Boko Haram throws bomb at gov’s convoy •We’ll crush criminal elements -Jonathan •Enough is enough -COAS •Senate in closed session


A bomb targeting a police vehicle in the convoy of Governor Kashim Shettima of Borno State and two other blasts rocked Maiduguri, but no casualties were reported, police and residents said on Tuesday. The blast occurred on Monday when suspected members of the Boko Haram sect threw a bomb at the police vehicle on the road from the Maiduguri airport.



The governor was returning from Abuja and was being welcomed by supporters along the airport road, following his victory in a legal challenge to his electroal victory in April.

“There was a blast targeted at one of our vehicles, but it did not hit its target,” Borno State Commissioner of Police, Mr Simeon Midenda told AFP. "It was a mild explosion. Nobody was killed or injured.”

Midenda said a second explosion targeted a military checkpoint around the Abbaganaram area of the city on Monday evening.

“The assailants detonated a bomb by the roadside around 7.30 p.m. in order to attract the attention of JTF military Joint Task Force,” he said.

“When the JTF heard the blast, they went to the scene and the Boko Haram members started firing indiscriminately and the JTF members fired back. At the end of the day, the assailants fled.”

Residents also told AFP a third explosion also occurred at Zajeri, a suburb of the city.

“I was in my shop when I heard a loud blast around 7.50 p.m. I hurriedly locked myself inside the shop. After about an hour, I came out and did not see anybody," Musa Jalo, a tailor in the area, told AFP.

Meanwhile, President Goodluck Jonathan on Tuesday vowed not to leave any hiding place for criminal elements, whose activities are causing death and destruction in the country as he assured families of victims of recent bomb attacks that justice would be served on those who perpetrated the attacks.

Speaking at the inauguration of the Presidential Committee on the Prerogative of Mercy, he also spoke on the need to forgive and grant relief to criminals who are manifestly repentant.

Jonathan called on those who had chosen to live on the fringes of the law to change, in order to facilitate their re-integration and rehabilitation, warning that those who undermined the state should be prepared to face the full wrath of the law.

Jonathan reassured Nigerians who had lost relatives to the crimes that the government would bring the perpetrators to book, saying that “we share in your pain. We stand united, as we confront the inhumane actions of the misguided few who seem determined to violate the core values of tolerance and peaceful co-existence. We shall fight and defeat that evil.”

Speaking on his vision for the nation’s justice administration system, the president said he believed the cycle of justice should include forgiveness and relief for those that were repentant.

Jonathan said it was partly for this reason that the constitution provided for the presidential advisory committee to assist the president in the exercise of the prerogative of mercy.
He congratulated members of the committee and expressed confidence in their ability to carry out their assignment.

Meanwhile, the Chief of Army Staff, Lieutenant-General Azubuike Iheji-rika, at an interactive session on Tuesday, warned the troublemakers wasting innocent lives to stop it.

The Army chief said the earlier the civil populace understood the military, the better, because they were human beings like other Nigerians and did nothing different except with the uniform that differentiated them from others.

In his remark, the Chief of Defence Staff, Air Chief Marshal Oluseyi Petinrin, said if the Armed Forces did not have the support of the civil society, then all the internal security operations were wasted.

Also speaking on the Jos crisis, Petinrin said because of polarisation of ethnicity among the people, nobody had come to explain to them the need to live together, adding that until they started understanding each other, their trouble would never end.

Speaking on the occasion, the Senate President, David Mark, represented by the chairman, Senate Committee on Defence and Army, Senator George Sekibo, said the importance of civil military relations in a democracy was underscored by former president, Chief Olusegun Obasanjo, who said “the importance of sustaining democracy has compelled the need for better civil-military relations, which has been frosty, full of suspicion and mistrust.”

In his address, the Chief of Civil-Military Affairs, Army Headquarters, Major-General Bitrus Kwaji, noted that the Nigerian military had been involved in governance of the nation for over 30 years, adding that though it had helped to preserve the corporate existence of Nigeria as a nation, it had, however, created an image problem for the army.is not yet an accused person on pages of newspapers and on the television is not good. It is difficult to convince an average person that one who has been so paraded has not committed any offence.”

While talking about injunctions against law enforcement agents, the CJN said “the guilty are afraid and when a man who has abused the public trust reposed in him feels the heat of the approaching long arm of the law, he rushes to a judge with flexible conscience, who makes him untouchable to the law enforcement. It is another obstacle to the struggle to uproot corruption in this country.”

The CJN, therefore, called on lawyers to take a position on issues which, he said, constituted a blot on the criminal process, adding that their voices would be heard and change would be made for the better.

He also drew the attention of the participants to the prisons where fellow human beings were reduced to the barest level of humanity, adding that the time was ripe to include a provision for suspended sentence in the criminal procedure code and the criminal procedure law.
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