Published on March 19, 2012 by pmnews
 
The Mushin gang battles which have claimed the lives of many innocent people since 2010 are far from over as an 18-year old JSS1 student has again been gunned down.
 The cause of the shooting at Alasalatu area of Moshalashi, Mushin, in Lagos State, Southwest Nigeria, could not be ascertained, but an eyewitness told P.M.NEWS that a fight broke out between two factions led by Akeem a.k.a. Co-ordinator from Moshalashi and another led by Wasiu Balogun from Olountoyin area of Idiaraba when Saheed a.k.a. Alamala broke a bottle on the head of an unidentified boy said to be residing at Idiaraba.
He reportedly attacked the boy with a bottle because he crossed from Idiaraba to Mushin.
 The teenager was later rushed to an undisclosed hospital.
P.M.NEWS gathered that Mushin youths have vowed since the supremacy battles broke out in 2010 that any time they see youths from Idiaraba, they would attack them.
Following the attack on a youth from Idiaraba by Saheed, fighting broke out between Mushin youths led by Akeem and Wasiu-led faction during which dangerous weapons were freely used.
The police at Olosan were alerted and they responded swiftly to restore normalcy. They arrested Saheed and took him to the station where he is still being detained.
Angered by the arrest of Alamala, according to a source, Akeem on sighting a JSS 1 student of Idiaraba Senior High School identified as Yusuf Adegbite shot him dead and escaped on Wednesday.
The police immediately cordoned off the entire battle ground to forestall a reprisal attack from Idiaraba boys, but residents are apprehensive about what would happen on the day the victim would be buried.
Narrating his dilemma to P.M.NEWS, the father of the deceased, Adegoke Akeem said, “my son told me he was going to Paul Oguntola Street in Mushin to collect his note book from his friend. And at about 8 p.m, somebody phoned me to say that my son had been shot dead.
“When I got there, people told me that my son was walking along the road when Akeem Coordinator shot him dead because he was an Idiaraba youth and that any time they set eyes on any Idiaraba youth, be he a student, they would kill him.
“I am now appealing to the Lagos State Governor Babatunde Fashola and the Lagos State Commissioner of Police to declare Mushin arms proliferation zone and order all landlords and tenants who own guns whether licensed or not, to surrender them.
“The killing in Mushin is becoming too worrisome as if we are in a lawless society.
“I want the authorities to come to my aid.”
When P.M.NEWS visited the Olosan Police Division, the Divisional Police Officer, DPO, was said to have gone out, but a police source confirmed the incident and the arrest of some suspects.
—Paul Iyoghojie
 
via PM News

ZIMBABWE--Eveline Girls’ High School in Bulawayo has expelled a 17-member gang of students that terrorised juniors, subjecting them to dehumanising acts such as drinking urine and shoving their heads into a toilet basin.

Victims who escaped this phase of abuse were beaten with sjamboks in a nearby park after classes. School authorities moved in to stop the bullies after frightened students wrote anonymous letters.

The gang which operated under the name NguX Ongasolveki comprised 15 Form 2 students and two others in Forms 3 and 4 respectively. The headmistress, Ms Rosemary Moyo, confirmed the students had been “excluded” from the learning institution. She said the school arranged for them to secure places elsewhere. The Ordinary Level student was also allowed to sit public examinations.

“There was a gang that bullied other students at this school. It was made up of 15 Form 2 pupils, one Form 3 pupil and another in Form 4,” she said.
“They would force other students to ‘bathe’ in toilet basins after flushing. We also gathered that some students were forced to drink urine. We, however, never got to know their names.

“We did not expel them, we excluded them. When you expel a child, you do not give them a letter of good standing. We gave them letters that ensure they get learning places elsewhere. We explained that position to their parents.”

Ms Moyo said the gang members moved around with different types of clothes in their satchels. They would then sneak out of class and meet up with a similar boys’ gang from a nearby school. The headmistress said she became suspicious after finding them in a park. The reign of terror only came to light after she requested other students to send anonymous letters detailing goings-on at the learning institution.

“As I was heading for a funeral on a particular day, I saw some students who were in school uniform. They were in the nearby park. They confessed to sneaking out of school after an official and I accosted them. What we got after the letters were submitted shocked me.

“One of the students was even caught with a sjambok in her satchel by a teacher. She confessed that she used it for beating other students who did not comply with the directives of the gang.

“We then called their parents and a resolution was passed to exclude them from the school.”

It is understood the matter was also reported to the police who sent officers in the community relations and liaison department to counsel students at the school. Bulawayo provincial police spokesperson Inspector Mandlenkosi Moyo would not be drawn into commenting on the case. “We constantly visit schools to educate children on various issues such as child abuse and bullying. We visited a lot of schools in October and counselled students on various matters,” he said

District Education Officer Mr Dan Moyo could not be reached for comment.


via ZOP

AGAIN, Nigeria’s corruption rating has taken a leap for the worse as Transparency International (TI) has said that Nigerian civil servants alone took bribes worth over N450 billion ($3b) in the last one year.

The TI report on Bribe Payers Index for this year released just in time for the G20 summit also assessed 28 countries and territories including most of the G20 countries excluding Nigeria, from its annual Bribe Payers index.

Although Nigeria was not included in the countries selected for review this year, the TI however conducted additional studies of corrupt behaviours in public and private sectors in the world, where Nigeria’s civil servants were mentioned.

According to the studies of corrupt behaviours in various public and private sectors of the economy done by the TI, it was confirmed that “previous findings showed that bribery is particularly widespread in the construction, energy and extractive industries, “ according to Deutsche Welle, Germany’s international broadcaster that produces television, radio and online content in 30 languages, which reported the study.

According to the publication, in Nigeria, which is one of the countries with dominant extractive industries, “corrupt civil servants in oil-rich Nigeria pocketed some $3.2 billion (2.3b euros) in bribes in the 2010/11 financial year alone.”

Essentially, the TI Briber Payers Index this year focused on Australia, Argentina, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, China, France, Germany, Hong Kong, Italy, India, Indonesia, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, Netherlands, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, South Africa, South Korea, Spain, Switzerland, Taiwan, Turkey, United Arab Emirates, United Kingdom and United States.

The reports said: “Inter-company corruption is as popular as the practice of offering bribes to civil servants,” adding that this year’s “findings indicate that corruption is not only a problem of the public sector but also of private companies because it exposes them to financial and reputational risks.”

The Briber Payers Index, BPI, released by the TI, global NGO on corruption ranks the likelihood of companies from 28 leading export countries and territories to bribe abroad and measures the perceived propensity of firms from 19 business sectors to engage in corrupt practices.

It scores and ranks countries on a scale of 0 to 10, where a maximum score of 10 corresponds with a view that companies from that country never engage in bribery when doing business abroad.

Leaders of international companies confess that they keep offering bribes to public officials to win public procurement contracts, sidestep regulatory regimes, fast-track managerial processes or secure influence over decision making.

In its concluding observations, TI urges both governments and companies to take steps to ensure effective implementation of anti-bribery policies and procedures.

via Tribune

Three percent of Ghana’s population are homosegxwals. This was disclosed by a self-styled Human Rights Advocate for Homosegxwals, Nana Kweku Sarpong.

Speaking on Adom FM’s Dwaso Nsem on Friday, Nana Kweku Sarpong poured out his frustrations on how homosegxwals in Ghana are treated.

He argued that everyone in Ghana is entitled to his or her freedom, but expressed worry over the manner in which people who are into same sex relationship are shunned by the society.

Though Nana Kweku Sarpong would not tell whether he is a homosegxwal or not, he defended gays in the country, saying they should be left alone to do their own thing.

He claimed he had a pregnant wife and does not mind having anal sex with her, maintaining that many married men have anal sex with their wives.

Nana Kweku Sarpong who claimed he was born on 1st January 1987 explained that men with feminine features often choose women as their sex partners, because inwardly these men feel they are women, so it is not strange for men to take men as their sex partners.

However, a legal practitioner, Barfour Awuah, while admitting that Ghana is a free society, noted that the mere fact that one has the desire to do something does not make it right, unless it goes with the norms of the Ghanaian society.

Lawyer Barfuor Awuah, therefore, advised that any passage of a law against homosegxwality should be done through a referendum before parliamentary ratification.

via myjoy

By YINKA IBUKUN, Associated Press
LAGOS, Nigeria – Residents angered by an attack on a church rioted Friday in a central Nigeria town at the center of post-election violence earlier this year, with at least two people already dead, police officials said.
The riot began in rural Kaduna state in the town of Zonkwa, where 300 people died following the April 16 presidential election that saw sectarian violence. The area sits on the dividing line between Nigeria's mostly Christian south and Muslim north.
A senior police official in the town reached by The Associated Press confirmed the ongoing fighting but declined to comment further. A commotion could be heard on the line before the police officer hung up.
Yemi Ajayi, a national police spokesman, said reports of rioting had reached the country's federal police headquarters in Abuja. He had no further details.
The violence apparently began after an attack on a church Thursday night in Tabak, a village near Zonkwa, Kaduna state police spokesman Aminu Lawal said. Two people died in that attack, while 12 others were injured, police said.
The fighting comes ahead of Eid al-Adha, or the feast of sacrifice, when Muslims around the world slaughter sheep and cattle in remembrance of Abraham's near-sacrifice of his son. Police elsewhere in the country had warned of violence ahead of the celebration in Nigeria, a country of more than 160 million.
Thousands have been killed in religious violence in the past decade in Nigeria.
In Kaduna alone, more than 2,000 died as the government moved to enact Islamic Shariah law in 2000. In 2002, rioting over a newspaper article suggesting the prophet Muhammad would have married a Miss World pageant contestant killed dozens here.
But the roots of the sectarian conflict across the north often have more to do with struggles for political and economic dominance.
In April, mobs armed with machetes and poison-tipped arrows took over streets in the capital Kaduna and the state's rural countryside after an election tribunal declared President Goodluck Jonathan the winner. Followers of his main opponent, former military ruler Muhammadu Buhari, a Muslim, quickly alleged the vote had been rigged, though observers largely declared the vote fair.

ZIMBABWE--An Epworth man was lucky to survive being struck with an axe in the head for kicking a married woman's buttocks during an altercation over a residential stand.

Bigboy Chihota was struck on his head after an altercation with one Eugenia Chitaka (32) on the wee hours of 8 October. Chitaka appeared before Harare regional magistrate Esthere Chivasa, jointly charged with Maxwell Mutova on a charge of attempted murder. She was however lucky after she was absolved for the serious charge and got convicted of a lighter charge of assault.

Mutova was found not guilty and acquitted after he stuck to his evidence that he was not present at the time of the alleged incident. Chitaka was sentenced to perform a correctional and lengthy 420 hours of community service (unpaid labour) for her to learn to control her temper.

The court heard that on 8 October at around 1am, at No. 199K Belapezi farm in Epworth, the complainant Bigboy Chihota and Chitaka had a misunderstanding over the same farm which Chihota had sold to the two.

Chitaka reportedly took an axe and struck Chihota once above his left eye and it was alleged that Mutova started using bricks to assault Chihota whilst he was on the ground. In coming up with the judgement, the court noted that Chihota had approached the woman at her place at an odd time and had provoked her by kicking her buttocks first.

She was slapped with 18 months imprisonment of which six months were suspended for five years on condition of good behaviour. The remaining 12 months were set aside on condition that she performs 420 hours of community service at Domboramwari police station. In passing the sentence the court noted that Chihota had not sustained serious injuries and had only four stitches on his head.

In aggravation, the court rules that, "there is need to punish the accused so that she could be a law abiding citizen and learn to control her temper".

via bulawayo24

ZIMBABWE--A SELF-PROCLAIMED man of the cloth allegedly asked a woman to bend over in the middle of a healing prayer session before forcing his "magic stick" into the unsuspecting patient's privates.

The woman (name withheld) is said to have approached Madzibaba Obvious Bunga (21) to get cured of infertility. The woman was diagnosed with a fallopian tube problem which has resulted in her failing to children.

"Realising that her problem was going to haunt her for the rest of her life, she visited Madzibaba Bunga at his lodgings in Nkulumane 5 in the city to ask for help.'

The prophet agreed to offer a helping hand and advised her to return the following evening when the healing session was to be conducted.

The woman heeded the instruction and returned as per arrangement. The two then headed to a bushy spot in the suburb after Madzibaba Bunga said his prayers only worked in bushes. While in the bush Madzibaba Bunga started praying with one of his hands on the woman's head. He then instructed her to bend over and the woman complied. Madzibaba Bunga is alleged to have pulled up the woman's dress and pulled down her underwear.

He took off his trousers before inserting his segxwal organ into the woman's privates and told her not to be afraid as it was the Holy Spirit entering her.

A passerby pounced on the two and demanded answers as to what was happening. Madzibaba Bunga said he was healing the woman which was rebuked by the passerby. The man advised the woman to make a report to police which she duly did.

Madzibaba Bunga was arrested. He appeared before Western Commonage magistrate, Shepherd Mjanja on a rape charge. He was remanded in custody to 3 November for plea recording.

via bulawayo24