Naijanews Today - Boy Turned Into Yam and Other News
Ekenlor Idi
2. Today in Niger Newspapers.
3. Nigerian witchcraft 'turns school boy into a yam'
4. Snakeoil salesman Daboh and Sharia
5.
1. HEADLINE: 40 Killed in Nigerian Crash
DATELINE: LAGOS, Nigeria
BODY:
A tanker truck carrying a load of diesel crashed into a commuter
bus, killing 40 people in eastern Nigeria, news reports said
Wednesday.
The tanker carrying 7,800 gallons of diesel veered out of control
late Monday as it came down a slope near the eastern Nigerian town of
Onitsha, witnesses said. It
was not immediately clear what caused the crash.
The tanker ran into women selling by the side of the road before
slamming into the bus and bursting into flames.
A number of traders were among the 40 people killed, Lagos newspapers
reported.
It was not immediately clear if other people were injured in the
crash.
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH
LOAD-DATE: March 22, 2000
March 22, 2000
SECTION: NEWS, DOCUMENTS & COMMENTARY
LENGTH: 812 words
HEADLINE: ;
Nigeria;
;
Today In Nigeria Newspapers;
BODY:
Lagos - Clinton Visits Nigeria June: Preparations for the visit of
United States President, Bill Clinton to Nigeria in June have been
intensified by both the Presidency
and officials at the US Embassy in Lagos.
President Olusegun Obasanjo invited Clinton to Nigeria as a signal to
the US support for the country's return to civilian rule. Clinton was
invited during Obasanjo's
visit to that country last year, agency reports monitored in Lagos
said. -The Post Express
No Court Can Resolve Sharia Crisis
Even as the Northern leaders have referred the controversial
determination of the constitutionality of Sharia to the law courts,
the Nigerian Bar Association (NBA),
yesterday said that the Sharia issue is a political issue which can
only be addressed politically.
In a statement signed by the President of the NBA, Mr. J.J. Onomigbo
Okpoko (SAN), the body argued that "no matter how right or correct
the final decision may be in
law, the proponents and opponents of Sharia who have taken their
respective fixed positions will brand such decision (whichever way it
goes) as one influenced by the
religious beliefs of the deciding judges." -The Post Express
Motion By Imo Assembly Serious -FG
The Federal Government yesterday reacted to the motion for
confederation passed by the Imo State House of Assembly describing it
as "a grave development."
Speaking at a news conference at State House, Abuja, the Special
Assistant to the President on Media and Publicity, Dr. Doyin Okupe
appealed to political leaders in
the South-east to let emotions and feelings over the recent riots in
the country over Sharia to subside before contemplating any
structural changes. -This Day
Legislators Kick Against Privatisation
Some members of the House of Representatives of northern extraction
under the aegies of the Northern Representatives Millennium Alliance
On National Issues have
condemned the Federal Government's privatisation programme, saying
that the exercise would mortgage the future of most Nigerians.
-ThisDay
NYSC May be Merged With Police
The National Youth Service Corps (NYSC) scheme is to be merged with
the Nigerian Police, if the National Assembly gives its nod to a
proposal to this effect likely
to be made by the Presidency.
A source at the Presidency told ThisDay that the merger is part of
Federal Government's move to realign parastatals. In readiness for
the merger, Mr. Amen Oyakhire,
erstwhile Military Administrator for Taraba and later Oyo states has
been named as the Director-General of the NYSC. His appointemnt was
announced in Abuja last
week. -ThisDay
Govt Protests Arrest Of 10 Nigerians In France
The Nigerian mission in France has protested formally to the French
authorities on the arrest, detention and trial of 10 Nigerians in
Paris promising that "this matter
will be pursued to the logical conclusion."
The Nigerians were arrested by French authorities on January 20 for
allegedly protesting the treatment of a colleague who was tied to a
seat on an Air France flight
bound for Lagos in January. The offence was described as "disturbing
the peace and preventing (in terrorist fashion) the scheduled
take-off of the plane." -The
Guardian
Makarfi May Sue Police Over Shooting
Kaduna State Governor Ahmed Mohammed Makarfi yesterday read the riot
act to the state police command over Monday's violence in which four
people were
allegedly killed by armed officers on trouble-shooting assignment.
He gave the command a 24-hour ultimatum to produce the culprits
failing which he would prosecute all officers on the team.
Residents of Rigasa, a suburb of the state capital, had reportedly
taken to the streets in protest against alleged extortion by soldiers
keeping the peace in their area
following the recent religious upheaval. -The Guardian
Bamaiyi's Escape Bid Foiled
An alleged attempt to escape from detention and flee the country by
retired Gen. Ishaya Bamaiyi, the former Chief of Army Staff,
currently facing trial over alleged
attempted murder of The Guardian newspaper publisher, Mr. Alex Ibru,
has been uncovered by the police.
Three soldiers have been arrested for aiding the alleged escape bid
which dependable police sources described as a confirmation of
earlier security reports of a grand
plan by some individuals to storm the Kirikiri Maximum Security
Prison to free the former chief of army staff and ferry him out of
the country. -National Concord
Coup Botched In Comoro
A number of people, including Abderrahmane Abdallah, a soldier and
son of slain Comoran President Ahmed Abdallah, have been arrested
following a coup botched
by the army in the troubled Indian Ocean lslands.
It was alleged that two sons of the late President Abdallah, who was
assassinated in a 1989 coup, led yesterday's attempt to topple Col.
Azaly Assoumani's
government. -National Concord
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH
3. Copyright 2000 Agence France Presse
Agence France
Presse
March 22, 2000, Wednesday
3:22 AM, Eastern Time
SECTION: International news
LENGTH: 285 words
HEADLINE: Nigerian witchcraft 'turns school boy into a yam'
DATELINE: MAIDUGURI, Nigeria, March 22
BODY:
Hundreds of curious Nigerians flocked Wednesday to the police
station in this northern town after radio reports that a local school
boy had been turned by witchcraft into a large yam.
Three pupils of the Evangelist Primary School in Maiduguri, in Borno
State, rushed into the headmistresses' office Tuesday morning and
said the boy, whose name was not given, had been transformed into the
popular root tuber after accepting a sweet from a stranger, radio
said.
The headmistress went and found the tuber and took it to the local
police station where it was being kept under guard Wednesday by
Divisional Police Officer Adamu
Tukur, the report said.
A local reporter contacted in Maiduguri confirmed that hundreds of
people had rushed to the police station Wednesday to see the yam for
themselves.
An official in the office of the governor Mala Kachalla confirmed
that "there has been a mysterious incident here" but refused to
provide details.
DPO Tukur told the radio the police were not ruling out anything in
their investigation of the event and were seeking the man alleged to
have given the sweet to the
boy.
"We are yet to track down the culprit. We have set up an
investigation team to go round and inquire from people if they have
seen or heard such a person," he said.
"Meanwhile we are taking the yam to the laboratory for forensic tests
to see if we can come up with any clues to unravel this mystery."
Belief in witchcraft -- including the power to transform human beings
into animals and natural objects -- remains strong in Nigeria.
Sceptics say that often those so "transformed" turn out to have been
murdered and to come from disadvantaged communities.
str/pcj/kc
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH
LOAD-DATE: March 22, 2000
4.
Copyright 2000 Africa News Service, Inc.
Africa News
March 22, 2000
SECTION: NEWS, DOCUMENTS & COMMENTARY
LENGTH: 504 words
HEADLINE: ;
Nigeria;
;
Daboh, Others Battle Sharia;
BYLINE: Femi Adepoju,
BODY:
Lagos - National Association for the Sustenance of Nigeria's
Secularity (NASNS), a new group with controversial personality, Dr.
Godwin Daboh Adzuana as the Protem National Chairman, has declared
its intention to openly resist those it described as pro-Sharia
bigots and anarchists without any notice, as its own way of
pursuing its objective of sustaining Nigeria's secularity.
The association in a communique issued after its 3-day meeting which
ended on 17 March commended, with some measure of reservation, the
steps so far taken by the government of President Olusegun Obasanjo
on the lingering Sharia issue.
The group submitted, however, that resolving the Sharia issue demands
for a bolder, firmer and prompt measure in order to avert the
disintegration of the Nigerian state "because of the intransigence of
the apostles of religious anarchy."
NASNS expressed some satisfaction at the observation by the Senate
President, Dr. Chuba Okadigbo, that a judicial interpretation of the
Sharia controversy will bring an end to what it further described as
the unpatriotic commitment by a small minority of Nigerians
dissatisfied with the present political dispensation to cause havoc
in the polity.
After taking the sequence of events from October 1999 to March 2000
in Nigeria, the Daboh-led group said it is convinced that the
philosophy of a solution based on a judicial pronouncement by the
highest court in the land will not provide the ultimate solution.
The group thus vowed to employ all the options open to it to prevent
the introduction of Sharia in Nigeria. It hinted that it has facts to
the effect that the Sharia crisis is a real ploy by the Hausa-Fulani
elite who have suddenly realised that by supporting Chief Obasanjo
instead of Chief Alex Akwueme during the 1999 presidential battle it
has made a mistake, to blackmail Obasanjo.
This, NASNS said, was further compounded by the fact that the
Hausa/Fulani who have ruled Nigeria for 27 years will never again
hold the office of president of
Nigeria until the year 2025 at the earliest. "This is because we
shall ensure that the following geo-political zones: South-East,
South-South, and North-Central
produce presidents before the Hausa/Fulanis have their next turn,"
the group declared.
The National Association for the Sustenance of Nigeria's Secularity
has Barrister Akor Yaaya as the protem national legal adviser, Chief
Dr. J.B.O. Ugochukwu, assistant secretary-general, (South-East),
Oluwale Adebayo, assistant secretary-general (South-West), Austin A.
Abdul, Assistant Commissioner of Police (retd), director of
investigation and surveillance among others as national officers.
The group which has one of its aims as the acquisition of the
capacity to retaliate in the event of further attacks on christians
by politicians masquerading as religious fanatics anywhere in the
core north already has 18,590 members drawn from Bauchi, Enugu, Abia,
Delta, Kano, Ebonyi, Imo, Oyo, Kwara, Sokoto, Taraba, Zamfara,
and Kogi states.
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH
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"We are accustomed to live in hopes of good weather, a good harvest, a
nice love affair, hopes of becoming rich or getting the office of chief of
police, but I have never noticed anyone hoping to get wiser...."
........... Anton Chekhov.
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