Mutallab ‘not radicalized at UK University’

Umar Faruk Mutallab, accused of trying to blow up a U.S.-bound airliner was not radicalised during his days as a student in Britain, a report on Friday said, challenging suggestions he was recruited on campus.

Earlier in September, Nigeria and Saudi-based cleric, Dr. Ahmed Gumi who has counseled Mutallab against radical Islam told Weekly Trust that he tried to dissuade him from going to Yemen, the country where Mutallab is believed to have come in contact with al Qaeda, the masterminds of the botched Christmas Day bombing attempt when he migrated there to acquire religious knowledge.

Gumi said: “It was just unfortunate that the chap got misguided by extremist groups.”

The attack on Christmas Day 2009 stirred fears that a new generation of UK militants had emerged through private networks and campus debating societies rather than high-profile mosques.

The study by a panel established by University College London (UCL) found that conditions at the university were not to blame for the radicalisation of former student Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, charged with trying to down a flight from Amsterdam as it approached Detroit.

Rshad al-Alimi, Yemen’s Deputy Prime Minister for Defence and Security, said on January 7 Abdulmutallab had been recruited by al Qaeda in Britain, where he studied from 2005-08 at UCL and became president of the student Islamic Society.

And media reports suggested British security services had known three years earlier that he had been “reaching out” to extremists and had passed a file to their U.S. counterparts on Abdulmutallab’s activities while he was a student at UCL.

However the review by the panel, made of figures from outside UCL whom the university described as independent, said:

“In the light of the investigations it has carried out, the panel concludes that there is no evidence to suggest either that Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab was radicalised while a student at UCL or that conditions at UCL during that time or subsequently are conducive to the radicalisation of students.”

EFCC seals ex-Gov Fayose’s house in Ekiti

EFCC BOSS

Operatives of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) yesterday sealed off the country home of former Governor of Ekiti State, Mr Ayo Fayose, in Afao Ekiti in furtherance of efforts to ensure full compliance with a subsisting court order on the interim forfeiture of his assets earlier obtained by the anti-graft agency.

The commission had last Wednesday September 29, 2010 sealed off two mansions belonging to the embattled former governor in choice areas of Ibadan, the Oyo state capital.  Daily Trust learnt that a team of EFCC operatives sealed off Fayose’s mansion located at Olorunfemi Esan Street, Afao Ekiti at about 2.20 pm yesterday.

Okah: Jonathan wants to blame North

Henry Okah

A major twist was added yesterday to the complicated story of last Friday’s Abuja bomb blasts when the exiled leader of the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND) Mr. Henry Okah told Al Jazeera Television that aides of President Goodluck Jonathan asked him to get MEND to retract its claim of responsibility for the bombings.

 Okah, who has been charged to court in South Africa for alleged complicity in the blasts, said the Federal Government wanted MEND to retract its claim so it could blame the incident on presidential aspirants from Northern Nigeria who are opposed to Jonathan’s desire for election in 2011.

President Jonathan’s spokesman Ima Niboro responded to Okah’s allegation yesterday, describing it as “an outright lie.” Niboro also challenged Okah to name the presidential aide that spoke to him.

Speaking exclusively to Aljazeera from his prison cell, Okah said, “On Saturday morning, just a day after the attack, a very close associate of President Jonathan called me and explained to me that there had been a bombing in Nigeria and that President Jonathan wanted me to reach out to the group, MEND, and get them to retract the earlier statement they had issued claiming the attacks.

“They wanted to blame the attacks on Northerners who are trying to fight against him [Jonathan] to come back as president and if this was done, I was not going to have any problems with the South African government. I declined to do this and few hours later I was arrested. It was based on their belief that I was going to do that President Jonathan issued a statement claiming that MEND didn’t carry out the attack because they were expecting a kind of retraction from the group.”

Okah said the president’s men don’t want it to seem as if Jonathan does not have the support of his people and that the attack is going to be a huge setback to his presidential ambition. “For

months now they have been lying to everybody that everybody is so pleased with Jonathan, that he is going to bring peace to the region, which is entirely false. This attack now was actually going to be a great smear on his aspiration. They just needed the group to retract that statement which was why I was contacted. But I declined to make any such move.”

He said, “You don’t just give people an amnesty and ask them to forget about the reason why they are fighting. Every one of us is fighting for something and if what we are fighting for is not addressed, it ushers problem in the area. You understand. It is not about Jonathan being president or about an amnesty being given. I mean, why will you steal my land and you give me an amnesty and then you expect me not to continue fighting you? Why would that happen?”

Okah said “With Yar’adua it was much better. He had a good understanding of the problem. And regardless of the fact that he was from the North, he was making good attempt at addressing these problems. But with Jonathan it is entirely a different story. He doesn’t know what the problems are and is also being teleguided by other people, you know, who are giving him very bad advice.”

Asked what he thought will happen to him now that he is being arraigned, Okah said, “I don’t care, I really couldn’t care. But one thing I tell you for sure, is just like I was able to talk to you, it only shows that South Africa is not like Nigeria. In Nigeria I was held for one year and four months in solitary confinement. I didn’t kill anybody, I had no books, no newspapers, no TV, no radio, not even electrified. But the fact that I can speak to you on phone, even though I am being detained, shows that I am in an entirely a different country from Nigeria. And I am arrested here at the instance of Nigeria, which threatened the South African government with diplomatic action if they didn’t arrest me. That is the only reason why I am in detention. All those people I learnt have been arrested in Nigeria I have no contact with any of them, I don’t even know them. They are just trying to do this thing to point the finger at other political opponents in order to scuttle their attempts at being president.”

For his part, Niboro’s statement said,  “Mr. Henry Okah who has been openly charged for masterminding the terror attacks against his home country has been quoted by Al Jazeera Network as claiming that an aide of President Goodluck Ebele Jonathan called to ask him to blame the October 1, 2010, bombings on Northern politicians.

This of course is an outright lie, and we challenge Okah to name the President’s aide that spoke to him on the subject. There is an ongoing investigation on Okah’s alleged involvement in the bombings in Nigeria. In South Africa, he has already been charged to court. He should face the charges, and stop making frivolous claims.

There is no question that Okah is a drowning man determined to pull others down with him, and there is hardly any purpose to be served by joining issues with an accused mass murderer. Okah is a man who has been known to say one thing and do another, and we are not at all surprised by his diversionary rhetoric.”

 Listen to the interview below:

Northern leaders to Jonathan:Resign or be impeached

President Goodluck Jonathan

President Goodluck Jonathan should immediately resign from office because he has proved that he is incapable of leading the nation justly and fairly, the Northern Political Leaders Forum declared in Abuja yesterday.

If the president fails to quit by the end of this week, the National Assembly should immediately take steps to impeach and remove him from the office, the Forum also said. It was reacting to claims earlier yesterday by exiled MEND leader Henry Okah, who said a Jonathan aide had asked him to retract the groups’ claim of responsibility for last Friday’s Abuja bomb blasts so it could be blamed on Northern politicians.
The spokesman for Jonathan’s campaign organisation Sully Abu responded last night, saying, “Malam Adamu Ciroma is one of our most distinguished statesmen and a role model to the youth of this country whom we all look up to, and anything that detracts from that role is not welcome and should be discouraged.”
Northern Political Leaders’ Forum [NPLF] leader Mallam Adamu Ciroma, who signed the statement said, “We as citizens of this country have totally lost confidence in his leadership and hereby call on him to immediately resign.” He said since Jonathan was desperate enough to want to hang mass murder around the necks of unnamed Northerners, “We state, without any equivocation that, as Northerners and as citizens of this country, we no longer feel safe and secure under his leadership.”
Condemning the bomb attacks that occurred in Abuja during the 50th Independence Anniversary celebrations, the Forum said it was regrettable that the attacks took place while the Heads of State and Government of several African and other countries were seated in Eagle Square, “while the attention of the whole world was upon us.”
The statement further said, “It is regrettable that these bombs were allowed to go off given that the nation’s security organizations had admitted that they were forewarned by foreign intelligence organizations and by the bombers themselves. It is also unfortunate that the bombings followed recent changes in the leadership of the nation’s first line of defence - the armed forces, the police force and State Security Service.”
“We in the Northern Political Leaders Forum condemn in the strongest possible terms this callous and barbaric act of cruelty and cowardice, perpetrated by a group of people steeped in the culture of terrorism and unbridled violence. We condemn all those who give them shelter or comfort under any guise and call on all law-abiding and peace loving Nigerians to raise their collective voice against this violent group, its method and motive. We call on the Federal Government and the nation’s law enforcement agencies to pursue these common criminals masquerading as militants with all the resources at their disposal and bring each and every one of them to justice for the crime of murder and for taking arms against the State.”
The Forum said it was a rude shock to the nation when President Goodluck Jonathan declared, only hours after the Abuja bombs that killed and maimed innocent civilians, “that MEND, the criminal group that took responsibility for the bombings, was not to blame,” saying: “Not only that, the President was also quoted as saying that he knew who the bombers were and that they were terrorists, not MEND, a distinction which reveals where the President’s sympathies lie.”
“In a curious reversal of roles, the President, Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces who swore to an oath to protect the territorial integrity of Nigeria and to protect the lives and property of its citizens has found himself, instead, going the extra mile to absolve from culpability the terrorist group that claimed responsibility for the attacks. Even more disturbing was the declaration by the President, only hours into the bombing investigations, that he knew who the attackers were.”
Ciroma also said, “We would like to state, for the umpteenth time, that President Goodluck Jonathan’s desperation to be President again in 2011 can only take Nigeria back to the dark days of President Olusegun Obasanjo’s Third Term with all its attendant instability and the wasting of innocent civilians’ lives. Now that the President has proven that he is incapable of leading the nation justly and fairly and that he is desperate enough to want to hang mass murder around the neck of unnamed Northerners to achieve his second term, we as citizens of this country have totally lost confidence in his leadership and hereby call on him to immediately resign.”