A chieftain of the ADC in Edo State, and two term Owan West LGA Chairman of Owan West, Hon Daniel Asekhame, has commiserated with the family of the two, just-graduated students of the Ambrose Alli University, who got involved in a fatal accident in Ekpoma yesterday. The unfortunate incident happened along the Benin - Auchi road in Ekpoma. The students, who were celebrating their graduation from the University, collided fatally with a stationery truck on the road. Hon Asekhame, who himself is a graduate of the Ambrose Alli University, said he empathises deeply with the parents of the students, one of whom have been confirmed to have passed on, while the other one is in critical condition at a hospital. He acknowledged that they will almost be inconsolable at this point, but urged them to take heart and submit to the situation they have found themselves in at this time. He prayed that God would grant them the courage and fortitude to bear the irreparable loss. The...
Nigeria is currently engulfed in a major crisis of intergroup relations that is rooted in the politics of economic survival but which is often easily exploited by the elite. The latest theatre of such madness is in the Northwest state of Zamfara where towns and villages are attacked, almost on a daily basis, by armed bandits while the vigilante groups brought in by the helpless communities to help restore order are either being exterminated or are themselves engaging in extra judicial killings. With villages being deserted and a growing resort to self-help in the face of what looks like organized crime, there are serious threats to our national economy and security that many Nigerians are not paying adequate attention to. The violence in Zamfara State is particularly difficult for “outsiders” to understand, especially when the people many of us had always assumed to be one and the same are now killing one another. That perhaps explains why most of the reportage of the or...
This is our second series on sub-machine guns. The submachine gun is an automatic or selective-fired shoulder weapon that fires pistol-caliber ammunition. The concept of submachine gun dates back to World War One; the trench warfare of this war required effective and compact weapons for short-range fighting in trenches; additionally, a lightweight and maneuverable fully automatic weapon was desirable to complement light machine guns in both defensive and offensive scenarios, to cover last 200 meters of assault on enemy positions. The first weapon which can be considered to some extent as the world's first submachine gun was the Italian Villar-Perosa, which was a twin-barreled automatic weapon that fired 9mm Glisenti pistol ammunition from top-mounted box magazines. It was compact, but its primary tactical role was of short-range machine gun; therefore it was usually fired from some sort of mount, and fitted with machine-gun type spade grips instead of more conventional rifle-typ...