Africa Should Reject ‘Free Pass’ for Leaders- ICC!

 African governments should reject special exemptions for sitting officials before the International Criminal Court (ICC), African organizations and international organizations with a presence in Africa said in a document released on 18th November, 2013.

The ICC’s annual meeting, the Assembly of States Parties (ASP), will take place from November 20 to 28, 2013, in The Hague, Netherlands.

The ICC faces important challenges in Africa. In October the African Union said that the trials of Kenya’s president and vice president, Uhuru Kenyatta and William Ruto, should be suspended and that all sitting national leaders should receive immunity before international courts.

“Immunity for government leaders before the ICC is contrary to the basic principle that no one should be above the law,” said Georges Kapiamba, president of the Congolese Association for Access to Justice.“We should not deny justice to the victims and their families because their tormentors hold high political positions.”
The meeting’s general debate and scheduled session on the impact of indicting sitting heads of state will offer African and other governments important opportunities to affirm support for the ICC’s independent role in ensuring justice for the gravest crimes.

“Human rights abuses by governments and armed groups remain one of the biggest challenges confronting people in Africa,” said George Kegoro, executive director at the International Commission of Jurists-Kenya. “Ideally, domestic courts will ensure justice for these crimes, but the ICC serves as a crucial court of last resort when they are unable or unwilling.”
Some African leaders have taken the position that the ICC is targeting Kenya. In Kenya, where the authorities failed to respond adequately to post-election violence, the ICC prosecutor’s office acted to open an investigation. In all other situations before the ICC, the situations were referred by the governments where the crimes took place or by the United Nations Security Council, as with Libya and Darfur, Sudan.

“The ICC is far from perfect, but it is not targeting Africa,” said Angela Mudukuti, international criminal justice project lawyer at the Southern Africa Litigation Centre. “The majority of ICC investigations came about because African governments requested the ICC’s involvement. These countries should work to dispelinaccurate information and to correct misperceptions about the court.”

At the same time, there are double standards in the delivery of international justice that need to be addressed, the organizations said.

“The ICC’s reach should be improved, but justice should not be denied in Africa because it is not yet possible everywhere,” said Chinonye Obiagwu, national coordinator at Nigeria’s Legal Defense and Assistance Project. “ICC members can demonstrate their commitment to victims by supporting prosecutions wherever the worst crimes are being committed.”
The document  intended to promote common advocacy aims in advance of the ASP session. Organizations involved include the following: Burundi Coalition for the ICC, Center for Democratic Development of Ghana, Centre for Accountability and Rule of Law – Sierra Leone, Coalition for the ICC, Congolese Association for Access to Justice, Human Rights Watch, International Commission of Jurists-Kenya, International Crime in Africa Programme of the Institute for Security Studies, Legal Defence and Assistance Project of Nigeria, Media Foundation for West Africa, NamRights in Namibia, Nigerian Coalition for the ICC, Southern Africa Litigation Centre, and Transformation Resource Centre of Lesotho.

Peter Okoye marries in grand style!

Peter Okoye of the Psquare duo finally got married to his beu and mother of his two kids, Lola Omotayo.

Theirs was a journey started years back, before the music artists made their debut.






The colorful marriage ceremony was witnessed by family, friends and dignitaries.











Despite the odds and challenges the story seems to have a happy ending. 






Roving Informant wishes them: A very happy and fruitful  married life.

6 people confirmed killed in Illinois by Tornadoes that hit US Midwest !

Six people were reportedly killed and it is feared that several hundred people may have been injured in the fast-moving storms. While a number of people are said to be trapped inside buildings.

Forecasters say up to 53 million people could be affected. Hailstones the size of tennis balls have been reported.

Continue reading the main story

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The rapid-moving storm - with winds of up to 111km/h (68mph) - is continuing its way east.

November is ordinarily one of the quietest months in the tornado calendar, meaning these storms are unusually destructive for this time of year, the BBC's Nick Bryant in New York reports.

'War zone'

All the fatalities were reported in Illinois, which was the hardest hit state.

One person died in the town of Washington, Melanie Arnold of the Illinois Emergency Management Agency was quoted as saying by the Associated Press news agency. She provided no further details.

Two further people died in southern Massac County, while an elderly man and his sister were killed when a tornado struck their farm house in the village of New Minden.

Eyewitnesses described how large parts of Washington had been levelled by the tornadoes.

Illinois officials are describing the situation as "dangerous and volatile".

Karen Harris, a food truck operator in Washington, told the BBC she saw a "car completely mangled, the houses gone".

"Telephone wires [are] down everywhere, live wires are still down. I'm pretty traumatised from what I saw.

"I actually saw a vehicle in the middle of the road, their left signal light turned on, like they were getting ready to turn, all the windows were out of it, blood was in the back seat.

"Pandemonium. It looks like a war zone," Ms Harris added.

Laura Nightengale, a reporter with the Journal Star newspaper in Peoria, Illinois, witnessed the approach of a tornado from inside a house in the town.

"From the window I saw this huge tornado, tonnes of debris flying through the air.

"I took shelter in the basement. The area that was hit, it's just absolutely devastated - entire blocks where homes stood this morning right now are just rubble," Ms Nightengale told the BBC.

The National Weather Service warned of a "particularly dangerous situation" for parts of the central US.

"Several rapidly moving, intense tornadoes, severe thunderstorms, large hail events and damaging winds are expected in these watch areas," the service said.

Illinois Governor Pat Quinn warned residents to "pay attention to all weather alerts and stay home and inside if possible".

American football fans were evacuated from a stadium in the centre of Chicago as one tornado moved through the city suburbs.

Banks threaten to shut down over detention of staff by DSS!

It has been reported that the Nigerian banking industry might be experiencing a shutdown soon if the Department of State Services (DSS) does not release the bankers it has been holding in custody.

News has it that some prominent staff of about 18 banks have been ‘illegally’ detained by the DSS for a long stretch of time without any formal charges being pressed.

The bankers are said to have been arrested over 2 weeks ago over allegations of money laundering but despite being held since then, they have not been charged for the offence.

"Senior personnel of 18 Nigerian banks have been languishing in detention in the holding facility of the Department of State Services for almost two weeks over allegations of terrorist financing and money laundering alleged by government functionaries to have been perpetrated by Aminu Suleiman Lamido, son of Jigawa State Governor, Alhaji Sule Lamido.

Aminu and his brother, Mustapha Lamido were arrested by Economic and financial Crimes Commission, EFCC, over an alleged N10 billion fraud.

They were arrested in Kano and flown to Abuja and have since been under interrogation at the Commission’s headquarters.

The banks whose staff have been picked up are Fidelity Bank Plc, First City Monument Bank Plc, FCMB, Wema Bank Plc, Access Bank Plc, Skye Bank Plc, First Bank Nigeria Limited, FBN, Sterling Bank Plc, Diamond Bank Plc, Zenith Bank Plc, Unity Bank Plc, Ecobank Plc, Guaranty Trust Bank Plc, GTBank, and Citibank. The DSS, it was learnt, which has been on the trail of Aminu Lamido, had sought an ex parte motion from the Federal High Court, Abuja, to freeze the accounts, in 13 banks, of Adold Engineering Company Limited, believed to be owned by the governor’s son.

The ex parte motion was granted by Justice A.F.A Ademola on November 6, 2013.

The fear of the banks, it was gathered, was that the DSS had no capacity to analyse information sent daily to CBN and EFCC related to money laundering.

They argue that banks on daily basis send report on suspected money laundering activities to the CBN and the EFCC.

A bank chief Executive said that in some of the above banks, the chief inspectors were picked. According to the bank executive who do not want his name in print, last week in one of the banks the Department of State Security officials visited the head office under the guise of inviting the officials to their Lagos office, but unknown to them they were flown in military aircraft to Abuja.

Since then no one has been allowed access to the officials. In one of the first generation banks an Executive Director was picked. Among those being detained by the Department of State Security are Bank Treasurers, head of Information Technology and other key officers whose day to day activities in the banks are key to the operations of banks".

Source: Vanguard N/P 

Prof. Iyayi’s death – Who will stop these convoys of death?!

late Professor Festus Iyayi

The news hit the nation like an electric shock. The news of the death of the activist-lecturer, writer, unionist, civil rights campaigner and humanist, Professor Festus Iyayi. The man was not sick. He didn’t die in his sleep. He was violently plucked from us by speed demons on the road! The man, who authored ‘Violence,’ one of his acclaimed fictional works, was violently killed on the Lokoja road by the convoy of Gov. Idris Wada of Kogi State.

Pray, who will stop these convoys of death? Who will stop these men of power from terrorising ordinary citizens with their crazy sirens and convoys? Who will stop this abuse of power by those we purportedly elected to govern us? Everyday and everywhere, they torture us with their sirens and convoys, obeying neither speed limits nor respecting the rights of other road users.

In civilised countries, the only sirens you hear are those of fire service, ambulances and the police on critical assignments. But here, all kinds of sirens harass the citizens. The most notorious are those of elected governors, ministers, National Assembly leadership, and all kinds of persons and organisations. Long convoys and blaring sirens have become a status symbol in this country. This nonsense must stop! This insanity has to end! Can’t our lawmakers enact a law, limiting or banning the use of sirens and convoys?

In South Africa, Ghana and some other African countries, no crazy sirens and convoys intimidate the citizens. Power is used to serve the people. Here, it is an instrument of oppression.

Of course, I am angry as I write this piece. Not just because I was acquainted with the late professor.  Truly, this was one avoidable death. Iyayi would have been alive if the crazy driver in Gov. Wada’s convoy had not seen the governor and his entourage as more important than Iyayi and other road users, just like other VIP drivers believe. Surely, Iyayi would not be dead if the Lokoja Expressway had not become more of a death trap, guzzling the blood of the innocents. Iyayi would still be with us if the Lokoja Expressway had not become a scam project, awarded and re-awarded yearly.

Iyayi was our brother, our comrade.  He was the comrade against injustice, oppression, corruption and maladministration. Till he breathed his last, he remained true to his conscience, to his constituency and to God.

Not surprising, since his death, there have been an outpouring of condolences, reminiscences, tributes, etc.  on the life and time of the former president of the Academic Staff Union of Universities, ASUU, one of which came from Comrade  DENJA YAQUB of the Nigeria Labour Congress, NLC, published below.

 Tribute to a consumate fighter

Precisely twenty five days after we lost one of our most unswerving leaders, Baba Omojola, whose entombment proceedings are still ongoing, death has again taken one of our best through a ghastly motor accident primarily caused by the irresponsible culture of impunity often displayed by the convoys of public office holders, who feel the capacity to “fly” on the road magnifies their obscure power of gripping other road users to acknowledge their weight, even when it clearly further exhibits how much contempt they have for people and lives.

Born in Ugbegun, Edo State, 66 years ago in 1947, Festus started his education at the Annunciation Catholic College in his village and later, Government College, Ugheli, Delta State. He soon after read Industrial Economics at the Kiev Institute of Economics in the defunct Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, ending with a doctorate at the University of Bradford in England. He thereafter returned to Nigeria and since 1980, until his death, he was a lecturer in the department of Business Administration at the University of Benin. He also did his last sabbaticals with the Nigeria Labour Congress where he added values to the work of Africa’s largest trade union federation.

An award winner from early stage of his education, Prof. Iyayi got his first award, as an essayist in 1968 when he won the John Kennedy Essay Competition organised by the Embassy of the United States of America in Nigeria. He was then in his final year at Government College, Ughelli.

A writer of high repute, his book, Heroes, did not only enjoy popular reading across the globe, it won him the esteemed Commonwealth Writers prize in 1988. He had also authored other thought- provoking novels, such as Violence in 1979, Contract in 1982 and Awaiting Court Martial in 1996. These books are compelling depiction of the decadence of the Nigerian society, a society that has continuously increased in her slide to banal reputations with leaders, who continue to flaunt stolen public wealth in the face of the impecunious millions that form over ninety per cent of the citizenry.

To these millions, who bear the brunt of the imperious presence of profligate ruling elite that is exceptional in its contempt for good governance, Festus committed the entirety of his productive life.

Festus was a conscientious organiser, who had been involved in the development of ideologically focused organisations of the Marxist flank as well as mass organisations committed to the desired change for a country that is so endowed with all that is needed to lead in development.

Festus did not only organise and lead intellectuals; he was deeply involved in organising peasants in remote areas of his native Edo State. He was a leading light in the socialist movement in Nigeria from the Socialist Congress of Nigeria (SCON) to the Socialist Party of Nigeria. He was part of the ideological substratum of the radical student movement in the 80s when students spoke with one patriotic voice under united, strong and vibrant auspices. A dexterous leader he was.

At the level of human rights and pro-democracy struggles, he succeeded Dr. Beko Ransome – Kuti, as President of the Committee for the Defence of Human Rights, CDHR. He was actively involved in the Campaign for Democracy. And as a writer, he was part of the Association of Nigerian Authors, encouraged by the commitment of personalities like Ken Saro-Wiwa.

The most open attestation of his activism was his leadership of the Academic Staff Union of Universities, ASUU. He was elected president of ASUU in 1986 at a time when the imperial structures of international finance capital used the opportunity provided by the anti-people regime of General Ibrahim Babangida to unleash all sorts of neo-liberal policies that have today left nearly all components of our collective socio-economic and political existence in shambles.

ASUU, under Professor Iyayi’s leadership, was a leading voice against the manipulations of that regime, most especially the economic sting, called Structural Adjustment Programme, SAP. He led ASUU to team up with Nigeria Labour Congress, National Association of Nigerian Students and several others to challenge the introduction of SAP and other draconian policies that were clearly intended to hand over our country to the whims of neo liberal institutions whose policies were sketched to subsume the entire Nigerian populace and our collective resources in second slavery, the fulcrum of the new capitalist economic order.

He fought for quality education and the right of every Nigerian to have education regardless of class barriers. He saw scholarship, as a major tool that can ensure the development of any country and to achieve this, only education that is people-driven in access, content and essence is required.

He put all of his energy, resources and intellect in this struggle and, indeed, lost his life in the cause of the struggle, as he was killed on his way to a meeting scheduled to advance the cause of the struggle for qualitative education in Nigeria.

He had suffered so much state attacks in the cause of his involvement in the struggles of our people, the most ferocious and traumatic being the state sponsored evacuation of his family from his official residence as a lecturer at the University of Benin, following his removal as staff of the university along with Prof. Itse Sagay, Dr. Osagie Obayuwana both of the law faculty at the time as well as Tunde Fatunde of the Faculty of Arts.

This was at the twilight of the orchestrated obliteration of quality education in Nigeria, which was carried out by the Babangida regime on behalf of neo liberal institutions, especially the International Monetary Fund, IMF, who abhorred resistance to their grit to seize our economy.

The systemic attack on education started with the annihilation of the culture of critical intellectualism when the regime, in open declaration of its disdain for quality education, claimed there were lecturers that were teaching what they were not paid to teach. Consequently, people like Festus, who in the perception of the regime fell in this category, were hunted and hounded out of the system. In fact, Dr. Patrick Wilmot, then a lecturer at the Ahmadu Bello University was thrown across the border, deported to the United Kingdom, and forcefully extricated from his Nigerian wife in a manner only presumed possible in war times. The students’ movement was not left out and today, the result is clearly evident in the catastrophic recession in our education system. Intellectualism has not only been destroyed, teaching and learning infrastructures in the system have totally collapsed.

The demand for proper funding for the effective revitalisation of these structures that will ensure quality education are the main issues in contention, leading to the current strike by university lecturers. Festus was committed to the struggle to actualise these demands until he was cut down in an accident that could have been avoided if the governor’s convoy had learnt a lesson from their previous accident.

Prof. Iyayi was a colossus in the movement and his death is indeed a major smack that would not elapse so easily but the challenge of regenerating his fighting spirit, dexterity and courage will ensure the continuity of all struggles he was involved in until victory.

 source: the Sun Newspapers

Suspected ritualists invade hospital in Ekiti, demand newborn baby!

A hospital in Ekiti-Nigeria was allegedly invaded at the weekend by hoodlums who demanded that a day old baby be handed to them.

The attackers, numbering 5 and suspected to be ritualists, ransacked the public health centre in Ado-Ekiti, the state capital, early on Saturday morning and made the unusual demand.

The staff of the hospital promptly informed them that there were no day-old babies within the premises but the assailants were not satisfied by the response and proceeded to assault the staff.

An official of Ado-Ekiti Local Government Council said: “The hospital workers tried to convince them that babies delivered in the last one week had been discharged, but their explanations fell on deaf ears. They were dealt with mercilessly. This angered them and they beat up the medical personnel. They ransacked the wards and left when they did not find any baby.”

She said one of the victims sustained a leg injury and was receiving treatment at an undisclosed hospital in Ado-Ekiti.

During his visit to the centre, the Council Chairman, Mr. Tope Olanipekun, described the attack as “the height of callousness”.

Olanipekun said: “The incident actually happened and we are taking steps to forestall a recurrence. The doctor-in-charge has reported the case at the Okesa Police Station and we are planning to fence all health centres and strengthen security.

“I have instructed that night duty be suspended until adequate security measures are put in place. We have also advised that expectant mothers in labour should be referred to Okeyinmi Health Centre.”

Police spokesman Victor Olu-Babayemi said the incident had not been officially reported to the police.

culled from the Nation N/P 

Nigerian dance hall star; Fada U- Turn dies @ 36!

One of Nigeria’s most popular 90s musicians Olufemi Mayomi, a.k.a Fada U-Turn, is dead.

It was learnt the dance-hall artiste passed on in Lagos today, following a protracted illness. He was 36 years old.

He died in a hospital around Okokomaiko, a Lagos suburb today, after suffering a liver related illness.

A family member confirmed he had been in and out of hospital for many weeks.

He was on admission at the last hospital for 10 days before he passed on.

He was survived by his siblings, wife Ajimoh and five children.

The late U-Turn was from Kabba-Bunu in Kogi State where he first tried his hands on entertainment, working as a radio and TV presenter. He had a brief stint at NTA in Lagos, after relocating here, before signing a deal with Ultima Records which released his early albums.

He was a little boy, with braids and a charming personality. And his signature intro ‘Apoola Berekete’ was far beyond his stature. But he got the industry’s attention and got a leg in the door before long.

After years of club tours and free gigs, he got his first break when he was signed to one of the biggest record labels at the time, Ultima Records.

Ultima engaged Nelson Brown to work on his first album which proved to be a huge success.The hits ‘African Culture’ and ‘Shakara’ threw him into national limelight,instantly putting him in the league of bonafide ghetto stars like Daddy Showkey and Daddy Fresh.

He espoused Okokomaiko where he resided, with many songs dedicated to the Lagos outskirt.

His second album ‘Padlock Ur Mouth’ produced the smash hit ‘Yetunde’ a collaboration with Pasuma Wonder.

Culled from Pmnews