Sahara Reporters Latest News Monday 30th September 2019
Sahara Reporters Latest News Today and headlines on some of the happenings and news trend in the Country, today 30/09/19
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E2%80%99s-government-arrests-another-journalist-chido-onumah target=_blank>BREAKING: Buhari’s Government Arrests Another Journalist, Chido Onumah
The President Muhammadu Buhari-led administration has arrested another journalist and critic of the regime, Chido Onumah.
Onumah was arrested by personnel of the Department of State Services at the Nnamdi Azikwe Airport, Abuja.
His arrest was confirmed to SaharaReporters by a lawyer, Mbaseki Martins-Obono, who said the government was doing everything to shrink civic space.
The lawyer said, “Chido Onumah has just been arrested by the DSS at Abuja International Airport.
“It is not clear what the offense is but it may not be unconnected with his book, ‘We Are All Biafrians’.
“The government is doing everything to shrink civic space but we will not let them.
“I was called by the person who was supposed to pick him up at the airport.”
Onumah’s latest book was published in December 2018.
Onumah is a Nigerian/Canadian journalist, author, blogger and rights activist.Chido Onumah has just been arrested by the SSS at Abuja International Airport. It is not clear what the offense is but it may not be unconnected with his book, #WeAreAllBiafrians the govt is doing everything to shrink civic space but we not let them.— M. M. Obono (@martobono) September 29, 2019
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target=_blank>Europe, Nigeria-based Groups Adopt Sowore As Prisoner Of Conscience
Omoyele Sowore
Omoyele Sowore
SaharaReporters Media
International civil rights groups in collaboration with their Nigerian counterparts have adopted detained pro-democracy campaigner and Publisher of Sahara Reporters, Omoyele Sowore, as a prisoner of conscience.
The adoption, which was made over the weekend, saw several international and local rights groups coming together to stand against what they describe as the persecution of Sowore.
According to the group, from all indications, Sowore was being held “for his strong political views which appear to be against the interest of those in power”.
In a statement signed by Olanrewaju Suraju, Simon Taylor, Nicholas Hildyard and Antonio Tricarico, the groups said, “We have followed with keen interest the arrest and prosecution of Omoyele Sowore, Publisher of Sahara Reporters.
“He was detained for 45 days on obvious charges for which the state has yet to provide credible evidential basis.
“With this adoption, the floodgates of international campaign has been opened for a vigorous lobby for the immediate release of Sowore.
“It will involve engagement of regional and international organisations and working within the United Nations and the European Union system.
“Sowore is now an imprisoned person with a global status.
“He has over the years broken borders and swept a new wave of renaissance across Africa and in particular, Nigeria.
“His case is that of outright persecution with the government insisting on a ring of capital offence around his neck.”
The groups said that framing charges of treasonable felony against a single person, who is a journalist without any collaborators, suggests that some powerful politicians wish to see Sowore perpetually locked up.
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target=_blank>Sowore: NBA Blasts DSS For Consistently Flouting Court Orders
The Nigerian Bar Association has condemned the disobedience of the order of Justice Taiwo Taiwo of the Federal High Court, Abuja, directing the release on bail of Omoyele Sowore by the Department of State Services.
The NBA expressed its displeasure in a statement on Sunday by Kunle Edun, National Publicity Secetary of the association.
It accused the DSS of approaching the court only when it is convenient for the Nigerian Government to detain citizens but has since refused to comply with the order of the same court directing the release of Omoyele Sowore.
The statement reads, “This is unacceptable in a country where there are laws and a nation where the President recently professed at the United Nations General Assembly to respect the human rights of citizens.
“The Department of State Services is displaying the notorious image of an agency that enjoys treating judicial process with disdain, particularly as it pertains to obeying orders of courts enforcing the fundamental rights of Nigerians.
“The continued detention of Col. Sambo Dasuki (retd) in spite of various court orders readily comes to mind.”The NBA therefore condemns the continued detention of Omoyele Sowere by the DSS as same amounts to violation of his constitutional rights to personal liberty.
“The Nigerian Bar Association therefore calls for the immediate release of Sowore in line with the order of the Federal High Court made on September 24, 2019, and other Nigerians who have been languishing in DSS detention centres without charges.”
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E2%80%9Cobnoxious%E2%80%9D-charges target=_blank>Nigerian Lawyers To Drag CBN To Court Over “Obnoxious” Charges
The Lekki Forum of the Nigerian Bar Association has said that it would take legal action against the Central Bank of Nigeria over the imposition of “obnoxious” bank charges on Nigerians.
This is coming in the wake of implementation of three per cent processing fees for withdrawals and two per cent processing fees for lodgments above N500, 000 for individual accounts.
Similarly, corporate accounts will attract five per cent processing fees for withdrawals and three per cent processing fee for lodgments above N3m.
The CBN has also directed the strict implementation of Merchant Service Charge, which would impose more charges on all point of sale (PoS) transactions.
Yakubu Eleto, Publicity Secretary of the NBA Lekki Forum, in a statement described the charges as “wicked, evil and inhuman policy”.
The lawyers expressed their readiness to resist the policy with both legal and political actions.
The statement reads, “It would be recalled that arising from a meeting, we issued a seven-days ultimatum on the Central Bank of Nigeria to rescind the circular imposing the obnoxious charges.
“The Lekki Forum is more appalled that despite the resolution of the House of Representatives directing the apex bank to suspend the obnoxious charges, it has proceeded through her Monetary Policy Committee to restate her readiness to continue with the wicked, evil and inhuman policy.
“The Lekki Forum shall proceed to take out legal action against the Central Bank of Nigeria.”
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target=_blank>DSS Cannot Complain The Handling Of Sowore’s Case By Justice Taiwo, Says Falana
Human rights lawyer and counsel to Omoyele Sowore, Femi Falana (SAN), has said that the Department of State Services has no reason to petition the National Judicial Council on how Justice Taiwo Taiwo of the Federal High Court, Abuja, handled Sowore’s case.
Falana said this in reaction to media reports that the DSS will be reporting the judge to the NJC, accusing him of abuse of power as Sowore should not have been granted bail.
The lawyer, while describing the report as “fictitious” and a “figment of the imagination of the writer”, claimed that the DSS was trying to justify their illegal actions by re-arraigning Sowore.
Falana said, “In a desperate bid to divert public attention from the contemptuous conduct of the DSS, the Nigerian Government has hurriedly pressurised the Federal High Court to assign the case for the arraignment of Sowore.
“From the information at our disposal, the report was designed to blackmail and intimidate the judges of the Federal High Court with respect to the trial of Sowore.
“Having regards to the facts and circumstances of this case, the DSS cannot complain against the handling of the case by Justice Taiwo who did not even entertain our application to quash the order for Sowore’s detention for 45 days.
“We had wanted to show that Sowore did not engage in any terrorist activity to warrant his incarceration.
“But the order for the 45-day detention of Sowore was allowed to expire by effluxion of time.
“Since Sowore was eventually not charged with terrorism, it means that the order to detain him for 45 days was obtained by fraud and misrepresentation of facts on the part of the DSS.”
The lawyer urged Nigerians to disregard the report as Justice Taiwo had not been accused of any act of judicial misconduct in ordering the conditional release of Sowore from unlawful custody.
He also added that the NJC has no power to sanction Justice Taiwo for exercising his discretion in an application.
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target=_blank>Global Warning Of Global Warming By Hannatu Musawa
Hannatu Musawa
Hannatu Musawa
Our climate is changing. At the United Nations General Assembly that just concluded, there was a Climate Action Summit, which addressed the dire consequences of Climate Change. In the face of worsening climate crisis, world leaders from government, business, and civil society met to come up with new pathways and practical actions to shift global response into higher gear. They deliberated on potentially far-reaching steps to confront the climate emergency that we are faced with today.
Climate change is the defining issue of our time and now is the defining moment to do something about it. There is still time to tackle climate change but it will require an unprecedented effort from all sectors of society. At the Summit, 16-year-old Greta Thunberg gave an emotional speech that moved spectators to the need to take serious and act on climate change.
Even in Nigeria, we can feel the effect of climate change with the Harmattan season proving to be hot, instead of the cool weather that it is supposed to be.
Like the weather, most Nigerians should agree that our climate is changing all the time. Because of global climatic cycles, some of the changes are natural while others are caused by human activities such as the burning of fossil fuels and gas emissions. In the past when I heard scientists talking about protecting the environment and reducing emissions of greenhouse gases, I put it down to the fact that they did not have better things to talk about. With millions of men, women and children being abused and starving the world over, why would a scientist solely be concerned with how many vehicles we drive? Besides, any talk about the ozone layer sounded more like the title of a Sci-Fi adventure movie for children to me back then. But upon doing some research and coming across numerous meteorological accounts that climate change is one of the most pervasive threats to the web of human life, I realised the supreme importance of considering the devastation of weather change. What prompted me to do research in this field was as a result of the countless, recurring natural disasters that have been occurring and reported all over the world in the last couple of years. Every time one turns on the news there seems to be a report of a wild fire, hurricane, earthquake, typhoon, snow storm, drought or cyclone and I wanted to understand whether these unfortunate events had any connection with the talk of the greenhouse effect.
The truth is that much of our lives depend on our climate because we rely on water stored underground, in lakes and reservoirs for our personal use and crop irrigation. If the climate changes and warms up, the ability of the land to store moisture or the rain to fall changes. Evidence of the effects of climate change is presently being felt throughout the world. All over the globe, forests are burning, glaciers are melting, avalanches are threatening, soil is eroding, water is flooding, snow is receding and oceans are warming; posing a risk to many marine creatures. The warm climate is upsetting seasonal cycles, harming ecosystems, affecting agriculture, food production and causing sea-levels to rise. In addition, landslides, drought and famine are experienced. On top of this imminent threat, hotter heat waves create an ideal breeding ground for disease infested insects and rodents to expand their range while species are pushed to extinction. In Nigeria, the effects could include an increase in epidemics of water-borne diseases such as malaria, typhoid, hepatitis and cholera.
Statistics show overwhelming evidence that the planet has warmed by about one degree Fahrenheit over the course of the past century with the final two decades of the 20th century being the hottest on record. This is due to rise even more rapidly in the coming decades. The cause of this hybrid is because of the thickening layer of carbon dioxide pollution mostly from power plants and automobiles that traps heat in the atmosphere.
Evidence shows that carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuels used in vehicles and dirty power plants has formed a blanket around the earth and is warming it. The gasses act like the gas of a greenhouse, trapping heat that would otherwise radiate off into space. The heat then rebounds onto the earth’s surface and the planet’s temperature rises, creating the greenhouse effect.
Its harmful impact on the worlds’ climate is now so overwhelming, especially given the fact that we have been pumping it into the world atmosphere for more than two centuries.
Although a certain level of global warming is natural and essential to sustain life, the excessive emission of greenhouse gases accelerates this process by trapping too much heat and resulting in devastating effects on the world. Meteorologists argue that the recent change of weather is the natural consequence of this green house effect. Whether we subscribe to this argument or not, we can’t deny that the recent behavior of the weather and atmosphere has been irregular to what we are normally used to.
If our behavior, as a people, has had anything to do with the freak trend of the climate, it is imperative for us to study natural events and strive to correct the continuing damage on the world at this stage. While it is impossible to completely stop global warming, we do have the ability to lessen the process, allowing nature time to adjust to this man made problem. Since we know that the majority of heat trapping gases comes from vehicles and power plants, we have the capability to curb their emissions by perfecting modern technologies and passing stronger laws regarding vehicle use and power plant management.
Typically, it is quite common to see cars and trucks in this country traveling the motorways with an unbelievable amount of exhaust fume. Regulations need to be passed prohibiting vehicle owners from operating such hazardous machines because apart from damaging the ozone layer, they further pose threats to other motorists.
Since we are a heavily populated country with a vast number of vehicles, the Nigerian authorities should educate the nation on the ill effects of climate change to our environment and the importance of adapting to it. Government and industries should adopt initiatives to take the immediate action that will lead to more efficient public transport, cleaner energy production, increasing the efficiency of buildings and better responsible industrial and agricultural practices.
In a country like Nigeria, there is a requirement for far more effective waste management and disposal. Everywhere we go in this country; there are dumps of rubbish and pollution on drive ways and road sides that it has almost become a trade mark of our towns and cities.
The environmental sector in Nigeria needs to introduce more strategies for waste disposal. Previously, past governments had a sanitation eradication program on Saturdays where people were not allowed to roam the streets until 10:00am, after a general clean up operation. The streets back then were much cleaner than they are now. Maybe the government needs to consider revisiting this practice in order to facilitate the clean up of the environment.
The Nigerian Government must consider adopting these or other alternative strategies and policies so that it can encourage industries to adapt to climate change. Furthermore, the initiative could include a sensitisation exercise on the benefits of recycling products such as aluminum, glass, plastic, cardboard and paper. This would help because it would allow industries to save a lot of energy needed to make new products. In addition, the use of energy efficient technologies and renewable energy resources like wind and solar power could be integrated by the industries that have the means.
On an individual and community level, we can each help cool the earth by small actions such as turning computers off overnight because of the energy it uses, planting trees and plants in order to combat erosion and integrating agricultural lands. The use of better water storage systems such as underground tanks and improved water treatment plants, improved rainwater harvesting strategies and creating community water resources to meet human or livestock needs can also be effective. Even though resources are limited, people engaged in the transportation business should try and service cars regularly and not send them out onto the streets with an unreasonable amount of exhaust seeping out. This is very common with ‘molue’ buses and trucks.
All Nigerians should get involved in curbing the climate change that is fast becoming a threat to our existence. The whole process of environmental awareness is a difficult feat because, as humans, we tend to be nonchalant about the effect of gas emissions and water misuse on our environment.
It is so easy for us to take the air we breathe for granted and not give a thought about the numerous ways we are polluting it. Unless a stance is taken, the cumulative impact of climate change is bound to affect our air and water quality even worse than it is now, resulting in inestimable consequences on everybody living on this planet. If not in our lifetime, the fall back of the damage will affect the occupation, property and lives of our descendants.
Since the root cause of climate change is thought by scientists to lie primarily in the phenomena of huge emissions of gas, we effectively have the power to mitigate its damaging impact on our planet. To protect the health and economic wellbeing of current and future generations, we honestly must reduce our emissions of heat trapping gases by using the practical solutions already at our disposal. Solutions to global warming are available and everyone has a role to play in implementing them at all levels of society.
Since embarking on my research and recovering from the ignorance of climate change that plagued me, I now consider global warming as one of the most serious challenges facing our species today. And since we were the original cause of the problem, we can always take solace in the fact that we can also create a solution for it.
Hopefully the summit has sparked the transformation that is urgently needed and propel action that will benefit everyone.
Now that the world has acknowledged the fact that we have a climate change problem through the Climate Action Summit, we should each strive to consider our role in keeping our environment clean and eventually saving our world. One hopes that the cumulative negative effect on natural resources and the balance of nature created by our oversmoking exhaust pipes and rubbish laden streets serves as a Global Warning for Global Warming!
I invite you to follow me on Twitter: @hanneymusawa
Hannatu Musawa
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target=_blank>Nigerian Government, DSS Trampling On The Rule Of Law By Stanley Imhanruor (Esq)
The continued detention of Omoyele Sowore by the Nigerian Government and Department of State Services in brazen disregard for the extant order of the Federal High Court per Hon. Justice Taiwo Taiwo to release him forthwith is to say the least an embarrassment to every Nigerian across the world.
This noxious descent to fascism is antithetical to all democratic norms. The difference between democracy and other forms of government is respect for the rule of law.
The rule of law is not what the Nigerian Government and DSS say it is. The rule of law is the principle that no person or government no matter how highly placed is above the law. It is the anchor of every democratic government.
This government ought to know that we are not a conquered people and Nigeria as a country is not a ‘Banana Republic’. We cannot be running a country in this manner and expect the comity of civilised and democratic nations to take us seriously. Why the desperation by the government and DSS?
This whole drama by the two is a monumental assault on the rule of law and our collective psyche as a people. It is indeed sickening. Sound legal reasoning appears to have taken a desperate flight from the seat of power.
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target=_blank>Ex-NBA Boss Urges Legal Practitioners To Protest Disrespect By Executive
Adesina Ogunlana
Adesina Ogunlana
Immediate-past Chairman of the Ikeja Branch of the Nigerian Bar Association, Adesina Ogunlana, has condemned the flagrant disregard of a court order by the Department of State Services by refusing to release pro-democracy campaigner and Publisher of Sahara Reporters, Omoyele Sowore, from detention.
Ogunlana also faulted the Presidency and executive arm of government for failing to comply with the court order and planning to re-arraign Sowore before another judge.
Ogunlana, who is the Convener of Citizens’ Rally against Oppression, urged all legal practitioners in the country to protest recent actions aimed at belittling the profession.
He also called on the National President of the Nigerian Bar Association to lead the action in resisting the move against the constitution.
He said, “There is a need to reposition the Nigerian Bar Association as a social force against impunity.
“Lawyers must arise through their branches of the Nigerian Bar Association to pass resolutions at their October 2019 monthly branch meetings to organise series of civic actions to protest the rape of the independence of the judiciary as witnessed in the last one week.
“The Paul Usoro-led national leadership must spring into action on this latest attack on the judiciary by issuing a strong worded statement against the attack and also take a decisive resolution up to declaration of mass protests, judiciary strike and court boycott until sanity is restored.”
The DSS plans to secretly arraign Sowore before Justice Ijeoma Ojukwu on a fresh seven-count charge on Monday after refusing to honour last Tuesday’s order of Federal High Court, Abuja, directing Sowore to be released.
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E2%80%99s-case target=_blank>Lawmakers Urge Justice Ojukwu To Recuse Self From Sowore’s Case
Omoyele Sowore
Omoyele Sowore
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The Lekki Forum of the Nigerian Bar Association has called on Justice Ijeoma Ojukwu of the Federal High Court, Abuja, to recuse herself from presiding over the case brought against pro-democracy campaigner and Publisher of Sahara Reporters, Omoyele Sowore, by the Nigerian Government.
The lawmakers stated that Justice Ojukwu should not preside over the case as the President Muhammadu Buhari-led administration and the Department of State Services had refused to abide by the order of Justice Taiwo Taiwo of coordinate jurisdiction, asking Sowore to be released on bail.
Justice Taiwo had last Tuesday asked the DSS to release Sowore on bail after the expiration of the 45 days detention order given to the security agency.
The NBA chapter in a statement by the Publicity Secretary of the Lekki Forum, Yakubu Eleto, posited that Justice Ojukwu must reject taking the case to save the judiciary from “executive recklessness” and flagrant disregard of court order.
The statement reads, “The Lekki Forum is of the view that such a judicial stance is urgently needed as part of the struggle for rule of law as our courts come under heavy onslaught of executive recklessness.
“The NBA emphasised the need for such judicial courage to reclaim the independence of the judiciary.”
The lawyers called on the President of the Nigerian Bar Association, Body of Benchers, the Judiciary Staff Union of Nigeria and the civil society to take decision on the next steps in the struggle for rule of law.
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BREAKING: Siasia’s Mother Freed By Kidnappers
Beauty Ogere, mother of former Super Eagles coach, Samson Siasia, has been released by her abductors, PUNCH reports.
Ogere was kidnapped on July 16 in her hometown in Bayelsa.
It’s the second time in four years that she had been kidnapped after she was held by gunmen for 12 days in November 2015.
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