Friday, May 1, 2015

President Goodluck Jonathan pledges he'll hand over a terrorist free Nigeria

President Goodluck Jonathan pledged Thursday in Abuja that he will do all within his powers to ensure that all Nigerian territory still held by terrorists and insurgents are totally liberated before May 29, 2015.

Receiving a delegation of Heads of Customs from the West and Central African Region of the World Customs Organisation, led by the Secretary-General of the organisation, Kunio Mikuriya, Mr. Jonathan said he was determined to hand over a country completely free of terrorist strongholds to the President-elect, Muhammadu Buhari.

The president said ongoing military operations in the North-East had already recorded huge successes, with two states completely free from the control of terrorists, while operations in the third state had reached a concluding stage.

“We can now say two states are completely free from terrorist control, while in the third state, it is only in one Local Government Area that they are still present; that is in the Sambisa Forest,” he said.

President Jonathan noted that the military had already moved into the forest to seize the remaining camps of the terrorists.

He said the recent rescue of about 300 abducted girls and women was further evidence of the success being achieved in the ongoing operation.

On his decision to concede victory to the President-elect, Mr. Buhari, before all the results of the presidential elections were announced, Mr. Jonathan said elections must be approached from a nationalistic point of view.

“Our elections should be about where Nigeria is going,” he said. “If Nigeria is moving forward, it is for the good of all Nigerians. My children and grandchildren will live and grow in this country and contribute to it.

“I always tell my colleagues to leave office when their time is up. We are trying to encourage African leaders not to remain in power as kings until death.”

Mr. Mikuriya commended the President for supporting the reform of the Nigeria Customs Service.

He noted that other African countries had already started emulating the vision, strategy, adoption to new technology and result- oriented training of officers that were captured in Nigeria’s reforms.

Premium Times

Thursday, April 30, 2015

Video - hundreds of bodies found in Nigeria town recaptured from Boko Haram


As coalition troops continue to fight Boko Haram, a disturbing picture is emerging about the civilian casualties.

There are reports of hundreds of bodies being recovered in the town of Damasak, which was recaptured from Boko Haram a month ago.

Video - Nigeria reacts to Boko Haram leader making TIME's 100 most influential people list


Boko Haram is clearly back in the headlines - and earlier this month the group's leader Abubakr Shekau was named as one of the Time magazine's top 100 most influential people in the world. Nigerians have been reacting to that.

EXO - Nigeria's Super Hero

Roye Okupe grew up in Nigeria with American superheroes – the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Batman, Spiderman – and always had “an itch” to write his own story.

It was not until 2008, when the new wave of superhero movies started breaking worldwide, that he started working on a concept, thinking “If you don’t do it now, you’re never going to do it,” he recalls.

By that point he was working in the US, having left Nigeria in 2002 to study at Georgetown University. He saved up some money, produced a seven-minute teaser and began to shop it around to producers and investors in the US and Nigeria, without much success.

“I had someone say to me ‘no one’s going to watch anything based on African characters.’ I had a producer tell me that point blank,” Okupe says. “I respectfully disagreed. I believe if it’s done right, if it’s done well, people will gravitate to it.

“I grew up watching Superman, not because he was fighting in Metropolis in America, but because I could connect to the story. I was just a kid from Africa. So why can’t the reverse be true? Why can’t I create an African superhero that everyone can connect to.”

African content – and in particular Nigerian content – has been gradually increasing in global prominence over the past few years, as a young, increasingly technology-savvy population clamours for movies, books and games that better reflect their own experiences.

‘Nollywood’, Nigeria’s film industry, which pumps out thousands of movies per year, is now a global industry worth $250m in 2012, and undoubtedly more now. Technology companies, such as Jason Njoku’s IrokoTV, have raised millions and made more in building out networks online to package and distribute content.

The huge expansion of mobile telephony – there are more than 100m mobile phones in Nigeria today, and smartphone use is growing as data services expand – has driven a consequent explosion in mobile gaming. Nigerian games studios, such as Maliyo and Kuluya, have developed relatively simple, but hugely popular titles based on Nigerian stories. The latter is estimated to be worth around $2m, and now has more than a million downloads.

Breakout Nigerian music stars, such as D’Banj, have inspired producers in the US and Europe to seek out talent in West Africa, with Jay-Z the latest big name to start scouting the region.

Frustrated in his attempts to get his product in front of producers, Okupe has changed tack, and is now raising money to turn his idea into a graphic novel, with the aim of building a brand around his concept, his character, Wale Williams, and his setting of ‘Lagoon City’ – to Lagos what Gotham City is to New York.

“I figured if I could build a fanbase, it’ll be easier for me to go back to a TV network or a distributor and say, look, people are waiting for something like this… people want to see an African superhero. We want to see diverse superheroes. People are clamouring for things like this.”

Nigerian – and African – stories could, Okupe hopes, follow the path of Japanese manga and anime, which broke into Western markets in a huge way in the 1980s and 1990s.

“I’m very optimistic,” Okupe says. “It’s going to be a tough road, but I believe it’s going to happen. When it happens, it’s going to be like a tidal wave of movies, comic books, video games.”

Written by Pete Guest


Forbes


Related story: Nigeria's own Comic-Con celebrates 3 years

More kidnapped women and children rescued from Boko Haram

Nigeria's military says it has rescued at least 160 more women and children who had been abducted by Boko Haram and were being held in the Sambisa Forest, considered to be the armed group's last stronghold.

Colonel Sani Usman, an army spokesperson, said in a statement on Thursday that those rescued include around "60 women of various ages and around 100 children".

"They have been evacuated to a safety zone for further processing," Usman said.

At least one woman and one soldier were reportedly killed in the fighting during the rescue. Eight other women and four soldiers were also injured.

Al Jazeera's Yvonne Ndege, reporting from Abuja, said that the reports from the army could not be independently verified because of restricted access to the area.

However, she added that the military promised to release more evidence of the rescues, including photographs, later on Thursday.

All the former hostages - some of whom are said to be traumatised by the experience - were being screened to determine their identities and from where and when they were abducted.

Their release comes a day after the Nigerian military rescued nearly 300 hostages - 200 girls and 93 women - in Boko Haram's forest stronghold.

Usman said that the girls who were seized from the northeastern town of Chibok in April 2014 were not part of the group. The fighters are believed to have taken the schoolgirls in trucks into the Sambisa Forest. Dozens escaped, but 219 remain missing.

Boko Haram has abducted an unknown number of girls, women and young men to be used as sex slaves and fighters. Many have escaped or been released as Boko Haram fighters have fled a multinational offensive that began at the end of January.

A month ago, the Nigerian military began pounding the Sambisa Forest in air raids, an assault they said earlier they had been avoiding for fear of killing the Chibok schoolgirls, or inciting their captors to kill them.

'Tip of the iceberg'

Earlier this month, rights group Amnesty International published a report saying that the armed group has abducted at least 2,000 women and girls since the start of 2014.

Amnesty's Africa director for research and advocacy, Netsanet Belay, said the rescues were a "cause for celebration" but he warned: "This is just the tip of the iceberg.

"There are thousands more women and girls, and men and boys, who have been abducted by Boko Haram," he said in a statement.

Aljazeera