect can also be regarded as an expression of social rage.

In his highly readable and wide-ranging discussion of rage as a social phenomenon, Bonnie Berry (1999) observes that social rage operates through intolerance “and the rageful exhibit a great deal of intolerance”. More importantly, “Rageful attitudes and behaviours rely heavily upon belief systems.” And as we are reminded, “Belief systems may be paradoxical, internally contradictory, and full of faulty reasoning, but they are not arguable.” The intolerance of Shiite members among Muslim umma in Nigeria is predicated on a belief system that is, from all indications, paradoxical, internally contradictory and with a baleful impact on reasoning.   

Dr. Abayomi Ogunsanya, Dublin, Ireland.

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Hundreds of passengers had to be rescued from a train near Mumbai.

Festus Keyamo SaharaReporters Media

Mr. Festus Keyamo (SAN), the ministerial nominee for Delta says he will unbundle Nigeria's Supreme Court if made the minister of justice and attorney-general of the federation.

Keyamo disclosed this on Friday while taking questions from members of the senate at the ongoing ministerial screening exercise in Abuja.

The human right activist, who was the fourth nominee to appear in the red chamber on Thursday, said it was “scandalous” to have only one Supreme Court in Abuja, attending to the whole country.

He said he would press for constitutional changes to create six regional Supreme Courts.

He attributed the current delay of judicial processes at the apex court to heavy traffic of cases coming from the 36 states and the FCT.

He proposed that the Appeal Court in Abuja should only be made to attend to constitutional interpretation, political and election matters.

He also advocated for the decongestion of the prisons across the country.

He said this would be made possible by making sure that every Divisional Police Officer opens his cells to the nearest magistrate to ascertain why suspects are detained.

He also called for the amendment of the criminal laws across the states, particularly calling for the review of the powers of the director of prosecution and their attorneys-general, to avoid abuse of office.  See Also Politics Ministerial Screening: Drama As Melaye Ask Festus Keyamo To Recite National Anthem 0 Comments 12 Hours Ago

On the number of the political parties in the country, Keyamo said, “We must keep opening up the political space to Nigerians.

“Besides registration of these political parties, they must be made to test their popularity and capacity at the lower elections.”

Senator James Manager (PDP Delta), who spoke on behalf of Delta caucus in the senate, urged his colleagues to support the nomination.

He said Keyamo had demonstrated competence and intelligence in handling all the questions by the senators.

The President of the Senate, Dr. Ahmad Lawan, therefore ratified Manager’s appeal through a voice vote in favour of the nominee.

Keyamo, 49, was the director of strategic communication, APC Presidential Campaign Council for the 2019 election. 

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On Wednesday, July 24, 2019, a video of a young man, shot and abandoned on the ground of where seems like a police station began to circulate on social media.  

In the one minute, nineteen second’s video, voices in the video seem to agree that the young, laying in his pool of blood, had committed an egregious offence that he deserved to die. A male voice in the video said he does not deserve to live.

“Let me call my father before I die,” the young man pleaded but his plea was ignored by police officers who ignored his obvious urgent need for medical attention and continued to flash their cameras in his face.

A man, who seemed angry by whatever this young man must have done responded: “God will punish your father. God will punish your father that you want to talk to”.  The video ended with this helpless man quiet and lifeless on the ground. No one helped him; both the policemen and those at the scene watched on as he bled out.

Who was the victim?

Obi Chinedu, a 24-year-old student of the University of Port Harcourt, was the young man in the video, SaharaReporters found out.

According to Obi Udochukwu, his brother, Chinedu had gone to visit his friends at Sango Ota in Ogun State, on July 15. He would later go out to buy a phone at a store close to Sango Ota Police Station.

Udochukwu explained, “While getting the phone, he and the salesgirl had an altercation. She insisted she needed to test the phone before he could leave the shop with the phone. He said there was no need for a test but she kept insisting.

“Chinedu left the phone for the storekeeper to test as she had insisted and went to sort out other things. When he got back to the shop, he realized the storekeeper had not tested the phone as she had insisted she wanted to do. This annoyed Chinedu who felt his time was being wasted.

“This led to a brawl between the two. The storekeeper got support from the people around and Chinedu was beaten up, then, handed over to the police at Sango Ota police station. He was in police detention till the next day, Friday, July 19.

“He narrated what happened to my mother when he called her from the station the next day. My mother called me that I should get his friends to bail him out. That night the police did not release him. They said he would remain in the cell for being too aggressive but his friends later bailed him.

“Before he was bailed, the owner of the shop went to the station to apologize to him that he was a customer, he does not deserve to have been treated the way he was. They settled and that was the last I heard from my mum. That was on the 19th. That was the last authentic information we heard from him.”

Chinedu’s family members thought all had been settled and were expecting him to return to Port Harcourt, where he lived with Udochukwu. Unknown to them, Chinedu had been rearrested and held in detention.

Aggrieved by his earlier detention, Chinedu had gone back to the shop, where he had gone to buy a phone to foment more troubles after he was released on Friday. According to the brother, the police said he destroyed properties and threatened to throw the storekeeper, who had caused his detention, from a storey building. 

Asked how that degenerated into shooting him and leaving him to bleed to death, Udochukwu said the police told the family that Chinedu broke the handcuff that was used to restrain him and also destroyed cars within the station. 

“The police said while they were interrogating him, he broke the handcuffs and right there in the interrogation room, he saw an axe, picked up the axe in the interrogation room and started destroying cars.”
In the now-viral video, a man, possibly a police officer in mufti, was seen holding an axe. Also, there was a vehicle with a damaged windscreen. 

SaharaReporters’ attempts to reach Abimbola Opeyemi, the spokesperson of Ogun State Police Command was unsuccessful as he failed to respond to multiple calls put through to his phone and message sent to him via WhatsApp. 

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Vice President Yemi Osinbajo has called on members of the All Progressives Congress (APC), Anambra chapter, to be united and work for common purpose and progress of the party in the state.

Osinbajo made the call during a roundtable with stakeholders of the state APC in Awka on Friday.

He said poor performance of the party in Anambra in the recent general election was attributable to the lack of synergy between party leadership and the grassroots.

He also said the victory of APC in the 2021 governorship election in Anambra could be realised if members worked in unity.

“We don’t need to deceive ourselves. We need ask ourselves question; how come Anambra got the least votes in South-east and second least in the federation.

“I have come to open a new chapter for APC in Anambra. We can win governorship here. We can be number one but we have to be united,” he said.

Osinbajo observed that the major problem in Anambra APC was because people refused to join the party because they thought it was a regional party.

He said President Muhammadu Buhari respected the residents of Anambra, given his numerous development projects in the state.

He assured them they would always get what was due to them including appointments under his administration.

The vice president advised members of the party to mobilise their members strategically for them to benefit from the various federal government intervention programmes.

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Europeans have agreed on a list of five candidates to replace Christine Lagarde as head of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and hope to whittle it down to one by the end of July.

The names include former Dutch finance minister and Euro group head, Jeroen Dijsselbloem.

Their names had already been circulating as potential successor, as well as former EU commissioner, Olli Rehn of Finland, according to the French Economy Ministry.

Other names include, Spanish Economy Minister, Nadia Calvino, Portuguese Finance Minister Mario Centeno, who is currently head of the Eurogroup, and also the former EU commission vice president, Kristalina Georgieva from Bulgaria.

French Economy Minister, Bruno le Maire has been coordinating the European search with the goal of agreeing on a single candidate with wide ranging experience in international finance by the end of July.

Le Maire has been in touch with European finance ministers, including the incoming British Chancellor of the Exchequer, Sajid Javid.

Maire called on finance ministers to name their favoured candidate in a second round of consultations this week.

The Washington-based IMF is traditionally led by a European while its sister institution the World Bank is led by an American, but emerging countries have challenged this unwritten rule.

“The IMF must end its practice of appointing only European managing directors, just as the World Bank must start considering non-US citizens,” Jose Antonio Ocampo, a Colombian central bank board member and former finance minister, wrote earlier this month.

Lagarde was nominated to succeed Mario Draghi as president of the European Central Bank and will leave the IMF on September 12, News Agency of Nigeria reports.

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Abubakar Malami, the former  Minister of Justice and Attorney-General of the Federation on Friday explained why some bills passed by the senate were not signed by President Muhammadu Buhari.

Malami, while fielding questions during the ministerial screening said the Petroleum Industry Governance Bill (PIGB) was refused assent because public interest was not factored in the bill.

He said the PIGB passed provided more priority to the individual more than the public interest.

He said that there was the need to establish deep rooted collaborations from conception of a bill to convocation of public hearing to seek input of varied opinions for the good of the public.

He also said the federal government had also taken up polices that would ensure the independence on funding of the Judiciary.

Malami, who got commendations for his laudable contributions as AGF was later asked to take a bow.

He said that the ministry under his watch had facilitated the prosecution of 63 terrorism cases and secured 59 convictions.

He said the federal government through the ministry had also increased the recovering of looted public funds in 2015 from N19 billion to N279 billion in 2018.

Malami was screened along side Hadi Sirika, the former Minister of State on Aviation.

The senate adjourned the exercise until 6:30 pm on July 25, after screening 14 nominees.

The third nominee, Dr. Osagie Ehanire (Edo), who was a minister of state for health was not available to be screened.

However, Senator Lawrence Ewhrdjakpo (PDP-Bayelsa), raising a point of Order 121, observed that a number of the ministerial nominees did not present their certificate of declaration of asset to senate.

He said it was a breach of the constitution for the nominees not to have presented their certificates of asset declaration as intending public officers.

He said failure of the nominees to present the certificate could result in their non-confirmation.

Commenting on the point of order, Senate President, Ahmad Lawan, sitting as the chairman of the Committee of the Whole, said the order was noted, News Agency of Nigeria reports.

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Nigerian government's request for the proscription of the Islamic Movement in Nigeria has been granted by a Federal High Court in Abuja.

The court gave the order that the group should be proscribed following an ex parte application by the federal government.

The Punch reports that the ex parte application marked FHC/ABJ/CS/876/2019 was filed in the name of the "Attorney-General of the Federation" before the court on Thursday.

The matter was argued on behalf of the government by the Solicitor-General of the Federation and Permanent Secretary, Federal Ministry of Justice, Mr Dayo Apata.

However,  the group had no representatives in court on Friday.

Justice Nkeonye Maha issued the order in a ruling in which she also designated the activities of the Shiite organisation in any part of Nigeria “as acts of terrorism and illegality".

The court restrained “any person or group of persons” from participating in any form of activities involving or concerning the IMN “under any name or platform” in Nigeria.

To complete the process of the proscription of the group, the court ordered the Attorney-General of the Federation “to publish the order proscribing the respondent (Islamic Movement in Nigeria) in the official gazette and two national dailies".

In its ruling the court said, “An order of this honourable court proscribing the existence and activities of the respondent (Islamic Movement in Nigeria) in any part of Nigeria, under whatever form or guise either in groups or as individuals by whatever names they are called.

“An order restraining any person or group of persons from participating in any manner whatsoever in any form of activities involving or concerning the prosecution of the collective intention or otherwise of the respondent (Islamic Movement in Nigeria) under any other name or platform howsoever called or described in any part of Nigeria.

“An order directing the applicant (the AGF) to publish the order proscribing the respondent (Islamic Movement in Nigeria) in the official gazette and two national dailies.

The Deputy Commissioner of Police in charge of Operations, Federal Capital Territory Command, Usman  Umar, and a ChannelsTV journalist, Precious Owolabi, died in the clash with many others injured and property destroyed.

The Shiites have for over two years taken to the streets particularly in Abuja to demand the release of their leader, Sheikh Ibrahim El-Zakzaky, and his wife, Zeenat.

In it response to the court order,  the spokesperson for the group,  Ibrahim Musa who spoke with Punch on Friday said the group could not be proscribed because its members are not politicians but Muslims practising Islam.

According to him, the group are not in possession of arms and they do not force anyone to join them rather all they want is justice.

Musa said, “Firstly, we are not an organisation or association or a political party that can be proscribed by fiat.

“We are Muslims practising Islam as revealed to Prophet Muhammed under the leadership of his family. Ours is a mass movement, hence we can’t abandon our religion just like that.

“We don’t bear arms, we don’t force others to join us, we are just demanding justice within the ambit of the law, therefore, proscribing us won’t work.

“We can’t say this is what we will do if we are proscribed, because it just won’t work. We are in each and every facet of life like other citizens.”

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President Muhammadu Buhari has been conferred with “The Grand Cordon of the Knighthood of Venerable Order of the Pioneers”, Liberia’s highest national honour.

The president was the special guest of Honour at the country’s 172nd independence anniversary.

“The award is presented by the government for outstanding and distinguished service in international affairs, government, religion, art, science and commerce.

“It is also for singular acts of philanthropy and deeds of heroism and valour,” the president’s media aide Garba Shehu stated.

But millions of Nigerians including former Presidents Olusegun Obasanjo and Goodluck Jonathan have repeatedly lamented the sorry state of Nigeria with increasing level of poverty and insecurity.

Buhari was accompanied by Governors Kayode Fayemi of Ekiti, Abdulrahman Abdulrazaq of Kwara and Mai Mala Buni of Yobe.

Others on the president’s entourage were the Permanent Secretary, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Ambassador Mustapha Sulaiman, and other top government officials, News Agency of Nigeria reports.
 

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Two teenage Americans were arrested after the fatal stabbing in central Rome on Friday.

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Australian swimmer Shayna Jack tests positive for a banned substance before the World Aquatics Championships, Swimming Australia has said.

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Helicopters, boats and divers converge on the train near Mumbai in a big recue operation.

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They rally against a mob attack on protesters last week, and accuse police of colluding with gangs.