Gee Black at the Enigma variety night

Good morning beautiful people! Gee Black was hosted at the Enigma Variety night yesterday Wednesday 29TH January 2014 that took place at Ember Creek Awolowo way Ikoyi Lagos. He thrilled the crowd first with a freestyle rap and then performed his new single Pay my money, that had so many people dancing along. Find pictures below.Follow us on Twitter: @geeblack704 @Team704music #reppin704music

Wife of late MKO Abiola declares for governorship in Lagos State

Mrs Dupe Onitiri-Abiola, one of the wives of late Chief MKO Abiola, has announced her intentions to contest the governorship seat in Lagos State in the next general elections. Mrs Onitiri-Abiola says she has 'all the formula to solve unemployment, electricity&education problems plaguing Lagos state' 

Mrs Onitiri-Abiola has not revealed the political party she would contest on. She says she is still studying the existing ones and would make her choice known by the end of the month.

Grammy winner Macklemore says Kendrick Lamar was robbed

acklemore & Ryan Lewis were nominated for 7 Grammy Awards last night and won 4 - Best New Artist, Best Rap Song, Best Rap Performance and beat Jay Z, Kanye West, Drake & Kendrick Lamar for Best Rap Album.

Many people felt Kendrick should have won Best Rap Album at least and so did Macklemore. After the awards, he apologized to Kendrick for 'robbing' him. See his text to Kendrick after the cut

Nasir El Rufai finally honours SSS invitation

Former FCT minister Mallam Nasir El-Ruafi has finally honoured the invitation of the State Security Service, SSS, days after armed men from the security agency stormed his home in Abuja to pick him up to answer some questions in connection with a statement credited to him that there might be violence if the 2015 general elections were not free and fair. (If you missed it, read all about it here). Find an update after the cut...

 

Full list of winners at 2014 Grammy Awards

Full list of winners 

Best New Artist: Macklemore & Ryan Lewis

Best Pop Duo/Group Performance: "Get Lucky," Daft Punk ft. Pharrell Williams and Nyle Rodgers

Best Rock Song: "Cut Me Some Slack," Dave Grohl, Paul McCartney, Krist Novoselic & Pat Smear

Best Pop Solo Performance: "Royals," Lorde

Best Rap/Sung Collaboration: "Holy Grail," Jay Z ft. Justin Timberlake

Best Country Album: Same Trailer Different Park, Kacey Musgraves

Song of the Year: "Royals," Lorde

Best Pop Instrumental Album: Stepping Out, Herb Albert

Best Traditional Pop Vocal Album: To Be Loved, Michael Buble

Best Reggae Album: Ziggy Marley In Concert, Ziggy Marley

Best Spoken Word Album: America Again: Re-becoming The Greatness We Never Weren't, Stephen Colbert

Best Remixed Recording, Non-Classical: Summertime Sadness, Cedric Gervais, Remixer (Lana Del Rey)

Best Gospel/Contemporary Christian Music Performance: "Break Every Chain [Live]", Tasha Cobbs

Best Gospel Song: "If He Did It Before... Same God [Live]", Tye Tribbett

Follow her arrow: Kacey Musgraves also won two gongs

Best Gospel Album: Greater Than [Live], Tye Tribbet,

Best Latin Pop Album: Vida, Draco Rosa,

Best Song Written For Visual Media:  "Skyfall," Thomas Newman

Best Chamber Music/Small Ensemble Performance: Brady Wells and Roomful of Teeth, "Roomful of Teeth"

Best New Age Album: Love's River, Laura Sullivan

Best Jazz Vocal Album:  Liquid Spirit, Gregory Porter,

Best Jazz Instrumental Album: Money Jungle: Provocative In Blue, Terri Lyne Carrington

Best Latin Jazz Album: Song For Maura, Paquito D'Rivera And Trio Corrente

Best Compilation Soundtrack Album: Sound City: Real To Reel, Butch Vig (Compilation Producer)

Best Musical Theater Album: Kinky Boots, Cyndi Lauper

Best Americana Album: Old Yellow Moon, Emmylou Harris, Rodney Crowell

Best Folk Album: My Favorite Picuture of You, Guy Clark

Best Dance Recording: "Clarity," Zedd ft. Foxes

Best Dance/Electronica Album: Random Access Memories, Daft Punk

Best Comedy Album: Calm Down Gurrl, Kathy Griffin

Best Rap Performance: "Thift Shop," Macklemore & Ryan Lewis

Best Rap Song: "Thift Shop," Macklemore & Ryan Lewis

Best Rap Album: "The Heist," Macklemore & Ryan Lewis

Best R&B Performance:  "Something," Snarky Puppy With Lalah Hathaway

Best Traditional R&B Performance: "Please Come Home," Gary Clark Jr. 

Best R&B Song: "Pusher Love Girl," Justin Timberlake

Best Urban Contemporary Album: Unapologetic, Rihanna

Best R&B Album: Girl on Fire, Alicia Keys

Best Blues Album: Get Up!, Ben Harper With Charlie Musselwhite

Best Music Film: Live Kisses, Paul McCartney

Best Country Duo/Group Performance: "From This Valley," The Civil Wars

Best Country Solo Performance: "Wagon Wheel," Darius Rucker

Best Country Song: "Merry Go Round," Shane McAnally, Kacey Musgraves & Josh Osborne

Best Rock Performance: "Radioactive," Imagine Dragons

Best Alternative Music Album: Modern Vampires of the City, Vampire Weekend

Producer of the Year, Non-Classical: Pharrell Williams

Best Metal Performance: "God Is Dead," Black Sabbath

Best Rock Album: Celebration Day, Led Zeppelin

INEC releases 2015 elections time table: Presidential election to hold Feb 14th

The Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, has announced February 14 2015 as the date for Nigeria's presidential election as well as those for the members of the National Assembly. 

Governorship and State House of Assembly elections are scheduled for February 28, 2015.

This was contained in statement released last night & signed by the Commission's secretary, Augusta Ogakwu. The commission also announced that the Ekiti State governorship election will hold on June 21, 2014 while that of Osun State will hold on August 9, 2014. Continue...

Since the inception of democratic government in Nigeria, Presidential and Governorship elections usually hold in April which would then be followed by the inauguration of the winners on  May 29th which is Democracy Day.

Rapper/Record label executive Birdman shows off his solid gold toilet

Choi! What some people are doing with money! Cash Money Records co-founder & Hip Hop tycoon Bryan Williams, aka Birdman showed off his solid gold toilet on his instagram page yesterday.

According to reports, the toilet is gold-plated, but the seat and the cover is solid gold and it cost $1m.

Dana Airline resumes flight operations today

According to reports, Dana Airline has successfully passed the operational audit exercise by the NCAA and would start operations as from today Saturday January 25th.

 A statement from the airline said following the successful outcome of the operational audit of Dana Air by the Nigerian Civil Aviation Authority (NCAA), the airline is set to recommence full commercial flight operations today.

Announcing the resumption of flight operations in Lagos, the Chief Operating Officer & Accountable Manager, Mr. Yvan Drewinsky, said the lifting of the suspension order is a testament that Dana Air
adheres strictly to prescribed safety standards as dictated by the Nigeria Civil Aviation Regulations (NCARs) and the International Civil  Aviation Organisation (ICAO) standards.

Seven Gay Men Arrested In Bauchi

According to a report by Channels TV, seven men appeared in court in Bauchi on Wednesday, Jan. 22, on charges of being involved in same-sex relationships. 

The case drew thousands of protesters to the court, who threw stones at the men as they were being transported back to prison after the trial, as security forces fired into the air to disperse the angry crowd.

The men were arrested by the Bauchi State Sharia Commission for allegedly engaging in homosexual activities, acts that contravene the Islamic laws which the state had been operating under since 2001.

The men were named as Shehu Adamu, Yusuf Adamu, Aliyu Dalhatu, Abdulmalik Tanko, Usman Sabo and Hazif Sabo Abubakar and Ibrahim Marafa. Continue...

It was the first case since President Goodluck Jonathan signed a bill that criminalises same-sex relationships, defying Western pressure over gay rights and provoking criticism from the United States.

The bill, which contains penalties of up to 14 years in prison and bans gay marriage, same-sex “amorous relationships” and membership of gay rights groups, was passed by the National Assembly last May but Jonathan had delayed signing it into law until early January.

At Thursday’s trial, the prosecuting lawyer said the case was a direct result of the recently-passed law.

“This is further to the law against homosexuals which was signed by the President. It has to be implemented. People caught breaking this law must be prosecuted accordingly,” said Danlami Ayuba.

The trial was adjourned to January 27.

New Video: Gee Black - My Baby ft Jazzy(Official video)

Gee Black finally drops the video to his 2013 hit single My Baby which features Jazzy and was directed by @kutifilmworks in the city of Lagos Nigeria. Still fresh in the music industry Gee Black is one guy you should watch out for! Twitter/Instagram: @geeblack704 / Legendary 704 Entertainment (C) 2014

Inside Nigeria’s Ruthless Human Trafficking Mafia - Report

This is a must read. Found it on Premium Times

Six out of 10 people who are trafficked to the West are Nigerians. Premium Times investigative reporter, Tobore Ovuorie, was motivated by years of research into the plight of trafficked women in the country, as well as the loss of a friend, to go undercover in a multi-billion dollar criminal enterprise. She emerged, bruised and beaten but thankfully alive, after witnessing orgies, big money deals in jute bags, police-supervised pickpocketing, beatings and even murder. This is her story. Continue...

We are 10 at the boot camp: Adesuwa, Isoken, Lizzy, Mairo, Adamu, Ini, Tessy, Omai, Sammy and I. We have travelled together in a 14 seater bus from Lagos, hoping to arrive in Italy soon. We are eager to get to the ‘next level’ as it is called: from local prostitution to hopefully earning big bucks abroad. But first, it turns out, we have to pass through ‘training’ in this massive secluded compound guarded by armed military men, far from any other human being, somewhere in the thick bushes outside Ikorodu, a suburb of Lagos. Our trafficker, Mama Caro, welcomes us in flawless English, telling us how lucky and special we are; then she ushers us to a room where we are to sleep on the floor without any dinner.

I had not expected this. We had exercised, through a risk analysis role play, in advance: my paperPREMIUM TIMES, and our partners on the project, a colleague–Reece Adanwenon– in the Republic of Benin, and ZAM Chronicle in Amsterdam. We had put in place contacts, emergency phone numbers, safe houses, emergency money accounts. We had made transport and extraction arrangements. Ms. Reece is waiting in Cotonou, 100 kilometers to the West in neighbouring Benin, to pick me up from an agreed meeting place. But we hadn’t foreseen that there was to be another stop first: this isolated, guarded camp in the middle of nowhere. It dawns on me that we could be in big trouble.

“Our trafficker, Mama Caro, welcomes us in flawless English, telling us how lucky and special we are; then she ushers us to a room where we are to sleep on the floor without any dinner.”

Risk analysis and preparation

It had all started in Abuja, with me deciding to expose the human traffic syndicates that caused the death, through Aids, of my friend Ifuoke and countless others. As a health journalist, I had interviewed several returnees from sex traffic who had not only been encouraged to have unprotected sex, but who had also been denied health care or even to return home when they fell ill. They were now suffering from Aids, anal gonorrhea, bowel ruptures and incontinence. In the case of some of them, who hailed from conservative religious backgrounds, doctors in their home towns had denied them any treatment because they had been ‘bad’. I was also aware that powerful politicians and government and army officials, who outwardly professed religious purity, were servicing and protecting the traffickers.I wanted to break through the hypocrisy and official propaganda and show how, every day, criminals in Nigeria are helped by the powerful to enslave my fellow young citizens. My PREMIUM TIMES colleagues had done undercover work before; they had warned me of the risks, but had agreed to support me in my decision to go through with it. With my colleagues, and with the help of ZAM Chronicle, we then started in earnest.

“I wanted to break through the hypocrisy and official propaganda and show how, every day, criminals in Nigeria are helped by the powerful to enslave my fellow young citizens.”

Oghogho

I had advertised my wish to get to know a ‘madam’ whilst walking the streets of Lagos, dressed as a call girl.It worked. I had met Oghogho Irhiogbe, an accomplished, well-groomed graduate in her thirties (though she claimed to be only 26), and a wealthy human trafficker of note. My lucky hunch to tell her that my name was ‘Oghogho’ too had immediately warmed her to me. She told me I looked like her kid sister and from then on treated me like a favourite.

“Don’t worry about crossing borders and getting caught,” she had told me. “Immigration, customs, police, army and even foreign embassies are part of our network. You only run into trouble with them if you fail to be obedient to us.” I already knew this to be true. Two of the trafficked sex workers I had interviewed had tried to find help at Nigerian embassies in Madrid and Moscow, only to realise that the very embassy officials from whom they had sought deportation had immediately informed their pimps. They had eventually made it back to Nigeria only after they had developed visible diseases, such as AIDS-related Kaposi sarcoma.

“Precious had already made enough money to start building her own house in Enugu, halfway between Abuja and Port Harcourt.”

Oghogho Irhiogbe had been luckier. She owned four luxury cars, two houses in Edo State, and was busy completing the building of a third house near the Warri airport in Delta State. Others I had met through my initial ‘call girl’ exploits were clearly on their way to riches, too. Priye was set to go back to the Netherlands, where she worked before, to become a ‘madam’. Ivie and Precious were quite happy to go back to Italy. Precious had already made enough money to start building her own house in Enugu, halfway between Abuja and Port Harcourt.

Forza Speciale

It is on the windy Sunday evening of October 6 that I make my first contact with the outer ring of this mafia. A big party with VIPs is on the cards; the kind of party an ordinary girl, or rather ‘product’, as we are called by traffickers, is not usually invited to. But I am currently on a fortune ride: Oghogho’s favourite. Additionally, I have been classified as ‘Special Forces’, or ‘Forza Speciale’ as my new contacts say, borrowing the Italian term. It’s a rule of thumb, I understand, that a syndicate subjects girls to classification through a check on their nude bodies and I, too – in the company of some male and female judges, headed by a trafficker called Auntie Precious – had been checked. I had received the highest classification. “This means that you don’t have to walk the streets. You can be an escort for important clients,” Auntie Precious had told me in a soft, congratulatory tone. The ones of ‘lesser’ classification were referred to as Forza Strada, the Road Force.

The party is held at a gorgeous residence along the Aguiyi Ironsi Way in Maitama, Abuja. This is designed to be a festive end to a great day, in which we went to church, hung out at the choicest places in town, shopped and got dressed in a suite at the Abuja power citadel, meeting point of the elite, the Transcorp Hilton.

“The ‘dividend’ is not from prostitution and trafficking alone, but Oghogho won’t tell me what the other source is.”

It is more like an orgy. Male and female strippers entertain guests, drugs abound, alcohol is everywhere in unrestrained flow; there is romping in the open. Also, big bags of money are changing hands. Barely an hour after we arrive, Oghogho receives a big jute bag, which is delivered from another room. As we walk out and she puts the money in the boot of her car, she smiles at me. “Don’t worry; very soon, you’ll get to receive dividend.” This ‘dividend’ is not from prostitution and trafficking alone, but Oghogho won’t tell me what the other source is. “When you come on board fully, you’ll know.”

A retired army colonel from the Abacha era sees to it that we are not disturbed. “He has top connections and sees to a smooth flow of the business,” Oghogho tells me.

Pickpocketing training

How ‘top’ these connections are, I find when I am taken with a group of girls to be trained in pickpocketing. We, a group of ten ‘products’, are placed at various crowded bus stops in the suburb of Ikorodu, where we must ‘practice’ under the guard of two army officers, a policeman as well as a number of male ‘trainers’. The policeman doesn’t even bother to cover his name badge: Babatunde Ajala, it reads.

The general operation is supervised by Mama Caro, popularly called Mama C, a 50-something, light-complexioned, busty woman. Her deputy is a Madam Eno. Mama C has told us that pickpocketing is a crucial skill for the Forza Speciale: we will need to be able to pick valuables from clients. She adds that the pickings are added to the girls earnings, so we will be able to pay off our debts– commonly called ‘meeting our targets’ – in a short time.

When I perform dismally, Eno rains abuses on me.  We are all to stay at the bus stop until I pick an item from somebody. It is already 11 PM.Tired, hungry and angry with me, Adesuwa, Isoken and the policeman guarding my group pick some extra pockets and hand me the items, so that I can show them to Eno.

“ We practice pickpocketing under the guard of two army officers and a policeman”

The next day, the bumpy journey to the ‘training camp’ appears endless. My fellow ‘products’ are snoozing and I battle to stay awake, wondering if we are tired or drugged. I note the bus moving off the main road somewhere around Odogunyan, into thick bushes, almost a forest.We stop at a compound guarded by armed military men. As my fellow ‘products’ wake up, it is clear that they think we are still in Lagos.

New names and indenture

The next day starts with strip tease and lap dance training after breakfast, and thereafter poise and etiquette. Five other girls have arrived in the meantime. They are all graduates, leaving for Italy fully aware of what they are to do there. “If I get caught by local police, I will just tell them I was trafficked against my will,” one of them, Gbemi, says light-heartedly. “I don’t think oyinbo (white man) will believe Mama C if she says that I am there voluntarily.”

I receive a crash course in pedicure and manicure because I am so bad at pickpocketing. “You’ll be utilizing these skills at my wellness centre in Italy,” Mama C says, after scolding me for being lazy and testing her patience. “You will be working on only men whilst wearing sexy dresses. That will enable you to attract customers.”

“Mama C makes us sign a statement that we have willingly embarked on the journey”

Later, Mama C makes everyone sign a statement that they have willingly embarked on the journey and that they are to return certain sums as professional fees to her. No girl is given a copy of what she has signed and the amount varies inexplicably: while Isoken signs up for a debt of US $100,000, I will have only US $70,000 to pay. We are told that we will receive new passports with false names and even false nationalities in Cotonou. I am to become a Kenyan, Mairo South African, and so on. “I have boys in the Benin immigration office,” boasts Mama C.

Horror

A just-arrived traditional ‘doctor’ then puts us through rites that involve checking the horoscope of each girl as well as collecting some of her blood, fingernails, hair and pubic hair. He then picks out four of us as ‘problematic’ and says we will bring ‘bad luck’. Either he is really clairvoyant or he is a professional security operative who has run background checks on us, because he is right about at least three of the four. Two of us have had unfortunate earlier experiences involving deportation back to Nigeria and are possibly known to the authorities in Europe. I am number three.

What happens next is like a horror movie.

As we ‘unlucky’ four, are standing aside, Mama C talks with five well-dressed, classy, influential-looking visitors.The issue is a ‘package’ that Mama C has promised them and that she hasn’t been able to deliver. The woman points at me, but Mama C refuses and for unexplained reasons Adesuwa and Omai are selected. We all witness, screaming and trying to hide in corners, as they are grabbed and beheaded with machetes in front of us. The ‘package’ that the visitors have come for turns out to be a collection of body parts. The mafia that holds us is into organ traffic, too.

“We all witness Adesuwa and Omai being beheaded in front of us. The ‘package’ that the visitors have come for turns out to be a collection of body parts. ”

With all of us trembling and crying, I and the other three ‘unsuitable’ ones are herded into a separate room. Mama C comes later to take me to yet another room for questioning. Angry beyond measure, she whips me all night, telling me to yield information on the ‘forces’ protecting me. “You are going nowhere,” she keeps shouting. “I have invested too much in you!”

Clearing the ‘spirit’

The next morning Mama C eats her breakfast while I starve: I have last eaten the previous morning. When she finished, and whilst the ‘approved products’ leave for Cotonou, Benin, to commence their journey to Italy, Mama C takes us four ‘unsuitables’ to visit three new, different ‘doctors’: one in the Agege neighbourhood of Lagos, the second in rural Sango Ota village and the third in remote Abeokuta in Ogun State. She clearly believes in traditional ‘medicine’ and is desperate to find a treatment for the ‘demons’ we are said to carry.

The first two ‘doctors’ agree with the first one that I am bad news, but the third, after roughly cutting off most of my hair, declares me free from the ‘spirit’. The ‘evil spirits’ in the other three girls, meanwhile, have been ‘beaten out of them’ with dry whips. Back at the camp the first ‘doctor’ rages at Mama C for approving me, insisting that the ‘doctor’ who ‘freed me from the spirit’ is a fraud. “This girl will bring about your downfall! You will end up in jail!” I am all the more convinced that he possesses not supernatural powers, but certain information.The syndicates are well-connected and someone may have told him that I am not who I say I am. The ‘doctor’ keeps repeating that ‘forces’ are protecting me. But Mama C insists that she is not to lose her investment.

“The ‘doctor’ keeps repeating that ‘forces’ are protecting me. But Mama C insists that she is not to lose her investment.”

Meanwhile, new ‘products’ have arrived to pass through the rites that night. The whole camp is again in the grip of fear as chilling screams indicate that some of the new arrivals – two girls and a young man, I learned later – are also murdered.

“Oghogho, I wonder what actually brought you here. I never expected a girl like you to venture into this,” says one of Mama C’s errand boys, as he enters the room I had again been locked in later that night with a plate of food.He seems well disposed to me. “You found and returned my Blackberry that I lost during one of the pickpocketing training sessions,” he explains. I had not realised the escort whose phone I found had been this boy; then, he had worn a cap pressed deep into his eyes. “Other girls would just have kept my phone,” he says. “You don’t belong here.I keep wondering what level of poverty has made you endanger yourself. You don’t deserve this.”

The plate of food is all I need to get my strength back. We are to travel the following morning.

Escape

As we are about to leave, I lose my phone to the army officer. Searching all of us, he has taken Isoken’s phone already and she has pointed at me to divert attention from herself, saying I had a phone too. He takes mine at gunpoint.I can only thank the heavens that it is dead. I had been upset because it didn’t charge the previous night, but the fact that it won’t switch on is my second lucky break: it has a lot of pictures and conversations I have recorded in the camp. The disadvantage of losing my phone is that I can’t contact our colleague Reece, who is to help me once I get to Cotonou. I also can’t communicate with my editors back in Nigeria.

All along the road leading up to the border, police and customs officers wave and greet Madam Eno and our head of operations, Mr James. Nigerian Immigrations and Customs officers also greet us warmly at the border post itself, whilst enquiring if there is anything in it for them today.

“Welcome, Madam! How have sales been?”

Eno: “Not much.”

“But your batch was allowed entry yesterday, so why claim you haven’t been making sales? “

Eno: “We are not the owner of yesterday’s batch of girls. We own these ones in this bus.”

“Haaa!You want to play a smart one? Not to worry, your boss will sort all this out with us.”

The officers then wave the minibus through without any form of documentation.

The original plan was for me to go with the transport as far as Cotonou, the capital of our neighbouring country Benin. But I don’t want to stretch it any longer. The border is usually very crowded and I plan to escape as soon as we are there. It works. Just after the Seme border post, in front of a crowded, muddy market, I run. Merging with the crowd, I take my top off – I have another top under it – and cover my head with a scarf. The army officer is following me, looking for me. I dive into a store and lose him.

“Just after the Seme border post, in front of a crowded, muddy market, I ran.”

I travel the twenty kilometres from the border motor park to Cotonou by minibus taxi.Colleague Reece – alerted by a phone call the driver helps make to her to ensure that she will be there to pay him – will wait for me there. Upon arrival, I see a woman I recognise from her Facebook photo. “Reece?”“Tobore!” She cries and holds out her arms to catch me. “I am safe.”

SSS finally secures warrant of arrest for Nasir El-Rufai

The State Security Service, SSS, has finally secured a warrant of arrest for the Deputy National Secretary of the All Progressives Congress, APC, Nasir El-Rufai, and has now launched a manhunt for him, the spokesperson for the agency has said.
  
This is even as armed operatives of the Service again stormed a second house in Abuja believed to belong to the former minister in their desperate bid to arrest him.

They had earlier in the afternoon invaded his first house in the Maitama District of the nation’s capital, but could not find him as he had reportedly gone to pick his children from school. They were said to have tried to force their way in to arrest the former minister. Continue...



In the latest siege on another property, also in the Maitama District, the operatives were said to have beaten up some private guards for refusing them entry.

The spokesperson of the SSS, Marylyn Ogar, confirmed that the operatives visited Mr. El-Rufai’s second house to arrest him, but denied that anyone was beaten.

“I hate cheap blackmail,” Ms. Ogar told Premium Times on telephone. “We went to the first place, nobody was beaten up. How will we go to the second place and beat people up?”

She explained that the SSS got an arrest warrant demanded by Mr. El-Rufai, but could not find him to personally serve him the document.
“We extended a friendly invitation to him,” the SSS spokesperson said. “He was invited honourably to come and make some explanations about the comments attributed to him.
“He said he wanted an arrest warrant. We have now obtained that from a competent court and we are wondering why he is running.
“We want to serve it on him. Or is there any Nigerian that is above the law?
“The president has said his ambition is not worth any Nigerian’s blood. So why will anyone else be making provocative statements?”

The manhunt for the former minister followed his refusal to honour an invitation from the SSS on Thursday.

He cited his pending suit against the Service over his detention in a hotel in Awka during the Anambra State Governorship last November 16 as the reason for refusing to honour the invitation.
Mr. El-Rufai also insisted on seeing a warrant of arrest before he could go to the SSS office.
The invitation of the APC chief was in connection with his remarks at a conference in Abuja on Wednesday that there might be violence if the 2015 general elections were not credible.

Meanwhile, Mr. El-Rufai, in statement by his media advisor, Muyiwa Adekeye, on Friday, confirmed that armed SSS officials stormed his home in Abuja following his rejection of the attempt by the organization to compel him to report at their office without a valid warrant.

The statement said the former minister had on Thursday firmly told the Director General of SSS that he would be exercising his right not to go to the SSS offices except a warrant mandates him and offered to meet the SSS officials in his home or office.

“The armed invasion of his house is a clear indication that the SSS imagines itself as an agency immune from respecting fundamental rights, behaviour akin to a gathering of toughs before whom every citizen must quake,” the statement said.

“The SSS agents did not produce any warrant to back their invasion of his premises.
“The assault on El-Rufai’s house continues a sorry tradition of serial violation of his rights by the SSS which has arrested him at airports and hotels.

“The most recent was the action of the SSS in violating his right to freedom of movement in Awka during the Anambra elections. Without any just cause or formal charge, the Directorate of State Security Services (SSS) had unlawfully detained El Rufai, the Deputy National Secretary of the All Progressives Congress (APC) at the premises of Finotel Hotel, Akwa, Anambra State, from the 15th day of November, 2013 to the 16th day of November, 2013.”

The statement said during the period, Mr. El-Rufai was not only restricted to the hotel, he was denied access to his congregational prayer as a devout Muslim, and kept incommunicado without access to anyone and or the press.

It stated that in order to remedy the flagrant violation of his fundamental rights as enshrined in sections 35, 39, 40 and 41 of the Constitution, the former minister sued the SSS, seeking eight reliefs, including an injunction to restrain the SSS from further infringing on his fundamental rights.

Source: Premium Times 

New Music: Gee Black - Pay my money(Produced by St. Buster)

Following the release of his first single Titled My Baby ft Jazzy(produced by St.Buster) in 2013 with the video just recently released. Legendary 704 Entertainment signed Artist, GEE BLACK is back with his second single titled Pay my money(produced by St. Buster) Download and enjoy For Booking and Enquiry @Team704music Download music here -  http://hu.lk/xp4nq452kwlc

We are officially here

Good day ladies and gentlemen. We are new with this, This is the official Blog of our Record Label. Legendary 704 Entertainment.We promise to bring you News from around the globe,sports Latest trends and Gossips. God bless you as you keep supporting the movement. #reppin704music