At least 11 people were injured after a tanker loaded with diesel exploded in Lagos, Nigeria’s economic hub on Saturday, local police said.
The explosion occurred when the tanker rolled and collided with another articulated truck carrying goods and a salon car along the Lagos-Ibadan expressway, Olusegun Ogungbemide, head of the Federal Road Safety Corps in Lagos, said in a statement on Saturday evening.
He said about 11 passengers were involved in the crash but no death was reported, and rescue teams from various agencies were quickly mobilized to the scene for first aid.
“The rescue team of Lagos Fire service and other emergency responders are making frantic efforts to extinguish the fire,” said Ogungbemide.
The commander also urged the public to be more vigilant while driving on the road, especially during this festive period.
Deadly road accidents are frequently reported in Nigeria due to overloading, poor road conditions and reckless driving.
Monday, December 21, 2020
At least 11 injured in tanker explosion in Nigeria
More students abducted in Nigeria but are quickly rescued
Gunmen in Nigeria abducted more than 80 Islamic school students in northwestern Katsina state Saturday night, but the pupils were quickly rescued by security forces after a fierce gun battle, police announced Sunday.
The foiled abduction comes less than two days after the release of 344 schoolboys who were kidnapped in the same area on Dec. 11. The incidents have highlighted the insecurity in northern Nigeria.
Saturday night's attempted kidnapping took place in Dandume, about 64 kilometres (40 miles) from Kankara, the town where the earlier kidnapping of schoolboys occurred.
The bandits had already abducted four people and stolen a dozen cows when they ran into the schoolchildren who were on their way home from a celebration, Katsina state police spokesman, Gambo Isa, said early Sunday morning. Police and a local community self-defence group rescued the children from the bandits after a gunfight, he said.
"The teams succeeded in dislodging the bandits and rescued all the 84 kidnapped victims and recovered all the 12 rustled cows." said Isa in a statement. "Search parties are still combing the area with a view of arresting the injured bandits and/or the recovery of their dead bodies."
Dandume, an area bordering the northern part of Kaduna state, is one of the region's hotspots for banditry and kidnapping, according to residents.
"Dandume is a no-go-area for many of us because of the high level of crimes and insecurity being perpetrated by armed bandits," said Saidu Lawal, an official of a local civic group in Katsina, told The Associated Press.
"Despite government efforts to open up the area by constructing roads leading from the metropolitan locations to the hinterlands of Dandume ... the banditry still persists," said Lawal. "On many occasions, the bandits block the Dandume-Sabuwa highways to attack travellers. It was based on that reason that many people have abandoned the new route."
By Haruna Umar
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Friday, December 18, 2020
Video - Freed schoolboys arrive in Nigeria’s Katsina week after abduction
More than 300 schoolboys who were kidnapped in northwestern Nigeria a week ago have arrived in Katsina city where they will be reunited with their families. They will first be checked by doctors. The boys were taken on Friday last week by gunmen, thought to be linked to Boko Haram, who raided a school. Al Jazeera's Ahmed Idris reports live outside the government house of Katsina state.
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300 Nigerian students kidnapped by Boko Haram returning home
More than 300 schoolboys abducted last week by armed men in northwest Nigeria have been released, a government official said Thursday.
In an announcement on Nigerian state TV, NTA, Katsina State Gov. Aminu Bello Masari said the 344 boarding school students were turned over to security officials and were being brought to the state capital, where they will get physical examinations before being reunited with their families.
“I think we can say … we have recovered most of the boys, if not all of them,” Masari said. He did not disclose if the government paid any ransom.
President Muhammadu Buhari welcomed their release, calling it “a big relief to their families, the entire country and to the international community,” according to a statement from his office. Amid an outcry in the West African nation over insecurity in the north, Buhari noted his administration’s successful efforts to secure the release of previously abducted students. He added that the government “is acutely aware of its responsibility to protect the life and property of the Nigerians.”
“We have a lot of work to do, especially now that we have reopened the borders,” Buhari said, acknowledging that the Northwest region “presents a problem” the administration “is determined to deal with.”
Boko Haram claimed responsibility for last Friday’s abduction of the students from the all-boys Government Science Secondary School in the Katsina State village of Kankara. The jihadist group carried out the attack because it believes Western education is un-Islamic, factional leader Abubakar Shekau said in a video earlier this week. More than 800 students were in attendance at the time of the attack. Hundreds escaped, but it was believed that more than 330 were taken.
For more than 10 years, Boko Haram has engaged in a bloody campaign to introduce strict Islamic rule in Nigeria’s north. Thousands have been killed and more than 1 million have been displaced by the violence. The group has been mainly active in northeast Nigeria, but with the abductions from the school in Kankara, there is worry the insurgency is expanding to the northwest.
The government had said it was negotiating with the school attackers, originally described as bandits. Experts say the attack was likely carried out by local gangs, who have staged increasingly deadly assaults in northwest Nigeria this year, and could possibly have been collaborating with Boko Haram. Armed bandits have killed more than 1,100 people since the beginning of the year in the region, according to Amnesty International.
Parents of the missing students have been gathering daily at the school in Kankara. News of the students’ release came shortly after the release of a video Thursday by Boko Haram that purportedly showed the abducted boys.
In the more than six-minute video seen by Associated Press journalists, the apparent captors tell one boy to repeat their demands that the government call off its search for them by troops and aircraft.
The video circulated widely on WhatsApp and first appeared on a Nigerian news site, HumAngle, that often reports on Boko Haram.
Usama Aminu, a 17-year-old kidnapped student who was eventually able to escape, told the AP that his captors wore military uniforms. He said he also saw gun-toting teens, some younger than him, aiding the attackers.
He said the kidnapped boys tried to help each other as bandits flogged them from behind to get them to move faster and forced them to lie down under large trees when helicopters were heard above.
Aminu escaped at night. He was able to return home after being found by a resident in a mosque who gave him a change of clothes and money.
Government officials said earlier this week that police, the air force and the army tracked the kidnappers to a hideout in the Zango/Paula forest.
Katsina state shut down all its boarding schools to prevent other abductions. The nearby states of Zamfara, Jigiwa and Kano also have closed schools as a precaution.
Masari said the government will work with the police to increase private security at the Kankara school “to make sure that we don’t experience what we have experienced in the last six days.”
Only one policeman was working at the school when it was attacked.
Friday’s abduction was a chilling reminder of Boko Haram’s previous attacks on schools. In February 2014, 59 boys were killed when the jihadists attacked the Federal Government College Buni Yadi in Yobe state.
In April 2014, Boko Haram kidnapped more than 270 schoolgirls from a government boarding school in Chibok in northeastern Borno state. About 100 of those girls are still missing.
In 2018, Boko Haram Islamic extremists brought back nearly all of the 110 girls they had kidnapped from a boarding school in Dapchi and warned: “Don’t ever put your daughters in school again.”
By Carley Petesch And Haruna Umar
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Thursday, December 17, 2020
Families of kidnapped Nigerian boys fear time running out
Families of more than 300 kidnapped Nigerian schoolboys worried they may be radicalised or held for years as security forces combed a vast forest on Wednesday for armed captors possibly from the jihadist Boko Haram movement.
According to an unverified audio clip, the group - whose name means “Western education is forbidden” - was responsible for last week’s raid on an all-boys school in the town of Kankara in northwestern Katsina state.
Parents fear time may be running out: Boko Haram has a history of turning captives into jihadist fighters.
“They will radicalise our children if the government does not act fast to help us rescue them,” said trader Shuaibu Kankara, crying as he spoke from home.
His 13-year-old son, Annas, was among those abducted from the Government Science school on Friday night.
Two other sons managed to escape, he added, when men on motorbikes with AK-47 assault rifles stormed the school and marched the boys into a forest.
Some experts feared the boys could be taken over the border into Niger or at least split into groups to make finding them harder.
Late on Wednesday, Katsina state Governor Aminu Bello Masari told the BBC Hausa service that the estimated 320 missing boys were in the forests of neighbouring Zamfara state.
Earlier in the day, an aide to Masari said soldiers and intelligence officers had been combing the Rugu forest, which stretches across Katsina, Zamfara, Kaduna and Niger states, in search of the boys.
Boko Haram and its offshoot, Islamic State West Africa Province, have waged a decade-long insurgency estimated to have displaced about 2 million people and killed more than 30,000. They want to create states based on their extreme interpretation of sharia law.
If Boko Haram carried out the kidnapping in an area where it had not previously claimed attacks, it would mark an alarming expansion beyond its northeastern base, security experts say. But it may alternatively have purchased the boys from criminal gangs in the northwest with which it has been building ties.
Vincent Foucher, a security analyst at the French National Centre for Scientific Research, said Boko Haram earlier this year released videos in which it said groups in the northwest had pledged allegiance to its movement.
CHIBOK GIRLS REMEMBERED
The abduction echoes Boko Haram’s 2014 kidnapping of more than 270 schoolgirls in the northeastern town of Chibok. The attack gave rise to a global #BringBackOurGirls campaign.
Six years on, only about half the girls have been found or freed. Others were married off to fighters, while some are assumed to be dead.
“We pray it’s not going to be another situation of the Chibok girls’ abduction,” said Ahmed Bakori, a farmer whose 14-year-old son, Abubakar, was among those taken.
About two dozen parents came to the Government Science compound on Wednesday and prayed in the school mosque. The compound, composed of white single-storey buildings built on dusty red soil, was quiet.
Abubakar Lawal, who has two children among the captives, said he did not believe Boko Haram’s claim and would wait with patience and prayers. “The government has to do diplomacy in a way to rescue these people,” he said outside the school.
The attack is awkward for President Muhammadu Buhari, who comes from Katsina and arrived on a private visit hours before the kidnapping. Buhari has repeatedly said that Boko Haram has been “technically defeated.”
A former military ruler, Buhari was elected in 2015 in large part due to his pledge to crush the insurgency. Under his predecessor, Goodluck Jonathan, Boko Haram grew in strength and controlled territory around the size of Belgium.
Across the nation, anger and anxiety were building over the abductions, with #BringBackOurBoys trending on Twitter.
Military spokesman John Enenche said troops were determined to rescue the boys alive and had no evidence any were dead.
He gave new details of the school attack and subsequent firefight with guards. Soldiers arrived but could only shoot in the air as the assailants used the boys as shields.
Jacob Zenn, a Boko Haram expert at the U.S.-based Jamestown Foundation think tank, said the longer the boys were with their captors, the likelier their indoctrination would be. He cited the example of some Chibok girls who chose to stay with Boko Haram.
“The longer this goes on, the more pressure will grow on the government to negotiate, and the more leverage the militants will have over the government,” he added.
By Afolabi Sotunde
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