National Night Out

On Tuesday, August 3, thousands of District of Columbia(DC) residents are expected to join with their neighbors, police officers and other community leaders in celebrating National Night Out. From community cookouts to open houses – block parties, candlelight vigils and athletic events – DC is gearing up for the 27th annual celebration of “America’s Night Out Against Crime.”  The citywide kickoff will begin at 6 pm at the Trinidad Recreation Center. Public safety characters McGruff the Crime Dog® and the National Knight® will be available to meet attendees and have their photos taken. In addition to the numerous activities taking place at the kickoff event, communities across DC – in all seven police districts – have scheduled NNO events during the late afternoon and evening hours.

The National Night Out campaign involves citizens, law enforcement agencies, civic groups, businesses, neighborhood organizations and local officials from 9,500 communities from all 50 states, US territories, Canadian cities and military bases worldwide.

National Night Out (NNO) is an annual event, sponsored by the National Association of Town Watch, that takes place on the first Tuesday in August. Each year, the Metropolitan Police Department actively participates in National Night Out by rallying community members throughout the District of Columbia to join with neighbors and police officers in their PSAs to be a part of this annual event.

National Night Out is designed to:

• Heighten crime and drug prevention awareness;
• Generate support for, and participation in, local anticrime programs;
• Strengthen neighborhood spirit and police-community partnerships; and
• Send a message to criminals letting them know that neighborhoods are organized and fighting back.

If you want to get involved in future NNO activites in your community, please contact your local police district, or call Yvonne Smith at (202) 727-8809.

Metropolitan Police Department Homicide Detectives announced that an arrest has been made in the June 2010, fatal shooting of Victor Chigoziri MBA-Jonas, Jr., which occurred in the 2500 block of 17^th Street, NW.

On Sunday, June 27, 2010, at 2:30 am, Third District officers responded to the 2500 block of 17^th Street, NW, for the report of a shooting; upon their arrival, they located the decedent suffering from gunshot wounds.  DC Fire and Emergency Medical Services transported the victim to and area hospital where he was admitted in critical condition. On Monday, July 19, 2010, at 2:25 pm, the decedent succumbed to his injuries and was pronounced dead. 

On Tuesday, July 27, 2010, at approximately 8:30 am, members of the Homicide Branch arrested Torain Devon Adams, an 18 year-old male from Northwest, DC, and charged him with First Degree Murder while Armed in the fatal shooting of Victor Chigoziri MBA-Jonas Jr., a 20 year-old male from the 14000 block of 4^th Street, Laurel, Maryland.

Dr. david Akanji

“Physical Disability is not a Barrier to a Willing Soul.”

 David Akanji an educator with recent doctorate degree in Special Education from Gallaudet University is a man who does not believe that his sight impairment is an excuse for him not to reach the heights.  In fact he is a better cook than some sighted men.  In this interview with Seyi  Oduyela, he shared his life experience. His journey that started from Bode in Iwo, Nigeria, through Little Rock in Arkansas and now Hyattsville in Maryland. He also spoke about his new book and his pet project; excerpts:

Q: Who is Dr. David Akanji?

A:  I am a native of Iwo in Osun State of Nigeria. It is very important for me, at this particular time, to begin the story of my life in earnest. An article writer says, “Life is a place full of struggles, it is also like a pendulum which swings from side to side, no one knows when and how it will fall.” As a blind person, I started my struggle in life at a very early age. My philosophy of life is “physical disability is not a barrier to a willing soul.”

Q: What year were you born and where is your place of birth?

A: I was born in 1955. Historically I was born at Bode, a village near Iwo; a town in Osun State of Nigeria.

Q: Were you born blind?

A: I became blind when I was an infant.

Q: Tell us about your elementary education?

A:  I did not start my primary education until I was 10 years old. I started my education at Ogbomosho Blind Training Center in 1961.

Q:  Where is Ogbomosho?

A: Ogbomosho is in Oyo State of Nigeria.  I was there from 1961 to 1963. During the same year, 1963, I was sent to my parents at Bode in order to continue my primary school education. I was at Bode District Council School from 1963 to 1966; when I successfully completed my primary school education. I did not even stop there. In 1967, I had the opportunity to attend Oshodi Vocational Training Center, where I learned Advanced Braille and Telephone operation.

Q: Where is Oshodi?

A:  Oshodi is in Lagos, former capital city of Nigeria. I was at the Center from 1967 to 1968. In 1969 I attended Iwo Catholic Secondary Modern School, where I learned typing. I was there till the end of 1970.

Q: What is Modern School?

A: Modern School is like Middle School. In 1971, I started my High Education at Ibadan Christ Apostolic Grammar School, Aperin- Oniyere, Ibadan, where I successfully completed my School Certificate papers with flying colours.  I was there from 1971 to 1975. In 1981, the then Oyo State Government, sent me to the United States of America for further studies. I was admitted by the then Arkansas Enterprises for the Blind. I was there so that I could be taught to use some different types of machines to enable me compete successfully with my sighted colleagues academically.

Q: How long were you there?

A: I was there for two semesters. In 1982, I was admitted by Philander Smith College, Little Rock, Arkansas for my Degree program in Special Education. I was at Philander from 1982 to 1985. I successfully completed my degree in three years instead of four. I graduated with Magna Cum Laudi. My thanks will always go to God and Dr. Joseph Amprey, the Vice President for the Academic Advancement at Kutz Town University in Pennsylvania; he was the one who got me a scholarship with which I did my graduate program at Howard University in Washington DC.

Q: When did you start your graduate program at Howard and for what course?

A: I started my graduate program in 1986. I was at Howard from 1986 to 1987. I completed the program in 3 semesters instead of two years. My course of study was M.Ed in Special education with specializing in Learning Disabilities.

Q: Did you participate in any extracurricular activities on campus?

A: When I was at Philander, I was a member of “Who is Who” among American Universities and Colleges. I was also a member of Alpha Kappa Mu.

Q: What did you do after you left Howard University?

A:  After the completion of my MA at Howard, I had the opportunity to teach Blind people like myself at Logan School for the Blind in North East, DC, I taught sighted students too. I taught braille to blind people and English Literature to the sighted people for many years. I taught with the District of Columbia Public School. Most of my students attended and still attending the University of the District of Columbia.

Q: You have a PhD, when and where did you do it?

A: Realistically, I started my PhD in 1998 at Gallaudet University, Washington, DC.  Frankly speaking, the journey at Gallaudet as far as PhD is concerned was not a smooth one; but as the Lord would have it, I survived the Doctoral ordeal. By the grace of God I took my qualifying exams and passed.

Q: What did you write your PhD Thesis on, how did you choose the topic and why?

A: The topic of my dissertation had been in my mind since the time I was at Philander after I had seriously looked into the problems of blind people like me in Nigeria. As I was thinking about this problem, I started to have the feeling that one day I will go into the Nitti gritty of these problems. As I was examining the problems facing blind people in Nigeria, I was able to put realize that the contributing factor to the problems of blind and visually impaired in Nigeria must be poor management on the part of administrators.

Q: What are the challenges you are facing?

A: The journey has not been easy. One thing about disability that I do not like so much is that you have to prove yourself to people every time. As far as people are concerned, once a person is disabled, there is nothing, absolutely nothing can come out of you. I t is left to the physically challenged person to prove that physical disability is not a barrier to a willing soul, and also there is no mountain a man or woman cannot climb provided he or she set mind on it.

Q: How did you become blind, since you stated earlier that you were not born blind?

A: When I was a small child, my parents said it was small pox. You know in our country, a very little thing could be blown out of proportion; that is, through the, those evil doers.

Q: when you look back at the beginning and now how do you feel?

A: As far as my accomplishments, I strongly believe that I have changed most people’s attitude towards people who are physically challenged. If I can do this, then there is no excuse for anybody not to want to strive.

Q: Tell us more about your family. What is your position and how many children?

A:   I am the third child. My mother gave birth to five children. My father is a polygamist. He married two wives.

Q:  From what I know and understand about Iwo people, they are predominantly Muslims. Were you a Muslim before you became a Christian?

A:  I was born Muslim, my Muslim name is Sabitu.

Q: Why and how did you become a Christian?

A: When I was at Ogbomosho Blind Training Center, the Baptist Missionaries preached to me and I found Jesus through them. Most importantly, through me, all the people in my family are Christians now.

Q: What led to the book you wrote on Blind Education in Nigeria?

A: As I have already said, being a blind person and when I got here, , especially when I was in Nigeria, I started to go to school, I encountered a lot of problems. There is nothing more stressful, especially when you are physically challenged and you are struggling to survive and people are putting barriers upon barriers on your way. If you don’t have God’s backing and you are not fully determined, there is every possibility for that particular person to give up. As a result that I did not give up and I was able to compete my Secondary education in Nigeria, I made up my mind that well, whatever is going to happen, I am not going to sit down and fold my arms and see other blind people encounter the same problems I encountered when I was young like them. As I have told you, my PhD Dissertation topic came when I was doing my second statistics at Philander. When I went to Nigeria for data collection, , and blind  people started to narrate to me, what, those of them who are attending school, what they are going through; I was weeping inside me. I don’t why they should be neglected like that. As a matter of fact, the government is not even ready to care for them.  Some of them were sent to vocational schools but after graduation, they have nothing to do. No jobs and the government is not doing anything to set them up, so they eventually went back to begging for survival. So I felt someone has to stand up to do something to help this people and that is exactly why I decided to write the book.

Q: What do you think your book will do?

A: To serve as an eye opener. It is a wakeup call to Nigeria government at all levels.

Q: What message do you have for physically challenged people?

A: They should be fully determined. They should not allow anybody to intimidate them or tell them that cannot do anything about their condition, because disability is not inability.

Q: What do you think the Nigerian government should do about education?

A:  I think the system of education in Nigeria should be reviewed because we have been giving ourselves what I can call mental torture. For instance now, you tell me that someone who passed literature and science but failed English language, then cannot go to the University, did he write his science, literature, economics and other subjects he passed in another language? For the physically challenged, government should provide adequate educational materials that will help the disabled get the right education they deserve. And those sent to Vocational Training centers should be taken care of. They need to be gainfully employed.

Q: what is the difference between living in Nigeria and America as a physically challenged person?

A: oh my goodness! The gap is too wide. First, America takes proper care of physically challenged people. Let me give you an example, on metro buses and train, disabled people enjoy priority seating. The sidewalks here too enable blind man like to go anywhere with my cane. Nothing like that exists in Nigeria, not because we cannot afford it back home it is because of lack of priority of the government in Nigeria. Those who are not even physically challenged find it hard to live comfortably.

Q: What do you for fun?

A: I don’t go to parties. Any party you see me, that person must be very important to me. I do go to parties on very rare occasion.

Q; You live by yourself. How do you all the things you do by yourself?

A: That is training. That is why America is great. I learned a lot of self-reliant skills at the Arkansas Enterprises for the Blind. They taught me how to cook. I did not know that I could do what I am doing now; I realized my potentials at Arkansas Enterprises for the Blind. I can do almost everything by myself. I can cook, bake cake and more; before I will request for any help from sighted person, I should have tried so hard.

Q: Do you consider going back home?

A: Yes. I am working on a project now. I have a foundation. The project is setting up School system from elementary to University and Vocational Training Center to help physically challenged people. I am hoping to start next year. We are looking for funding now.

Dr. David Akanji on his graduation day at Gallaudet University, Washington DC

PRESS RELEASE

The Vienna Declaration: A Global Call to Action for Science-based Drug Policy

Three leading scientific and health policy organizations have launched a global drive for signatories to the Vienna Declaration (www.viennadeclaration.com), a statement seeking to improve community health and safety by calling for the incorporation of scientific evidence into illicit drug policies. Among those supporting the declaration and urging others to sign is 2008 Nobel Laureate and International AIDS Society (IAS) Governing Council member Prof. Francoise Barre-Sinoussi, co-discoverer of HIV.
The Vienna Declaration is the official declaration of the XVIII International AIDS Conference (AIDS 2010), the biennial meeting of more than 20,000 HIV professionals, taking place in Vienna, Austria from 18 to 23 July 2010 (www.aids2010.org).
“Many of us in AIDS research and care confront the devastating impacts of misguided drug policies every day,” said AIDS 2010 Chair Dr. Julio Montaner, President of the IAS and Director of the BC Centre for Excellence in HIV/AIDS. “These policies fuel the AIDS epidemic and result in violence, increased crime rates and destabilization of entire states – yet there is no evidence they have reduced rates of drug use or drug supply. As scientists, we are committed to raising our collective voice to promote evidence-based approaches to illicit drug policy that start by recognizing that addiction is a medical condition, not a crime.”

The Vienna Declaration describes the known harms of conventional “war on drugs” approaches and states: “The criminalization of illicit drug users is fuelling the HIV epidemic and has resulted in overwhelmingly negative health and social consequences. A full policy reorientation is needed…Reorienting drug policies towards evidence-based approaches that respect, protect and fulfill human rights has the potential to reduce harms deriving from current policies and would allow for the redirection of the vast financial resources towards where they are needed most: implementing and evaluating evidence-based prevention, regulatory, treatment and harm reduction interventions.” Outside of sub-Saharan Africa, injecting drug use accounts for approximately one in three new cases of HIV. In some areas of rapid HIV spread, such as Eastern Europe and Central Asia, injecting drug use is the primary cause of new HIV infections. Legal barriers to scientifically proven prevention services such as needle programmes and opioid substitution therapy (OST) mean hundreds of thousands of people become infected with HIV and Hepatitis C (HCV) every year. The criminalization of people who inject drugs has also resulted in record incarceration rates placing a massive burden on the taxpayer. HIV outbreaks have also been reported in prisons in various settings internationally. This emphasis on criminalization produces a cycle of disease transmission, along with broken homes and livelihoods destroyed. Yet these costs, along with the more direct costs of the ‘war on drugs’, produce no measurable benefits.

“The current approach to drug policy is ineffective because it neglects proven and evidence-based interventions, while pouring a massive amount of public funds and human resources into expensive and futile enforcement measures,” said Dr. Evan Wood, founder of the International Centre for Science in Drug Policy (ICSDP) and Clinical Associate Professor at the University of British Columbia. “It’s time to accept the war on drugs has failed and create drug policies that can meaningfully protect community health and safety using evidence, not ideology.”

The Vienna Declaration calls on governments and international organizations, including the United Nations, to take a number of steps, including: • undertake a transparent review the effectiveness of current drug policies;
• implement and evaluate a science-based public health approach to address the harms stemming from illicit drug use;
• scale up evidence-based drug dependence treatment options;
• abolish ineffective compulsory drug treatment centres that violate the Universal Declaration of Human Rights; and unequivocally endorse and scale up funding for the drug treatment and harm reduction measures endorsed by the World Health Organization (WHO) and the United Nations. The declaration also calls for the meaningful involvement of people who use drugs in developing, monitoring and implementing services and policies that affect their lives. “As a scientist, I strongly support drug policies that are based on evidence of what actually works,” said Prof. Francoise Barre-Sinoussi, Director of the Regulation of Retroviral Infections Unit at the Institute Pasteur, IAS Governing Council member and recipient of the 2008 Nobel Prize for Medicine. “I join with my colleagues around the world today to sign the Vienna Declaration in support of science-driven policies and human rights.”
The effectiveness of opioid substitution therapy (OST) and needles and syringe programmes is well-documented, though access to such interventions is often limited where HIV is spreading most rapidly. According to various scientific reviews conducted by WHO, the US Institutes of Medicine and others, these programmes reduce HIV rates without increasing rates of drug use. These cost-effective interventions also produce significant savings in future health care costs, and help people who use drugs access health care and drug treatment. No evidence exists demonstrating negative consequences of use of these programmes.

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“Reflecting the AIDS 2010 theme of Rights Here, Right Now, the Vienna Declaration is rooted in the belief that global drug policy must respect the human rights of people who use drugs if it is to be at all effective,” said AIDS 2010 Local Co-Chair Dr. Brigitte Schmied, President of the Austrian AIDS Society. “No one who is familiar with addiction would deny the negative impacts it has on individuals, families and entire communities, but those harms do not justify human rights violations. People addicted to illicit drugs have the right to evidence-based drug treatment, to interventions to prevent infection, and, if they are living with HIV, to antiretroviral treatment.”

The Vienna Declaration was drafted by an international team of scientists and other experts, many of whom will participate in AIDS 2010 next month. It was initiated by the IAS, the International Centre for Science in Drug Policy (ICSDP), and the BC Centre for Excellence in HIV/AIDS based in Vancouver, British Columbia.
Those wishing to sign on may visit www.viennadeclaration.com, where the full text of the declaration, along with a list of authors, is available. The two-page declaration references 28 reports, describing the scientific evidence documenting the effectiveness of public health approaches to drug policy and the negative consequences of approaches that criminalize drug users.

About AIDS 2010
The XVIII International AIDS Conference (AIDS 2010) is the biennial meeting of researchers, implementers and diverse leaders involved in the global response to HIV. It is convened by the IAS in partnership with international, regional and local partners. Visit www.aids2010.org for more information and to register for the conference, which is taking place from 18 to 23 July 2010 in Vienna, Austria.

International AIDS Society
The International AIDS Society is the world’s leading independent association of HIV professionals, with 14,000 members from 190 countries working at all levels of the global response to AIDS. Our members include researchers from all disciplines, clinicians, public health and community practitioners on the frontlines of the epidemic, as well as policy and programme planners.

International Centre for Science in Drug Policy
ICSDP aims to be a primary source for rigorous scientific evidence on illicit drug policy in order to benefit policymakers, law enforcement, and affected communities. To this end, the ICSDP conducts original scientific research in the form of systematic reviews, evidence-based drug policy guidelines, and research collaborations with leading scientists and institutions across diverse continents and disciplines.
BC Centre for Excellence in HIV/AIDS
The BC Centre for Excellence in HIV/AIDS (BC-CfE) is Canada’s largest HIV/AIDS research, treatment and education facility. The BC-CfE is based at St Paul’s Hospital, Providence Health Care, a teaching hospital of the University of British Columbia. The BC-CfE is dedicated to improving the health of British Columbians with HIV through developing, monitoring and disseminating comprehensive research and treatment programs for HIV and related diseases.

MEDIA CONTACTS: Mahafrine Petigara Edelman

Email:mahafrine.petigara@edelman.com
Tel: +1 604 623 3007, ext. 297

Michael Kessler
Media Consultant, AIDS 2010
Email: mkessler@ya.com
Tel: +34 655 792 699 ]]> http://www.africaninterest.com/world/the-vienna-declaration-a-global-call-to-action-for-science-based-drug-policy/feed/ 3 http://www.africaninterest.com/world/%e2%80%9chuman-traffickers-exploited-2-4m-people%e2%80%9d-un-report/ http://www.africaninterest.com/world/%e2%80%9chuman-traffickers-exploited-2-4m-people%e2%80%9d-un-report/#comments Thu, 08 Jul 2010 20:17:41 +0000 Shamsydeen Badmus http://www.africaninterest.com/?p=983 “Human Traffickers Exploited 2.4m People,” UN Report

By Shamsydeen Badmus

More than 2.4 million people around the world are currently being exploited by human traffickers for sexual or forced labour, the United Nations said on Tuesday. The UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) launched a new report which estimates that human traffickers in Europe make up to three billion US dollars a year from the trade. Exploited people are often coerced by violence, debt and confiscation of passports, the report said. It also found a “strong correlation” between the nationality of people trafficked and that of their recruiters. Just over half of people trafficked in Europe are from the Balkans or the former Soviet Union, while 13 per cent are from Latin America and five per cent from Africa, according to the report.

Tayo Adelaja

Global rates of poverty, health problems, crime and human rights abuses are disproportionately far higher among indigenous people, the United Nations has found. The UN’s first study of the state of the world’s 370 million indigenous people was published yesterday. It reveals that the life expectancy of indigenous people is up to 20 years lower than the life expectancy of non-natives in some countries. Poor nutrition, limited access to care, lack of resources crucial to maintaining health and well-being and contamination of natural resources are the main factors that affect the health of indigenous people. Indigenous people make up only five per cent of the world’s population, but represent around one third of the world’s 900 million extremely poor rural people. The report states that self-determination and land rights are vital for the survival of indigenous people.

Former President Olusegun Obasanjo

Terrorism in Nigeria, Former President Obasanjo Ignored Earlier Warning

By Samuel ‘Seyi Oduyela

If there is any military officer lucky in Nigeria, it is General Matthew Aremu Okikiola Olusegun Obasanjo. He is lucky because he never participated in any coup, but had been a beneficiary of coups. He enjoys taking other people’s credit when the job is completed. He claimed the credit of being a Civil war Hero because the leader of the Biafra Army surrendered to his Command. After the ouster of General Yakubu Gowon, Obasanjo became the second-in-command to Murtala Mohammed and after the assassination of Murtala on February 13, 1976, Obasanjo, “an unwilling candidate,” was forced to take over as the Head of State. The position he held for 3 years.

 While he was arrested and jailed for his alleged involvement in a coup plot against late General Sani Abacha, he was lucky again to leave the prison alive but his second-in-command during his tenure as a military Head of State was not lucky, Major-General Shehu Musa Yar’Adua died mysteriously in Abakaliki Prison. Obasanjo came out of prison to become the first Nigerian former military ruler to come back as a civilian president. So far, he holds the record of being the only civilian president spending second term in office. And he still on the road to making another news as the first person who rules “democratically” for 12 years.

Omar Bakri Mohammad

 No one could have considered himself luckier than Obasanjo, who won where his fellow Yorubas  failed. Late M.K.O. Abiola won the freest and fairest election in the history of Nigeria, but he was denied of his victory by Obasanjo’s first constituency- the military. Chief Obafemi Awolowo attempted to become President but lost; but Obasanjo was never interested but persuaded to rule.  These and many more have made this man to become the most powerful leader of the most populous black nation in the world and by extension, wanting to become the most powerful man in Africa. Obasanjo played major roles in preventing these two people accomplish their political ambition. He confirmed in his book, ‘Not My Will’ that he voted against Chief Awolowo in the 1979 elections. He also supported the annulment of the June 12, 1993 election and was instrumental to the appointment of Chief Ernest Shonekan as Interim government Head of State rather than fighting for the release of the June 12 elections.

To international community, he is a lover of democracy, because he voluntarily handed over power to a democratically elected government in 1979. But what is not known to them is that it was not Obasanjo’s calling to hand over or not to hand over in 1979, he was simply acting the script of those who put him there as a Head of State. The same people, who released him from jail, kill Chief M.K.O Abiola and imposed him on People’s Democratic Party as presidential candidate.

Umar Farouk Mutallab

In 1999 Napoleon Igboku-Otu, journalist and environmental activist stumbled on a piece of information that borders on national security. Perhaps if something had been done may be we may not have had the serious case of terrorism facing the world now. According to the information, extremist Palestinian Islamic group, Hamas, were to train some Islamic fundamentalists in Nigeria for an all-out Islamic Jihad against non-muslims, they had recruited Iraqi dissident military officers. The Islamic Jihadists, the report says had already established training camps in Northern Nigeria and were recruiting Sudanese Muslims and smuggling them through Niger Republic into Maiduguri, Kano, Katsina and Kaduna in readiness for the planned bloody campaign. The report named a certain Sheikh Omar Baleri, head of Hez Bothriah, an Islamic group with a bridgehead in Northern Nigeria as the brain behind the set up in Nigeria. Another Omar Bakri Mohammed was mentioned with email address: obm@mail.com, checks on this email in 2002 show that it has been deactivated.

Syrian born radical Islamist Sheikh Omar bin Bakri Muhammad is the founder of the London branch of Hizb Al-Tahrir (the Islamic Liberation Party ), and of the organization “Jama’at Al-Muhajirun” (”The Emigrants,” in reference to those who accompanied the Prophet Muhammad on his Hijra from Mecca to Medina).

Igboku-Otu-Out contacted the Director-General of the State Security Service (SSS) Colonel Kayode Are (rtd) who did not see anything serious and alarming in the information. Are’s only response was to lodge the activist in a hotel in Abuja while he pussyfooted. His attempt to see President Obasanjo directly was rebuffed.  According to Aso Rock sources, Aliyu Mohammed Gusau, the National Security Adviser, prevented Igboku from seeing Obasanjo. Sadly,  a day after his aborted visit to the Villa, unknown men went to his house at Adeniyi Jones, Ikeja, slaughtered him and that was all. Some days after, the men of the SSS were in his house looking for the document on the said terrorists. The News Magazine published the story in 2001. Nobody took it serious, same year they struck in the United States. The file has been thrown into the dustbin of the police just like the ones before him. The Police could not have done anything since the President himself told the press that Igboku was attacked by armed robbers, even before the Police launched its investigation.  From 2000 to date Nigeria have had many religious-motivated demonstrations where many lives were lost. In February 2000, riots erupted in Kaduna, over 2000 people were killed and nobody was brought to book, in spite of the fact that someone was caught in the security report to have supplied machetes to Muslims to attack Christians. More than 3000 died in Kano in 2001 while 200 were killed in 2002. For all these deaths no one has been arrested or charged.

A serving Minister of his government was indicted by security report. The security report, indicted Sango Daura, who was then the Minister of Agriculture. What Obasanjo did was to remove Daura from his cabinet for some phony reasons without addressing the serious report that showed Daura in a video distributing machete to Islamic militants to fight and kill southern Christians. The report according to sources was doctored by Aliyu Mohammed Gusau, who was Obasanjo’s National Security Adviser.

To be continued…….

Aminatou Haidar

 By Tayo Adelaja

Western Sahara’s most prominent human rights activist has been told to appear in a Spanish court for public disorder after starting a hunger strike in the Canary Islands. Aminatou Haidar, who campaigns for indigenous Sahrawi rights, started her protest at Lanzarote airport on Sunday after Morocco refused to allow her to return to the disputed territory of Western Sahara. Ms Haidar was allegedly arrested and had her passport confiscated by Moroccan authorities on Friday after arriving in the Western Sahara capital of Laayoune, where she lives, on a flight from Spain’s Canary Islands. She was sent back to the archipelago. Ms Haidar has accused Spain of holding her against her will. Spanish officials say she cannot leave without a passport. Morocco controls most of the disputed Western Sahara, but Algerian-based separatists want a referendum on independence.

Seyi Oduyela/Washington, DC

The United Nations-backed Global Fund announced yesterday that it has secured 2.4 billion US dollars to support projects that fight AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria in low-income countries over the next two years. These three diseases are estimated to kill more than four million people every year. The Global Fund also said that a 216 million US dollar pilot programme to reduce prices for effective malaria medicines will go ahead in nine African countries and Cambodia. Researchers at an international malaria conference in Nairobi earlier this month had revealed that almost one million people die from the disease each year because they cannot afford the most effective treatment available.