Jonathan’s Brazil trip, abdication of duty — Reps

Members of the House of Representatives yesterday criticised President Goodluck Jonathan for travelling to Brazil for the United Nations conference on climate change when hundreds of Nigerians are being killed and maimed in several cities, saying he abdicated his duty.

The members stated this while debating a motion sponsored by Rep Yakubu Barde (PDP, Kaduna) who came under matters of urgent national importance over the Sunday bombings of three churches in Kaduna State and the reprisal attacks that followed.

The legislators unanimously voted summoning President Jonathan to come back home from Brazil. The House resolution invited the President and the security chiefs to address the House at a closed-door session on the insecurity situation in the country.

Representative Emma-nuel Jime (PDP, Benue) said: “There is an abdication of responsibility on the part of the President. So far what we have is a statement by his spokesman to say that he is too engaged with state issues than to talk about Boko Haram,” Rep. Jime added.

Minority Leader Femi Gbajabiamila (ACN, Lagos) also criticised the President for contravening the oath of office he swore on May 29th 2011 by travelling “to far away to Brazil to engage in climate conference when a state capital is under siege for hours.”

“We must begin to look elsewhere for solution, drastic situations calls for drastic measures. We have power of oversights not only on the National Security Adviser but also on the President himself”, the Minority Leader said.

In her submission, Rep. Olajumoke Okoya-Thomas (ACN, Lagos), said if the President knows that he can’t handle the situation ‘he should step down’. “We should issue marching order to the President in view of the security situation,” she said.

Rep. Jerry Manwe (PDP, Taraba) said:  “Is Mr. President scared? Is the IGP scared? Are there some people that cannot be arrested? If the President knows who is behind Boko Haram he should go after them otherwise nobody should come and tell us that they are on top of the situation”.

“Ali Modu Sheriff is today walking the street of Nigeria, Jonathan must now demonstrate that he has the will power to handle it, he can no longer be telling us that this is a phenomenon. He said even in his cabinet there are Boko Haram symphatisers but it means that he is the only person who has the custody of information about their sponsors,” Jime said.

Speaking shortly after the motion was passed, Speaker Aminu Waziri Tambuwal lamented that he was quoted out of context when he issued statement on the Sunday bomb blast and reprisal attacks in Kaduna state through his Special Adviser on Media and Public Affairs, Malam Imam Imam saying, “my stance has always been known on issue of terrorism; I have always spoken against the perpetrators, therefore I crave the indulgence of those desperately looking for what to use to smear my name to please leave me alone”.

Although no date was set for the appearance of the President before the House, this would be the first time that the House has summoned the President since assuming office in February 2010 after he was declared Acting President by a resolution of the both chambers of the National Assembly.

Meanwhile three opposition parties; Congress for Progressive Change (CPC), Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN) and the All Nigeria Peoples Party (ANPP) also condemned the President Jonathan for embarking on the Brazil trip while Yobe and Kaduna States when dozens of Nigerians wee being killed and maimed. ACN said it is a sign of incompetence and confused leadership.

Read More

Liberia’s Charles Taylor sentenced to 50 years

A UN-backed war crimes court sentenced Liberia’s former president Charles Taylor to 50 years in jail Wednesday for arming rebels in Sierra Leone in return for “blood diamonds”. Taylor, 64, was convicted last month of all 11 counts of war crimes and crimes against humanity for aiding and abetting Sierra Leone’s Revolutionary United Front (RUF) during the country’s brutal 1991-2001 civil war. In return, the court said, he was paid in diamonds mined by slave labour in areas under control of the rebels, who murdered, raped and kept sex slaves, hacked off limbs and forced children under 15 to fight.

 “The accused has been found responsible for aiding and abetting some of the most heinous crimes in human history,” said Special Court for Sierra Leone judge Richard Lussick on Wednesday. “The trial chamber unanimously sentences you to a single term of imprisonment for 50 years on all counts,” the judge said as he announced the ruling of the court based at Leidschendam, just outside The Hague.

 “The trial chamber noticed that the effects of these crimes on the families and society as a whole in Sierra Leone was devastating,” Lussick said in handing down the ruling, the first sentence against a former head of state in an international court since the Nazi trials at Nuremberg in 1946. Taylor, wearing gold-rimmed glasses and dressed in a dark suit and gold tie, listened with his eyes closed as the judge handed down the sentence, which Taylor’s team, and prosecutors, have two weeks to appeal.

 Early this month, chief prosecutor Brenda Hollis argued for 80 years behind bars for Taylor, once one of west Africa’s most powerful men and a driving force behind Sierra Leone’s decade-long war which claimed 120,000 lives. His defence argued such a sentence would be “excessive”. Throughout the trial, Taylor himself maintained his innocence and insisted he was instrumental in eventually ending Sierra Leone’s civil war. He will remain in the UN’s detention unit in The Hague until his appeal procedure is finalised. Taylor’s sentence will be served in a British prison. London’s offer in 2007 to host Taylor in custody if he was found guilty was part of the deal to put him on trial in the Netherlands-based court. The trial, which lasted nearly four years, wrapped up in March 2011.

 It saw several high-profile witnesses testify, including supermodel Naomi Campbell, who told of a gift of “dirty diamonds” she received in 1997 at a charity ball hosted by South Africa’s then president Nelson Mandela. Handing down the verdict last month, Judge Lussick stressed that although Taylor had substantial influence over the RUF, including its feared leader Foday Sankoh, this “fell short of command and control” of rebel forces. Sankoh died in 2003 before he could face trial. 

Authorities in Nigeria arrested Taylor in March 2006 as he tried to flee from exile after being forced to quit Liberia three years earlier, under international pressure to end that country’s own civil war. He was transferred to The Hague in mid-2006 amid security fears should he go on trial in Sierra Leone’s capital Freetown. 

Taylor’s sentencing came 66 years after the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg sentenced admiral Karl Donitz to 10 years in jail for his part in Nazi crimes during World War II. Adolf Hitler had appointed Donitz his successor shortly before committing suicide in Berlin in 1945.

Read More