1. North Africa al qaeda offers to help Nigerian Muslims fight the Nigerian Christians in Jos
An al Qaeda group in North Africa has offered to give Nigerian Muslims training and weapons to fight Christians in the West African country, where more than 460 people were killed in sectarian clashes last month.
Vice President Goodluck Jonathan sent in the military to halt the violence after four days of clashes between Christian and Muslim mobs armed with guns, knives and machetes in the area round the city of Jos in central Nigeria. “We are ready to train your people in weapons, and give you whatever support we can in men, arms and munitions to enable you to defend our people in Nigeria,” the statement by al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) said.
2. Niger Delta: MEND claims it is “not directly” responsible for the sabotage of Royal Dutch Shell oil pipeline
The sabotage on Saturday came hours after the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND) ended a three-month old cease-fire and threatened to unleash “an all-out assault” on Africa’s biggest oil and gas industry. While MEND said the attack was the work of a militant group it backed, one security source, who declined to be identified, said the sabotage on Shell’s pipeline, in Bayelsa state in the Niger Delta, might have been carried out by oil thieves trying to tap into it. “MEND was not directly responsible,” the group said in an email to Reuters. “It was certainly a response to our order to resume hostilities by one of the various freelance groups we endorse.”
4. expressions of outrage in Sierra Leone — EU, AU called out for supporting corrupt former president
It has come to the attention of this press, that civil servants appointed to key positions of authority and influence by the previous SLPP government in Sierra Leone, are alleged to have gone on the rampage to sabotage, destroy and ruin the economic framework that the President and government of Sierra Leone are instituting to return the country to a sound economic footing. If the allegations are true, then this is an economic crime against humanity. It is reported that these civil servants may have been directed by the opposition party’s machinery to unleash an agenda of sabotage to bring the economy of the country to a halt by failing to institute fiscal policies that will stimulate growth in the economy. And by diverting necessary funds meant for infrastructural development to their pocket, these civil servants are ill-bent on causing chaos and tarnish the important work the present government led by Dr Ernest Bai Koroma is doing to salvage the opposition-battered economy presided over by former President Ahmed Tejan-Kabbah.
…Some of Sierra Leone’s finest military officers were executed in cold blood by President Ahmed Tejan-Kabbah in the previous SLPP government. Their only crime? They did not accompany him to Guinea when soldiers overthrew his government in a coup d’état. On returning from Guinea after ECOMOG helped restore his government, Tejan-Kabbah ordered the arrest and detention of all whom he thought were not loyal to him and without a single evidence of complicity in the coup, he ordered the execution and continued detention of some of the most gallant men and women of the country’s military. In fact for him to be restored back into power, he ordered ECOMOG fighter jets to bomb Freetown, the capital, at random, without any regard for human life, in his quest to get the rid of rebels in the city and regain power. Thousands of innocent civilians were killed and homes destroyed. This is indeed a crime against humanity. And for this reason alone, I detest any attempt by international organisations like the U.N. or A.U. to employ the services of this brutal dictator in any mediation efforts across the continent. Tejan Kabbah is not worthy of holding any public office anywhere in the world. Even prior to his election victory there were reports of him being convicted of corruption when he worked as a civil servant in the Siaka Stevens administration.
5. threat of another military intervention in Guinea as top junta official is arrested
Dadis Camara’s closest confidante in Guinea’s military junta, Colonel Moussa Keita, has been arrested and taken into custody. There is clear indication from reports coming out of Guinea, that officers loyal to exiled Junta leader Dadis Camara, are determined to sabotage the peace agreement signed in Burkina Faso as long as their leader is kept in isolation….The acceptance of Guinea’s Interim Leader Sekouba Konate, to sign up to the Ouagadougou agreement had raised suspicion of a sell-out in Dadis Camara’s mind as reports late last year from Morocco, indicated that Western Diplomats made a lucrative offer to Konate to sign up to a plan hatched by the U.S. to remove Dadis Camara from Guinea’s political life.
