The Lagos State House of Assembly has passed a bill with a recommendation of stiffer penalties, including death sentence for kidnappers

The lawmakers passed the bill today, Thursday, for a Law to Provide for the Prohibition of the Act of Kidnapping and for Other Connected Purposes after the third reading.

The bill was sponsored by the Speaker of the House, Mr. Mudashiru Obasa and specifically recommends death sentence for kidnappers whose victims die in their custody and life sentence for kidnappers whose victims do not die in the hands of their abductors.

The bill states that any person, who kidnaps, abducts, detains, captures or takes another person by any means or trick with intent to demand ransom or do anything against his/her will, commits an offence. The bill also stipulates life imprisonment for anyone who makes an attempt to kidnap another person.

The bill prescribes seven years imprisonment for anyone making false representation to release a kidnapped or abducted person.

The passage of the bill was also sequel to the adoption of a report presented by the Chairman of the House Committee on Judiciary, Petitions, Human Rights and Lagos State Independent Electoral Commission (LASIEC), Mrs. Adefunmilayo Tejuosho. [myad]

Chairman of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), Professor Mahmood Yakubu, has promised the team of Special Investigative panel on the December 10, Rivers state Legislative Re-run elections, that the Commission would make available all the necessary facts and figures on the violence that greeted the election.
The invetigative panel was recently set up by the Inspector General of the Police, Ibrahim K. Idris.
“On our own as a Commission, we have also set up an Administrative Review of what happened in Rivers so that where our staff are found to be culpable we will deal with the situation. We have very conscientious staff in the Commission, but where our staff erred, this will be dealt with,” the INEC boss told members of the team who visited the Commission’s Headquarters in Abuja today, Thursday.
He asked the IGP investigation panel to make sure that perpetrators of the violence and killings in the Rivers re-run elections are brought to book.
“I wish to assure the investigative panel that we will now and forever, fully cooperate with the security agencies in your investigation. Whatever you require to facilitate the investigation from the Commission, be rest assured that the Commission will be forth coming”.
The INEC Chairman commiserated with the security agencies for the loss of lives recorded, particularly the death of DSP Mohammed Alkali and his orderly who were killed on duty in the Rivers re-run elections in what he said was supposed to be a peaceful process of election.
Earlier, the leader of the delegation and head of the Investigative Panel, Deputy Commissioner of Police, Daniel Okoro, explained that the purpose of the visit was to felicitate, interact and introduce the members of the panel made up of Police Officers and Officers of the Department of State Services (DSS).
He sought the Commission’s cooperation to aid the successful execution of the national assignment by his team. [myad]

President Muhammadu Buhari has commended the soldiers fighting Boko Haran insurgents in Borno State for the recovery of another Chibok schoolgirl, Rakiya Abubakar, in the Alagarno area of Damboa Local Government Area of Borno State.

A statement by the special adviser to the President on media and publicity, Femi Adesina, quoted the President as saying that the recovery of the girl had raised renewed hope that the other captured girls would be reunited with their families, friends and community.

He commended the military for the diligent investigation which led to the recovery of Rakiya and advised them to continue in the spirit with which they cleared the Sambisa forest of terrorists.

The President assured that his government would continue to do all within its powers to assist the military in locating the rest of the girls and eradicate the menace of terrorism in Nigeria.

Earlier in the day, Acting Director Nigeria Army Public Relations, Brigadier General Sani Kukasheka Usman announced that the girl, Rakiya Abubkar, holding six month old baby, was discovered during the investigation of arrested suspected Boko Haram terrorists.

The Spokesman said that preliminary investigation showed that   Rakiya is the daughter of Abubakar Gali Mulima and Habiba Abubakar of Chibok. She was a student of Senior Secondary School Class 3B (SS 3B), before her abduction along with her colleagues on 14th April 2014 by the Boko Haram terrorists.

The Army spokesman said that the girl is undergoing further medical investigation and would soon be released to the Borno State Government.

It could be recalled that 21 Chibok girls were recently freed by Boko Haram out of the over 200 girls kidnapped by Boko Haram terrorists. [myad]

Former Ekiti State Governor, Chief Segun Oni, has described Governor Ayo Fayose of Ekiti State as a comedian who will never stop entertaining Nigerians with wild allegations.

Chief Oni, who was reacting to Fayose allegation that he is plotting to engineer the judiciary to impeach him, said that the governor was just raising false alarm, saying that such allegation came from what he called “a mind gripped by fear of the unknown.”

Chief Oni, who is the Deputy National Chairman (South) of the All Progressives Congress (APC), said that he has the utmost respect for the judiciary and would never indulge in any act to bring the revered institution into ridicule and opprobrium.

Through his media aide, Ayo Akinyemi, Chief Oni said that the purported meeting where he and the Minister of Solid Minerals Development, Dr. Kayode Fayemi, boasted to APC members of intent to enlist the judiciary for the alleged plot only existed in the imagination of Fayose.

“Fayose himself knows that no judiciary can remove him now because he enjoys immunity until the expiration of his tenure on October 15, 2018. He can only be investigated, so what is Fayose talking about?

“Perhaps Fayose is afraid of facing the law after his immunity might have expired next year and that is why he is labouring now to spill the beans in anticipation of his doom. He is a drowning man trying to clutch the last straw and smear anybody.

“In a normal setting, should he (Fayose) have contested for governorship in the first instance? This is a man having corruption cases hanging on his neck and was facing trial in the court.

“This is a man accused of complicity in murder incidents that happened during his first tenure and it is unfortunate that our system allows a character like that to run for the exalted office of governor.

“Now with series of allegations coming out on the way funds meant for purchase of arms were diverted to his campaign as revealed by his man, Dr. Tope Aluko and confirmed by Musiliu Obanikoro in his evidence before the court.” [myad]

The Ekiti State Governor, Ayodele Fayose, has fingered two former governors of the state, Chief Segun Oni and Dr. Kayode Fayemi in what he called the plot to compromise a section of the judiciary to impeach him.

In a letter addressed to the Chief Judge of Nigeria (CJN), Walter Onnoghen, the furious governor asked the judiciary not to succumb to the alleged devious plots to undermine its independence and integrity.

Fayose said: “the essence of all of these is to silence him as the voice of opposition in the country because he has bluntly rejected all overtures to him to defect into the ruling APC or stop talking.

“Certain APC chieftains were again making subterranean moves to manipulate and compromise a section of the Judiciary, particularly some judges, to get through the back door what they failed severally to achieve through the ballot box as well as in open court, even in matters already decided by the Supreme Court.

“At a recent meeting held in Ado-Ekiti, the State capital, at which several stalwarts and chieftains of the All Progressives Congress were in attendance, two former governors of the State and members of the APC, namely Engr. Segun Oni and Dr. Kayode Fayemi, now a Federal Minister, boasted that there is no going back on the latest plans to subvert the will of the people of Ekiti freely given; wrest the governance of Ekiti from me at all costs before the expiration of my tenure in October 2018 through orchestrated but dubious legal process; and thereby render nugatory the sacred mandate of the people given unto me openly and unequivocally when I won in all the 16 local governments of the state while the then incumbent Governor, Kayode Fayemi recorded zero.”

Governor Fayose accused the Presidency of complexity in the fresh plot with Oni and Fayemi as their local arrow heads even as he claimed that a fresh suit is being rehashed and to be filed against him on the same old allegation that have been trashed all the way from the Tribunal to the Supreme Court.

“This time, the plotters of this judicial coup-de-tat plan to procure the services of a compromised or malleable judge to get self-serving ‘jankara’ and kangaroo judgment with the intention of having the Supreme Court reverse itself on the June 2014 Ekiti election.

“Segun Oni and Kayode Fayemi boastfully claimed that they have enlisted the assurances of Justice Okon Abang and one or two other judges in the concocted fresh suit, hinged on the report of a useless, senseless, and orchestrated Military report not known to the Electoral law.”

The governor appealed to Onnoghen to take “notice of judicial pronouncements by courts of concurrent jurisdiction as well as the scathing remarks of appellate courts on how the said Justice Okon Abang has been used in the past by anti-democratic forces to endanger democracy and engage in deleterious miscarriage of justice.

“My Lord, you have a duty to ensure that no Judge under your watch is enlisted into this diabolical act by any rampaging anti-democratic elements.

“The embarrassing incidents currently playing out on our National Judicial horizon, with several judicial officers, including serving Justices of the Supreme Court, enmeshed in simulated and orchestrated corruption scandals and indictments by agencies of the Federal Government because they had refused, at one time or the other, to serve the base interests of the ruling APC government in matters pending before their Lordships, have kept us wondering whether the
Judiciary will succumb to these unwarranted harassments and intimidation meant to coerce and cower it into submission and make this very important and indispensable Third Estate of the Realm subservient to the arbitrary wishes, whims, and caprices of the Executive and political desperados.” [myad]