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Police deploy men in churches, ban fireworks ahead of Christmas celebrations
The Nigeria Police have scaled up security arrangements around churches and public locations across the country to forestall attacks by insurgents and other criminal elements during the Christmas celebration, Saturday PUNCH has learnt.
Similarly, the police commands across the country have banned the use of fireworks, especially around churches.
Findings show that police formations across the country are deploying thousands of men in churches, and locations like major markets and motor parks, an arrangement that is expected to continue till the New Year’s Day celebration.
The Nigeria Police’s spokesman, Donald Awunah, said on Friday that the nationwide operation would involve specialised units like the Police Mobile Force, Counter-terrorism Unit, Special Protection Unit, Federal Highway Patrol, Explosive Ordinance Department, the Armament Unit, Marine Police, helicopters and sniffer dogs.
“Motorists, commuters and other road users are enjoined to cooperate with police detachments and personnel deployed in the highways and major roads across the country,” Awunah said.
He said that the Inspector-General of Police, Ibrahim Idris, had directed the Assistant Inspectors-General of Police and Commissioners of Police in all the zones and commands in the country to personally supervise the operation.
In Nigeria’s North-East, which is battling Boko Haram insurgency, the security arrangements are more extensive. It was learnt that churches in the zone were training private security guards to complement the efforts of the police.
The Catholic Church in Yola, Adamawa State, for instance, said it had learnt from past attacks and had taken measures to secure worshippers.
Head, Justice, Peace and Development Commission and Director of Communications for the church in Yola, Maurice Kwairanga, said threats of attacks are usually heightened during festivities.
According to him, youths trained in identifying suspicious faces will be deployed in churches to screen incoming worshippers.
He said the efforts of the military and the police would be complemented by the vigilance of youths and volunteers, who have been trained to detect any suspicious person.
He said, “We are aware of that and have put in place measures of detection and prevention. We have Catholic youth volunteers, who although not armed, can easily identify any new face or suspicious persons.”
However, the Chairman, Christian Association of Nigeria in Adamawa State, Bishop Mike Moses, said there were complaints by some churches that they were not being covered by security agents. He said such churches had been advised to make use of their internal security systems.
To show the scale of police deployment, Niger State for instance, deployed 4,000 personnel in churches, while the Nasarawa State Police Command deployed 5,000 in churches and trouble spots across the state’s 13 local government areas on Friday. The Commissioner of Police in the state, Abubakar Bello, said his men would be at junctions, places of worship, recreation centres and other public places to prevent any attack.
According to the Police Public Relations Officer in Niger State, Mr. Bala Elkana, the men would also cover all the recreational centres and parks in the state, as mobile police and an anti-bomb squad would be actively in place.
The Katsina Police Command has deployed an equally large number of personnel in the state. It was learnt that regular and plain-clothes policemen would be stationed at churches in the state to augment the security put in place by the religious houses.
The command’s spokesman, Salisu Agaisa, said the command had met with religious leaders in the state to ensure peace during the festive period.
A similar arrangement is being made in Ondo State, where the police command said it had “mapped out strategies to re-detail the duties of every policeman working in the state during the Yuletide.”
The Spokesperson for the Ondo State Police Command, Femi Joseph, said undercover police officers were already in place across the state to gather intelligence.
“We have also intensified our visibility patrols, especially along the highways and around banks and financial institutions,” he said.
Hand in hand with the deployment of policemen is the ban on fireworks and firecrackers in the country.
The police headquarters in Abuja said violators of the ban would be arrested and prosecuted, while the CAN said “bangers and other explosives” would not be allowed within church premises in the country.
The Sokoto State Police Command said its men would promptly arrest anybody caught with firecrackers during the festive season.
Also, the Public Relations Officer, Adamawa State Police Command, Othman Abubakar, expressed confidence that the ban on the use of firecrackers would be adhered to in the state.
He said because of the peculiar security situation in the state, many plain-clothes security operatives would be utilised to assist the force fish out suspicious elements, who may have infiltrated the population.
The Ondo, Ogun and Ekiti state police commands also said anyone engaged in the sale and use of firecrackers would be dealt with according to the law, which stipulates a 14-year jail term for such offence upon conviction. The same warning has been issued in Nasarawa State.
However, churches and the CAN are not leaving security around their religious houses to the police alone.
For instance, in Katsina and some other states, Saturday PUNCH learnt that in the past week, churches have trained private security guards to work on their premises during programmes. The security guards are expected to frisk people entering the churches.
Also, CAN in Katsina State has banned ladies from taking their bags inside churches but are expected to drop them in designated spots outside the church to prevent insurgents disguising as women to smuggle bombs in.
The CAN Secretary in Sokoto State, Adedeji Tade, said even though Boko Haram attacks were alien to the state, security measures like metal detectors were still being put in place around churches.
It was learnt that many churches in the state have also employed private security outfits to mount surveillance and patrol their premises.
In Kwara State, the Chairman of CAN, Prof. Timothy Opoola, said pastors in the state had undergone special security training to prevent security breaches in their churches during the Yuletide and the New Year’s Day celebration.
The Special Assistant to the President of CAN, Bayo Oladeji, told one of our correspondents in Abuja that screening of worshippers before church services would be necessary “to forestall attacks by insurgents.”
“Ordinarily, Christmas is a time of celebrations. But the satanic agents in the garments of extremists and terrorists are making it difficult for the people of God to rejoice. The CAN President, Rev. Olasupo Ayokunle, has advised churches to be vigilant and security conscious before, during and after the Yuletide season,” he said.
NNPCL and Corruption’s Final Throes
By Pius Olasanmi
In the twilight of the Obasanjo administration, when Nigerians were still capable of being outraged, when Turn Around Maintenance (TAM) of refineries was a buzzword that still held some mysticism to bamboozle citizens, during a conversation, a certain man said something profound. The man said, “As a businessman, if I were the owner of these refineries, knowing that they are three decades old, I would take the last money I have, hire bulldozers, raze them to the ground, and obtain loans to build new ones.”
When we pressed him further on why he would engage in such waste, he explained that repairing the refineries is the real waste. He explained that even if the TAM were honestly carried out, a thirty-year-old refinery would never compete favourably with a new one that would integrate contemporary technology. Operating at its best, such a refinery would never be comparatively more efficient. It is therefore pointless to have spent another one naira on the refineries at that point.
A few months later, I had a conversation with a then-lawmaker on an entirely different matter. I mentioned that the National Assembly has failed by not crafting legislation that would criminalise and punish public office holders who foist wrong decisions on the country. The logic: a public office holder need not steal to be punished, wrong decisions should attract penalties for an office holder who opts for the worst of all options when there are less injurious ones.
These established premises speak to the ongoing nauseating efforts at revisionism by those who wrecked the Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited (NNPCL) and its previous iteration, the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC). Notably, this campaign to rewrite history is traceable to Engineer Mele Kolo Kyari, the disgraced immediate past Chief Executive Officer of NNPCL and his hirelings. They have suffocated the news and the public opinion space with even more lies than they spun while in office.
The Saint Kyari campaign is anchored on convincing Nigerians that the Port Harcourt, Warri and Kaduna Refineries were fully functional when he was booted out of office. So brazen is the campaign that one of its talking heads challenged the group chief executive officer (GCEO), Engr. Bayo Ojulari, to “inform Nigerians categorically what happened to the functioning refineries he inherited from his predecessor, Engr. Mele Kyari.” The effrontery.
We have not forgotten so soon the charade that followed the baffling claim that Nigeria has spent $2.8 billion on the repair of the refineries, while they are not churning out even a single litre of refined product among them. Saint Kyari and his goons played all manner of tricks, all of which embarrassed President Bola Tinubu, who had counted on ticking off the return to productivity of the refineries as part of his achievements, only to realise that he was deceived into celebrating phantoms. Tragic.
Lest we forget, 200 trucks were arranged as props in a well-directed video clip to celebrate the re-streaming of the Port Harcourt Refinery. The disappointment. Nigerians were to learn from several reports that the Port Harcourt refinery was not producing and was instead using old, stored petroleum products to load trucks. Worse still, the Kyari crew was passing off sanction-tainted Russian-sourced crude oil refined in Malta as locally refined products. More insult was piled on the assault on our collective sensibility with the lies that the Port Harcourt Refinery exported semi-finished products. Brazen.
Meanwhile, Kyari and his hirelings called those who pointed out or protested these glaring scams all manner of names. They hid behind industry technicalities and jargon to create the impression that those of us who knew Nigerians were being robbed did not understand what we were saying. The point remains that a $2.8 billion investment can potentially build a refinery with a capacity of around 100,000 barrels per day (bpd). Of course, the actual capacity of such a refinery will depend on various factors, including the complexity of the refinery, the technology used, and the location. That is the amount that Kyari’s regime at the NNPCL took and did not give Nigerians refined products.
Fast forward to Kyari’s sack and the appointment of Engineer Bayo Ojulari, who has demonstrated that things can indeed be done differently. Kyari’s exit was expectedly followed by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) going after him and his associates. The extent of the theft is better understood against the backdrop of N80 billion being found in the bank account of one of his associates. They went on the run.
Perhaps because the EFCC was biding its time on securing international warrants for the arrests of these characters on the lam, they have become emboldened. They have decided to fight back and rewrite the story of their participation in the greatest fraud against Nigerians. Engineer Ojulari’s renewed mindset, which is entrenching a semblance of the transparency Nigerians demand, became their natural target. The demons that once roamed around the corporation came out with malevolence. They started spinning stories of corruption to tarnish the incumbent who refused to hide their crimes. The objective: bring Ojulari down. But alas, he is winning the war as it stands.
His innocence is proven, and it is glaring that those who want him out are mere charlatans who can no longer ply their corrupt wares because of the impact of the new reforms. Corruption in the NNPCL is in its final throes. The fake news being unleashed against the incumbent leadership is akin to corruption’s last kicks as reforms in the sector strangulate it and its practitioners. The reforms must take place in the NNPCL, whether the industry demons like it or not.
As a parting shot, Kyari and his associates would do well to prepare their defence. In addition to accounting for the $2.8 billion they laundered in the name of repairing the moribund refineries, they must also answer for the poor decision to fix that which is irretrievably broken. Awarding contracts for Turn Around Maintenance of 59-year-old refineries that a right-thinking person had suggested should be demolished almost twenty years ago, when they were only 30 years old, is criminal. Trying to deceive Nigerians that the fake repairs worked is treason.
Olasanmi is a public affairs analyst writing from Lagos.
GRANDIS 5STAR LUXURY APARTMENT & SUITES SET TO REDEFINE LIVING IN VICTORIA ISLAND
Set to Rise elegantly against the Lagos skyline, is the Grandis 5Star Luxury Apartment & Suites. According to Adejuwon Ademola, The General Manager of the Development company, it is more than just a residential building
“it’s a lifestyle statement. Standing 17 floors high in the heart of Victoria Island, this revolutionary masterpiece of modern architecture will offer a panoramic 360° view of Eko Atlantic, Victoria Island, and Ikoyi, transforming every apartment into an exclusive penthouse experience for the world’s most discerning elite.”
Developed by Dumarco Construction Limited, a globally acclaimed company with decades of delivering complex, high-value projects in the highly regulated petroleum, oil, and gas industries, Grandis 5Star brings unmatched international safety standards, uncompromising quality, and timeless elegance into Nigeria’s luxury property market.
> “When you live in Grandis, you’re not just buying a home—you’re investing in peace of mind, world-class safety, and an effortless luxury experience that will remain pristine for decades,” says Adejuwon A. Ademola, General Manager of Dumarco Construction Limited.
The Gold Standard in Safety and Quality
Dumarco’s roots in the oil and gas sector mean the company operates to some of the strictest safety protocols in the world. Every stage—from conceptualization, design, construction, to long-term maintenance—follows internationally accepted procedures and quality assurance measures. Cutting corners is simply not in Dumarco’s vocabulary.
> “In the oil and gas industry, there’s no room for compromise. We’ve brought that same discipline and zero-tolerance for mediocrity into property development,” says Ademola. “That’s why Grandis will be one of the safest and most enduring residential developments in Nigeria.”
To ensure transparency and prevent (project complacency), Dumarco deliberately separates the developer, contractor, and consultant roles, engaging only the most competent professionals in each respective field. Dumarco’s project team includes globally recognized contractors such as Julius Berger, Cappa & D’Alberto, and Elalan, Migliore Construczione & Tecniche (MC&T) and their partners VENCO IMTIAZ CONTRACTING COMPANY (VICC) based in Dubai, UAE, Business Contracting Limited, alongside leading consultants like Morgan Omanitan & Abe, LAMBERT, and James Cubitt.
Grandis – Investments, appreciation, returns and profitability
Our selection process for the location of the project alone was pains-taking and completely thorough scientific process. Top professional companies were employed to conduct a scientific data acquisition and analytical survey of the entire Victoria Island, Ikoyi, Lekki and Eko Atlantic before a project site is selected. Analyzing and acquiring areas developmental charts and trends, studying and gathering historical and present sale prices, rental charge and occupancy rates over a 50 year period from every individual street before the selection of the location of any of our developments especially true for the Grandis Project
He adds,
“Our clients and residents can be rest assured that the location of Grandis has been scientifically proven through all existing data to provide our clients with a 100% occupancy rate, highest developmental location, highest rental income and investment returns. ”
The Grandis Experience
Located minutes away from international corporate headquarters, embassies, and landmarks such as Eko Hotel, Radisson Blu, and the Radisson Red, Grandis offers unmatched convenience for professionals, diplomats, and high-net-worth individuals. Every residence is designed for both indulgence and efficiency, with high-grade finishes, smart-home systems, and private amenities that ensure seamless living.
From sunrise over the Atlantic to the glittering Lagos night skyline, residents will enjoy uninterrupted luxury, supported by discreet and highly trained staff, advanced security systems, and a design that prioritizes comfort and privacy.
> “We designed Grandis for people who want everything—security, elegance, convenience, and the assurance that their home will look as spectacular in 20 years as it does on day one,” Ademola notes.
A Legacy That Lasts
With its combination of visionary architecture, peerless safety, and meticulous maintenance planning, Grandis is built to remain iconic for generations. Thanks to Dumarco’s meticulous approach, the building’s service charges are expected to remain low while its value and appeal continue to appreciate over time.
In a market often marred by shortcuts and substandard practices, Mr Ademola says
Grandis stands as a beacon of what luxury living should be—safe, spectacular, and built to last.
“Grandis 5Star Luxury Apartment & Suites — Where safety meets sophistication, and every detail is designed for a life well-lived.”
He added
Website -www.dumarcoltd.com
Project website – www.26idowutaylor.com
Email [email protected]
Tel / WhatsApp +234 9077777883
GM – Adejuwon A. Ademola
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