Latest and Current Articles, Items & News on Sahara Reporters

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Francis Ojo - I know why you are inconsolable over Justice Salami's salacious suit against Chief Justice of Nigeria Katsina Alu. If we can behold the revealing details in his angry suit, how in a loud whisper, the Chief Priest of Justice tried to force a smelly deal down the throat of Ayo Salami.

" The Sultan's office is at stake if you clear the road of Justice." He must have croaked like a college bully staring down the old feeble looking Salami. "So block it!" Salami alleged that because he refused to erect the check point of Injustice, Katsina Alu, a judicial bully, hijacked the road personally and erected the road block. So was constrained to the dustbin, the entire wishes of the ordinary people of Sokoto State to elect the leader of their choice as democracy had promised when they lined up orderly to cast their ballot.

Source: Crooked Judges,  A Cracked Judiciary And  Corrupt Settlement

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When last year SaharaReporters broke the news that attorney Ephraim Emeka Ugwuonye had unlawfully retained $1.55 million of the tax refund accruing to the Nigerian Embassy from a series of real estate transactions, Mr. Ugwuonye reacted by filing a series of lawsuits against some Nigerians he accused of libel for their involvement in publishing or commenting on the story.

He sued then Ambassador Oluwole Rotimi as well as SaharaReporters and Mobolaji Aluko, a professor of engineering, in the US District Court for Maryland.  In the lawsuits, he alleged defamation, claiming that the defendants conspired to defame him because he was "Igbo." In his complaint, he also claimed that the Nigerian authorities gave him a "lien" authorizing him to withhold the $1.55 million tax return in lieu of payment for unrelated legal services rendered to the Nigerian authorities.

The US District Court soon dismissed Mr. Ugwuonye's suit against Mr. Aluko for lack of jurisdiction, a fact that Mr. Ugwuonye should have known as a lawyer. In dismissing the case, the court awarded Mr. Aluko $750, a fine which Mr. Ugwuonye paid. Ugwuonye's lawsuit against Mr. Rotimi was similarly dismissed for lack of service, because the suit could not be served on the former ambassador, another aspect Emeka Ugwuonye was supposed to know as a lawyer. 

Source: Nigerian Embassy Real Estate $1.55 Million Tax Refund: The Travails of US-Based Nigerian Lawyer, Emeka Ugwuonye

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Tayo Soyemi - Human rights lawyer Femi Falana has dragged the African Union to the African Court on Human and Peoples' Rights in Arusha Tanzania over alleged denial of access to the court.

In the suit filed 17 February 2011 at the court, Falana is challenging violations of his "rights to freedom from discrimination, fair hearing and equal treatment contrary to Articles 1,2,7 and 13 of the African Charter on Human and Peoples' Rights."

Source: Falana Sues AU Over Denial Of Access To African Human Rights Court

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Jide Ajani, Editor, Northern Operations - Buhari... Without a strong and clean leadership, Nigeria cannot be stabilised

In this second part of General Muhammadu Buhari's interview, he touches on the very essence of his challenge against the elite in the country.
Just check out this exchange:

General, that  is why I asked about the lessons you've learnt in politics.   ANPP was your party that time and see how they treated you.

Do you know what? The decision to withdraw the case from court was not taken by the appropriate organs of the party saddled with that responsibility.

Source: Buhari: Those Who Want To Flee When I Take Over Are Free – Vanguard Newspaper Interview

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Rufus Kayode Oteniya – Some say he is Godsent to be the man for the moment who would change the status quo, others say he is not; some call him the lucky man with the Midas touch while others say his good luck, like the biblical Jabez's, brings ill-luck to the nation and others around him; some call him the messiah that Nigeria needs and others say Nigeria would better without him.

President Goodluck Ebele Azikwe Jonathan (GEAJ) is man certainly drawn between uncritical sympathisers and unsympathetic critics. He sure means different things to different folks

Source: Is President Goodluck Jonathan Different From Others? - Part 1

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Lauren Frayer (Contributor) - With unrest sweeping his country, where is Africa's longest-serving leader?
Libya's Moammar Gadhafi briefly plunged into crowds of his countrymen near Tripoli's Green Square last Friday, riding atop a truck surrounded by supporters.

It was likely an attempt to portray the hoards taking to the streets as his own backers, rather than anti-government demonstrators, as is now overwhelmingly the case. He didn't speak publicly and hasn't

Just three days later, it's unlikely he'd survive crowd-surfing the larger, angrier crowds that have swept westward after claiming control of Libya's second-largest city, Benghazi, to the capital Tripoli today. Snipers opened fire on protesters trying to seize Green Square before dawn, and demonstrators broke into the offices of state-run TV channels. Violent crackdowns by plainclothes security forces have killed at least 233, according to Human Rights Watch.

Source: With Libya in Turmoil, Where Is Gadhafi?-AolNews

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I was in Odo Awukam's car a few hours into the New Year one frigid mid-morning in Calabar where I was attending the State's annual Calabar carnival. Behind us sat Ubi, Ken Nsan and Isaac. I was almost dozing as we drove round town to no where in particular, the serenity and sheer ambience of one of Nigeria's finest cities soothing my jangled Lagos nerves in the harmattan. Odo pulled out a few cans of Soda drinks from his glove compartment; tossed them around and inserted 'Terry Tha Rapman's' 'Boys are not smiling' CD into the car player.

-    Jude Egbas     
     
Source: This Year, 'Boys' Are Not Smiling

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Since the political and constitutional upheaval in Tunisia, then followed by Egypt and now Libya, Jordan, Bahrain, Yemen and so on, some Nigerians have publicly commented that Nigerians can only dream of Egyptian and Tunisian style revolutions and political uprising.

Some Nigerians have even gone to the unreasonable extent of actually saying such will not, and could NEVER happen in Nigeria! And we must ask, REALLY?

Dimeji Bankole, Speaker of Nigeria's House of Representatives drove the last nail into this revolution-is-impossible-in-Nigeria argument several days ago, through his address to parliamentarians from Germany who were visiting Nigeria. Speaker Bankole, whose only claim to fame, infamy, are series of scandalous dealings and revelations against him thinks Nigerians have no reasons to revolt?

By Paul I. Aduji

Source: Is Revolution Impossible In Nigeria?

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No I totally believe Justice Ayo Salami period...I believe and see this in the prism of an ordinary Nigerian. The sin of Justice Salami in the eye of the opponents is simple "Justice Salami has broken decades old code of silence, never to speak up against the powers that be in the Judiciary even if it is a matter that questions integrity and misconduct of Judges and leadership of the judiciary, as such he must be dealt with appropriately as a deterrent to others who might do the same or follow his lead."

In Adolf Hitler's Germany, Josef Goebbels was the megaphone and the propaganda machine of the Nazi Germany; he disseminates information from the third Reich, to the German people. He is the spokes man of the evil regime that planned and killed over 6 million people. In that Nazi Germany, discontent voices were shouted down and stifled and so it was until Nazi Germany was overrun by the allied forces and did away with Hitler's third

By Owunari Hopkins-Amachree           

Source: Response To Atsar Terver's "Why Salami Should Not Be believed."

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The Osun and Ekiti state chapters of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) earlier today submitted two petitions containing phone call logs that the party claimed it retrieved pertaining to  calls made  between operatives of rival Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN) and the president of the court of Appeal, Justice Ayo Salami, during the last gubernatorial appeal tribunal sittings that upstaged two of its governors.

One of the petitions  was sent directly to the National Judicial Council (NJC) and the second one sent to the office of Nigeria's president, Goodluck Jonathan.

Source: Judicial Crisis Escalates As PDP Submits Two Petitions Against Court Of Appeal President, Justice Ayo Salami