On Tuesday, President Bola Tinubu of Nigeria called for a thorough investigation into a military drone attack, following the state emergency agency’s report in northern Kaduna state, which indicated that at least 85 people were killed over the weekend.
Governor Nasir el-Rufai, a religious leader, and eyewitnesses informed Reuters on Monday that numerous civilians lost their lives during the military drone operation aimed at targeting insurgents and bandits on Sunday night.
Providing the first official acknowledgment of the toll from the weekend incident, the Kaduna State Emergency Management Agency confirmed on Tuesday that at least 85 individuals had lost their lives during the attack.
“The Northwest Zonal Office has received details from the local authorities that 85 dead bodies have so far been buried while a search is still ongoing,” the agency said.
Tinubu, who is attending the Cop28 Climate Summit in Dubai, said the “the bombing mishap” in a village at Tundun Biri, was “very unfortunate, disturbing, and painful,” his spokesman Ajuri Ngelale said in a statement.
“The President directs a thorough and full-fledged investigation into the incident and calls for calm while the authorities look diligently into the mishap,” said Ngelale.
The Nigerian Army has not provided any comments regarding the incident; however, the Air Force has denied its involvement in the mission leading to the attack on Sunday.
Nigeria’s military, with support from the United States, Britain, and other non-Western allies, is engaged in a protracted war against Islamist insurgents in the northeast. Over the years, the military has conducted lethal aerial operations in various parts of the country.
Kaduna, situated 163 km (101 miles) from the capital Abuja, has witnessed an increased security challenge. In addition to the conflict in the northeast, the army and air force have been tasked with addressing the escalating threat in Nigeria’s northwest and central regions, including Kaduna state.
These threats are posed by armed criminal groups carrying out violent attacks on villages and engaging in large-scale kidnappings.
Officials, including Derna’s mayor, Abdulmenam al-Ghaithi, have been arrested in Libya, where the city has been devastated by intense flooding. These officials are facing charges connected to the calamitous disaster that claimed thousands of lives in eastern Libya earlier this month.
Last week, in a display of anger and frustration, residents of Derna set fire to the mayor’s residence as a form of protest.
The attorney general’s office, based in the capital city of Tripoli, announced on Monday that these officials, including Mr. al-Ghaithi, were “responsible for managing the country’s dam facilities” and, as a result, were the subjects of a criminal case. Some of these officials were already in custody awaiting trial.
In a statement issued on Monday, the attorney general’s office detailed numerous alleged failings by these officials. These included mismanaging funds designated for dam maintenance, which ultimately led to dam breaches and the catastrophic floods in Derna. Additionally, the officials were accused of negligence, which resulted in flood-related deaths and substantial economic losses for Libya. Mr. al-Ghaithi faces further accusations of abusing his authority.
Libya is divided into two rival administrations, one in the east and one in the west. Given the attorney general’s location in Tripoli in the west, it raises questions about the extent to which he can order arrests in the eastern region.
As of Sunday, the eastern government reported that the confirmed death toll from the floods had risen to 3,868. The attorney general’s office indicated that investigations into other officials were ongoing, suggesting the possibility of further arrests.
A former President of the Chartered Institute of Taxation Ghana and a Fellow of the Institute of Chartered Accountants Ghana, Mike Kofi Afflu, has lodged a formal request with the Auditor-General to initiate an investigation into the perplexing transfer of GH¢52.5 billion to an undisclosed account during the year 2020.
Afflu has brought attention to a letter dated October 5, 2020, sent by the Audit Service to the Managing Director of GCB Bank Plc.
This letter, addressed to the Auditor-General, prompted the bank to provide an explanation regarding the substantial sum of GH¢52.5 billion that had been transferred from the bank to an account of unknown origin.
In his petition, which bears the date August 11, 2023, and is directed to the Chairman of the Public Accounts Committee of Parliament, with copies furnished to GhanaWeb, Afflu pointedly voiced his concern over the lack of any elucidation offered by the Auditor-General to the taxpayers of Ghana.
He inquired about the specific whereabouts of the transferred funds, the authorized source of the transfer, the destination account’s details, and any correlated issues.
Afflu’s apprehension extends to the exchange rate between USD and GHS for the month of October 2020, which averaged 5.77522.
Based on this exchange rate, the sum of GH¢52.5 billion would correspond to approximately US$9,090,783 (approximately $9.1 billion).
According to him, “If this GH¢52.5 billion (from GRA Account) had been transferred to the Bank of Ghana as mandated by Law, Ghana would not have gone to the International Monetary Fund (IMF) for the bailout of $3 billion.”
“I am therefore requesting the Public Accounts Committee of Parliament of which you are the Chairman, to invite the Auditor-General of Ghana to provide the necessary explanation to your committee and Ghanaians as a whole,” the petition noted.
“We want to know who withdrew that amount of money from the GCB Bank Plc and for what,” he concluded.
Two people have been detained by police in connection with an alleged theft of the rail line infrastructure, according to a video that went popular on social media.
A May 1, 2023 statement posted on their social media handles identified the two as Ibrahim John and Bashiru, who were transporting the materials to a company in Tema.
“According to the suspects, their company has been contracted by the Ministry of Railway Development to cart the exhibit items to Tema.
“Officials of the company who were not met at the premises of the company have been asked to report to the Police tomorrow morning to assist the investigation,” the statement noted in part.
The viral video of rail tracks and steel sleepers being removed in parts of the country went viral on social media on May 1, 2023.
The videos, shared by the state-owned Daily Graphic, showed a citizen raising alarm about how the perpetrators had cut and removed the rail infrastructure along a bushy area in an unidentified location.
Most commenters on social media lamented how critical infrastructure was being destroyed and looted by individuals whiles other tagged the police to take immediate action.
Hours later, the police announced the arrest of two persons in connection with the act, stating that investigations were still underway.
POLICE ARREST TWO PEOPLE IN CONNECTION WITH VIRAL VIDEO ON SOME ALLEGED STOLEN RAIL TRACKS AND STEEL SLEEPERS
The Police have arrested two suspects in connection with some alleged stolen rail tracks and steel sleepers believed to belong to the Ghana Railway Development Authority which has gone viral on social media.
The suspects Ibrahim John and Bashiru Ibrahim were arrested while transporting the said items to Ferro Frabrik Ltd. yard in Tema.
According to the suspects, their company has been contracted by the Ministry of Railway Development to cart the exhibit items to Tema.
Officials of the company who were not met at the premises of the company have been asked to report to the Police tomorrow morning to assist the investigation.
Contact has also been made with the Ministry of Railway Development and officials of the Ministry are expected to report to the Police tomorrow 2nd May 2023 to support the investigation.
Meanwhile, three DAF trucks GN 8501 – 15, GT 4705 -15 and GT 6707 -15 which were being used to convey the items have been impounded and parked at the National Police Training School due to the size of the trucks while the investigation continues.
Chur, a town in Switzerland, has a large monolithic granite block in the middle of the cemetery that has gone unnoticed for decades because no one seems to understand what it is.
The 13-ton stone monument, which dwarfs the neighboring gravestones, is now the source of shame and controversy.
A local journalist’s investigation has uncovered connections to Nazi Germany as well as Switzerland’s own tense relations with its adversaries during World War Two.
Chur’s cemetery is in the centre of town. Many people, like radio journalist Stefanie Hablützel, pass it every day on the way to work or out shopping.
Nowadays the monument at the cemetery, untended, is covered in moss. The engravings on it are difficult to discern.
Image caption,The origins of the monument and its links to the Nazi presence in Switzerland were unknown
“At first sight it looks like a war memorial,” says Stefanie, pointing out some faint lettering: “1914 – 1918; hier ruhen deutsche Soldaten… here lie German soldiers.”
Why, though, would German soldiers be buried here?
In fact, thousands of wounded prisoners of war, French and British as well as German, were treated and interned in Switzerland during World War One. Some died from their injuries, others during the 1918 flu pandemic.
But Chur’s monument was not built until 1938. “That’s 20 years after these men died,” says Stefanie. “It wasn’t built to mourn these dead soldiers, it was built for propaganda reasons, for the Nazi regime.”
Swiss historian, Martin Bucher, explains that, as the Nazis grew in power in Germany, their propaganda involved cult-like worship of their war dead. In the 1930s the German War Graves Commission became part of Hitler’s propaganda machine. Its task, to create visible signs of Nazi power in Germany’s neighbours as well as at home.
There were many thousands of Germans living in Switzerland at the time, and, Martin says, they were organised. “In Switzerland all these organisations you know from Germany existed. The National Socialist Party, the German Labour Front, the Hitler Youth. They were all here, but only for Germans, not for Swiss people.”
Germany’s War Graves Commission submitted ambitious plans to build a vast mausoleum in the Swiss town of St Gallen. This was rejected by Swiss authorities. But the monument in Chur was approved. Polished and engraved in Munich, using the Nazis favourite Fraktur font, it was delivered to Chur on the eve of World War Two.
At the time, says Martin, Chur’s residents must have known what it was. “On Nazi holidays they put Swastikas on this monument… people would have seen it was a Nazi monument.”
Some were clearly unhappy. Stefanie uncovered an indignant letter to the local newspaper, written in 1938, asking: “Why do we have a Nazi stone in our cemetery?”
BBC
I didn’t realise how many Nazi organisations were present in the 1930s, here in ChurStefanie Hablützel Radio journalist
But some will have been supportive. Swiss sympathisers of Nazi Germany were well-documented in canton Graubünden, of which Chur is the capital. But homegrown Swiss fascist parties never really took off, getting only two seats in the Swiss parliament in 1935, and never standing again.
While Switzerland still has no official memorial to the Holocaust, parliament did approve plans for one in March last year. There are, however, around 50 unofficial monuments.
Throughout the war, Germans in Switzerland continued to be active in the Nazi party, and continued to display their Nazi sympathies. And the Swiss, hoping as usual to stay out of the fighting, made compromises with Berlin, banking Nazi gold, and turning away Jewish refugees.
Then, just one day after the war ended, neutral Switzerland got off the fence. “There was a huge purge,” says Martin. “The Swiss government tried to punish Swiss Nazis, there were trials.”
German Nazis, meanwhile, were expelled. “I think after that a lot of people were thinking it’s done now, the Nazis are away, no problem,” says Martin. “And I think they forgot this monument.”
Image caption,Historian Martin Bucher says Hitler’s propaganda machine was tasked with creating visible signs of Nazi power in neighbouring countries
So complete was this collective amnesia that today, among people like Stefanie, born decades after the war, the origins of the monument, and the Nazi presence in Switzerland, were a revelation.
“I grew up here in Chur,” she says. “And I didn’t realise how many Nazi organisations were present in the 1930s, here in Chur.”
Even local member of parliament Jon Pult was taken by surprise. “Switzerland wasn’t Nazi free, and I knew that,” he says. “But I didn’t know about this monument.
“I live maybe 500 metres from the cemetery where this stone is, and I walked past that stone probably a hundred times, and I never realised that it is of course a Nazi stone. Now that I know it’s very clear. I get it, I see it.”
So, what should happen now?
Despite a certain embarrassment, very few people have suggested tearing down the monument. But even fewer, says Stefanie, say it should be left just as it is.
Instead, consensus seems to be forming around a proposal to re-examine and publicise that period in Swiss history, just as Switzerland had to re-examine, and apologise for, its treatment of Jewish refugees during the war.
“I think it should stay in Chur,” says Martin, adding: “But I think it’s important to tell people why it is there. Maybe it can be a monument to remember all the people who died in the Second World War.”
Jon Pult agrees that Switzerland should “create a memorial” out of the monument “to remember the horrific crimes of the Nazis”.
But also, he says, the monument, and the information he expects to be placed in the cemetery with it, should serve as a warning.
“We should create a culture of knowledge about this, because as we know there is always a danger of fascist ideologies, totalitarian ideologies, as we see now for example in Russia.”
Journalists in Cameroon gathered on Monday (Jan.23) in Yaoundé to pay respect and demand justice for the killing of their colleague Martinez Zogo, whose was abducted last week and whose body was found this weekend near the capital.
Gathered among candles, flowers and banners demanding justice, friends and colleagues stood outside the radio station Amplitude FM, where Martinez Zogo worked.
Journalist Jean Bruno Tagne said during the event that he believed the killing was “a message that was sent to all independent journalists and to all those who think that this country can function differently.”
Tagne added: “Journalists must continue to do their job. We absolutely must not cede to fear so that we don’t play into the hands of Martinez’s executioners and so that he didn’t die for nothing.”
The mutilated body of Zogo was found on Sunday near Yaounde, the capital of Cameroon, five days after he was kidnapped.
Zogo hosted a popular daily show on Amplitude FM where – according to the Committee to Protect Journalists – he recently commented on alleged embezzlement in public-sector procurement that benefitted a prominent businessman. Zogo served a two-month prison sentence for criminal defamation in 2020, the CPJ said.
Barely a day after police commenced an investigation into a chieftaincy dispute in Enchi, video footage has emerged.
The CCTV clips detail how the suspected attackers besieged the palace on Sunday in the Western North Region.
That morning, four people were shot dead with one left in critical condition at Enchi Government Hospital.
According to the report, the incident was evoked when an unidentified group believed to be residents of the community attempted to attack their paramount chief of Enchi Traditional council, Beyeeman Tano Kwao Benbuin II at his palace on early Sunday, November 6, 2022.
Watch CCTV footage below:
However, the palace guards also avenged and there was an exchange of gunfire between the two parties.Four of the visitors were killed and one person was also injured.In the video obtained by Myjoyonline.com, about a dozen men are seen bullying their way through the streets of Enchi armed with guns, knives and other assault weapons.
Sources say the incidents recorded ensued moments before the violent attacks.
At a point, two of them stopped and fired shots into the air before proceeding toward the palace.
According to Adom News’ Augustine Boah, security has been strengthened in and around the palace today.
He however indicates that there is an uneasy calm despite the police presence.
The Ghana Police Service says an investigation is ongoing with crime scene experts deployed on site.
The police in a statement say reinforcement teams have been dispatched from the national headquarters in Accra and surrounding police regions to support the Western North Regional Police Command.
They also urged “the public, in this case, our revered chieftaincy institution which is the embodiment of our customs, traditions and values to use peaceful and due judicial process in resolving differences in order to avoid such needless deaths.”
A Chinese national who allegedly slashed the throat of his Ghanaian employee at Kweikuma, a community in the Sekondi-Takoradi municipality of the Western Region is set to make a court appearance today.
Police preliminary investigation indicates that the suspect, Xue Hue, on September 28, 2022, allegedly attacked the victim, who is a mason with Paulichenda Engineering, a construction company at Kweikuma, with a knife inflicting a cut on his neck.
The Police in a statement said Hue was arrested “for using an offensive weapon to cause harm” and will be put before court on September 30, 2022, to face justice.
The victim has since been treated and discharged.
Read the entire police statement below;
POLICE ARREST CHINESE NATIONAL FOR CAUSING HARM TO A CO-WORKER AT TAKORADI
The Police have arrested a Chinese national for using an offensive weapon to cause harm to his Ghanaian co-worker at a construction site at Kweikuma suburb of Takoradi, in the Western Region.
Preliminary investigation indicates that the suspect, Xue Hue, on September 28, 2022, allegedly attacked the victim, who is a mason with a construction company at Kweikuma, with a knife inflicting a cut on his neck.
The victim has since been treated and discharged.
Meanwhile, the suspect is in custody assisting investigation and will be put before court on September 30, 2022, to face justice.
In an update on the investigation into the “brutal, callous, thoughtless attack”, Merseyside Police Detective Chief Superintendent Mark Kameen said the killer had failed to hand himself in. In a direct message to him, he said: “We will not rest until we find you – and we will find you.”
He was chasing 35-year-old convicted burglar Joseph Nee, who ran into the terraced house to get away from the shooter.
Despite being rushed to a children’s hospital by officers, Olivia died of her injuries in what police have branded a “shocking and appalling” crime.
Mr Kameen said Nee remains in hospital – and would be returned to prison once his treatment is finalised.
He said the man who was with Nee at the time of the shooting had been identified, but gave no further details.
The officer also said the driver of the Audi had been found and spoken to by police.
The investigation is “incredibly fast-paced” and “complex”, he said, reassuring the community that officers are working “relentlessly”.
