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Five Chibok parents received calls from missing girls’ mobiles

Five parents of the abducted 219 Chibok schoolgirls have received calls from the phone numbers of their missing daughters, our correspondent gathered on Tuesday.

The parents who reportedly called back the lines were however told off by the respondents at the other end.

The Chairman, Chibok Community in Abuja, Tsambido Abana, told our correspondent that the community planned to report the incident to the government for investigation.

“Five parents informed me that they have been receiving calls from their daughters’ phones, but when they called back, the persons that responded said the phones were their own and that they should stop calling the lines. We don’t know if the network (telecom firms) had allocated the girls’ lines to other persons or if the callers were just playing pranks on the parents; we will report this to the government for security agencies to investigate,” Abana said.

The Chibok elder could not however confirm when the parents received the calls, saying he was just informed about it on Tuesday.

Meanwhile, a 16-year-old girl identified as Fati, who regained freedom after spending two years in Boko Haram’s captivity, has explained how teenage girls volunteer to go on suicide missions in order to escape molestation and other forms of hardship under the sect.

Fati, whose name was changed to protect her identity, said young girls fight to strap on a bomb, not because they were brainwashed by their captors but because the relentless hunger and sexual abuse became too much to bear.

“They came to us to pick us. They would ask, ‘Who wants to be a suicide bomber?’ The girls would shout, ‘me, me, me.’ They were fighting to do the suicide bombings,” Fati told CNN.

“It was just because they want to run away from Boko Haram. If they give them a suicide bomb, then maybe they would meet soldiers, tell them, ‘I have a bomb on me’ and they could remove the bomb. They can run away.”

The teenager who was kidnapped from her village by the insurgents  shared her experience with CNN at a refugee camp in Cameroon.

“We said, ‘No, we are too small; we don’t want to get married, so they married us by force,” Fati said, explaining that after he raped her for the first time, her abuser gave her a wedding present – a purple and brown dress with a matching headscarf that she would wear for the next two years.

While under his control, she explained that she was whisked from one hideouts to another hideouts in order to evade security forces. She recalled that she met girls even younger than her in Sambisa Forest, some of whom she claimed were the abducted Chibok schoolgirls.

“There were so many kidnapped girls there, I couldn’t count. There were always bombs and bullets coming from the sky. All of the girls were so frightened. All of them, they always cried and the men raped us. There is no food, nothing. The children, you can count their ribs because of the hunger,” said Fati, who is now in Minawao refugee camp in Cameroon.

Fati said, “Many girls are still in Sambisa, some volunteering to die so that they can perhaps live.”

The United Nations International Children Emergency Fund has said Boko Haram’s use of child bombers has increased over the last year with one in five suicide attacks now done by children.

In a report titled, Beyond Chibok, UNICEF said that boys abducted and recruited into Boko Haram’s ranks were forced to attack their own families to demonstrate their loyalty, while girls were exposed to severe abuse including sexual violence and forced marriage to fighters.

The UN report was released as Nigeria approaches the second anniversary of the kidnapping by Boko Haram of more than 200 girls from their boarding school in Chibok.

“Girls, who are often drugged, were behind three-quarters of such attacks committed by the militant Islamist group in Cameroon, Nigeria and Chad.

“It is an 11-fold increase with four attacks in 2014 compared to 44 the next year, including January 2016,” the report said, adding that the change in tactics reflected the loss of territory by the terrorist group.

UNICEF said up to 1.3 million children have been forced from their homes across Cameroon, Chad, Nigeria and Niger.

A 17-year-old girl who was abducted and is living with her baby in a camp Maiduguri told the UN agency that she refused to marry despite death threats.

“Then they came for me at night. They kept me locked in a house for over a month and told me: ‘Whether you like it or not, we have already married you,” she narrated.

Fuel scarcity to disappear in days as more stock arrives –NNPC

THE Nigerian National Petroleum Corpora­tion (NNPC) has assured that fuel queues will disap­pear in the next few days with the arrival of more stocks, enough to soak the nation’s demand.
NNPC Chief Executive Officer (Upstream), Bello Rabiu, gave the Corpora­tion’s assurance while brief­ing State House correspon­dents at the Presidential Villa, Abuja, yesterday.
Flanked by the Chief Operating Officer (Down­stream), Henry Nkem-Obi; Chief Operating Officer (Refineries), Anibo Kragha and Group General Man­ager (Public Affairs), Gar­badeen Mohammed, Rabiu, who gave the update on the supply and distribution of the product, pledged that the Corporation will saturate the market with more petrol than the nation can consume.
He disclosed that five vessels were discharging products in various parts of the country, beside the more than 120 million litres of products the private import­ers were also discharging to complement NNPC imports.
The NNPC boss, ex­plained that there was delay in circulation of the products across the country because they had to be trucked since the pipelines were still not in good condition.
According to him, “The plan going forward from to­day, is that we want to make sure that we give more than what is required in the whole country. The total require­ment of the country is just about 1,300 trucks but our plan is to make at least 1,500 available everyday until this thing clears up.
“So, we want to make sure that we saturate the market in a very short time and I think you can see clearly now that Lagos is almost cleared and Abuja is getting better. Other places will follow.”

He said the Corporation knows what each state needs and the demand would be met, adding, “we just want to ensure this thing happen and quickly too.”
While apologising for the fuel scarcity on behalf of the Minister of State Petroleum Resources, Dr. Ibe Kachik­wu and the NNPC, Rabiu assured that it would never repeat itself.
He noted that part of the ways to guard against re­occurrence was to have in-country storage capacity so that it would take minimum time to move products to de­pots in any part of the coun­try, adding that the NNPC was therefore concentrating on that.
He added that efforts were also underway to ensure that the refineries and the pipelines were put back to order to achieve stability and make fuel queues a thing of the past.
He appealed to Nigerians  to refrain from panic buying as the products would now be available on a regular ba­sis in all the filling stations across the country.

We spend $1.8bn to import fuel every quarter — NNPC

Read more at: http://www.vanguardngr.com/2016/04/spend-1-8bn-import-fuel-every-quarter-nnpc/

We spend $1.8bn to import fuel every quarter — NNPC

Read more at: http://www.vanguardngr.com/2016/04/spend-1-8bn-import-fuel-every-quarter-nnpc/

ABUJA—Nigeria National Petroleum Cooperation, NNPC, has revealed that an average of $1.8 billion is spent on quarterly basis on the importation of Premium Motor Spirit, PMS, also known as fuel, into the country. This was as the corporation also apologized to Nigerians for the lingering scarcity of the product across the country. In a joint briefing at the presidential villa, Abuja, yesterday, four officials of NNPC in the persons of the Group General Managing, GGM, Public Affairs, Mr. Garba Deen Mohammed, and the Group Executive Directors, GED, Mr Bello Rabiu, (Upstream) Henry Obih (Downstream) and Anibor Kragha (Refineries), assured that long queues at the gas stations would disappear in days. Speaking through Rabiu, amid intermittent contributions from them, the GEDs said that already, several trucks loaded with fuel had been dispatched to Abuja, Lagos and Port Harcourt. Fuel now available in Abuja According to him, Abuja is now wet with fuel and other areas will soon receive supplies. He said: “The objective is to brief you on the current situation of the petroleum products scarcity and queues all over the country. Let us start by tendering our apology and telling the people that we are really doing the right thing. ”We have been working very hard. It is supply issues that have been causing this problem but we are doing everything possible to end it. What we are doing now is to ensure that we get necessary supplies into the country through imports as well as through our refineries. “As we speak today, we have 5 vessels serving products all over the country. And not only in Lagos, but also Port Harcout, Warri and Calabar. Apart from these vessels discharging, we also have private sector people that imported over 120 million and are discharging currently. In moving the product out into the hinterlands, we have a little option because most of the pipelines are still not working. “Because pipelines are not working, we are relying on about 100 percent trucking to the hinterlands. The plan is that going forward, from today, we will ensure that we give what is more than required in this country. The total requirement for the whole country is about 1300 trucks. But our plan is to make at least 1500 trucks available everyday. We want to make sure that we sustain the market in a very short time. You can see that Lagos is almost cleared. Abuja is getting better. Other places will follow. Apology to Nigerians ”On behalf of the Minister, who is also NNPC GMD, we are very sorry for what has happened. And we are working very hard to ensure that this does not happen again. We are doing everything possible to have storage that will not allow us to experience this again. Once our depots are wet, it will not take anybody more than 4 hours to take the products from NNPC to any part of the country. “We are trying to ensure sustainable import, making sure that the refineries work and the pipelines also works. That will reduce all these incidences. Once we achieve that, queues will become things of the past in the country.”

Read more at: http://www.vanguardngr.com/2016/04/spend-1-8bn-import-fuel-every-quarter-nnpc/

Chibok girls constantly on Buhari’s mind, says Osinbajo.

 

 

Vice President Yemi Osinbajo yesterday cautioned against cynicism and hopelessness about the recovery of the 217 Chibok girls abducted by Boko Haram.

According to him, their recovery is uppermost in the mind of President Muhammadu Buhari.

He spoke at a one-day Roundtable on Vulnerable People in Insurgency and other conflicts in Nigeria, organised by the Office of the National Security Adviser (ONSA).

He said: “At any security council meeting that I have attended, the President in particular has always been concerned about the question of Chibok girls in particular. Of course it comes out of ensuring that apart from the international importance attached to it, he reflects on the abduction as if any of the girls is one of his own”.

National Security Adviser Maj.-Gen. Babagana Moguno also said: “Government is also committed to locating the whereabouts of the Chibok girls with a view to rescuing them. The issue has been at the top of the agenda during national council meetings. Moreover, the security agencies have stepped up their search and rescue activities. For instance, in the last one month over 3000 hostages have been rescued by the armed forces in their counter-insurgency operations in the North East,” he said.

We spend $1.8bn to import fuel every quarter — NNPC

Read more at: http://www.vanguardngr.com/2016/04/spend-1-8bn-import-fuel-every-quarter-nnpc/