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Insecurity: Change Security Chiefs Before It’s Too Late, Group Tells Buhari

Published

4 years ago

December 12, 2021

Editor

The Human Rights Writers Association of Nigeria, HURIWA, has called on President Muhammadu Buhari to rejig the internal security architectures of the country to reflect federal character.

HURIWA made the call against the backdrop of killings by terrorists in the Northern part of Nigeria.

The right group said religious and ethnic bigotry by security heads was responsible for killings and terrorism in Nigeria.

A statement by HURIWA’s National Coordinator, Emmanuel Onwubiko reads: “Following the serial blood cuddling butcher and slaughter by terrorists in the North West of Nigeria of civilians including travellers and the persistent failures of intelligence gathering capacity of the Armed Forces of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, a call has gone to the President and Commander-In-Chief President Muhammadu Buhari to rejig, reorganise and reshape the internal security operations especially the hierarchies to reflect the Federal CHARACTER Principle as enshrined in section 14(3) of the 1999 Constitution.

“HURIWA believes that religious and Ethnic bigotry by heads of the internal security operations is why there are a lot of terrorism and killings by armed non state actors aided by serving members of the armed forces.

“Specifically, Section 14 (3) of the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria said thus: “The composition of the Government of the Federation or any of its agencies and the conduct of its affairs shall be carried out in such a manner as to reflect the federal character of Nigeria and the need to promote national unity, and also to command national loyalty, thereby ensuring that there shall be no predominance of persons from a few State or from a few ethnic or other sectional groups in that Government or in any of its agencies.”

HURIWA accused Buhari of being a habitual abuser of this law by not only concentrating strategic internal security appointments to Muslims but “he even violated with ignominy the law in making top two appointments into the Federal Character Commission which is an agency to address Federal character issues.”

The group tasked Buhari and the National Assembly to investigate the allegations that the Nigerian Army and Air force deliberately began uncoordinated and poorly executed military actions against terrorists hibernating in Zamfara State and deliberately created escape routes for them to escape the theatre of fire into Sokoto State where they are now transferring their unjust aggression to target civilians and innocent citizens.

The statement added: “It’s shocking that for over six years, President Muhammadu Buhari refused to listen to the voice of reason and stop the religious and Ethnic bigotry which characterised the formation of the heads of the entire agencies of government in charge of internal security operations, thereby allowing only Muslims and mostly Hausa/Fulani to head strategic internal security operations as the Nigerian Customs Service, the Nigerian Immigration, the Nigerian Civil Defence Corps, the Nigerian Correctional Centre and the Nigerian Police Force and a South West fanatical Moslem heading the ministry of internal Affairs.

“It is disheartening that the heads of Department of State Services and the Nigerian Intelligence Agency are all headed by Fulani Muslims but yet sophisticated weapons have flooded into Nigeria from the North and these officers perfectly pretended not to know what they are doing whilst terrorists have overwhelmed the entire North, but it took pressures for the government to lazily proceed to the Federal High Court to belatedly classify these suspected Fulani armed militia in the North West as terrorists.

“Why is President Muhammadu Buhari comfortable and sleeping peacefully whilst Nigeria is turned upside down by killers and all kinds of armed non state actors and the Muslim-controlled internal security architectures that have failed and indeed compromised against national security are left intact in their offices as if the government is actually happy that blood is flowing all over the nation? Mr. President, sack these incompetent officers who cannot protect Nigerians. These persons are delegitimising your administration because any administration that is unable to defend the defenceless is a fraud.

“HURIWA is asking the President to appoint qualified Nigerians from all religions and ethnicities to man the internal security operations of Nigeria because empirical evidence now shows that the all Muslim-internal security team have acted like compromised bunch of Islamists who have permitted the infiltration and flooding of Nigeria by all kinds of armed bandits, terrorists and Islamists and it seems these bunch of killers are waging Jihad in Nigeria against Christians whilst a few of them are engaged in the terrorist acts of kidnapping of civilians and destruction of communities”.

(DAILY POST)

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Drivers Mount Handmade Cooling System On Top Of Taxi To Replace AC

Published

2 hours ago

August 9, 2025

Editor

Due to the fact that car air conditioning systems break down too often as a result of excessive heat and repairs are too expensive, taxi cab drivers in Afghanistan often turn to handmade roof-mounted rudimentary systems in order to cool the inside of their vehicles.

Driving through Kandahar, Afghanistan’s second-largest city, you’re likely to see taxi cabs with large rectangular boxes mounted on the roof and large tubes extending from them and into the vehicles, through a rear window or through a hole cut into the roof.

Blue taxi cabs were mostly seen with what they cobbled together and strapped to the roof with exhaust hoses delivering the cool air through the passenger windows of the cabs.

According to the Agence France Presse (AFP), they are handmade cooling devices meant to replace the cars’ built-in air-conditioning systems, which used to always break down when they are most needed and cost a fortune to repair.

According to the report, similar to industrial evaporative air cooling installations, these boxes can lower temperatures by 12 degrees Celsius through water evaporation. They are less noisy than air conditioning systems and consume way less power.

With temperatures often exceeding 40 degrees Celsius in the country during the summer months, taxi cab drivers have to get creative to keep passengers cool and these evaporative air coolers have proven very reliable and cheap for them to maintain.

One of the drivers was seen using sticky tape to attach the cooler’s exhaust vent onto the taxi cab’s window, while his assistant climbed the roof of the cab to fix the body of the unit to it and there is always the need to manually refill water in the unit twice a day in order to ensure continued cooling.

One of the drivers who carried out the idea was quoted as saying: “These cars’ AC systems didn’t work, and repairs were too expensive. So I went to a technician and had a custom cooler made. This works better than air conditioning. The ACs in our cars only cool the front. This handmade cooler spreads air throughout the car.”

In short, taxi cab drivers have cobbled together a creative solution to spare them and their passengers from the sweltering heat.
(TRIBUNE)

Headline

21 Die As Bus Carrying Mourners Crashes In Kenya

Published

13 hours ago

August 9, 2025

Editor

A bus carrying mourners from a funeral crashed in western Kenya on Friday, leaving at least 21 dead, an official said, a day after deadly plane and train accidents killed 14.

The latest deadly accident follows an aircraft crash near the capital, Nairobi, on Thursday, when an air ambulance came down in a residential area, killing six people.

The same day, local media reported that a collision between a train and a bus killed eight.

Friday’s incident happened at around 5:00 pm local (1400 GMT) in Kisumu County after a bus — believed to be returning from a funeral earlier that day, according to local media — crashed, Regional Traffic Commander Kisumu, Peter Maina, said.

“The vehicle lost control, veered, rolled onto the other side of the road,” he told reporters at the scene.

“We lost 21 persons, and amongst the 21 who lost their lives were 10 women, a girl aged 10, and 10 men,” he said.

Five people were seriously hurt in the incident, he said, among them an eight-month-old baby who was currently receiving care at a nearby hospital.

The cause of the crash was not clear, Maina said, adding that investigations were ongoing.

Local media reported the incident took place on a notorious section of road where accidents are frequent. The East African country has a poor road safety record, with fatal crashes reported daily.

Headline

How False Claims Led To $500m mRNA Vaccine Contracts Cancellation

Published

13 hours ago

August 9, 2025

Editor

US Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. cited false claims to justify terminating 22 federal contracts for mRNA-based vaccines, researchers said Friday, a day after the World Health Organisation called the decision a major blow.

Kennedy on Tuesday announced the cancellation of contracts worth around $500 million, marking his latest attempt to infuse vaccine skepticism into the core of US health policy.

Citing medical experts, disinformation watchdog NewsGuard identified a series of false claims about the vaccines –- credited with saving millions of lives during the Covid-19 pandemic — that Kennedy promoted to explain the termination.

Kennedy claimed that mRNA vaccines were responsible for “new mutations” of the virus, thus creating new variants that can prolong pandemics.

“Kennedy is mistaken in statements made when ceasing funding for mRNA vaccine development,” Stephen Evans, a professor at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, told the London-based Science Media Centre.

“No vaccine, including mRNA encourages new mutations.”

Kennedy also made two previously debunked claims about the effectiveness of the vaccines.

He stated that mRNA vaccines “fail to protect effectively against upper respiratory infections like Covid” and added that mRNA technology “poses more risks than benefits.”

Evans said the vaccines were “extremely effective against Covid, preventing deaths, hospitalisations and clinical or sub-clinical infection.”

“No vaccine has a zero incidence of side-effects, some of which can be serious, but the benefits of both mRNA vaccines and other types of vaccine –- lives saved and illness reduced — hugely outweigh the risks,” Charles Bangham, a professor of immunology at the Imperial College London, told the Science Media Centre.

On Thursday, WHO immunisation figurehead Joachim Hombach called the US decision to terminate the contracts a “significant blow.”

“mRNA vaccines are a very important technology and platform which has served us extremely well for Covid. We also know there is very promising work going on in relation to influenza vaccines,” he said.

Echoing those comments, US experts have warned that the funding cuts threaten critical research and public health around the world.

“This sets back vaccine science by a decade,” Andrew Pekosz, a professor of molecular microbiology and immunology at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, wrote on X.

“Of course they didn’t read the science or listen to the experts… if they did, they wouldn’t have made this decision.”

Kennedy, who spent two decades sowing misinformation around immunization, has overseen a major overhaul of US health policy since taking office.

He has fired, for example, a panel of vaccine experts that advise the government and replacing them with his own appointees.

In its first meeting, the new panel promptly voted to ban a longstanding vaccine preservative targeted by the anti-vaccine movement, despite its strong safety record.

He has also ordered a sweeping new study on the long-debunked link between vaccines and autism.

AFP