actress deepika

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Aug. 28, 2013
By Sam Otti and Odogwu Obinna; The Sun
Hell was let loose in the early hours yesterday at Oba-Ofemmili community in Awka-North Local Government Area of Anambra State, when some youths, suspected to be cultists attacked Christians in their worship places, shot and inflicted machete wounds on over 50 of them.
The attackers also went on rampage, looting and burning churches in the community. Some of the churches burnt include Assemblies of God Church, Grace of God Church, Deeper Life Bible Church, Winners Church, Christ Holy Church, St. Paul’s Catholic Church and another pentecostal church.

The assailants, according to the victims, attacked the worshippers with dangerous weapons, shooting sporadically and wounding several people. They were said to have invaded no fewer than seven churches, burning and destroying everything within their reach.
A two-year old baby was among the victims.
It was gathered that trouble started in the community over disagreement between the Christians and the idol worshipers on the cultural night masquerade, a local fetish cult opposed by Christians in the area.
A victim of the incident, who gave his name as Mr Sunday Aliuba, said they were in the church when the miscreants stormed their church, armed with guns and machetes. He said they swooped on the congregation and inflicted machete wounds on them, causing stampede as people struggled to escape from the church.
Hear him: “How it happened was that Oba-Ofemili and the Christians had an agreement that the night masquerades will not start by 9pm, and we were having our programmes according to the rules. But on Monday night, I was at the crusade when we heard that the pagans will burn down all the churches. Around 11pm, they started shooting sporadically into the air, causing everybody to shiver. Around 1.00am on Tuesday, they stormed the church, and razed down the parish priest’s house and pursued everybody in the church. We hid under the staircase and under the pews.
“In self-defence, we pounced on some of them. As it got hotter, my colleagues ran away. I also ran but they pursued me and shot me in the legs, shattering my ankles and bones. They also inflicted machete wounds on me. The blood that came out of my body can fill two buckets. It is only God that is sustaining my life till now.”
When contacted, the priest of St. Paul’s Anglican Church, whose parish church was razed, Rev. Pat. Odinanwa, said series of efforts made to ensure peace in the community between the church and the community failed. He said the pagans nursed pathological hatred for Christians in the community. According to him, there were agreements reached between the church and the community, but the pagans sought all avenues to stop Christians from worshiping God in the community.
According to him, over 50 persons sustained gunshot and machete wounds, while seven churches were burnt by the irate youths. He said Christians in the area had been living in fear, as the youths threatened further attack today.

The girl said her parents were divorced and her father was the one taking care of her so he threatened to stop supporting her if she told anybody. “If my father doesn’t pay my fees no one will do it. My mother does not have the means to take care of me in school so I was afraid to inform anybody about my ordeal; not even my mother,” the victim claimed.

“He had it planned all along and we are working with Thai police to trace him and have him deported to Malaysia,” he said.

The return of the purportedly healed governor of Taraba State’s Governor Danbaba Suntai became more bizarre on Sunday following his return to Nigeria after 10-months of medical treatment in Germany and later in the United States.

Arriving at the Jalingo airport in Taraba State, Mr. Suntai was bizarrely prevented from meeting with the Acting governor, Alhaji Graba Umar, who was present to receive him.
As soon as he was assisted off the aircraft, his supporters ushered him into a maroon Range Rover SUV and drove off with thousands of the rented crowd in tow.
Mr. Suntai's return to Nigeria began at the John F Kennedy International airport in New York at about 7:50p.m local time aboard a chartered Gulfstream IV with US registration number N388CA chartered from Farmingdale, New York–based Air Rutter International.
The jet first flew to Santa Maria Airport  (LPAZ) near Senegal before proceeding to Nigeria, arriving in Abuja at about 1p.m. local time.
Upon arrival, it was a strange sight as Mr. Suntai was assisted by three aides to disembark from the jet.  Following planted reports as to how well he had responded to treatment, several of his associates who had expected to meet a strong, healthy and fit Suntai were disappointed as he could not disembark without assistance.

He was immediately whisked to the VIP lounge where he was received by a big Peoples Democratic Party figure, Professor Jerry Gana, John Dara and several others.
Mr. Suntai managed to smile occasionally, but he did not speak to the waiting throng of reporters.  In the continuing choreography, Prof. Gana later attributed the returnee-governor’s inability to speak to the long trip and jet lag.
At a point, photo journalists were ushered in to take Mr. Suntai’s photo, but he remained carefully sandwiched between Gana and another aide.
When the stage-managed events at the Nnamdi Azikiwe airport were over, Mr. Suntai took the flight home to Jalingo, the Taraba capital, arriving there at 3:45p.m.  Coordinators of the road show ensured that he also evaded the thousands of supporters mobilized to the airport to welcome the “healed” governor.
Sources have indicated that the next phase of the plot by a powerful cabal to keep the brain-damaged governor in power will manifest at the Governor’s Lodge in the next few days.
We have learnt that the main personnel behind the unfolding drama include retired general Theophilus Danjuma; Damian Dodo, a Senior Advocate of Nigeria, who will provide the legal firepower for the maintenance of political power in the hands of a man who is clearly incapacitated; and Senator Emmanuel Bwacha, who will be the main political operative.  They are being joined by some government officials led by the Secretary to the Taraba State Government, who will likely be used to form a parallel power structure in the state to keep Mr. Suntai in power.
A junior Minister in President Goodluck Jonathan's administration, Darius Dickson Ishaku, along with Plateau State Governor Jonah Jang, are the other actors in the political power heist in Taraba which offers moment-to-moment reminders of the fading days of President Umaru Yar’Adua.
Following his carefully-plotted “return” to power on Sunday, Governor Suntai is expected to send a letter to the House of Assembly in the next few days requesting a leave of absence. He may then return to the United States, where doctors have said he is unlikely to recover enough to return to normal life, to continue his rehabilitation.
READ MORE:  http://news.naij.com/44980.html

READ MORE:  http://news.naij.com/44980.html

The teenage stowaway, Daniel Ihekina, who was arrested at the Lagos Airport after flying in the tyre hole of an Arik plane from Benin to Lagos on Saturday morning, thought he was on a US-bound flight.
A source at the Benin Airport who disclosed this said the boy’s parents had already departed for Lagos in search of the stowaway.

The airport source, who did not want his name in print said, “From what we heard, the boy said he was being maltreated and tried to escape from his parents. He thought he was on his way to the US.
“The parents have travelled to Lagos by road, to get him back.”
Meanwhile, investigations conducted by one of our correspondents in Lagos revealed that the boy had been handed over to the operatives of the State Security Services for further investigation.
The General Manager, Corporate Communications, Federal Airports Authority of Nigeria, Mr. Yakubu Dati, who also confirmed the development, said the aviation security personnel of the agency had handed over the young voyager to the men of the SSS for extensive investigation.
Dati said, “The residential address the boy gave to us was traced to a church in Benin by our airport manager and his team. So, there is need to hand over the teenager to the SSS who are experts in such investigations. They will carry out further investigation on the matter.”
The FAAN spokesman said the nature and circumstances surrounding the crime informed the agency decision to hand over the stowaway to the SSS operatives.
Meanwhile, following the Benin Airport incident, FAAN has adopted the ‘risk amelioration processes to safeguard flight operations’ at all its 22 airports across the country.
Dati stressed that the agency had tightened its risk amelioration procedure to ensure that similar incident did not occur again.
He also said the agency had prioritised the perimeter fencing of all the 22 airports in the country.
“In the meantime, we have adopted risk amelioration processes to safeguard flight operations. As a result of this incident in Benin, we have further tightened our risk amelioration procedure to ensure that a similar incident does not occur,” he said.
However, FAAN has also continued to trade blame with Arik Air over the Benin incident.
The agency, in a statement on Sunday, said it read with “great dismay the statement released by Arik Airlines about the stowaway found on board Arik’s flight 544 from Benin to Lagos on Saturday 24 August, 2013.”
Dati said FAAN was “unfairly indicted” while the airline took no responsibility whatsoever for such a “serious security breach.”
FAAN said its preliminary investigation had revealed that Arik did not give accurate account of the Benin Airport incident.
Giving the accounts of its preliminary findings, FAAN said, “Our investigations reveal that a passenger on board the flight called the attention of the cabin crew while the aircraft was waiting to take off at the threshold of the runway, to the effect that they had seen a young boy walk under the aircraft and had not seen him re-appear on the other side.”
“The cabin crew in turn informed the pilots in the cockpit about this. The pilots called the control tower and asked them to request FAAN to do a sweep of the area after their departure, opting to carry on with their flight despite the report.”
“Upon the arrival of the aircraft in Lagos, we were informed that there had been a stowaway found alive alighting from the wheel well of the aircraft. While FAAN takes this security breach extremely seriously, we deem Arik’s attempt at indicting and smearing FAAN as irresponsible. Safety and security breaches occur when all the checks in the system are beaten. Given that security is a responsibility for all players in this industry, a critical last opportunity to detect and prevent this stowaway was offered and had the airline taken the information by passengers as seriously as they should have, this incident would have been avoided.”