The Transformation Agenda Solidarity Forum (TASOF), a socio-political group, has urged President Goodluck Jonathan, to respond to calls by Nigerians and contest re-election in 2015.

Briefing newsmen on Friday in Abuja, Alhaji Muhammadu Ari-Gwaska, the Chairman of the forum, appealed to Jonathan to declare his interest without further delay.

“We appreciate what he is doing and what he is determined to do.

“We join millions of Nigerians to urge him to respond to calls by genuine Nigerians to declare his interest in the election of 2015.

“We would like to remind Nigerians again and again that President Goodluck Jonathan, by constitutional provision (1999) is qualified to contest election for a second term,’’ Ari-Gwaska said.

He described the leadership style of the president as “wonderful’’ and called on Nigerians to rally round him, saying that he meant well for the country.

The chairman said that the claim by some politicians that Jonathan had agreed to do one term or was already doing his second term in office was “a misleading information”.

“We made it clear to those people, who claim to have had discussion with the president and that he told them he was only prepared for one term, that that was a private discussion which is not lawful or binding on Nigerians.

“The take-over of the government by President Goodluck Jonathan after the death of the late president was a constitutional issue.

“The provision of the constitution is such that when the president dies, automatically his Vice will take over for the rest of the tenure,’’ he said.

According to Ari-Gwaska, Jonathan got his first mandate from Nigerians in the election held on April 16, 2011, during which he emerged victorious.

He also said that the insinuation that some politicians in the North did not want the president to contest the 2015 presidential election was a “political gimmick’’.

Ari-Gwaska said that the president got 60 per cent of the total vote cast in the 2011 presidential election from the Northern region.

“Those of us, who were alive at the time of Sir Ahmadu Bello, are witnesses to the fact that the then Eastern minorities, now South-South zone co-operated with the late Premier of Northern Nigeria.

“The campaigns for elections in 1959 were carried out in cooperation with this people, they are very loyal, respectful and cooperative; they assisted the North to bring unity to this country.

“Northerners, a lot of them are aware of this and they feel that our support for Jonathan is a return for the loyalty and cooperation by his grandfathers, some years back.

“We will continue to remind northerners, who are ignorant of this fact that it is not out of the way to support this leader to bring about peace and harmony,’’ he said.

Ari-Gwaska also urged Nigerians to eschew primordial sentiments and support the president in the fight against terrorists who were threatening the unity of the country.

“The surest way we can defeat terrorism is to support our government and its security forces at all times,’’ he said.

Ari-Gwaska commended the president for his steadfastness and the achievements he had so far recorded in all sectors in spite of orchestrated distractions and vilification. (NAN)

Senegal’s health ministry has confirmed a first case of Ebola, making it the fifth West African country to be affected by the outbreak.

  Health Minister Awa Marie Coll Seck told reporters on Friday that a young man from Guinea was confirmed to have contracted the virus.

 The man was immediately placed in quarantine, she added.

  The current outbreak, which began in Guinea, has killed more than 1,500 people across the region.

  At least 3,000 people have been infected with the virus. The World Health Organization (WHO) has warned it could get much worse and infect more than 20,000 people.

 Senegal had previously closed its border with Guinea in an attempt to halt the spread of Ebola, but its frontiers are porous.

 It had also banned flights and ships from Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone – the three worst-hit countries.

 But the Guinean health services reported on Wednesday “the disappearance of a person infected with Ebola who reportedly travelled to Senegal,” according to Senegal’s health minister.

 A young Guinean student later turned up at a hospital in the capital, Dakar, said Ms Seck, but he did not reveal that he had had contact with Ebola patients in his own country.

 Senegal, a major transit hub for aid agencies, has a large Guinean population.

 Separately on Friday, residents of Guinea’s second largest city, Nzerekore, rioted after its main market was sprayed with disinfectant in an attempt to halt the spread of the virus.

 The exact cause of the riot is not clear – some people reportedly feared the spray would spread Ebola. Police responded by firing tear gas.

 A 24-hour curfew is currently in place in the city, which is the capital of the Forest Region, where the Ebola epidemic has its epicentre.

 However the BBC’s Alhassan Sillah in Guinea says the town has miraculously remained free of Ebola so far.

 There have been relatively few cases in Guinea recently, with far higher infection rates in Liberia and Sierra Leone, and six deaths in Nigeria.

 On Thursday, the WHO unveiled a plan aimed at stopping transmission of the virus in the next six to nine months.

 Among its recommendations, it said countries affected should conduct exit screening to prevent the disease from spreading to a further 10 countries.

 The plan calls for $489m (£295m) to be spent over the next nine months and requires 750 international workers and 12,000 national workers across West Africa.

‎Former minister of Information and political, Edwin Clark, has spoken against the leadership of the Peoples Democratic Party in considering a waiver grant to former chairman of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, Nuhu Ribadu, to enable him contest the party’s primary for the forthcoming Adamawa governorship election.

Clark said this at a press conference in Abuja on Thursday, saying Ribadu has no political value and that the enemies of President Goodluck Jonathan are those behind the former EFCC who contested as presidential candidate of now defunct Action Congress of Nigeria.

Ribadu, who recently defected from the All Progressives Congress to the PDP, has collected the party’s Expression of Interest form to participate in the October 11 bye-election in Adamawa.

However, in an open letter addressed to the national chairman of the PDP, Adamu Mu’azu, read to journalists, at the conference, said there is nothing positive about Ribadu and that he would bring nothing to the ruling party in the long run.

“What, really, is our party receiving so joyfully? What is the political value of this emerging treachery, the well-established bone-marrow trademark of the man, Ribadu?

“In 2011 election, Ribadu ran for president on the platform of the defunct Action Congress of Nigeria, lost at his family home polling booth, and also his ward, scored a mere 32 votes in Yola, and 32,786 total in Adamawa, against Gen. Muhammadu Buhari’s 344,526 and President Goodluck Jonathan’s 508,314,” Clark said.‎

According to the South South region leader know for his controversial statements, Ribadu has never expressed gratitude to President Goodluck Jonathan despite the president saving him from public disgrace by converting his dismissal to retirement as Assistant Inspector General of Police.

“Seemingly, not imbued with a spirit of gratitude, Ribadu has, up till this moment, failed to show respect to Mr. President, who magnanimously saved him the odious stigma of the status of ‘dismissed-with-ignomy’ to the honourable one of ‘retirement-with-full-benefits’

“Not only that, Jonathan’s administration dressed him up with a high-profile appointment as chairman of the Petroleum Revenue Special Task Force Committee, against the run of play.

“His response? A failed drama of trumped-up indictment of government, the fingers that thought to feed his thinned-out public image, following battering it rightly received during the Yar’Adua administration, Clark added.

Jihadist militants from Islamic State (IS) appear to have executed “dozens” of Syrian army soldiers, activists say.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the soldiers were captured while attempting to flee to Hama province after IS stormed the Tabqa airbase.

Twitter accounts belonging to jihadists had boasted about 200 deaths, it added.

On Wednesday, photos and a video were posted online appearing to show more than 100 men in their underwear being marched through the desert at gunpoint.

In the video, militants shout “Islamic State” and “There is no going back”.

In images published earlier this week, IS fighters wearing balaclavas could be seen shooting dead at least seven kneeling men at the airbase.
Tabqa airbase – near the northern city of Raqqa, an IS stronghold – fell to IS on Sunday after weeks of fierce fighting.

The Observatory said 346 IS fighters and more than 170 members of the security forces were killed in the final battle, which lasted five days.

The head of the Observatory, Rami Abdul Rahman, told the AFP news agency that about 1,400 troops had been stationed at the airbase, 700 of whom managed to escape.

Two hundred appeared to have been caught and executed by IS as they attempted to cross the desert to government-held territory in the Orontes Valley to the west, he said. Another 500 men were on the run, he added.

After the airbase’s capture, Syrian state television said the army was “regrouping” and that a “successful evacuation” had taken place.

On Tuesday, UN investigators said Islamic State militants had committed “mass atrocities” in Syria and had recruited children as fighters.

Their report said public killings were a “common spectacle” in areas run by the jihadist group and that local people were forced to watch.

At the same time, the investigators said that Syrian government forces had also committed atrocities by dropping barrel bombs and chlorine gas from helicopters, shelling hospitals and torturing and killing civilians.

—BBC News

A doctor who treated one of those who had direct contact with Liberian-American, Patrick Sawyer, has died from the Ebola Virus Disease (EVD).

The doctor, resident in Port Harcourt, Rivers State, was said to have treated the patient who escaped from where he was quarantined after suspicion he must have come down with the EVD again.

Minister of Health, Prof. Onyebuchi Chukwu, who made the disclosure on Thursday morning, said the widow of the doctor informed the authorities of the death of her husband.

The corpse of the doctor, according to Chukwu is “not yet‎ disposed of.”

Chukwu said at the briefing: “This primary contact of Mr Sawyer’s evaded our surveillance team in the last week of July 2014 and travelled out of Lagos to Port Harcourt where, as we now understand, he consulted with a doctor and was apparently treated for some symptoms. After four days, following a manhunt for him, he returned to Lagos by which time he was found to be without symptoms.

“This case would have been of no further interest since he had completed the 21 days of surveillance without any other issue, but for the fact that the doctor who treated him died last Friday, 22nd August, 2014.

“Following the report of this death by the doctor’s widow the next day, the case had been thoroughly investigated and laboratory analysis showed that this doctor died from EVD. As a result, several contacts have now been traced, registered and placed under surveillance. However, because the widow is now symptomatic, she has been quarantined pending the outcome of laboratory tests on her.

“The Incident Management Committee has already deployed a very strong team to Port Harcourt to work with the health authorities of Rivers State. Just like the situation has effectively been managed in Lagos and Enugu, the situation in Port Harcourt will also similarly be effectively managed and we have begun to do so.”

Chukwu said with the death of the doctor, the number of those who had died from the EVD in Nigeria now stands at six.

He said: “The total number of deaths from Ebola Virus Disease in Nigeria, therefore, is now six, the index case (Mr Sawyer), the four primary contacts that died in the isolation ward in Lagos, and a doctor that died in Port Harcourt whose blood sample tested positive after death. Also, 70 persons have been placed under surveillance in Port Harcourt.

“I want to charge the residents of Port Harcourt not to panic over this situation as the experience we have gathered from Lagos and Enugu respectively indicates that there is no cause for alarm when you have the government fully in control of the situation.

“Once again we appeal to all contacts under surveillance to abide by the advice given to them by the Incident Management Committee.

“With regard to Enugu, all secondary contacts will be followed up till tomorrow when they are all expected to be discharged from our surveillance.”

Chukwu said the escaped victim is a Nigerian but works for the ECOWAS Commission.

On the wife of the doctor, Chukwu said: “As we speak, she is still‎ in Port Harcourt quarantined. We are taking her specimen this morning and send it to Lagos. We don’t know what the result will turn out to be but certainly if it turns out positive; it’s likely we will move her to Lagos.”

On the number of those under surveillance, Chukwu said: “In Enugu, we have six.

“In Port Harcourt, we have 70.

“In Lagos, we have 141.

“Since we started this journey of Ebola Virus Disease in Nigeria, 200 contacts have completed their 21 days and we are no longer tracking them.

“Out of the 70 in Port Harcourt, only one person has symptom presently.”

He continued: “The contact tracing moved immediately on Saturday to Port Harcourt.

“Then the treatment group moved in yesterday morning.

“The mobile laboratory will move to Port Harcourt on Saturday.”

On the escaped ECOWAS staff, Chukwu said: “We have brought him under quarantine.

“He’s not symptomatic.

“He doesn’t have Ebola virus in his blood.

“But we are also looking at other possible secretion….

“The man has anti-bodies showing that he has suffered it before but he’s not ill today.”

Sawyer brought Ebola into Nigeria on July 20 and died in a Lagos hospital on July 25.