TheNewsGuru

Tag: nigerian

  • FBI declares Nigerian, Kelechi James wanted over $5 million cyber fraud

    FBI declares Nigerian, Kelechi James wanted over $5 million cyber fraud

    The U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigations, FBI, has declared a Nigerian, Kelechi Declan James, wanted.

    The FBI made this known on its Twitter handle and its website on Friday.

    According to the FBI, the accused has federal criminal charges against him from an investigation by FBI New York’s Cyber Crime Task Force.

    As alleged in a complaint sworn out of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, Mr. James, along with four other co-conspirators, ran an e-mail compromise scheme that resulted in losses of more than $5 million for their victims.

    As part of scheme, the suspect and his co-conspirators allegedly defrauded victims across the U.S. by tricking them into wiring money to bank accounts the victims believed were owned by friends or business associates.

    They did this in two ways: by overtaking an e-mail account of an individual trusted by the victim and then requesting money be wired to a bank account; or by developing a relationship of trust with victim like an Internet romance and then asking the victim to wire money, the American agency said.

    As soon as the money was wired, it would be moved from one account to another, and the funds would be withdrawn. Mr. James’s role in this scheme was to withdraw the money from bank accounts, the FBI said.

    “James is known to frequent the Brooklyn neighborhoods of East New York (Crescent Street and Loring Avenue; Vermont Street between Blake Avenue and Dumont Avenue), Brownsville, Bedford-Stuyvesant (MacDougal and Hull Streets), Crown Heights (Park Place and Utica Avenue), Flatbush (E 29th and Avenue D), and East Flatbush (East 51st and Winthrop Street),” the agency said.

    The FBI offered a $1,000 reward for information that leads to his arrest.

  • Gambian lawyers protest appointment of Nigerian Judges, vow to boycott courts indefinitely

    Gambian lawyers protest appointment of Nigerian Judges, vow to boycott courts indefinitely

    Gambia Bar Association, GBA, ha​s​​​ protested against the appointment of four Nigerian High Court judges​.

    The newly appointed Nigerian judges are Justice Edward Ogar, Justice Mathias Olusegun Agboola, Justice Simeon Abi and Justice Matins U. Okoi.

    A statement signed by Secretary-General of the association, stated that the bar association shall proceed to file an action to challenge the appointments, to seek an order quashing same and to seek necessary prohibitive relief.

    The group said its members would commence a boycott of the courts presided over by the said judges until further notice.

    ​GBA ​​however said it would engage the Judicial Services Commission and executive of the government, through the Minister of Justice, to continue the necessary dialogue and consultation for the development and protection of the administration of justice system.

    GBA ​has already fi​led a suit against the Judicial Service Commission, JSC, and Attorney-General, seeking the necessary orders from the High Court, including the suspension of the letters of appointments of the said Judges, pending the hearing of the application before the court.

    T​he lawyers said they were saddened by the fact that ​their​ ​”​hopes and aspirations that a transparent mechanism would be put in place for the appointment of qualified, eminent, independent jurists that The Gambian people have yearned for so long​”​, had not been respected.

    ​GBA warned that true justice and independence of the judiciary should not be sacrificed for speedy and superficial appearance of a functioning judiciary.

     

  • Another 171 Nigerians deported from Libya

    Barely a week after 162 Nigerians were brought back by the Federal Government from Libya, another batch of 171 Nigerians were yesterday deported.

    TheNewsGuru.com gathered that they were brought into the country through the Murtala Mohammed International Airport, MMIA, Lagos.

    They landed at the cargo section of the airport at about 4p.m.

    Breakdown of persons flown back include 109 female adults, two female children and one infant. Males were 49 adults, five children and five infants.

    The Libyan returnees were brought back courtesy of the FG and the International Organization for Migration, IOM.

    The Federal Government, however, assured that the evacuation programme from Libya, being the seventh in about 14 months, will not continue endlessly, but would soon be wrapped up.

    Recall that after videos and pictures of the killing of black immigrants in Libya were circulated online, the FG had warned Nigerians to stay clear of Libya.

    The Senior Special Assistant to President Muhammadu Buhari on Foreign Affairs and Diaspora, Abike Dabiri-Erewa, said although the authenticity of the pictures and tapes in question could not be verified, it was a known fact that Libya had been allegedly executing black immigrants illegally for years.

  • Buhari cautions against illegal migration of Nigerian youths to Europe

    Buhari cautions against illegal migration of Nigerian youths to Europe

    President Muhammadu Buhari has frowned at the high rate of illegal migration of Nigerian youths to European countries through the Mediterranean Sea.

    Buhari made this known at the 32nd Annual Meeting of the Sahel and West Africa, organised by the Food Crisis Protection Network in Abuja on Monday.

    The president, who was represented by Chief Audu Ogbeh, the Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development, called for an immediate stop to the action by Nigerians, saying it was unfair to European countries.

    He said that agriculture revitalisation was a solution to the migration issue, while expressing the readiness of his administration to support farmers in order to boost local production in the country.

    “We are pained when we see our youths across West and North Eastern Africa in a desperate attempt to cross the desert; get to Libya and cross the Mediterranean Sea to Europe.

    “We consider it as something that must stop as fast as possible because it is unfair to Europe.

    “We think that if we reorganise our agriculture better, many of these youths will earn a decent living at home rather than become an embarrassment to their host countries and to us here in Africa.

    “We are not unmindful of our youths population here, hence the need to ensure that the agriculture sector is revitalised as soon as possible.

    “We have decided that we will no longer rely on rainfall, we will create dams, water reservoirs and insist on harvesting food at least three times in a year,’’ the president assured.

    On food crisis in the West African region, he described the threat as real, saying that urgent steps were necessary to address the challenge.

    According to him, there are 800 million hectares of agricultural lands across the world yet to be cultivated and Africa owns half of them.

    The president, appealed to Sahel and West African agricultural stakeholder to devise ideas that would guarantee better management in cattle breeding through artificial insemination.

    Buhari, however, said his administration was aggressively tackling humanitarian crisis of the Internally Displaced Persons by attending to issues of food and nutrition, especially for women and children in the North East.

    Mr Marcel De Souza, the President of ECOWAS Commission, said that no fewer than 40 million Nigerians were internally displaced as a result of the insecurity in the North eastern region.

    He listed some of the developmental challenges of the Sahel and West African regions to include economic and political governance.

    De Souza called on governments of the regions to invest toward addressing unemployment and food crisis, which he described as bane to development.

    Mr Kassoum Denon, the Malian Minister of Agriculture, appealed to various countries in the Sahel and West Africa to share ideas and success stories with a view to addressing food crisis in the regions.

    The Food Crisis Protection Network is an international network created in 1984 as part of regional system for the prevention of food crisis.

    It brings together Sahelian and West African expertise of the humanitarian and development spheres by mobilising available resources for social protection, livelihoods, nutrition, agricultural development, natural resources management to benefit the most vulnerable populations.

    It aims to eradicate hunger and malnutrition by 2030 in the regions.

  • Nigerian equity market appreciates by 0.31%

    Activities on the Nigerian equities market on Friday remained on a positive trend with the market indices appreciating further by 0.31 per cent.

    The All-Share Index grew by 78.51 points or 0.31 per cent, to close at 25,817.69, as against the 25,739.18 achieved on Thursday.

    Also, the market capitalisation which opened at N8.856 trillion rose by N27 billion, to close at N8.883 trillion.

    Forte Oil for the second consecutive day led the gainers’ chart, appreciating by N9.86 to close at N106.23 per share.

    Nigerian Breweries followed with a gain of N2.95 to close at N145 and Okomu Oil rose by N1.99 to close at N40 per share.

    7Up garnered 64k to N130 and ETI chalked up 34k to close at N9.94 per share.

    On the other hand, Seplat topped the losers’ chart having lost N2.90 to close at N340 per share.

    Presco dipped N2.20 to close at N41.87, while Mobil lost N2.15 to close at N305 per share.

    Large Wapco dropped N2.08 to close at N38.82 and Unilever was down by N1 to close at N45 per share.

    However, the volume of shares transacted closed lower as investors bought and sold 108.53 million shares valued at N1.63 billion, exchanged in 2,512 deals.

    Recall that this was against the 165.99 million shares worth N1.27 billion traded in 2,485 deals on Thursday.

    Diamond Bank remained the most-traded equity with a total of 23.64 million shares worth N20.11 million.

    It was followed by Transcorp with 15.13 million shares valued at N12.89 million, while Access Bank accounted for 9.82 million shares worth N52.77 million.

    FCMB Group transacted 7.89 million shares valued at N8.06 million and FBN Holdings exchanged 7.39 million shares valued at N25.96 million.

     

  • Ericsson sacks 160 Nigerian workers, replaces them with Indian professionals

    Ericsson sacks 160 Nigerian workers, replaces them with Indian professionals

    Indications emerged Thursday morning that Ericsson Nigeria, the local subsidiary of the global telecommunications solutions provider, has disengaged about 160 permanent and outsourced workers in its Network Operating Centre.

    It was gathered that disengagement, which takes effect on Sunday, December 4, 2016, affected 55 full-time employees of the company.

    According to anonymous sources in the company, some workers were laid off in July when the offshoring of jobs to India began.

    Further investigations reveals that foreign workers had been recruited to replace the disengaged workers, and knowledge transfer by Nigerian engineers to the new workers was ongoing in the company’s office in India.

    The knowledge transfer had been going on since last year when some Indians were brought into the country to study the management of telecommunications infrastructure in the country.

    A copy of the disengagement letter to the permanent workers signed by the Managing Director of the company, Johan Jemdahi, reads: “Please be informed that effective December 4, 2016, your position has been declared redundant. We thank you for all your past services to Ericsson. Further information about the redundancy benefits will be communicated to you before the actual termination date.”

    Findings showed that in the last two and half years, Ericsson Nigeria had managed the MTN network majorly from its pool of local workers, some of who were former MTN employees, as well as other contracted workers.

    One of the affected workers who prefers to speak on condition of anonymity said that the company was offering the jobs, which involved the monitoring of MTN masts and networks in the country, to Indians at reduced costs.

    The workers expressed fears that this would be a continuous trend in the telecommunications industry if it was not addressed by the government.

    “The company said it was cheaper for the work to be done in India than in Nigeria. The monitoring of those masts can be done from anywhere. We monitor Abuja, Enugu, Asaba, and Port Harcourt sites from the Lagos office. What they are now proposing is that instead of monitoring from Lagos, they want to monitor from India.

    “They have taken the Airtel NOC office to India. They brought about 30 Indians to Nigeria last year to come and understudy the MTN network and after a month, they went back and started monitoring from there. There are no plans to pay compensation to the outsourced workers in the company,” the source said.

    The Public Relations Manager, Sub-Saharan Africa, Ericsson, Toju Egbebi, who confirmed the development, said the move was part of the company’s global cost and efficiency programme to achieve a net annual cost savings of Swedish Krona 9bn, adding that the programme would continue till 2017.

    According to her, the redundancy is being carried out across 180 countries where the company operates.

    In her words: “This means employees will be affected. The decision to offshore our service is in keeping with our global delivery strategy; certain work may be centralised into global delivery centres. This is to enable improved network availability and quality for consumers, and cost efficient network operations for operators.”

    She explained that on July 19, the company announced actions to further save costs as well as intensify reductions in cost of sales activities and adapt its operations to a weaker mobile broadband market.