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(Nigeria) The Enugu State Police Command says has rescued two kidnapped students of the Enugu State University of Science and Technology, ESUT, from their abductors. This is contained in a statement by the command’s Spokesman, Mr Ebere Amaraizu, on Tuesday in Enugu. Amaraizu said that the students, Afamefuna Akadieze and Miss Miracle Chukwuemeka were rescued unhurt at Ufam Stream at Ituku in the Awgu Local Government Area of the state. He said the victims were rescued after an intensive confrontation between the police and the hoodlums, whom he said, had escaped with various degrees of injuries. The spokesman said, however, that a member of the gang was arrested by the police. He said that the victims were abducted at gunpoint and blindfolded when they were buying provisions at a shop near their hostel. “The hoodlums demanded N20 million ransom from the parents of the victims which they later reduced to N10 million. “Following a tip-off, the police Anti-Kidnap Squad, s

(Nigeria) The authority of the Federal Government College, Buni-Yadi, in Yobe State, on Tuesday confirmed that 29 of its students were killed by insurgents who attacked the institution on Monday. Mr Ibrahim Abdul, a Senior Master, gave the figure while receiving Governor Ibrahim Gaidam during a sympathy visit to the school. Abdul said that 11 students also sustained various gunshot wounds. He said that all the hostels and classrooms were burnt by the insurgents who attacked the college at 11.30 p.m. The attackers, who were said to have arrived at the college in several vehicles, also burnt down 40 houses. The governor described the attack as inhuman and unfortunate. Gaidam called on security operatives to evolve more proactive and intelligence approach to curb the menace of the insurgents. He announced a donation of N100 million to assist the victims. The college was the fourth educational institution attacked in the state in the last eight months.

Egypt's military-installed authorities named a former member of ousted strongman Hosni Mubarak's ruling party as prime minister Tuesday ahead of a presidential election expected to bring the army chief to power. Ibrahim Mahlab, a former state-sector construction boss, vowed to fight "terrorism" and bring back tourists as he began work on forming a new cabinet after the surprise resignation on Monday of prime minister Hazem al-Beblawi. Beblawi's government had been installed in July after the military ousted Islamist Mohamed Morsi, Egypt's first freely elected president and its first civilian one. But it resigned in the face of mounting criticism of its failure to get to grips with a floundering economy and worsening industrial unrest. Mahlab, who served as housing minister in Beblawi's cabinet, said that interim president Adly Mansour had tasked him with forming a new government "in three to four days". He promised to work hard to

(Nigeria) Stakeholders at a town hall meeting on education in Edo State, have thrown their weight behind plans by the state government to conduct a test for teachers in the state to assess their levels of competence. Participants at the town hall meeting, at the Imaguero College Hall, Benin City, Tuesday, include traditional rulers, non-governmental organisations, clergymen, civil society groups, market women and other stakeholders were of the view government’s huge investment in the rebuilding of schools would be a waste if there were no competent teachers to handle the pupils. The Onojie of Opoji, His Royal Highness, Ehidiamen 1, said the government should not compromise in sanitizing the education sector in the state. He noted that education is the fulcrum of development in any society, and urged the governor to flush out unqualified teachers from the system in the interest of the pupils, stressing that true union leaders would not support unqualified teachers. Also the

(Nigeria) Suspected Boko Haram Islamists killed 43 people on Tuesday when they attacked girls secondary school students as they slept in the latest school massacre to hit Nigeria's troubled northeast. The raid at 2 a.m., (0100 GMT) targeted the Federal Government College in the town of Buni Yadi in Yobe State and bore the hallmarks of a similar attack last September in which 40 died. The attackers reportedly hurled explosives into student residential buildings, sprayed gunfire into rooms and hacked a number students to death. A senior medical source at the Sani Abacha Specialist Hospital in Yobe's capital Damaturu said the gunmen only targeted male students and that female students were "spared". "So far, 43 bodies have been brought (from the college) and are lying at the morgue," said the source, who requested anonymity as he was not authorised to discuss death tolls. Yobe has been one of the hardest areas in Boko Haram's four-and-half ye

Red Cross said Tuesday it had collected nine more bodies in Bangui, bringing to 1,240 the number of confirmed deaths from the violence in the Central African capital since December. Among the corpses collected by Red Cross staff were two Chadian soldiers from the African Union peacekeeping force MISCA and two civilians who were killed on Sunday in clashes with militiamen on Sunday. The bodies of the other five were retrieved from several Bangui neighbourhoods, a Red Cross official told AFP on condition of anonymity. The exact time and circumstances of their death was not clear but they all had bullet or machete wounds. The Central African Red Cross had found another six bodies in Bangui between Thursday and Saturday last week. The Red Cross official said his staff had now collected a total of 1,240 bodies from the streets of Bangui since December 5, when French troops deployed in a bid to quell flaring sectarian unrest. He said the real death toll for Bangui was probably m

Outgoing housing minister Ibrahim Mahlab was appointed Tuesday as Egypt's new prime minister after the resignation of the cabinet installed by the military following last year's overthrow of Islamist president Mohamed Morsi. Mahlab, a former member of deposed president Hosni Mubarak's National Democratic Party, told reporters he had been tasked by interim president Adly Mansour with forming the new government ahead of presidential polls due to be held this spring.