NCC orders telcos to immediately reactivate barred lines of NIN-SIM verification - ITREALMS

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The Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC)

has ordered the reactivation of SIMs affected by National Identification Numbers (NINs), reports ITREALMS.

According to the Director Public Affairs at NCC Mr Reuben Muoka, noted that  over the weekend many telecom subscribers/consumers were unable to access their phone lines due to the inability of some telecom consumers to verify their NINs with their Subscriber Identification Modules (SIMs).

FEC mess: Shittu barred from dispensing Buhari campaign caps

ITREALMS:

The Minister of Communications, Adebayo Shittu may have entered another mud on Wednesday as he was barred from dispensing President Muhammadu Buhari’s re-election election campaign caps at the cabinet meeting, report ITRealms.

Mr. Shittu, who adorned the cap with the inscription ‘Continuity ’19: Muhammadu Buhari/Osinbajo’, reportedly came to the meeting with a bag containing the caps for distribution to cabinet members.

According to Daily Trust sources said, the Secretary to the Government of the Federation, Boss Mustapha, disallowed the planned distribution of the caps.

ITRealms recalls that former President Olusegun Obasanjo had Tuesday advised Buhari against seeking re-election.


Just as last Saturday, Shittu had inaugurated the Southwest zonal office of Buhari/Osinbajo Campaign Organisation in Ibadan, Oyo State.

At the FEC meeting, it was only Shittu that dressed with the cap.

Uboshe Uboshe/GEE

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Elombah.com family abducted by SARS, barred from leaving Nigeria

ITREALMS:

The publisher of Elombah.com and a United Kingdom-based lawyer, Mr. Daniel Elombah, has confirmed that at least three members of his family were abducted on the New Year day 2018 by members of the Federal Special Anti-Armed Robbery Squad (SARS), reports ITRealms.

Elombah in a public statement sighted by ITRealms, lamented that till the time of going to the press, his family cannot leave the country, whilst his children school resumption was on Wednesday, January 3, 2018.

According to him, “on the 1st day of January 2018, men of the Federal Special Anti-Armed Robbery Squad, SARS, numbering about 15 and armed to the teeth stormed our family compound in Edoji Uruagu Nnewi, Anambra state.

“The men who struck around 5:am on the new year day climbed over the gate with their ladder and ransacked the entire house. At the end of the operation, 6 adult male members of the family including myself were handcuffed, herded into a rickety bus and driven to the SARS Nnewi office where we were briefly detained.

“No one explained to us the reason for our arrest thereby throwing the entire family including our aged mother, our wives and our little children into great distress. Our repeated requests for the reason for our arrest was met with a terse, "you'll be told at the station".

“From Nnewi we were driven to the SARS headquarters in Awkuzu, near Awka, again without being told the reason for our arrest.

“At the SARS state headquarters we were handed over to a different set of four armed men who were later identified as officers from the Special Tactical Squad, STS, a crack team of operatives directly in the office of Nigeria's Inspector General Of Police.

“Their team leader explained that the IGP (Inspector General of Police) personally ordered our arrest because my brother Tim Elombah, was accused of publishing an article on an online media, Elombah.com which article was allegedly aimed at blackmailing the IGP. We requested for details of the offending article but were told that we will be given the details in Abuja where we were headed shortly. “The STS team leader thereafter released 3 of my brothers who were told to find their way back home to Nnewi, while the 3 of us namely: myself, Tim and Izuchukwu Elombah were herded in handcuffs into another Bus after we were briefly interrogated.

“At this point I repeatedly requested to be told the offence for which I was arrested but was ignored. The allegation against Izuchukwu, a trader in Niger State was also not provided to us.

“We left Anambra State and arrived at the STS Abuja office around 5:00pm.

“My brother Tim who is also the editor-in-chief of the online news medium, www.Elombah.com was grilled for nearly three hours while I, and Izuchukwu were detained behind the Counter.

"All of us were eventually interrogated separately for several hours. It thereafter emerged that my brother Tim was accused of publishing a defamatory article on a website. The article titled "IGP Ibrahim Idris's Unending Baggage of Controversies" was published as an opinion piece on opinionnigeria.com, an online medium that was hitherto unknown to any us. Moreover the author of the said article was one Ebiowei Dickson, again a very strange name to the three of us.

"My brother, Tim repeatedly denied writing the article which in any case was NOT published on Elombah.com. Tim also denied knowing the identity of Ebiowei Dickson.

"Around midnight, my friend, Chief Obunike Ohaegbu who was a Federal Commissioner used his influence to secure my release and that of my brother Izuchukwu Elombah, but Tim Elombah remains in detention.

"Let me emphasise that up till now the Police have not revealed to me and Izuchukwu our alleged offences. No one has informed me why I was abducted from my country home, handcuffed like a criminal and transported in a bus over a very bad road for 700 miles to Abuja. Izuchukwu was assaulted, slapped, punched and beaten. We were physically and psychologically tortured and traumatised! My mother's blood pressure shot through the roof and she is presently undergoing medical treatment. 

"Our children were traumatised at the sight of gun totting hefty men that we initially mistook for armed robbers or kidnappers banging at our doors and waking up the entire household in the wee hours of the morning of the new year day. My movement is restricted and I'm not allowed to leave the country. That means that I and my family could not travel back to London as scheduled to enable our children resume schooling. The schools resumed on Wednesday 3rd January.”

Uboshe Uboshe/GEE

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Broadband corruption: How Atiku was barred from US

ITREALMS:

The reasons on why the former Vice President, Atiku Abubakar was allegedly barred from entering the United States, has been revealed, ITRealms reports.

Investigations has revealed that his inability to visit the United States in recent years, especially since leaving office 10 years ago, was not unconnected to a purported bribe associated with award of a broadband contract to a US-based enterprise, iGate Incorporated with an indictment of a Louisiana representative William J. Jefferson, who has family ties to the business in 2005.

ITRealms also gathered that Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI) had raided Jefferson’s Congressional offices in May 2006, but he was re-elected later that year, but on June 4, 2007, a federal grand jury indicted Jefferson on sixteen charges related to corruption.

In 2009 he was tried in Virginia on corruption charges. On August 5, 2009, he was found guilty of 11 of the 16 corruption counts. Jefferson was sentenced to 13 years on November 13, 2009, the longest sentence ever handed down to a congressman for bribery.

The investigation began in mid-2005, after an investor alleged $400,000 in bribes were paid through a company maintained in the name of Jefferson's spouse and children. The money was traced to a tech company named iGate Incorporated, of Louisville, Kentucky, and in return, it is alleged, Jefferson would help iGate's business. Jefferson was to persuade the U.S. Army to test iGate's broadband two-way technology and other iGate products; use his efforts to influence high-ranking officials in Nigeria, Ghana, and Cameroon; and meet with personnel of the Export-Import Bank of the United States, in order to facilitate potential financing for iGate business deals in those countries.

On 30 July 2005, Jefferson was videotaped by the FBI receiving $100,000 worth of $100 bills in a leather briefcase at the Ritz-Carlton hotel in Arlington, Virginia. Jefferson told an investor, Lori Mody, who was wearing a wire, that he would need to give Nigerian Vice President Atiku Abubakar $500,000 "as a motivating factor" to make sure they obtained contracts for iGate and Mody's company in Nigeria.

ITRealms reports that a few days later, on 3 August 2005, FBI agents raided Jefferson's home in Northeast Washington and, as noted in an 83-page affidavit filed to support a subsequent raid on his Congressional office, "found $90,000 of the cash in the freezer, in $10,000 increments wrapped in aluminum foil and stuffed inside frozen-food containers". Serial numbers found on the currency in the freezer matched serial numbers of funds given by the FBI to their informant.

Further investigations by ITRealms, revealed late on the night of May 20, 2006, FBI agents executed a search warrant at Jefferson's office in the Rayburn House Office Building. The raid led to an irony that one of Democrat Jefferson's staunchest defenders in the turf battles between the FBI and Congress became Dennis Hastert, who was Speaker of the House and a Republican.

As contained in the affidavit used to support these raids, FBI alleged:

• The FBI videotaped Jefferson receiving a stock certificate from Mody for a company set up in Nigeria to promote iGate's technology. Jefferson predicted the deal would generate $200 million annually after five years.
• Jefferson told Mody that he wanted a similar financial stake in the business in Ghana.
• Jefferson sought $10 million in financing from Mody to take over iGate and install "confidants" on the new board. In two payments, Mody wired $89,225 to the ANJ Group LLC, a company controlled by Jefferson's family.
• Jefferson lent $4,800 of the money Mody gave him to an unnamed congressional aide. Another $4,900 was given back to the FBI by one of Jefferson's attorneys.
• The FBI claims it has uncovered "at least seven other schemes in which Jefferson sought things of value in return for his official acts."

ITRealms recalls that Atiku Abubakar, at the weekend, declared his return to the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) with anticipated by industry observers that he is likely to run for president in 2019, had insisted that U.S. authorities have nothing against him, noting he had visited Europe regularly without being arrested for onward extradition to the U.S.

Abukakar in a recent chat with TheBoss Newspapers, expressed optimistic that if Nigerians elect him president in 2019, he would be allowed into the United States just like Mr. Buhari and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, both of whom are now being accorded red carpet treatments in the U.S. after becoming leaders of their respective countries, despite every odd of suspicion or linkage to an American congressman Williams Jefferson, who was jailed in 2009 after conviction by the FBI in relation to that case.

Although as at press time, ITRealms reports there is no formal statement from United States or its embassy in Nigeria on the Atiku Abukakar involvement and eventual ban.

Uboshe Uboshe/GEE

ITREALMS ... everything news digitally!

Pix; Atiku Abubakar and William Jefferson