BIZZARE: GUNMEN KILL VILLAGE HEAD, 51 OTHERS IN ZAMFARA

No fewer than 52 people, including the village head of Kizara and four vigilante men, in the Tsafe Local Government area of Zamfara State have been killed by gunmen who ransacked the village at about 2.00 a.m. on Tuesday.
The hoodlums were said to be over 50 in number.
Daily Independent gathered that the attackers arrived Tsafe town through Birnin Gwari forest in Kaduna State.
The gunmen embarked on house-to-house search, shooting sporadically to scare even the vigilante men in the dead of the night.
After killing several people, it was learned that the gunmen identified the residence of the village head, Alhaji Bello Ibrahim, and brutally murdered him.
A resident of Tsafe town, headquarters of the local government, Sani Sabo, told Daily Independent that because of the confusion caused by the attack, movement to Tsafe area was severely restricted to the extent that even the police officers and other security operatives coming to the village had to pass through some alternative roads from Gusau.
Though the casualty figure is yet to be ascertained as at press time, sources who spoke to Daily Independent on phone confirmed that about 52 people were killed in the attack, apart from others who were injured, including women and children.
When contacted on phone, Tsafe Local Government Council boss, Aliyu Abubakar, confirmed the incident, explaining that he was on his way to Abuja for an official engagement when the news reached him.
According to him, the development  has made him to call off the trip and return home to visit the affected village.
Also contacted on phone, Zamfara State Police Commissioner, Akila Usman Gwary, who was on his way to the village confirmed the incident.
But he said he could not specify the number of casualties yet.
He added that based on the security report, he had to pass through Wanke-Magami to Keta to reach the village, and assured journalists that immediately he comes back, he would give the casualty figure.
In a related development, President Goodluck Jonathan on Tuesday reiterated his call for greater global cooperation and coordination in the war against terrorism.
Speaking at the State House, Abuja, where he separately received letters of credence from the new envoys of Israel, Russia, Greece and Algeria, the President said Nigeria and other countries will benefit immensely from such greater collaboration among their security agencies on efforts to combat domestic and international terrorism.
Jonathan told his guests that Nigeria would welcome increased cooperation  from countries that are more experienced in such matters for its ongoing operations against domestic terrorist groups.
Jonathan told the new Israeli Ambassador, Uriel Palti, that he looked forward to visiting Israel later this year to discuss ways of enhancing bilateral cooperation between Nigeria and Israel with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
He also assured the other envoys – Alekos Oikonomopoulos (Greece),  Nikolay Udovichenko (Russia), Belkacem Smaili (Algeria) and Amadou Habibou (Senegal) – that the Federal Government will fully support their efforts to strengthen existing cordial relations between Nigeria and their countries.
The new ambassadors all expressed their delight at being posted to Nigeria and promised to do everything possible to strengthen diplomatic and economic ties between their countries and Nigeria.
SOURCE: Daily Inp

Confed Cup: Oduamadi top FIFA ratings

Super Eagles’ hat-trick hero, Nnamdi Oduamadi has topped FIFA’s list of excellent performers after the first round of matches at the ongoing Confederation Cup in Brazil.
In a post on its website on Tuesday, FIFA disclosed that Oduamadi is leading its  Castrol Index, which rates performances of players in a championship, by 9.55points, just some few points ahead of Italy’s Mario Balotelli that came in second with 9.38.
FIFA is particularly impressed with Oduamadi’s prowess in front of goal. According to its post, his ability to be exactly where he is needed to score is quite stunning.
“The hat-trick scored by Nnamdi Oduamadi in Belo Horizonte has made him the Index’s early frontrunner.
“What was impressive about Oduamadi’s contribution was his finishing accuracy. While Nigeria’s six goals came from 17 shots, the 22-year-old – who spent last season in Italy’s Serie B with Varese – scored with three from four. In fact he had just three goal attempts inside the Pacific Islanders’ penalty box but was in the right place to put the ball in the net on each occasion.
“While Oduamadi’s treble earned him 9.55 points, Italy’s Mario Balotelli took 9.38 for his lively performance against Mexico, capped by the winning goal with 12 minutes remaining,” FIFA wrote.
But Oduamadi was not alone in the ratings as Eagles’ defender, Uwa Echiejile was also on the index. He is third on the Index behind Balotelli.
“Uwa Echiejile…sits third in the Index compliled by the Castrol Performance Analysts with a score of 9.35 – making him the top-ranked defender.
“The Super Eagles’ No. 3 was heavily involved in his team’s play, scoring the opening and closing goals against Tahiti and ranking fourth in this initial round for the number of passes made with 112. The fact that the top four in that category were all Nigerian shows how much of the ball the West Africans saw against Tahiti,” FIFA posted.

More Nigerian girls pose nude to trend on Twitter

More Nigerian girls pose nude to trend on Twitter

Nude pictures are beginning to dominate the Nigerian Twitter space as the act is fast becoming fashionable among young ladies.

One of the objectives ladies who engage in this act seek to achieve is to break into trending topics on the social service and ultimately build a huge Twitter following and gain cheap popularity.

Ladies who have made this act a hobby employ hashtags to string together these obscene pictures to get them easily noticeable by other Twitter users. For instance, some of them use hashtags such as #boobsmonday, #boobsfriday and post their nude photographs.

Other girls equally interested are lured into posting their own nude pictures on the social site by employing the use of the hashtags for the day — such as #boobstuesday on a Tuesday, which make their nude pictures travel fast and go viral.

One of the typical Twitter female users of the social network who engage in this act is one with the name, Pretty Osaro. Osaro posted three nude pictures of herself on May 15, each showing her in different positions.  On her handle she says, ‘’I wanna be famous, doesn’t matter how many guys…’’

She went on to lament that her previous Twitter account was suspended and lashed out at those who reported her via the Twitter Help Center for posting offensive contents. ‘’My previous account was suspended, if you don’t like what I do kindly unfollow or f..k out of my timeline,’’ she says.

In the usual manner in which desperate girls seeking fame on social media do, Osaro has at one time or the other reached out to celebrities who make use of Twitter to retweet her to the hundreds of thousands of their fans.

The day Osaro posted her nude pictures on the social service, she tweeted the same picture to Nigerian music artistes  — Wizkid and Davido with — a view to getting them retweet the pictures.

She has also sought the help of American socialite and TV personality, Kim Kardashian who has over 17 million Twitter followers. Tweeting at Kardashian, she says, “Am I not hotter than @Kimkardashian? @KimKardashian, I love you so much please retweet me.’’

Other Twitter users with the names Bayelsa Queen and Ha Royal Sexcellency regularly trend on Twitter, posting their nude pictures. Besides, there is a nude picture being credited to one Adefope Temilola,  which has been circulating on Twitter for over two months.

A new media enthusiast, Tunji Lardner, describes the development as a “really bad behaviour’’, adding that typical youthful aspirations are now being amplified globally by social media. He adds that with the current level of under-development in the country, Nigerian youths — both male and female, should redirect their youthful vigour to hold political leaders accountable for their misdeeds with the new media technologies.

He says, “These are invariably young and immature people grappling with the need for popularity and acclaim from their peers. This is just another manifestation of the ongoing breakdown of our social order and the loss of parental control and oversight of our digital children with analog parents.’’

Lardner who is the Executive Director, West Africa NGO Network, warns that those engaged in the act risk the negative consequences and urges them to move towards changing the content and quality of their online discourse.

He says, “Everything lives forever on the Internet. Those pictures posted will be archived and someday retrieved, and can most certainly come back to haunt you, perhaps when you are looking for a job or even when you want to get married.’’

“Those involved can start by changing the quality and contents of their online discourse. Use these powerful technologies to interrogate the political system, ask the tough questions, find the tough answers and hold their leaders accountable for their misdeeds.’’

Speaking on the ways of stemming the tide in the country, he observes that it is difficult to legislate morality on a global and virtual platform like the Internet. According to him, the responsibility for the moral tone and content of youth participation in social media still rests with society at large.

“Their engagement on these platforms and the quality of their discourse is a direct reflection of the society’s prevailing norms. But there should be an understood code of conduct that is widely disseminated, spelling out the pitfalls of the dark side of social media.

“Perhaps the traditional media can help evolve this standard, and there is no need to reinvent the wheel. There is a considerable body of work that deal with youth and the use of social media.

11 killed in JTF, Boko Haram Yobe clashes

The Military Joint Task Force  in Yobe State has confirmed that 11 people were killed in separate attacks as suspected members of the Boko Haram sect invaded the Government Secondary School and a military checkpoint in Damaturu, the state capital.

The military spokesman in the state, Lieutenant Eli Lazarus, in a statement on Monday, explained that two teachers, seven students and two insurgents were killed during the attacks.

Apart from the 11 killed, three soldiers, according to the statement, were critically injured in the clash that lasted for over five hours.

The army spokesmen said three of the suspected Boko Haram members were caught alive and were currently in the custody of the JTF.

The Medical Officer of the Damaturu Specialist Hospital, Salem Umar, confirmed that 11 corpses were brought to the hospital and gave the breakdown as seven students of the GSS Damaturu, two teachers of the school and two members of the suspected Boko Haram members.

He added that six students also sustained various degrees of injuries and were currently receiving treatment at the Damaturu Specialists Hospital.

Mohammed Ya’u (SS3 student) Abdulkadir Mohammed (SS2) and Goni Abubakar (SS1), who survived the attacks, said in Damaturu that the suspected insurgents stormed their hostels few minutes after 9pm on Sunday and started shooting sporadically as the panic-striken students fled through the windows and doors of the hostel.

The insurgents, who they said were many, also compelled some of the students to direct them to the teachers’ quarters, after which they were also killed.

Sunday’s attack interrupted the months of ceasefire in Damaturu, a situation that made the state government to further reduce the curfew hours to between 9pm to 6am from 6pm to 6am daily.

Exposed: Edward Erin, the doctor whose faked asthma drug test results proved fatal

A British doctor faked test results during clinical trials for an asthma drug in which one person died and others contracted cancer and pneumonia, The Independent has learnt.

Dr Edward Erin’s fabrications were not detected until he was arrested and jailed for six years for lacing his lover’s coffee with drugs in an attempt to have her miscarry.
His sentence was later extended by two years after it emerged that he had tried to persuade a former cellmate to kill the woman and their baby son, and he is still in prison.
The medical trial began in 2003, when a dozen researchers at Imperial College London began trialling a new drug on 38 asthma sufferers at St Mary’s Hospital, London, where Erin worked as a chest consultant. His faked research partly contributed to the trial being extended internationally before its deadly side-effects were discovered.
***
It began with good intentions, but turned into the medical experiment from hell: a search for a wonder cure for asthma attacks which left one man dead, 20 seriously ill with pneumonia and eight with cancer. But for Britain’s leading heart and lung scientists at Imperial College, London, it was to get even worse: a doctor on their 12-strong team had faked his research results.
What makes the disclosure of his crime even more extraordinary is the fact that Dr Edward Erin’s fabrications were not detected until he was arrested and jailed for six years for lacing his lover’s coffee with drugs so she would miscarry.
Only two of the scientists involved in the study were willing to talk to The Independent: Professor Peter Barnes, who for three decades has been the world’s most respected specialist in his field, and the US asthma specialist Dr Sally Wenzel.
The medical trials began in 2004, when researchers started testing 38 asthma sufferers at St Mary’s Hospital, London. They were trying to discover whether a new drug could prevent airways of asthma sufferers from becoming life-threateningly inflamed.
In Barnes, a professor of thoracic medicine and head of airway disease at the National Heart and Lung Institute, it had at its head a renowned name in respiratory medicine. Working alongside him was Professor Andrew Bush, Imperial College’s professor of paediatrics and professor of paediatric respirology, Dr Trevor Hansel, medical director of the Imperial Clinical Respiratory Research Unit, and Dr Onn Min Kon, consultant respiratory physician and lead clinician for tuberculosis services at St Mary’s and Hammersmith Hospitals.
The costs of the trial were part-funded by the American drugs company, Centocor, which manufactured the drug being tested. Success would mean that it owned a multibillion dollar medicine.
After the American Journal of Respiratory and Clinical Care (AMJCC) published a paper, prepared by the UK team, saying results of their clinical study of 38 asthmatics had been promising, it was extended from using modestly ill to severely asthmatic patients, in international experiment almost eight times as big.
But what the team did not realise was that the results had been partly based on bogus tests concocted by Erin, a chest consultant at St Mary’s. Although his findings did not directly contribute to the development of cancers in the asthma patients, his data was an important factor in extending what had been a limited UK experiment to a global search involving almost eight times as many – and much more seriously ill – asthma sufferers.
From 2004 to 2006, three-quarters of 309 patients with severe and uncontrolled asthma who had volunteered to take part were given the drug, known as Golimumab, in three different strengths; the rest were on placebos. Dr Sally Wenzel, professor of medicine and director of the Asthma Institute at Pittsburgh’s Montefiore Hospital, was put in charge of the new clinical trials in the US and several European countries, including the UK.
The scientists running the study were deliberately not allowed to see the results as they were compiled, so their judgements were not compromised until all the data had been collated up to the 24th week. It was not until 25 February 2007, when the data was unlocked, that the awful consequences of the drug were discovered.
“There were serious side effects,” Professor Barnes said. “Pneumonia and cancer.” Dr Wenzel added: “It is potentially one of the big finds if it works, but Golimumab had substantial side effects.”
The next day the US Food and Drug Administration ordered an immediate shut-down of the trials. But it was too late. “One death occurred in the 200mg group,” the AMJCC dispassionately reported. “This patient was hospitalised in an unresponsive state one week after receiving the fourth Golimumab dose. The patient’s respiratory status declined, requiring ventilatory support, and the patient died from septic shock following diagnosis of small-bowel pneumatosis.”
It continued: “Eight malignancies were reported in Golimumab-treated patients: breast cancer in the 50mg group; B-cell lymphoma and malignant melanoma in the 100mg group; and cervical carcinoma, renal cell carcinoma, colon cancer (stage 0), and two basal cell carcinomas in the 200mg group.” One female test subject had to have her breast removed, while another man had a fast-growing polyps.
What was not then known was that an analysis of one set of tests, which looked at the build up of mucus developing in the lungs of patients, was bogus. Those findings were the result of work done by Erin, whose name appeared first among all the study authors in four AMJCC reports monitoring its progress. In 2008 he was arrested on charges of having laced his lover’s drink with drugs to try to make her miscarry and was suspended from practising as a doctor. Professor Barnes immediately asked another member of their research team to check all of his findings, and discovered that a lot of his data had been fabricated. Some statistics had been inflated to several times their real value.
In 2009, Erin was given six years in jail for two counts of attempting to administer poison and ordered to pay £30,000 costs. Judge Richard Hone, QC, described him as an “egocentric” who had delusions of grandeur. “The trial process has exposed you,” he added, “stripped of your flummery, as a liar, a cheat and a predator.”
“Erin did not seem different to any to any other research fellow,” Professor Barnes said. “He worked there. Was always in and working.” He discovered that Erin had consistently changed results for about three years. “The judge was absolutely right about Erin,” he said. “He was a liar and a cheat. But psychopaths are very convincing. It could happen to anyone.”
He continued: “Before he was arrested, we had no suspicions. We only had concerns about Erin because he was arrested and convicted of a crime. The person in a related area was not getting similar results. We obtained the notebook which contained the original data that Erin had taken. He had systematically changed figures.”
Professor Barnes acknowledges that Erin, a 44-year-old father of two with a 20-year unblemished medical record, may have been driven by a desire to enhance his career. “It is very difficult to see why he would he did it. It is as if he had a compulsion to change things. These people lie about things they don’t need to lie about. We have never had anything like it in my 30 years.”
In September 2010 a letter, signed by Professor Barnes, Professor Andrew Bush, Dr Trevor Hansel and Dr Onn Min Kon was sent to AMJCC retracting the research. It cited, among other things, an example of the way Erin had altered his data. One figure had been changed from 3.81 to 23.81.
In 2012, Erin’s sentence was extended for a further two years after a former cellmate revealed that the doctor had asked him, as he was about to be released from prison, to kill his former mistress and their baby son, Ernie.

The plot: A deception that continued in jail

On the surface, Dr Edward Erin was a respected doctor and family man.  But the 47-year-old father of two was leading a double life. Dubbed “Dr Poison”, he was jailed in 2009 for trying to poison his secretary, Bella Prowse, when she became pregnant after an affair that began at a Christmas party.
He tried to lace two drinks – a coffee and an orange juice – with drugs that he hoped would induce a miscarriage. Noticing her drinks had been tampered with, Ms Prowse went to the police. A former consultant at St Mary’s Hospital in west London, Erin’s subsequent trial revealed a man described by Old Bailey judge Richard Hone, QC, as “a liar, a cheat and a predator” who exploited his position and his wealth to seduce women.
Even in prison, Erin continued to plot a web of deception that he hoped would clear his name. He convinced a fellow inmate, Joe Mallia, to steal Ms Prowse’s phone and to send a text from it “confessing” that she had made the whole thing up. But Mallia took his story to The Sun, who then secretly filmed Erin going over the plot with Mallia.
The video was used as evidence against the disgraced doctor and he was found guilty of perverting the course of justice.

The retraction: an extract from the letter

In September 2010, a letter was sent to the AMJCC, signed by Dr Hansel, Prof Bush, Dr Kon and Prof Barnes:                                                                                         
“In January 2008 we were presented with some individual immunoassay points provided by Dr Edward M. Erin. On 16th February 2008 another member of our research team highlighted serious concerns. This matter was immediately reported to the relevant authorities. Having reviewed all immunoassay data from relevant studies, the Committee confirmed there was an overwhelming case to answer.
In their report, the Committee stated that Dr Erin, the first author in these publications, is the most likely person to have been responsible for the inaccuracies in the date. The Committee noted Dr Erin has not provided a satisfactory explanation for any of the several hundred unambiguously detailed numerical faults identified, despite being given a chance to provide an explanation.
Dr Erin has denied any wrongdoing on his part in relation to the above clinical research matters, but we authors feel the strong need for withdrawal of the above paper due to the factual inaccuracies.

SOURCE: INDEPENDENT

100,000 demonstrators flood Brazil's streets in protests

In some of the biggest protests since the end of Brazil's 1964-85 dictatorship, demonstrations have spread across the country and united people from all walks of life behind frustrations over poor transportation, health services, education and security despite a heavy tax burden.

More than 100,000 people were in the streets on Monday for largely peaceful protests in at least eight big cities. They were in large part motivated by widespread images of Sao Paulo police last week beating demonstrators and firing rubber bullets into groups during a march that drew 5,000.
There was some violence, with police and protesters clashing in Rio de Janeiro, Porto Alegre and Belo Horizonte. The newspaper O Globo, citing Rio state security officials, said at least 20 officers and 10 protesters were injured there.
Monday's protests come after the opening matches of soccer's Confederations Cup over the weekend, just one month before a papal visit, a year before the World Cup and three years ahead of the 2016 Olympics in Rio de Janeiro. The unrest is raising some security concerns, especially after the earlier protests produced injury-causing clashes with police.
In Sao Paulo, Brazil's economic hub, at least 65,000 protesters gathered on Monday at a small, treeless plaza then broke into three directions in a Carnival atmosphere, with drummers beating out samba rhythms as people chanted anti-corruption jingles. They also railed against the matter that sparked the first protests last week — a 10-cent hike in bus and subway fares.
Thousands of protesters in the capital, Brasilia, peacefully marched on Congress. Dozens scrambled up a ramp to a low-lying roof, clasping hands and raising their arms, the light from below sending their elongated shadows onto the structure's large, hallmark upward-turned bowl designed by famed architect Oscar Niemeyer. Some congressional windows were broken, but police did not use force to contain the damage.
“This is a communal cry saying: 'We're not satisfied,”' Maria Claudia Cardoso said on a Sao Paulo avenue, taking turns waving a sign reading “(hash)revolution” with her 16-year-old son, Fernando, as protesters streamed by.
“We're massacred by the government's taxes — yet when we leave home in the morning to go to work, we don't know if we'll make it home alive because of the violence,” she added. “We don't have good schools for our kids. Our hospitals are in awful shape. Corruption is rife. These protests will make history and wake our politicians up to the fact that we're not taking it anymore!”
Protest leaders went to pains to tell marchers that damaging public or private property would only hurt their cause. In Sao Paulo, sentiments were at first against the protests last week after windows were broken and buildings spray painted during the demonstrations.
Police, too, changed tactics. In Sao Paulo, commanders said publicly before the protest they would try to avoid violence, but warned they could resort to force if protesters destroyed property. During the first hours of the march that continued into the night there was barely any perceptible police presence.
The Sao Paulo march itself was a family affair: A group of mothers received a rousing cheer when they arrived at the plaza where the march began, brandishing signs that read “Mothers Who Care Show Support.”
“I'm here to make sure police don't hurt these kids,” said Sandra Amalfe, whose 16-year-old daughter chatted with friends nearby. “We need better education, hospitals and security — not billions spent on the World Cup.”
Officers in Rio fired tear gas and rubber bullets when a group of protesters invaded the state legislative assembly and hurled rocks and flares at police. But most of the tens of thousands who protested in Rio did so peacefully, many of them dressed in white and brandishing placards and banners.
In Belo Horizonte, police estimated about 20,000 people took part in a peaceful protest before a Confederations Cup match between Tahiti and Nigeria. Earlier in the day, demonstrators erected several barricades of burning tires on a nearby highway, disrupting traffic.
Protests also were reported in Curitiba, Belem and Salvador.
Marcos Lobo, a 45-year-old music producer who joined the protest in Sao Paulo, said the actions of police during earlier demonstrations persuaded him to come out Monday.
“I thought they (the protests) were infantile at first because of my preconceived notions,” Lobo said. “Then I saw the aggression.”
Another protester, Manoela Chiabai, said she wanted to express her dissatisfaction with the status quo.
“Everything in Brazil is a mess. There is no education, health care — no security. The government doesn't care,” the 26-year-old photographer said. “We're a rich country with a lot of potential but the money doesn't go to those who need it most.”
In a brief statement, President Dilma Rousseff, who faces re-election next year and whose popularity rating recently dipped for the first time in her presidency, acknowledged the protests, saying: “Peaceful demonstrations are legitimate and part of democracy. It is natural for young people to demonstrate.”
Brazilians have long accepted malfeasance as a cost of doing business, whether in business or receiving public services. Brazilian government loses more than $47 billion each year to undeclared tax revenue, vanished public money and other widespread corruption, according to the Federation of Industries of Sao Paulo business group.
But in the last decade, about 40 million Brazilians have moved into the middle class and they have begun to demand more from government. Many are angry that billions of dollars in public funds are being spent to host the 2014 World Cup and 2016 Olympics while few improvements are made elsewhere.

parents take note : 7 YEARS OLD BOY NARRATES ORDEAL WITH KIDNAPPERS-

A seven-year-old pupil of Martha Dei Primary School in Ogoja, Cross River State, Williams Ebele, said the kidnappers that abducted him on June 10, 2013 gave him ice cream to lure him to their hideout in the bush.

Ebele, who was abducted for four days before he was rescued by the police, also said the kidnappers took him once to a nearby river to take his bath.

He spoke on Friday at the headquarters of the Cross River State Police Command in Calabar, where two of his abductors alongside six other arrested criminals, were paraded by the state Police Commissioner, Mr. Kola Sodipo.

The names of the arrested suspected kidnappers were Mark Odey (27) and Julius Ogbor (22). Other paraded suspects who were linked to armed robbery, cultism and communal clash comprised Victor Edu (21); Ubong Udo (21); Anthony Etowa (30); Mathew Akpana (26); and Ikechukwu Okereke (30).

Items recovered from the suspects were one GPMG gun, two AK49 rifles, one AK47 rifle, one assault rifle, seven rounds of GPMG live ammunition, eight empty magazines of AK rifles and speedboat W23 fitted with 200HP Yamaha engine.

Ebele said he was given only biscuits (cabin) to eat for the four days he stayed in the hideout.

He said, “They (kidnappers) came to my school after we had closed and said my father was calling me. I had not seen them before but followed them because they gave me ice cream. They took me to the bush and they gave me cabin biscuit for four days.

“On the day I was rescued, they gave me their mobile phone to speak with my daddy and I told him that I was in the bush and that he should come and carry me. That was how he came with police to rescue me. Some of the kidnappers ran away.”

 One of the arrested kidnappers, Julius Ogbor (22), who hails from Yala Local Government Area of the state, said he was introduced into the crime because he needed money.

Ogbor said, “We went to the boy’s school after discovering that the father could cough up some money. We demanded N5m ransom but he (the boy’s father) later agreed to pay N1m.

“We were waiting to receive the N1m when the father came with police to our hideout in the bush and some of us were apprehended.”

However, the state Commissioner of Police, Kola Sodipo, said the rescue was one of the numerous breakthroughs the command had achieved while combating crime in the last one month.

Sodipo said two suspected sea pirates were on June 9 shot dead by men of his command while attempting to attack a Nigerian Ports Authority vessel, MT AUCKLAND, along the Calabar-Oron waterways.

He said the suspects were shot during a gun duel which ensued after the pirates were accosted by a team of Marine Police on patrol along the Calabar-Oron channel as they were about to attack the vessel.

Sodipo also said the command arrested 27 suspected armed robbers, four other kidnappers and 15 cultists during the period under review, adding that all arrested suspects would soon be charged to court.