Security
White House does not rule out Haiti request for U.S. troops
The United States is still reviewing a request for troops made by Haiti’s interim Prime Minister Claude Joseph to help secure key infrastructure after the assassination of President Jovenel Moise, White House spokesperson Jen Psaki said on Monday. Psaki said Haiti’s political leadership remains unclear and that it was vital for the country’s leaders to come together to chart a united path forward. Moise was shot dead early on Wednesday at his Port-au-Prince home by what Haitian authorities describe as a unit of assassins formed of 26 Colombians and two Haitian Americans. Haitian police said on Sunday they had arrested another key suspect. The death of the president has plunged the troubled country into deeper turmoil, and U.S. officials traveled there on Sunday to assess the situation and ...
Pentagon: US team going to Haiti to assess needs
A team of U.S. security and law enforcement experts is traveling to Haiti to determine what assistance Washington can provide following the assassination of the Haitian president last week, the Pentagon said on Sunday. “Today, an inter-agency team largely from the Department of Homeland Security and the FBI are heading down to Haiti right now to see what we can to do help in the investigative process,” Pentagon spokesman John Kirby told “Fox News Sunday.” “That’s really where our energies are best applied right now – in helping them get their arms around investigating this incident and figuring out who’s culpable … and how best to hold them accountable,” Kirby said in the interview. President Joe Biden will be briefed by the team when it returns and “then make decisions about the way forwa...
Obudu contract debt: Appeal court reserves judgment against Cross River
The Abuja division of the Court of Appeal has reserved judgment in the appeal filed by a private firm, Zedici Capital Ltd, against the Cross River State Government over a N3.8 billion contract debt. The appellant, Zedici Capital Ltd, is the firm that remodelled the Obudu Mountain Resort in Cross River State, now a subject of litigation. The three-member panel of the Court of Appeal, headed by Justice Peter Ige, reserved the date after counsel to the parties had adopted their legal submissions for and against the appeal, that is challenging the judgment of a High Court of the Federal Capital Territory (FCT), which had in 2019, refused to affirm the arbitral award to Zedici Ltd over its investment of N3.8 billion in the resort. Justice Ige announced that a date for the judgment would be comm...
President Buhari orders military to crush bandits in ‘language they understand’
President Muhammadu Buhari on Saturday ordered the military to crush bandits operating in Zamfara and Kaduna in the language they understand. The president condemned repeated bandit killings in Zamfara and Kaduna States, urging the nation’s military to respond to the worrying situation in a language that the bandits understood. Buhari, in a statement issued by his spokesman, Garba Shehu noted that the military and other security agencies were now working on new methods and policies that are yielding good results in many of the troubled parts of the country. He called for a crushing response to the killing of innocent citizens in the rural communities. Buhari also averred that the nation, its military and the entire population needed to summon the courage required to defeat the bandits and ...
Yahaya Bello: Nigeria deserves the best captain no matter where he comes from
The Governor of Kogi State, Alhaji Yahaya Bello, has said that rather engage on the unconstitutional issue of rotational presidency, what Nigerians should focus on is look for that Nigerian, no matter where he comes, who can be the captain to pilot the country to the promised land. The governor who stated this at the First Annual Governor Yahaya Bello (GYB) Seminar for Nigeria’s Political and Crime Correspondents/Editors at the Transcorp Hilton, Abuja, said that even after 16 years of Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and another six years of All Progressives Congress (APC), in the country, the problems of the nation has not been solved by the rotational presidency that has taken place over the years. Bello insisted that the political party must not limit the choice of Nigerians to any region...
Haiti asks US, UN to send troops after president’s assassination
Haiti has asked Washington and the UN for troops to secure its ports, airport and other strategic sites after the assassination of President Jovenel Moise opened a power vacuum in the crisis-hit Caribbean nation, an official said Friday. The United States has already said it will send FBI and other agents to Port-au-Prince, two days after Moise was shot dead in his home. In the wake of the slaying “we thought that mercenaries could destroy some infrastructure to create chaos … During a conversation with the US secretary of state and the UN we made this request,” elections minister Mathias Pierre told AFP. The US State Department and Pentagon both confirmed receiving a request for “security and investigative assistance” and said officials remain in contact with Port-au-Prince, but did not s...
Cross River: Igbo leaders to partner with police on community policing
President of Igbo Congress Cross River chapter, Prince Raymond Atulomah, has stated that Ndi Igbo would partner with police command in the area of community policing. Speaking during a courtesy call on the Cross River Commissioner for Police, Mr Sikiru Akande, in his office in Calabar on Friday, Atulomah said Igbo leaders crave for a crime-free society and therefore would contribute to ensuring that the police Command succeed in the area of crime fighting. He said Igbo are committed to promoting a peaceful co-existence between them and host communities especially in local security. He said: “We are here to pay solidarity visit to the Commissioner and congratulate him on his appointment. We pledge to collaborate with your office in the area of community policing. We promise to be law abidin...
33% of Companies Undergo Cyberattacks Twice a Month on Average, per Report
Sourced from International IDEA The Hiscox Cyber Readiness Report 2021 provided some concerning statistics and facts about the impact of cyber-crime. It is a game, and it is one that Hiscox fundamentally believes no business should leave to chance. Multiple threat vectors and variable threat actors, and, perhaps most worrying – repeated attacks on companies by cyber-crime pose a serious risk to organisations small and large alike. One-in-six of all firms attacked this year (17%) said the impact was serious enough to ‘materially threaten the solvency or viability of the company’. According to Anna Collard, SVP Content Strategy & Evangelist at KnowBe4 AFRICA, the report underscores the immense challenge that organisations face when it comes to securing the business and the people within ...
Cybercrime is a Pressing Threat to Economic Growth in West Africa
Sourced from the Guardian Nigeria. While organisations across West Africa work to recover from the economic impact of the pandemic, the global cybercrime industry is going into overdrive. An increasingly sophisticated cybercrime industry is launching a range of attacks aimed at organisations and critical infrastructure. Such attacks are growing in volume and sophistication, putting our collective economic recovery at risk at a time when organisations invest more heavily in digital technologies. Global attacks on Internet of Things (IoT) devices, for example, have risen 300% in 2019 alone, and cost organisations untold amounts of revenue and disruption to their business operations. One study found that the average cost of cybercrime is $13-million per successful attack, a huge 72% increase ...
Awareness and Training Are Key in Defending Your Company from Blended Cyber-Threats
Image sourced from Finance Times. While blended cybersecurity threats are not new, they are fairly sophisticated and multi-staged in nature, meaning that they are difficult to protect against and can pose a considerable threat to organisations’ IT environments. A blended threat typically uses and exploits multiple vulnerabilities in an attack chain, says Brian Pinnock, Senior Director of Sales Engineering (EMEA) at Mimecast, adding that the severity of a blended threat will depend on the specific vulnerabilities that are targeted. “For example, a threat actor or cybercriminal will launch a phishing campaign against an organisation by sending emails with infected links that redirect to malicious websites. When a user clicks on these links, they could download a piece of malware like a Troja...
NUT: Nigerian government not interested in curbing insecurity
The 1st Vice President of the Nigeria Union of Teachers, Mr Kayode Akosile, has said insecurity is getting worse at schools and other places in the country because the government is not seriously invested in curbing the situation. Akosile said government could as well use the money being embezzled and wasted on other not too important things to combat insecurity in the land. The NUT boss said this while speaking with journalists in Ibadan on Tuesday on the sidelines of a workshop on privatisation and commercialisations of education organised by NUT in partnership with International and Friedrich Ebert Stiftung Foundation. He said teachers and students’ minds were no longer at rest while in schools, saying the future of the nation was already in jeopardy. He said everything should be done t...
Yobe governor: No plan to retrench workers
Gov. Mai Mala-Buni of Yobe on Tuesday said his administration has no plan to retrench civil servants in spite of the state’s meagre resources. Mala-Buni gave the assurance in Damaturu on the sidelines of the swearing-in ceremony of newly appointed permanent secretaries and board members. He said he would continue to attract investments to Yobe from both state and non-state actors in order to meet the financial obligations of the state. “People accuse me of frequenting Abuja; the truth is, if I remain in Damaturu, we cannot pay even our salary bills. “And that means we will have to join the league of states that are retrenching workers; we don’t have such plan. “You are aware of the projects we started, including the four modern markets we are building, the ongoing 3,600 houses, the over 87...
