COVER
Ortom: Buhari Orders Security Agents to Root Out Bandits in Benue
…Police Special Investigative Team Arrives Makurdi
By Gom Mirian, Abuja
President Muhammadu Buhari has ordered security agents to flush out all marauders currently occupying Benue communities.
Buhari’s order came on heels of a special investigation taskforce set up by the Inspector-General of Police, Mohammed Adamu, arrived Makurdi, Benue State capital yesterday.
Benue State Governor, Samuel Ortom, who disclosed at the weekend while commissioning the Tito Multipurpose Centre in Makurdi, said the order would ensure that sanity returned to the occupied communities and those displaced from their homes returned to their ancestral land.
Governor Ortom, who lamented that he had been a sad man over the continued displacement of close to 800,000 Benue indigenes by armed herders, expressed optimism that the latest directive by President Buhari would make the communities safer for the displaced persons to return home.
“I am not a happy man, each day I wake up in tears over the fate of our people who are living in Internally Displaced Persons, IDPs, camps. I keep asking myself the sins of the families, the children and women who are spending their days in IDPs camps.
“It’s all because government allowed terrorists and bandits who have no value addition whatsoever to come in, terrorize our land, send our people away, take over the land and make our people IDPs.
“Mr. President has directed that all this people, who came, destroyed our homes, our villages, took over the land and stopped my people from going back to farm, that the security agencies should flush them out and ensure that our people go back to their ancestral homes.
“I look forward to seeing the Federal Government monitor this directive to ensure that Mr. President’s directives are complied with. If they are not complied with, my mouth is still open, so I will talk.
“I urge those that are to implement that order to ensure that it is done as directed. I pray for our security chiefs that God should help them to do the needful.
“They should ensure that they justify the tax payers monies that go to them by complying with the President’s directive. And I look forward to seeing other things I recommended to Mr. President being implemented.
“We must all work hard to save our country because we have no other. We must, as a country avoids toeing the path of Libya, Syria, even Cameroon and other troubled spots of the world. We must also continue to be prayerful because prayer is the key and God answers prayers.”
Special Police Team Arrives Makurdi
Special Police Team assignment is in continuation of the ongoing investigation into the reported attempted murder of Governor Samuel Ortom, the spokesperson of the police, Frank Mba, said.
He said the team consisting of operatives from the Tactical Investigation Units of the Force Intelligence Bureau (FIB) is led by Abba Kyari, a deputy commissioner of police.
Others on the team are “experienced, crack detectives with specialised competencies in crime scene investigation and reconstruction, ballistics, fingerprint analysis and other core areas of forensics.
“The Team is expected to take over and consolidate all on-going investigation into the incident. The Team is also expected to investigate all angles of the reported attack with a view to ensuring that all persons empirically linked to the incident are apprehended and brought to book.
“Meanwhile, the Inspector-General of Police has charged the team to be professional, thorough and clinical in their investigations. They are expected to liaise and work with the Benue State Police Command and other relevant members of the law enforcement community to ensure that they deliver on their mandate,” Mba said.
Ortom was reportedly attacked last Saturday around his farm at Tyo-Mu Community, about 20 kilometres from Makurdi, the state capital.
According to Ortom, he was inspecting the farm when cattle herders dressed in black outfits ambushed him and his security personnel.
President Muhammadu Buhari condemned the attack and called for an “open and transparent investigation” of the attack, saying “whoever is linked to it should be caught and be made to face the law.”
By David Torough, Abuja
Nigerian Correctional Service (NCoS) has declared 281 inmates missing from the Medium Security Custodial Centre, Maiduguri, Borno State.
NCoS said this followed an evacuation after the flood that engulfed the state capital.
A statement onby the Service Public Relations Officer (SPRO), Mr Abubakar Umar yesterday in Abuja said seven other inmates had been recaptured.
Umar said that the service was in custody of the details of the missing inmates, including their biometrics.
“The flood brought down the walls of the correctional facilities, including the medium security custodial centre Maiduguri (MSCC) as well as the staff quarters in the city.
“Upon the evacuation of inmates by officers of the service with support from sister security agencies to a safe and secure facility, 281 inmates were observed to be missing.
“However, it is important to note that the service is in custody of their details, including their biometrics, which is being made available to the public.
“The service is working in synergy with other security agencies as both covert and overt deployments have been activated to look out for them.
“Presently, a total of seven (7) inmates have been recaptured and returned to custody, while efforts are on ground to track down the rest and bring them back to safe custody.“While this effort is on, the public is assured that the incident does not impede or affect public safety,” he said.
By Tony Obiechina, Abuja
After controversies, trucks from the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation Limited (NNPCL) yesterday lifted petrol from the Dangote Refinery.
NNPCL revealed that Dangote Refinery sold the fuel at N898 per litre.
The national oil company began loading yesterday after moving about 300 trucks to the 650,000 capacity refinery Dangote Refinery located in Ibeju-Lekki, Lagos State.
Its spokesman, Olufemi Soneye was quoted as saying, “We successfully loaded PMS at the Dangote Refinery today [Sunday].
”“The claim that we purchased it at N760 per liter is incorrect.
“For this initial loading, the price from the refinery was N898 per liter.
”At least, over 70 trucks had loaded at the time of this report.
This marks an end to the month-long debate over the quality and sale of the Dangote petrol.
Speaking to newsmen at the refinery, the Vice President of Oil and Gas at Dangote Industries Limited (DIL), Devakumar Edwin described the commencement of the petrol lifting moment of pride to every Nigerian.
He said, “My President has been showing presentations that 52 years ago, we were trying to see how to solve the problem of PMS supply and the queues. Now, after 52 years, we have a solution.
“And the solution is local production of PMS and it is from a Nigerian oil company. And as EPC contractor, it was constructed by a Nigerian company.
“So, it’s a matter of pride that a Nigerian oil company, constructed by a Nigerian-owned company, is able to generate PMS from the local crude and daily will not only to meet the entire requirement of Nigeria, but can also have surplus to export. So, it is a time and moment of great pride to every Nigerian.”
Edwin said 44 percent of the PMS production from the Dangote refinery can meet the requirement of the entire country.
“If you look at the refinery as a whole, PMS alone, every day, 650,000 barrels of crude if we’re processing, we can generate more than 54 million litres of PMS.
“And, of course, the refinery has the capacity to produce various other products too. 44% of the production can meet the entire requirement of the country, 56% of the production has to be exported. “So, it is a huge refinery. So, it is not only going to be doing import substitution, but it is also going to make Forex generation through export revenue.
“The gantries are actually 86 and they can load 86 trucks at a go,” he said.
Last Friday, in Abuja, a member of the Presidential Committee on the Sale of Crude Oil and Refined Product and Chairman of the Federal Inland Revenue Service (FIRS), Zacch Adedeji confirmed that the NNPCL remains the sole buyer of petrol from the Dangote refinery while willing off-takers are free to lift diesel and other products from the refinery.
According to Adedeji, the NNPCL would further distribute to other independent marketers after lifting from the refinery.
He said the nation’s oil company will commence the sale of crude oil to the Dangote refinery in naira from October 1.
By Tony Obiechina, Abuja
Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) has issued a new directive to Payment Service Providers (PSPs), requiring them to comply with enhanced routing guidelines for Point of Sale (PoS) transactions.This move is aimed at strengthening the monitoring of electronic transactions across Nigeria.
The directive issued on Wednesday aims at strengthening the monitoring of electronic transactions across Nigeria following CBN’s initiative to diversify the Payment Terminal Service Aggregator (PTSA) structure, which previously operated through a single aggregator. In a circular signed by Oladimeji Yisa Taiwo on behalf of the CBN Payments System Management Department, the apex bank mandates that all PoS transactions from merchant and agent locations—whether physical or electronic—must now be routed through any CBN-licensed PTSA.The directive is part of efforts to decentralize PoS transaction routing and address concerns over the centralization of such transactions under a single entity.In Aug. 2011, the CBN initially granted a PTSA license to the Nigeria Interbank Settlement System (NIBSS) Plc to serve as the sole aggregator of PoS transactions.However, to promote competition and enhance service delivery, the CBN awarded a second PTSA license to Unified Payment Services Limited (UPSL) on April 19.This development aims to reduce the dependence on a single aggregator for the management of PoS transactions, promoting transparency and operational efficiency in Nigeria’s growing electronic payments landscape.
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