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Nigerian kidnappers posing as white lovers lure, abduct Ghanaian women in Port Harcourt

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Nigerian kidnappers posing as white lovers lure, abduct Ghanaian women in Port Harcourt

By: Zagazola MakamA

Two Ghanaian women have been rescued from captivity in Nigeria after they were lured through social media by a group of Nigerian kidnappers who posed as white men in search of romantic partners.

Zagazola Makama understands that the victims, Anastasia Beidou and Evelyn Sewa Kunedu, were deceived into traveling separately to Nigeria, where they were abducted, tortured, and held for ransom.

At a press briefing held on Tuesday at the Criminal Investigations Department (CID) Headquarters in Accra, the Ghana Police Service confirmed that eight suspects have been arrested five in Ghana and three in Nigeria in connection with the kidnapping.

The Director-General of the CID, COP, Lydia Yaako Donkor, said the suspects used social media platforms to initiate romantic conversations with the victims while pretending to be foreign nationals seeking marriage.

The victims, unaware of the trap, accepted the marriage proposals. On April 22, 2025, both women traveled to Nigeria separately but arrived at the same location in Port Harcourt, Rivers State. Upon arrival, they were seized by the gang and held captive.

The kidnappers demanded a ransom of 500,000 Ghana Cedis from each victim’s family. Videos sent to their relatives showed the victims bound and pleading for help, prompting immediate police investigations in Ghana.

A coordinated operation involving the Ghana Police Service, Nigeria Police Force, and the National Signals Bureau led to the arrest of five suspects in Ghana. These included Christian Emeka, and Basil Okonkwo, both Nigerians; and Titus Imba Awuni, Alfred Amalbio, and Mama Mahaseni Matei, all Ghanaians.

Three more suspects Peter Okoye, Paulinos Chidokwe, and Chinonso Okafo, were arrested in Port Harcourt and Onitsha by Nigerian authorities. The victims were rescued unharmed and are currently undergoing trauma care.

Investigations revealed that the suspects used Ghanaian SIM cards fraudulently registered with stolen Ghana Card details to receive ransom payments. One suspect, Titus Imba Awuni, a mobile money vendor, confessed to acquiring SIM cards through a telecom company employee who provided login credentials to register the cards illegally.

The suspects used the SIM cards to receive a total of 13,200 Ghana Cedis in ransom, which was later transferred into a Nigerian bank account under the name Cecilia Williams.

The victims reported that while in captivity, they were stripped naked, beaten with shards of glass, wrapped in orange bedsheets, and threatened with death. The gang recorded the abuse to pressure their families for ransom.

DCOP Donkor warned the public, especially young women, to exercise caution in online interactions, noting that criminal syndicates are increasingly using social media to exploit and abduct unsuspecting individuals.

She added that efforts are ongoing to extradite the suspects to Ghana for prosecution and reaffirmed the commitment of the Ghana Police to combating cross-border crime through collaboration with regional and international partners.

Nigerian kidnappers posing as white lovers lure, abduct Ghanaian women in Port Harcourt

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Nigerian Air Force Neutralises Terrorists in Successful Air Interdiction at Maisani

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Nigerian Air Force Neutralises Terrorists in Successful Air Interdiction at Maisani

By: Zagazola Makama

The Nigerian Air Component of Operation Hadin Kai have executed a coordinated strike on a major terrorist enclave located at Maisani in the Timbuktu Triangle general area of Borno State, killing several ISWAP terrorists.

Intelligence sources told Zagazola Makama that the air interdiction mission conducted on May 4, 2025, at approximately 1800 hours, was informed by credible intelligence and sustained surveillance, targeted terrorists’ structures cleverly concealed and camouflaged under thick shrubs in the area.

The sources said that using advanced platforms, the Nigerian Air Force (NAF) conducted a focused Air Interdiction (AI) mission, resulting in the destruction of the identified enemy hideouts and the neutralisation of an unconfirmed number of insurgent fighters.

According to the sources, Post-strike Battle Damage Assessment (BDA) obtained from our Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance (ISR) platforms confirmed that the airstrike achieved its intended objectives, dealing a significant blow to terrorists.

Nigerian Air Force Neutralises Terrorists in Successful Air Interdiction at Maisani

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Nigeria Looks to World Bank to Tackle Challenges of National Capital Accounting

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Nigeria Looks to World Bank to Tackle Challenges of National Capital Accounting

By: Michael Mike

As the world marks the 2025 Environment Day, the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) has appealed to the World Bank for support on capacity building, data and in addressing the challenges poised by Natural Capital Accounting (NCA) in the country.

Head of Department, National Accounts Energy and Environment at the NBS, Dr. Baba Madu made the appeal at the 2025 Natural Capital Accounting (NCA) Conference on Thursday in Abuja with support from the World Bank in. collaboration with the NBS and the Federal Ministry of Environment.

Madu while noting that the NCA was a new area Nigeria must exploit to further boost the nation’s economy, said for Nigeria to grow and be at par with other developed nations, there was need to account for her natural resources.

He said: “NCA has been tasked with the crucial role of integrating natural capital into economic measurement. It is impossible to measure the economy accurately without accounting for natural resources. Issues such as environmental degradation, afforestation, desertification, and climate change all directly impact productivity.

“Productivity in turn, influences output—one of the core components of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP). These environmental factors must be reflected across all economic activity sectors to present a more accurate picture of national output.”

While stating that Nigeria currently has data on NCA in Nigeria, the NBS official however raised concerns over the huge data gap from relevant Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs) in the environment sector.

He said: “We are not doing badly but we need to improve on what we are doing. In terms of data sources, I can tell you there’s a big gap because these are new areas needed to be exploited.”

Programme Leader on Sustainable Development at the World Bank, Vina Vutukuru, said there was need to jointly
explore the vital role of national accounting in national development plans and to brainstorm on how Nigeria could institutionalize it.

He said: “Establishing the national capital accounting as part of the national account system will allow us to measure the economic value of ecosystem services such as clean air, water and biodiversity which are essential for our well-being and economic prosperity.”

Vutukuru commended Nigeria for having “very bold ambitions” as far as responding to climate change was concerned saying, “That shows the commitment of the policy makers here towards the issue of climate.

“But I think to back up that aspiration and the aggressive goals that Nigeria has set for itself, the foundational thing for those goals to materialize those objectives to come true is a very strong natural account system.”

Head of Media, National Council on Climate Change Secretariat (NCCCS), Chioma Azie who represented her Director General, Dr. Nkiruka Maduekwe at the event, described Nigeria as a very ambitious country, stressing that natural resources was instrumental to achieving all the objective of climate action.

She said: “Technology, policy reforms, behavioral changes has a role to play but natural resources is very key because they’re underpinning the mitigation and adaptation for climate action.

“If you look at Nigeria’s NDC, the NCA is an avenue to provide raw materials that we could use to develop mitigation and adaptation strategies.

“If you look at what we have done in terms of this NDC in 2020.which is the second leg of the NDC, we identified a lot of mitigation activities within this mentioned sectors of ours. In agricultural sector we talked about smart agriculture. What is smart agriculture without natural resources?

“We talked about biomass, what is biomass without natural resources? We also spoke about land use changes and that is natural resources, we talk about natural solutions and we talked about also afforestation, reafforestation. Those are mitigation potentials of our NDC. So, we cannot achieve our NDC without SEEA.

“What you cannot be able to account for is recorded as if it is not done so if we know what is existing in terms of the reservoirs we have for natural resources, it can inform the scope of the mitigation activities we’re going to be imputing in the NDC 3.0,” she said.

Nigeria Looks to World Bank to Tackle Challenges of National Capital Accounting

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NIMC Insists All Its Verification Services, Functional, Accessible

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NIMC Insists All Its Verification Services, Functional, Accessible
.. Says Police Service Commission Not Denied Access

By: Michael Mike

The National Identity Management Commission (NIMC) has said all its verification service platforms are functional and accessible to all partners including all security agencies.

The Commission, in a statement on Thursday by its spokesman, Dr. Kayode Adegoke said it is aware of the purported ”inability of the Police Service Commission (PSC) to access the NIMC verification server,” insisting that the “information is not only misleading but also inaccurate.”

Adegoke said: “To set the record straight, the NIMC granted verification access to all Nigerian Police formations for the verification of the National Identification Number (NIN). The NPF, PSC and other security agencies have been enjoying uninterrupted verification services for over five years.

“NIMC has provided top-notch verification services for recruitment into the Nigeria Police Force, as conducted by the PSC and at no time have there been any complaints or issues regarding NIN Verification by the NPF or PSC.”

Adegoke, in the statement, claimed that: “The Commission has a robust and harmonious working relationship with the Nigerian Police Force and the Police Service Commission. The Information Communications and Technology (ICT) department of the Nigeria Police Force is actively managing the long-standing verification and integration service between the NIMC and all Nigeria Police formations. NIMC will continue to provide flawless verification services for the purpose of recruitment, security mapping, cybercrime control, and any other security matters.”

He explained that: “The framework by which NIMC provides services to the security agencies was recently restructured for standardization and effective implementation, following consultation with the Office of the National Security Adviser, and NPF has confirmed the verification services have continued to be available. We therefore believe that any service interruption experienced by PSC may be due to internal matters.”

He promised that: “NIMC is committed to providing excellent verification services to the PSC, NPF and all its partners but the terms and conditions inherent must be adhered to for uninterrupted flow of service.”

NIMC Insists All Its Verification Services, Functional, Accessible

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