Alexey Navalny, the prominent opponent of Russian President Vladimir Putin, is imprisoned in conditions that amount to torture and may slowly be killing him, human rights group Amnesty International said on Wednesday. Navalny, who last year was poisoned with a military-grade nerve agent, was now being subjected to sleep deprivation and did not have access to a doctor he could trust in jail, it said. “Russia, the Russian authorities, may be placing him into a situation of a slow death and seeking to hide what is happening to him,” Agnes Callamard, Amnesty International’s secretary general, said ahead of the publication of the group’s annual report. “Clearly the Russian authorities are violating his rights. We have to do more,” she said. “[They] have already attempted to kill him, they are n...
Armed herdsmen: Group calls on President Buhari to caution Bauchi governor
An Edo State-based civil society organisation, the Foundation for Good Governance and Social Change (FGGSC), has called on the Presidency to caution the governor of Bauchi State, Bala Muhammed, over a statement credited to him justifying bearing of arms by Fulani herdsmen to protect their cows. The group, faulting the comments of the governor, described it as ‘reckless, provocative, divisive and unbecoming of the status of a governor in a pluralistic society like Nigeria.’ Addressing journalists in Benin City, the Executive Director of FGGSC, Austin Osakue, said the situation in Nigeria was similar to what led to the 30 months civil war in the late 1960s that resulted in wanton destruction of lives and properties. ‘The statement opens the floodgates of self-help for Nigerians of other ethn...