The Nigerian Police We All Know ... Lmao Wtf!

This things makes us unique as a nation, you dont need any cinema hall to watch any police investigative movie in Nigeria or say a certain television channel to watch the Nigerian version of N.C.I.S series, lol its out there on the dusty street of my freaking nation ... no fee no security office to restrain you from using your camera to infringe coyright laws ... dont forget to grab your popcorn for 1kobo though and enjoy afterall the movie itself is free

The 16th indigenous Inspector General of Nigeria Police Force (NPF), Mohammed Dahiru Abubakar, has been working tirelessly to reposition the Police. But FRANCIS SUBERU reports that not manypolice men and women are complying with the new Code of Conduct issued one year ago.

A policeman boarding a motorcycle after its prohibition in Lagos. PHOTOS- OLUFEMI AJASA AND YINKA ADEPARUSI

Nigerians across social strata have often expressed disgust at the inappropriate public behaviours of the rank and file of the police. Aside the fact that most policemen don’t care about turning out smart and well in their uniforms, many are seen daily drinking and smoking in public even while on duty and in uniform.
Such untoward attitude have on many occasions denied them the much needed collaboration from members of the public who ordinarily would have assisted them with intelligence gathering that could lead to the arrest of criminals.
To this end, many concerned citizens heaved a sigh of relief when in 2012 the Inspector General of Police Mohammed Abubakar announced that he would be issuing a new code of conduct for the Nigeria Police Force.

The code which took effect on November 19, 2012 comprises set of rules guiding the behaviours of police officers on and off duty.
The code under its second rule specifically provides that: “The purpose of having a code of conduct is to provide all members of the Nigeria Police Force with a set of guiding principles and standards of behaviour while on or off duty. It is intended to be used by officers in determining what is right and proper in all their actions.”
According to the Deputy Force Public Relations Officer, CSP Frank Mba, the code comprises rules collated and formulated under the leadership of the Inspector-General of Police, for guiding and regulating the behaviours of police officers in Nigeria.
He said, “The Code contains standard policing rules as well as contemporary international best practices in law enforcement as available in various United Nations conventions, the Nigerian Constitution, Police Act and Regulations and other domestic statutes.

Police officials forcefully arresting a commercial driver at Idi-Iroko area of Ikorodu, recently.

“The Code is designed to promote efficiency and effectiveness of police services by promoting transparency, accountability and a deeper sense of civilian oversight on police activities. It is further intended to promote discipline, professionalism and strict adherence to due process in police activities and operations.
“Its institution is therefore part of measures by the IGP to promote the Federal Government transformational agenda, through deliberate and conscious efforts at encouraging positive attitudinal change amongst all cadres of officers within the Force.”
The code under its heading and sub-headings encompasses the following: primary responsibilities of a police officer: performance of duties as a police officer, discretion, use of force, confidentiality, integrity, cooperation with other police officers and agencies, personal professional capabilities and private life.
Under integrity for instance, the code provides that: “A police officer will not engage in acts of corruption or bribery, nor will an officer condone such acts by other police officers. The public demands that the integrity of police officers be above reproach.
“Police officers must therefore, avoid any conduct that might compromise integrity and that undercut the confidence reposed by the public, in the police. Officers will refuse to accept any gifts, presents, subscriptions, favours, gratuities or promises that could be interpreted as seeking to cause the officer to refrain from performing official responsibilities honestly and within the law.
“Police officers must not receive private or special advantage from their official status. Respect from the public cannot be bought; it can only be earned and cultivated.”
Similarly, under private life, the code provides that: “Police officers will behave in a manner that does not bring discredit to the Force or themselves. A police officer’s character and conduct while off duty must always be exemplary, thus maintaining a position of respect in the community in which he or she lives and serves. The officer’s personal behavior must be beyond reproach.”
However, one year on, critics have said the code has been largely been observed in the breach, sniggering that the Leopard cannot change its spot. The public are yet to find tangible change of attitude in private and public lives of a police personnel in the country.
Though the code is seen largely as ineffective, it is not lacking in implementation principles. The Code under implementation provides that:
• Effort shall be made to ensure that the principles embodied in this code are reflected in appropriate legislations guiding the Nigeria Police Force.
• The code shall be made applicable to all police officers regardless of their jurisdiction.
• Necessary measures will be emplaced to instruct, in basic training and subsequent training and refresher courses, police officers of all cadre, on the principles of the code and the implications of their violation.
• Principles of the code will be given the widest possible publicity and translated into the major national languages to enable public participation in the monitoring of police conduct across the country.
• Effective mechanism shall be established to ensure the internal discipline and external control as well as the supervision of police officers.
• Particular provisions shall be made, for the receipt and processing of complaints against police officers, made by the public and the result of the outcomes of such procedures will not be considered classified.
Everyone who spoke National Mirror in respect of police officers’ conducts said nothing has changed in their ways and attitude to work.
According to Mr. Ayotade Adewale, who claimed to have lived very close to police barrack at Ikeja for 10 years, the code has not changed anything and will probably not do much to improve the police behaviorally?
“With the present structure, the Nigeria Police can never change. I can tell you that the code has not changed anything, people are told everyday what they can do and how to go about it and what they cannot do but they still go and do those things.
“If you look at things critically, you will discover that nothing is absolutely new in the code and since nothing there is special, how do you think it will have effect. To me, nothing is being done today that has not been done in the past.”
Another commentator, Anthony Orji said, “The code cannot solve the problem because the problem of Nigeria Police Force is multifaceted. It is the problem of the entire society. People will continue to suffer from inadequate policing and poor quality service until the society decides to change.
“Our environment is corrupt; almost everybody is corrupt, so how possible can the police be different? Whatever behaviour they exhibit is a reflection of what is going on in the society because there is corruption everywhere in the country.”
Madam Fatimo Ajayi, who also lent her voice, blamed the country’s leaders for their insensitivities to the plight of the police.
She said, “Sometimes, it appears that we are expecting a miracle from the police. Police officers are not well catered for. They are neglected in their duty post with poor infrastructure and lack of equipment.
“On very many occasions, we see a situation whereby a junior police officer showed courage to arrest a culprit and refuse to compromise but after some contacts, the culprits are released because he or she is well connected.
“Will such courageous police officer exhibit such courage and discipline next time? Will he not willingly collect bribes the next time? That is why I keep saying the problem is the pervading corruption and depraved value system in the entire country.”
In the opinion of a security expert, the Managing Director of Halogen Security Limited, Mr. Olawale Olaoye, for any meaningful change to take place in the Nigeria Police Force, the entire establishment must be overhauled.
According to him, to change the police, we need to go back to the society and change our value system.
“You cannot do anything outside what the society has to offer. The police, the security personnel are all members of society. An officer of the law, someone meant to enforce the law, and his plight is not well catered for, his welfare neglected and even his work tool is inadequate. How do you expect such a person to be effective?
“He cannot say if I die in the line of duty, the force will take care of his family. This is personnel who will arrest someone and then see the person immediately released because he is well connected. So we have to think of who the security officers are in the first place.
“The population has grown but the quantity and the quality of the Force has been impeded. The quality of training is very poor. When the current Inspector General of Police was appointed, he said he was declaring a state of emergency on police training; nobody paid attention.
“We are fond of complaining all the time. But, have we ever thought of how these officers are recruited and trained? Policemen are called officers of the law because they are meant to enforce law and order but are we taking care of their welfare?
“What do you expect when police personnel officers are being owed arrears of salary? I do not know if anything has changed. Today, if an officer is killed in the line of duty, the family will not be paid any benefit. I am one of those advocating that the police should be well catered for.
“Presently, the police are in dire need of total overhaul in terms of who an officer of the law should be, in terms of recruitment and training and in terms of welfare. How can a police officer be competent if he is poorly trained and motivated?” Olaoye said.

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Chinua Achebe, African Literary Titan, Dies at 82

Craig Ruttle/Associated Press

Chinua Achebe, a Nigerian-born novelist and poet, on the campus of Bard College in Annandale-on-Hudson, N.Y., in 2008.

By JONATHAN KANDELL

Published: March 22, 2013 

Chinua Achebe, the Nigerian writer who was one of Africa’s most widely read novelists and one of the continent’s towering men of letters, died on Thursday in Boston. He was 82.

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Mr. Achebe in 1988.

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His death was confirmed by his agent in London.

Besides novels, Mr. Achebe’s works included powerful essays and poignant short stories and poems rooted in the countryside and cities of his native Nigeria, before and after independence from British colonial rule. His most memorable fictional characters were buffeted and bewildered by the conflicting pulls of traditional African culture and invasive Western values.

For inspiration, Mr. Achebe drew on his own family history as part of the Igbo nation of southeastern Nigeria, a people victimized by the racism of British colonial administrators and then by the brutality of military dictators from other Nigerian ethnic groups.

Mr. Achebe burst onto the world literary scene with the publication in 1958 of his first novel, “Things Fall Apart,” which has sold more than 10 million copies and been translated into 45 different languages.

Set in the Igbo countryside in the late 19th century, the novel tells the story of Okonkwo, who rises from poverty to become an affluent farmer and village leader. But with the advent of British colonial rule and cultural values, Okonkwo’s life is thrown into turmoil. In the end, unable to adapt to the new status quo, he explodes in frustration, killing an African in the employ of the British and then committing suicide.

The novel, which is also compelling for its descriptions of traditional Igbo society and rituals, went on to become a classic of world literature and was often listed as required reading in university courses in Europe and the United States.

But when it was first published, “Things Fall Apart” did not receive unanimous acclaim. Some British critics thought it idealized pre-colonial African culture at the expense of the former empire.

“An offended and highly critical English reviewer in a London Sunday paper titled her piece cleverly, I must admit, ‘Hurray to Mere Anarchy!’ ” Mr. Achebe wrote in “Home and Exile,” a collection of autobiographical essays that appeared in 2000. A few other novels by Mr. Achebe early in his career were occasionally criticized by reviewers as being stronger on ideology than on narrative interest.

But over the years, Mr. Achebe’s stature grew until he was considered a literary and political beacon.

“In all Achebe’s writing there is an intense moral energy,” observed Kwame Anthony Appiah, professor of Afro-American studies and philosophy at Princeton, in a commentary published in 2000. “He speaks about the task of the writer in language that captures the sense of threat and loss that must have faced many Africans as empire invaded and disrupted their lives.”

In a 1998 book review in The New York Times, the South African novelist Nadine Gordimer, a Nobel laureate, hailed Mr. Achebe as “a novelist who makes you laugh and then catch your breath in horror — a writer who has no illusions but is not disillusioned.”

Mr. Achebe’s political thinking evolved from blaming colonial rule for Africa’s woes to frank criticism of African rulers and the African citizens who tolerated their corruption and violence.

Forced abroad by Nigeria’s civil war in the 1960s and then by military dictatorship in the 1980s and ‘90s, Mr. Achebe had lived for many years in the United States, where he was a university professor, most recently at Brown, where he joined the faculty in 2009 as a professor of African studies after teaching for 19 years at Bard College in the Hudson River valley.

He continued to believe that writers and storytellers ultimately held more power than army strongmen.

“Only the story can continue beyond the war and the warrior,” an old soothsayer observes in Mr. Achebe’s 1988 novel, “Anthills of the Savannah.” “It is the story that saves our progeny from blundering like blind beggars into the spikes of the cactus fence. The story is our escort; without it, we are blind.”

Albert Chinualumogu Achebe was born on Nov. 16, 1930, in Ogidi, an Igbo village, during the heyday of British colonial rule. His father became a Christian and worked for a missionary teacher in various parts of Nigeria before returning to Ogidi. Chinua, then only 5, recalled the homecoming as a passage backward through time.

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: March 22, 2013

An earlier version of this obituary misspelled the last name of another Nigerian author. He is Cyprian Ekwensi, not Ekwendi. It also misstated the title of a novel by Amos Tutuola. It is “The Palm Wine Drinkard,” not “The Palm Wine Drunkard.” It also misstated the location of the University of Nigeria, where Mr. Achebe taught. It is in Nsukka, not Lagos.

Source

Nigerian farmers sue Shell over oil spills

Published on 11 October 2012 - 9:07am

Four Nigerian farmers take on Shell in a Dutch court, accusing the oil giant of destroying their livelihoods in a case that could set a precedent for global environmental responsibility.

The civil suit, backed by lobby group Friends of the Earth, alleges that oil spills dating back to 2005 by the Anglo-Dutch company made fishing and farming in the plaintiffs' Niger Delta villages impossible.
The case was initially filed in 2008, demanding that Royal Dutch Shell clean up the mess, repair and maintain defective pipelines to prevent further damage and pay out compensation.
In a landmark ruling, the Dutch judiciary in 2009 declared itself competent to try the case despite protests from Shell that its Nigerian subsidiary was solely legally responsible for any damage.
"I inherited the fishponds from my late father. I lost my income due to the oil spill. Now we are struggling to make ends meet," plaintiff Fidelis Oguru, the head of Oruma village, was quoted as saying by Friends of the Earth.
Oil pollution has ravaged swathes of the Niger Delta in the world's eighth largest oil producer, which exports more than two million barrels a day.
Shell is the biggest producer in the west African country, where it has been drilling for over 50 years.
Environmental groups accuse Shell of double standards and treating spills in Nigeria differently from pollution in Europe or North America.
"The scale of the pollution is enormous: twice as much oil has been spilled in Nigeria than was in the Gulf of Mexico. Only there (Nigeria) it's never been cleaned up," Friends of the Earth Netherlands spokesman Geert Ritsema told AFP.
The 2010 explosion and sinking of BP's Deepwater Horizon rig led to around five million barrels of oil leaking into the Gulf of Mexico in the biggest ever marine spill.
Shell says that spills in Nigeria are well below five million barrels and that the company cleans up whenever there is a leak, many of which it says are caused by sabotage.
Environmentalists want the Netherlands, and other Western nations, to pass laws forcing companies to enforce the same environmental responsibility standards abroad as at home.
If the Nigerians' suit succeeds, it could lead to a flood of similar cases being brought before Dutch courts.
Shell operates in over 90 countries, according to its website.
© ANP/AFP 

Nigeria: U.S.$3 Million Bribery Latest - Otedola Submits Video, Audio Evidence to IGP

13 JUNE 2012

Abuja — Oil magnate, Femi Otedola, yesterday, stoked his charge against embattled Rep. Farouk Lawan, by handing over to the police, audio and video evidence of how Lawan got the first installment of the bribe and how he demanded the balance.

Sources close to Otedola told Vanguard yesterday that besides submitting the video and audio evidence,he told Police investigators inAbuja how Farouk mounted pressure on him with a list of senior officials of the House who he claimed were to be settled with the bribe money.

Meanwhile political leaders from Lawan's political base inKanohave disowned him.

The evolving scandal nonetheless, the Nigeria Labour Congress, NLC waded in yesterday with an admonition that the bribery scandal should not in anyway distract from the process of implementing the recommendations originally reached by the Lawan committee.

Meantime, the House leadership was last night meeting on how to respond to the damaging revelations spewing from the scandal. Among the options as learnt is to bring forward the House resumption from the scheduled Tuesday, June 19, 2012.

Sources close to Lawan were still upbeat, yesterday, insisting that the Police was working on the call logs in its custody, with which they were expected to clear the embattled lawmaker.

Otedola, Chairman of Zenon Petroleum appeared before the Special Task Force constituted by the Inspector General of Police, Mohammed Abubakar at precisely 10.55 a.m. yesterday.

He told the panel headed by Commissioner of Police Ali Amodu that Lawan collected $500, 000 in cash and the Secretary of the committee, Boniface Emenalo collected $120, 000 in two installments of $20, 000 and $100, 000 respectively.

The video evidence

He produced a video recording of Lawan collecting the $500,000 in his residence and disclosed that the money in marked notes was provided by the SSS. He also disclosed that Lawan made "desperate" efforts to collect the balance of the money subsequently.

According to Otedola, Lawan said the money was to be distributed to other members of the House of Representatives who could help in suppressing the indictment of Otedola or his companies.

Otedola told the police that the persistent demands by Lawan for the balance of the bribe made on telephone were recorded in audio format. Both the audio and video recordings of the transactions were submitted yesterday.

A source privy to the developments disclosed: "Farouk put pressure and kept on calling for the balance and when the pressure became unbearable, Otedola said that the two agreed that the balance should be flown in a chartered plane toAbuja. However, on the day the money was to come, Farouk said he would be in plenary and gave Otedola a name and phone number of somebody who would meet him for the money."

Asked if the Police had recovered the money, a senior officer close to the investigation said yesterday: "First of all, the money was at no time handed over to the Inspector General of Police. Secondly, we have asked Hon. Lawan and the House to hand over the money to us and so far they have refused.

"We are told that the money will be kept as exhibit and only presented in a court of law. The question arising now is when has the House of Representatives become a security agency. What about the fear of tampering with the money, how do we guard against it if the money remains with the House?"

On what the next line of action would be if the House continues to hold on to the $620, 000, the source said, "The IGP who is the one investigating the scandal is currently on official assignment outside the FCT. As soon as he comes back, he will give us directives on what to do and we will take it from there".

Otedola's appearance before the Police yesterday was on his own volition Vanguard learnt yesterday. Sources close to him disclosed that Otedola went to the Police to give them the evidence of the alleged bribery following earlier denials put forth by Lawan.

Confusion trails Lawan's documents

Meanwhile, confusion yesterday trailed the documents put forth by Lawan in which he claimed that he had written the leadership and the Chairman of the House Committee on Anti-Corruption, Adams Jagaba.

He first denounced the claim on Monday night, saying "there is no connection between my committee and the fuel probe committee and I was not given anything please thank you for calling to confirm from me." Yesterday, he turned hostile as reporters sought clarifications from him.

"I have told you not to call me again on this matter; no comments,"Adamssaid.

Meanwhile shock and disappointment was evident in Lawan's constituency in Shanono,Kanoyesterday as news of the scandal filtered among the people the embattled Lawan has represented since 1999.

Ali Katako, Commandant Bagwai unit of Askarawan Kwankwasiyya, a group associated with the ruling Peoples Democratic Party, PDP noted that the development is self imposed, adding that "the only regret we seem to be nursing now is that this development has put us on bad light".

Similarly, the Bagwai PDP council chairman, Alhaji Inuwa Zangina Dangada on his part said "if in the end a prima facie is established against the lawmaker, he should be made to face the full wrath of the law."

In Shanono Local Government, a stalwart of All Nigerian Peoples Party, Abubakar Usman, revealed that the lack of sympathy for the embattled legislator emanated from his own negligence.

"You only identify with someone that recognizes your existence but go round and find out whether anyone from this town appears to have shown concern on what has befallen a man they can legitimately claim to be one of them."

He said that Lawan has not impacted on his people, and no traces of his developmental project in any of the two local Government councils that made up the Federal constituency.

Emmanuel Aziken, Kingsley Omonobi, Victor Ahiuma-Young and Abdulsalam Muhammad

Secret prison in the jungle on Nigerian island

Sunday Alamba / AP

A man swalk past a sign post at the former prison known as Tekunle on Ita Oko Island outside of Lagos, Nigeria. The prison is cut out of the dense jungle that engulfs this island outside of Nigeria's largest city, but it never officially existed although many critics of the nation's military rule were kept here. Ita Oko Island allowed Nigeria's military governments to have opponents disappear into the swamps of the Lekki Lagoon at a camp accessible only by boat and helicopter.

Jon Gambrell / AP

A message on a wall at the prison on Ita Oka Island.

Sunday Alamba / AP

Associated Press team shields from rain as they travel to the former prison known as Tekunle on Ita Oko Island.

Sunday Alamba / AP

The remains of a burnt down part of a former prison known as Tekunle on Ita Oko Island outside of Lagos, Nigeria.

The Associated Press reports that anyone deemed a security risk by the government could be imprisoned:

Those deemed to be a major risk politically found themselves taken to Ita Oko by helicopter, where they worked on the farm and had no contact with the outside world, Agbakoba said. Even today, as the country has become a democracy with the guise of free information laws, it remains unclear how many inmates died on the prison island.

"It was abused by prison authorities," Agbakoba said. "If you misbehave, they said we'll send you as punishment to" the island.

In 1988, the wife of one inmate who discovered her husband had been sent there slipped a note to Nobel laureate Wole Soyinka. Soyinka was on the board of Agbakoba's Civil Liberties Organization, which later traveled to the island with a journalist from The Guardian newspaper who published a story exposing the prison. Authorities quickly closed the prison.

Nigeria – Mistake Since When?

on MAY 7, 2012 · in EDITORIAL

3:12 am

CONTENDERS for disintegrating Nigeria are increasing. What is uncertain is along what lines they want a split of the country  that was moulded 98 years ago.

Professor Ango Abdullahi, former Vice Chancellor of Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria, has lent his voice to calls for urgent consideration of “likely disintegration.”

“Until the correct things are done, we cannot ignore these facts or we continue to pretend as our leaders that this is a passing phase. The question of a likely disintegration is not a too distant future,” Abdullahi told an Abuja gathering that included Aminu Tambuwal, Speaker of the House of Representatives, former Head of State Gen. Muhammadu Buhari, former Senate President Ken Nnamani former Minister of Defence, Gen. Theophilus Danjuma, former Governor of Lagos State Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu,  and former Minister of the Federal Capital Territory, Gen Jeremiah Useni.

The two-pronged thesis for the call was that the 1914 amalgamation was a fundamental mistake and that India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Sudan, where the British made the same mistake, corrected it by separating.  Must we follow their examples if it worked for them?

Abdullahi was guest speaker at the 50th birthday celebration of newspaper publisher Sam Nda-Isaiah. The rest of the session was taken up by blame shifting, blame sharing, name calling, without individuals admitting their roles in where Nigeria is.

What part did 1914 play in the quality education and attendant privileges Abdullahi and his generation had? Is 1914 responsible for insecurity in Nigeria? How did 1914 make millions of children – the leaders of tomorrow – street urchins? Surely, a country with some of the world’s best professors of agriculture is unable to feed itself because of 1914. What laws have been passed since 1999 that resulted in improvements in the lives of Nigerians?

Matters are more depressing when Gen. Danjuma, a key player in Nigerian affairs joins the debate. “Let us not deceive ourselves, the chief security officer of a state is the governor. Where are our Northern governors? Borno is a failed state Jigawa is almost a failed state. Kano is threatening to be a failed state,” Danjuma preached. Who was he trying to deceive? Can governors who do not command a single policeman be the chief security officer of anything? Which state has not failed?

Clearly, most of the calls for disintegration of Nigeria are rooted in frustration at the loss of relevance in the power calculations. Those keen on improving the condition of the ordinary Nigerian would find spaces in people-oriented constitutional amendments that will make the people the major factor in our politics. Today, they are not.

If managing Nigeria is challenging, disintegrating it would be more so.

Nigeria: Maiduguri Bakers Shot By 'Suspected Islamists'

A security crackdown has led to fewer attacks across the north in recent weeks

Continue reading the main story

Five bakers in Nigeria have been killed by gunmen in the north-eastern city of Maiduguri - a base of the Islamist Boko Haram sect, police have said.

Their deaths follow the assassination of a customs officer and water vendor on Wednesday by suspected militants.

The group has carried out a series of deadly attacks in northern Nigeria in the past 19 months - often targeting officials and security officers.

Boko Haram says it wants to establish Islamic law in Nigeria.

Correspondents say a security crackdown seems to have led to fewer attacks in recent weeks, but the uprising remains a huge challenge for the authorities.

Borno state police spokesman Samuel Tizhe said it was not clear why the gunmen had opened fire on the bakery on Thursday.

Boko Haram - whose means "Western education is forbidden" - has attacked churches and this year began to target schools.

The group first came to prominence in 2009 when hundreds of its followers were killed when they attacked police stations in Maiduguri.

Its founder, Mohammed Yusuf, was arrested but died in police custody.

In 2010 the group started to stage drive-by shootings on government targets in revenge for his killing.

Last year, it carried out suicide bombings on high-profile targets such as the headquarters of the UN and police in the capital, Abuja.

Their attacks, mostly in the north of the country, have killed hundreds of civilians, both Muslim and Christian.

Nigeria: FG Opens Secret Prison For Sect

Abuja - Nigeria is opening a secret detention centre to hold and interrogate suspected high-level members of a radical Islamist sect responsible for hundreds of killings this year alone, a security official has told The Associated Press.

While the facility could create a more cohesive effort among disparate and sometimes feuding security agencies in Nigeria to combat the sect known as Boko Haram, it raises concerns about its possible use for torture and illegal detentions. 

Nigeria's security forces have notorious human rights records, with a documented history of abusing and even killing prisoners.

The prison is in Lagos, far from the violence plaguing the country's predominantly Muslim north, where Boko Haram carries out frequent bombings and ambushes, said the security official, who is directly involved in the project. He spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorised to discuss the facility with journalists.

"All suspects arrested will be taken to the centre and would be interrogated by a security group," the official said. He declined to say exactly where it is or how many inmates it can hold. He said authorities are arranging to transport suspects to Lagos, Nigeria's largest city located in its southwest.

The detention centre was created at the orders of Nigeria's National Security Adviser General Andrew Owoye Azazi, the official said. Azazi's telephone number is unlisted and the AP was unable to contact him for comment.

Ekpeyong Ita, the director-general of the Nigeria's secret police agency known as the State Security Service, declined to comment on Thursday when the AP asked him about the prison.

Minutes later, secret police spokesperson Marilyn Ogar called an AP journalist and said anyone with information about the purported prison should go to the courts instead of talking to journalists. She refused to confirm or deny the prison's existence.

"Whatever we do, we're running a democratic system that respects the rule of law," the spokesperson said.

Taunting videos

Boko Haram, whose name means "Western education is sacrilege" in the Hausa language of north Nigeria, is carrying out increasingly sophisticated bombings and attacks in its sectarian fight against the country's government. The sect carried out a suicide bombing in August at United Nations' headquarters in the country that killed 25 people and wounded more than 100 others, as well as a co-ordinated assault this January in the northern city of Kano that killed at least 185 people.

Diplomats and military officials say the sect has links with two other al-Qaeda-aligned terrorist groups in Africa. Members of the sect also reportedly have been spotted in northern Mali which Tuareg rebels and hardline Islamists seized control of over the past month.

Police officers shot and killed Boko Haram's former leader Mohammed Yusuf in 2009 while he was in their custody, underscoring the lack of respect for human rights among the security forces. Security agencies have been unable to find and arrest the sect's current leader Sheik Abubakar Shekau, who posts taunting videos on the internet promising more violence.

"The problem we have is lack of synergy among the security agencies," the security official told AP. Those agencies include the police, the military, and intelligence agencies like the State Security Service. 

Relations between the agencies are testy at times as each fights for its own budgetary allotments and there are suspicions that some have been influenced by ethnic or religious factors in this nation of more than 160 million people with two dominant religions and more than 250 ethnic groups.

Intelligence agencies allegedly released a suspected Islamic radical in 2007 who later masterminded Boko Haram's suicide car bombing of the UN headquarters. Leaked US diplomatic cable also show US officials complained in 2008 about Nigeria's government quietly releasing other suspects into the custody of Islamic leaders as part of a program it called "Perception Management."

Suspected sect members have been arrested and kept locked up for months without being charged. Authorities also routinely arrest women and children related to suspected Boko Haram members in attempts to draw them out. Amnesty International has said some Boko Haram suspects have been "subject to enforced disappearances."

Incommunicado detention

This record leads to fears among human rights groups that the secret detention centre could see more suspects disappear, deprived of the right to challenge their detentions in the courts.

"Attacks by armed groups do not absolve the Nigerian government of the responsibility to conduct security operations in a manner that complies with national and international law," Amnesty International said in a statement on Thursday. "Widespread unlawful, incommunicado detention must cease immediately."

Ogar, the secret police spokeswoman, appeared later Thursday on the state-run Nigerian Television Authority before the AP published its story. In an interview, she said that a "group of disgruntled people have gone to the foreign media to say that Nigeria has now produced another Guantanamo Bay," referring to the US military detention camp in Cuba.

It is unclear whether any foreign governments have offered Nigeria advice or assistance in opening the detention centre. US Ambassador to Nigeria Terence P McCulley, speaking to journalists April 4, said the US is "working with the Nigerian government to help them develop a counter-terrorism strategy that includes perhaps a centre even to better co-ordinate information and intelligence that they receive".

But Deb MacLean, a US Embassy spokesperson, told the AP that she was unaware of the new detention centre and said that the US had no role in it.