Politics

The Nigerian army has managed to retake full control of the northeastern state of Adamawa from Boko Haram Takfiri terrorists. “Troops today succeeded in clearing terrorists out of Madagali, the last of places held by the terrorists in Adamawa,” the Nigerian military tweeted on Thursday, adding that a clean-up operation is underway in the liberated area. There were no casualties among the government troops, according the army announcement. This victory by the Nigerian military has pushed many political commentators to opine that President Goodluck Jonathan will get a deserving second mandate as Commander-in-Chief of the Nigerian armed forces----a situation that will provide much relief to the leaders of the anti-Boko Haram coalition.

In an interview published on Wednesday, Nigerian President Goodluck Jonathan predicted that the three violence-wracked states of Yobe, Borno and Adamawa in the northeast of the country would be recaptured in the next three weeks. On the same day, Mike Omeri, the coordinator of Nigeria’s National Information Center, also said the country’s armed forces freed 36 towns from Boko Haram since the start of a military operation by regional West African countries against the Takfiri group. Crucial “co-operations and alliances” have brought victories against the militants, Omeri said, adding, “It is hoped that the unfolding regional cooperation will hasten the total defeat and extermination of Boko Haram in Nigeria and the sub-region.” In February, four nations of the Lake Chad Basin - Chad, Cameroon, Niger and Nigeria - launched a joint campaign, together with a contingent from Benin, to confront the rising threat of Boko Haram in the region.

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Ngwa Bertrand

13.Mar.2015

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Nigeria has recaptured 36 towns from Boko Haram since the start of a military operation by regional West African countries against the Takfiri group, an official says. Nigeria’s National security spokesman Mike Omeri said on Wednesday that four towns, located in Nigeria's troubled northeastern states of Borno and Yobe, have been retaken since last Friday. Crucial "co-operations and alliances" have brought victories against the militants, Omeri said, adding, "It is hoped that the unfolding regional cooperation will hasten the total defeat and extermination of Boko Haram in Nigeria and the sub-region.”

The official further thanked regional states for cutting off "the supply lines of the terrorists,” who are wreaking havoc on Nigeria and its neighbors. Back in February, four nations of the Lake Chad Basin - Chad, Cameroon, Niger and Nigeria - launched a joint campaign, together with a contingent from Benin, to confront the threat from Boko Haram in the region.

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Ngwa Bertrand

12.Mar.2015

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Niger says it has killed more than 500 members of the Boko Haram terrorist group since February 2015. Niger's police spokesman Captain Adili Toro said on Wednesday that some 513 terrorists had been killed since February 8, adding this number does not take into account those killed in land and air operations launched on Sunday jointly by the armies of Niger and Chad against Boko Haram militants in Nigeria. Niger has also lost 24 soldiers in the operations that have also killed at least one civilian and wounded 38 soldiers, Toro stated.On March 8, Nigerien and Chadian military forces launched a joint operation against the Takfiri terrorist group in northeastern Nigeria. The military operation took place following the African Union's final decision to establish a regional force of up to 10,000 men to battle the terrorist group, which has pledged allegiance to ISIL Takfiris.

 Boko Haram in Nigeria is a child of Nigerian history and the impunity of Northern Nigeria’s Military establishment. Armed conflict is part of Nigeria history. It is also a business which has enriched many.  People including generations unborn learn from history. The savaged brutality meted on civilians and civilian objects in Nigeria pre-exist Boko Haram. These acts of impunity were some of the methods deployed by successive military regimes, most of them from Northern Generals to accede and sustain power. The ongoing slaughter by Boko Haram follows the same pattern which in 1966 led to the Nigeria/Biafra War. The underlying cause of the slaughter of hundreds of thousands of Southerners, mainly of the Ibo ethnic groups in the North was never comprehensively investigated, if at all.  There is no gainsaying that had the crimes been investigated, the result would have pointed to some powerful individuals within the Nigerian Military structure of Northern origin. For these, political power and control of the economy could only be attained through scapegoating communities whom they perceived as serious competitors.

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Ngwa Bertrand

12.Mar.2015

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Some 80 children liberated from a Boko Haram Takfiri terrorist camp in Cameroon do not even know their names let alone origins, an aid worker says. The rescued children, all between the ages of five and 18, were not capable of speaking English, French, or any local language, the state-run BBC quoted a director for the US-based National Democratic Institute, Christopher Fomunyoh, as saying on Tuesday.    The youngsters were found at a militant training camp during a raid by security forces in northern Cameroon back in November. Fomunyoh said that he had visited the kids in an orphanage where they were being helped towards rehabilitation.

Being with their captors for so long had made the children totally forget who they initially were, he said. "They've lost touch with their parents," Fomunyoh said. "They've lost touch with people in their villages, they're not able to articulate, to help trace their relationships, they can't even tell you what their names are."

The Nigerian based Takfiri militants have started to extend their campaigns into neighboring Cameroon, Chad, and Niger. Boko Haram, whose name means “Western education is forbidden,” controls parts of northeastern Nigeria and says its goal is to overthrow the Nigerian government. It has claimed responsibility for a number of deadly shooting attacks and bombings in various parts of Nigeria since the beginning of its militancy in 2009, which have left over 13,000 people dead and 1.5 million displaced.

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Ngwa Bertrand

11.Mar.2015

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The alleged intervention of President Paul Biya to resolve an examination scandal which his Minister of High education publicly stated he perpetrated pursuant to government policy is not just a pity but an anxious interpretation of the signs of times. Higher Education Minister, Professor Fame Ndongo accurately explained that he was executing the policies established by Paul Biya which have been in place for the past 32 years. For this, purpose, there may no reason for Paul Biya to fire him which he hasn't. There is also no reason for him to resign since he merely did the job he was appointed to do. On the contrary, the manner of Presidential intervention tacitly approves of the Minister actions. Removing the Minister alone will not adequately redress a systemic wrong which has caused so much pain and suffering on so many over three decades. Honour requires that the formulator of this policies that led to this and other scandals must resign. That person is the President himself.

The conduct of the Minister in this scandal was but a faithful interpretation and implementation of policies that have sustained the crime syndicate in power and through which it buys consciences and compel allegiance. That Fame Ndongo acted the way he did and later justified it, is not news. What is news and should attract public attention and scrutiny is the fact some of those who were complicit in the execution of this policy in the past, this time around, challenged it by publishing the list of successful candidates which the examiners retained. The publication of the political list came only to alert the conscience of a captive and docile nation. The commendable action of the examination panel in publishing the genuine list of successful candidates, damning the consequences, is an indication that finally some people within the crime syndicate are anticipating a future without Paul Biya and his coterie of corrupt Ministers.

True to a nation of cowards, Paul Biya is being praised for decreeing an admission list which includes candidates whose names were corruptly removed. The question is not asked, how the panel arrived at the first list before it was tampered with. It may well have been the product of corruption at another level, political, nepotic and tribal influence. Disturbing as that may be, that should not preoccupy us now. It suffices that they published the list; a bold act in a regime whose staying power is inbuilt corruption and cultic allegiance to its corrupt entreprise.

Fame Ndongo rebuked the panel for not applying the policy of regional balance in their deliberations. But this policy has hardly ever been applied in any sector of this perverse neo-colonial contraption as Ntemfac Ofege has brilliantly demonstrated elsewhere. The CPDM has a policy of so-called " back scratching" in which corruption as a political tool of governance is celebrated and vigorously applied. Regional balance has nothing to do with this corrupting policy of allegiance, mental compulsion, political blackmail, patronage and intimidation. The case of the captive colonial territory of the Southern Cameroons where the escalation of the policy of cultural genocide is ongoing makes the situation of its colonial citizenry worse.

Paul Biya has acted the way he has because the unprecedented action of the examination panel and national/international public reaction took him off guard at a time he is abroad. No one should be surprised that members of this panel rather than Fame Ndongo may be sanctioned. If ever Fame Ndongo is sanctioned or moved around to a senior or strategic position to oversee this policy, that will still be within the hallmark of the policies of corrupt governance.
The conduct of Paul Biya as well as that of his foot soldier Fame Ndongo in this case must be critically analysed within the context of the failed policies that 32 years of misrule has pushed this sinking boat. The conduct of the examiners may herald the emergence or begining of a positive trend among persons who at long last have acknowldged the approach of a Noah's Arc of political survival at the shores of a desperate polity fighting for its soul. The reality of a future at some point in time, without Biya and without the many Fame Ndongo's who elevated him to a demi-god, may at long last be reaching the confines of the conscience of some people. For those who were complicit in the many crimes, one which has alarmed the conscience of the nation and beyond, their Saul to Paul moment may be now.

Reasonable persons should therefore be celebrating the courage of those who published the genuine list no matter their motivation, and encourage others to do the same. Heaping misplayed praises on Paul Biya whose policies led to the pain, humiliation, anxiety and shame of a nation held hostage by Aujoulatist neo-colonial vampiric rule, strengthens the hand of tyranny, criminality and political rascality. Only a cowardly people applaud their own victimization. That is what those praising Paul Biya rather than those who exposed the fraud are doing. And that is worse than the crime itself.

Chief Charles A. Taku

Details

Ngwa Bertrand

10.Mar.2015

Hits: 3312

The alleged intervention of President Paul Biya to resolve an examination scandal which his Minister of High education publicly stated he perpetrated pursuant to government policy is not just a pity but an anxious interpretation of the signs of times. Higher Education Minister, Professor Fame Ndongo accurately explained that he was executing the policies established by Paul Biya which have been in place for the past 32 years. For this, purpose, there may no reason for Paul Biya to fire him which he hasn't. There is also no reason for him to resign since he merely did the job he was appointed to do. On the contrary, the manner of Presidential intervention tacitly approves of the Minister actions. Removing the Minister alone will not adequately redress a systemic wrong which has caused so much pain and suffering on so many over three decades. Honour requires that the formulator of this policies that led to this and other scandals must resign. That person is the President himself.

The conduct of the Minister in this scandal was but a faithful interpretation and implementation of policies that have sustained the crime syndicate in power and through which it buys consciences and compel allegiance. That Fame Ndongo acted the way he did and later justified it, is not news. What is news and should attract public attention and scrutiny is the fact some of those who were complicit in the execution of this policy in the past, this time around, challenged it by publishing the list of successful candidates which the examiners retained. The publication of the political list came only to alert the conscience of a captive and docile nation. The commendable action of the examination panel in publishing the genuine list of successful candidates, damning the consequences, is an indication that finally some people within the crime syndicate are anticipating a future without Paul Biya and his coterie of corrupt Ministers.

True to a nation of cowards, Paul Biya is being praised for decreeing an admission list which includes candidates whose names were corruptly removed. The question is not asked, how the panel arrived at the first list before it was tampered with. It may well have been the product of corruption at another level, political, nepotic and tribal influence. Disturbing as that may be, that should not preoccupy us now. It suffices that they published the list; a bold act in a regime whose staying power is inbuilt corruption and cultic allegiance to its corrupt entreprise.

Fame Ndongo rebuked the panel for not applying the policy of regional balance in their deliberations. But this policy has hardly ever been applied in any sector of this perverse neo-colonial contraption as Ntemfac Ofege has brilliantly demonstrated elsewhere. The CPDM has a policy of so-called " back scratching" in which corruption as a political tool of governance is celebrated and vigorously applied. Regional balance has nothing to do with this corrupting policy of allegiance, mental compulsion, political blackmail, patronage and intimidation. The case of the captive colonial territory of the Southern Cameroons where the escalation of the policy of cultural genocide is ongoing makes the situation of its colonial citizenry worse.

Paul Biya has acted the way he has because the unprecedented action of the examination panel and national/international public reaction took him off guard at a time he is abroad. No one should be surprised that members of this panel rather than Fame Ndongo may be sanctioned. If ever Fame Ndongo is sanctioned or moved around to a senior or strategic position to oversee this policy, that will still be within the hallmark of the policies of corrupt governance.
The conduct of Paul Biya as well as that of his foot soldier Fame Ndongo in this case must be critically analysed within the context of the failed policies that 32 years of misrule has pushed this sinking boat. The conduct of the examiners may herald the emergence or begining of a positive trend among persons who at long last have acknowldged the approach of a Noah's Arc of political survival at the shores of a desperate polity fighting for its soul. The reality of a future at some point in time, without Biya and without the many Fame Ndongo's who elevated him to a demi-god, may at long last be reaching the confines of the conscience of some people. For those who were complicit in the many crimes, one which has alarmed the conscience of the nation and beyond, their Saul to Paul moment may be now.

Reasonable persons should therefore be celebrating the courage of those who published the genuine list no matter their motivation, and encourage others to do the same. Heaping misplayed praises on Paul Biya whose policies led to the pain, humiliation, anxiety and shame of a nation held hostage by Aujoulatist neo-colonial vampiric rule, strengthens the hand of tyranny, criminality and political rascality. Only a cowardly people applaud their own victimization. That is what those praising Paul Biya rather than those who exposed the fraud are doing. And that is worse than the crime itself.

Chief Charles A. Taku

Details

Ngwa Bertrand

10.Mar.2015

Hits: 2548