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It’s Expensive Deploying Technology To Fight Insecurity – NSA

Published

3 years ago

April 21, 2022

Editor

The National Security Adviser, Babagana Monguno, has said the use of technology in fighting crimes in the country has never been an easy feat because it is expensive in nature.

According to him, it takes time to acquire the necessary technological weapons to fight crimes especially when the country lacks the capacity to mass-produce these weapons.

Munguno, who took part in the security council meeting presided over by President Muhammadu Buhari at the State House on Thursday, was reacting to a question posed by State House Correspondents on why it seems so difficult to deploy technology, especially in some areas that the military has been having problems?

His response, “So, the first question has to do with why is it so difficult to deploy technology. One, technology is expensive. Technology takes time to acquire these things. Since inherently we do not produce these very, very delicate equipment.

“It’s not as if the government is not making any effort to acquire but we need to know who to acquire this technology from, where, when and there are certain processes. For now, I know we have but the plight is that they are inadequate, so to the government, it’s a continuous process. That’s what I can say about the issue of deploying technology.”

Commenting on the porous nature of Nigerian borders and how it is impacting on national security, the NSA attributed some of the challenge to the extensive nature of our borders.

His words, “Obviously, we have very extensive borders, and I’m not going to deceive anyone. All of us know that we have problems of infiltration by virtue of the fact that we have a very large economy. It attracts a lot of people from outside and they come in illegally, not just through the land borders, but also through the maritime waters.

“Of course, in the case of the maritime borders, the most of things have been done in the last one year, to secure the maritime to domain up to the point that the International Maritime Bureau has acknowledged the fact that in 27 years, our maritime borders have not been as secure and peaceful as they were in the last one year.

“That is a fact is not a conjecture, I didn’t cook up this thing. So, we want to see how we can replicate that type of effort to put in the maritime domain on our land borders. That is something that the council is looking into.”

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Hiroshima Marks 80 Years As US-Russia Nuclear Tensions Rise

Published

5 hours ago

August 7, 2025

Editor

Japan marked 80 years since the atomic bombing of Hiroshima on Wednesday with a ceremony reminding the world of the horrors unleashed, as sabre-rattling between the United States and Russia keeps the nuclear “Doomsday Clock” close to midnight.

A silent prayer was held at 8:15 am (2315 GMT), the moment when US aircraft Enola Gay dropped “Little Boy” over the western Japanese city on August 6, 1945.

On a sweltering morning, hundreds of black-clad officials, students and survivors laid flowers at the memorial cenotaph, with the ruins of a domed building in the background, a stark reminder of the horrors that unfolded.

In a speech, Hiroshima mayor Kazumi Matsui warned of “an accelerating trend toward military buildup around the world”, against the backdrop of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the chaos in the Middle East.

“These developments flagrantly disregard the lessons the international community should have learned from the tragedies of history,” he said.

Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba said it was Japan’s mission “to take the lead… toward a world without nuclear weapons”.

The final death toll of the Hiroshima attack would hit around 140,000 people, killed not just by the colossal blast and the ball of fire, but also later by the radiation.

Three days after “Little Boy”, on August 9, another atomic bomb killed 74,000 people in Nagasaki. Imperial Japan surrendered on August 15, bringing an end to World War II.

Today, Hiroshima is a thriving metropolis of 1.2 million but the attacks live on in the memories of many.

On the eve of the ceremony, people began lining up to pay their respects to the victims in front of the cenotaph.

Before dawn on Wednesday, families who lost loved ones in the attack also came to pray.

Yoshie Yokoyama, 96, who arrived in a wheelchair with her grandson, told reporters that her parents and grandparents were bomb victims.

“My grandfather died soon after the bombing, while my father and mother both died after developing cancer. My parents-in-law also died, so my husband couldn’t see them again when he came back from battlefields after the war.

“People are still suffering,” she added.

Wednesday’s ceremony was set to include a record of around 120 countries and regions including, for the first time, Taiwanese and Palestinian representatives.

The United States — which has never formally apologised for the bombings — was represented by its ambassador to Japan. Russia and China were absent.

Nihon Hidankyo, the grassroots organisation that last year won the Nobel Peace Prize, is representing the dwindling number of survivors, known as hibakusha.

As of March, there were 99,130 hibakusha, according to the Japanese health ministry, with the average age of 86.

“I want foreign envoys to visit the peace memorial museum and understand what happened,” the group’s co-chair Toshiyuki Mimaki told local media ahead of the commemorations.

Pope Leo XIV said in a statement that “in our time of mounting global tensions and conflicts”, Hiroshima and Nagasaki remained “living reminders of the profound horrors wrought by nuclear weapons”.

United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres warned that “the very weapons that brought such devastation to Hiroshima and Nagasaki are once again being treated as tools of coercion”.

– Younger generation –
The attacks remain the only time atomic bombs have been used in wartime.

Kunihiko Sakuma, 80, who survived the blasts as a baby, told AFP he was hopeful that there could eventually be a nuclear-free world.

“The younger generation is working hard for that end,” he said ahead of the ceremony.

But in January, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists’ “Doomsday Clock” shifted to 89 seconds to midnight, the closest in its 78-year history.

The clock symbolising humanity’s distance from destruction was last moved to 90 seconds to midnight over Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022.

Russia and the United States account for around 90 percent of the world’s over 12,000 warheads, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI).

SIPRI warned in June that “a dangerous new nuclear arms race is emerging at a time when arms control regimes are severely weakened,” with nearly all of the nine nuclear-armed states modernising their arsenals.

Earlier this month, US President Donald Trump said that he had ordered the deployment of two nuclear submarines following an online spat with former Russian president Dmitry Medvedev.

Headline

Rare 1937 ‘Hobbit’ Discovered In House Clearance Sells For $57,000

Published

6 hours ago

August 7, 2025

Editor

A rare first-edition copy of J.R.R. Tolkien’s “The Hobbit” sold for 43,000 pounds ($57,000) at auction on Wednesday, after it was found during a house clearance in South-West England.

Purchased by a private collector in the United Kingdom, the book is one of 1,500 original copies of the British author’s seminal fantasy novel that were published in 1937.

Of those, only “a few hundred are believed to still remain”, according to the auction house Auctioneum, which discovered the book on a bookcase at a home in Bristol.

Bidders from around the world drove the price up by more than four times what the auction house expected for the manuscript.

“It’s a wonderful result for a very special book,” said Auctioneum rare books specialist Caitlin Riley.

“The surviving books from the initial print run are now considered some of the most sought-after books in modern literature,” Auctioneum said in a statement.

Auctioneum unearthed the book during a routine house clearance after its owner passed away.

“Nobody knew it was there,” Riley said. “It was just a run-of-the-mill bookcase.”

“It was clearly an early Hobbit at first glance, so I just pulled it out and began to flick through it, never expecting it to be a true first edition,” she said.

“I couldn’t believe my eyes,” she added, calling it an “unimaginably rare find”.

The copy is bound in light green cloth and features rare black-and-white illustrations by Tolkien, who created his beloved Middle-earth universe while he was a professor at the University of Oxford.

The book was passed down in the family library of Hubert Priestley, a botanist connected to the university.

“It is likely that both men knew each other,” according to Auctioneum, which said Priestley and Tolkien shared mutual correspondence with author C.S. Lewis, who was also at Oxford.

“The Hobbit”, which was followed by the epic series “The Lord of the Rings”, has sold more than 100 million copies worldwide.

The sagas were turned into a hit movie franchise in the 2000s.

A first edition of “The Hobbit” with a handwritten note in Elvish by the author sold for £137,000 at Sotheby’s in June 2015.

AFP

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Relief For Applicants As Germany Eases Visa Process, Opens Visa Centres In Nigeria, Others

Published

7 hours ago

August 6, 2025

Editor

Germany has expanded its Schengen visa services by launching four new application centres in Africa and the Middle East, including two in Nigeria.

The centres, located in Abuja, Lagos (Nigeria), Yaoundé (Cameroon), and Nicosia (Cyprus), are part of a new seven-year partnership between Germany’s Federal Foreign Office and VFS Global, the international visa processing firm.

Until now, Nigerians applying for German Schengen visas had to go through the German Embassy in Abuja or the Consulate General in Lagos, where limited capacity and high demand often caused delays and long appointment wait times.

The new visa centres are expected to significantly ease the process, cut down on waiting periods, and improve overall access for applicants.

Germany continues to be a major destination for Africans and Middle Easterners pursuing education, healthcare, tourism, and job opportunities.

Meanwhile, VFS Global has issued a warning to the public about fake websites and individuals offering fraudulent visa appointments for a fee.

Recent figures indicate Nigeria had a 45.9% Schengen visa rejection rate in 2024—the third-highest globally after Bangladesh.