• FAC

After 17 years of wrongful imprisonment, a man was released from jail, only to find that his wife fell in love and had a child with a police officer who arrested him!

Watch the video below…https://zambianews365.com/wrongly-imprisoned-man-released-from-jail-after-17-years-only-to-find-wife-in-love-with-the-officer-who-jailed-him-video/

The Katsina State Police Command have arrested a former caretaker chairman for Jibia Local Government Area of the state, Haruna Musa Mota over alleged ties with bandits.

Spokesperson of the command, SP Gambo Isah, who confirmed the development, said Mota was arrested for allegedly aiding and abetting bandits operating in the state.

The ex-council boss was arraigned before a senior magistrate court on Friday, February 5 and remanded in a Katsina correctional centre pending the time the police would complete investigation on his case and when the state Ministry of Justice issue legal advice on the case.

The Katsina State Police Command have arrested a former caretaker chairman for Jibia Local Government Area of the state, Haruna Musa Mota over alleged ties with bandits.

Spokesperson of the command, SP Gambo Isah, who confirmed the development, said Mota was arrested for allegedly aiding and abetting bandits operating in the state.

The ex-council boss was arraigned before a senior magistrate court on Friday, February 5 and remanded in a Katsina correctional centre pending the time the police would complete investigation on his case and when the state Ministry of Justice issue legal advice on the case.

Tension is beginning to brew, and if revenge attacks on Southerners begin here in the North, it will be difficult to control. Our enemies from within and outside, some well known by our security agencies, are more determined than ever to set us against each other, so that we may get to a point of no return when the conflagration begins.

The mayhem we see, almost everyday now, of killings and maiming of people of Northern extraction, including, especially, the Fulani, in some other parts of the country, is totally unacceptable. There is clearly a nefarious plan by the enemies of this potentially great country to initiate a violent crisis that may lead to its destruction.

Tension is beginning to brew, and if revenge attacks on Southerners begin here in the North, it will be difficult to control. Our enemies from within and outside, some well known by our security agencies, are more determined than ever to set us against each other, so that we may get to a point of no return when the conflagration begins.

There is no part of this country that is at peace. Local and neighbouring, including foreign, terrorists, are busy, fully armed, to cause whatever damage they can inflict on our dear country. I, therefore, call on President Buhari to take this insecurity and the ethnic lynchings happening very seriously, and put up urgent measures to deal with them without any more delays.

…urgent and decisive action is now necessary. If any Nigerian will not be allowed to live freely and conduct his/her life and business in any part of the country without being disturbed or molested or even killed, then no one should be allowed to settle and prosper anywhere else. If that were to be the case, then, we have no country.

I am sure, there is concern at the Presidency and discussions are being held. But, urgent and decisive action is now necessary. If any Nigerian will not be allowed to live freely and conduct his/her life and business in any part of the country without being disturbed or molested or even killed, then no one should be allowed to settle and prosper anywhere else. If that were to be the case, then, we have no country. That is how serious it is. And that is what our enemies desire.

We must not allow them by our inaction. Those foolish leaders and their stupid hirelings who encourage the expulsion of other Nigerians from their States, should remember that their own indigenes also live in other parts. They must stop, or the law should stop them by all means necessary.

 

 

Bashir Othman Tofa wrote from Kano State, Nigeria.

Taline Kazandjian, Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine; Harry Greene, Cornell University; Nicholas Casewell, Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine, and Wolfgang Wüster, Bangor University

Cobras are fascinating and frightening creatures. These snakes are most well known for their characteristic defence mechanism called hooding, when the sides of their neck flare out in a dramatic display.

However, hooding isn’t the only defensive behaviour in a cobra’s arsenal. Some species of cobra have modified fangs with small, front facing orifices. These allow them to forcibly eject venom as a spray or “spit”, which can hit the eyes of a target up to 2.5 metres away. For this behaviour, they are known as spitting cobras.

Bizarrely, this unique adaptation has evolved three times independently in a small group of Afro-Asian snakes: once in African cobras, once in Asian cobras, and once in the related rinkhals, also known as the ring-necked spitting cobra.

While most snakes use venom for preying on other animals, spitting cobras use it purely for defence. In a new study, we tested the venom of spitting cobras to see what toxins could be found, to work out what might have caused this defensive behaviour to evolve. The results show it might have been to ward off attacks from our human ancestors.

Unique toxin cocktails

Snake venoms are complex mixtures of proteins, used primarily in foraging to efficiently incapacitate prey. While snakes do use their venom in self defence, for example in the case of human snakebites, most of the evidence suggests venom composition has been evolved for foraging, not defence.

Venom in fixed front-fanged snakes, including cobras, tends to cause paralysis. This is due to an abundance of toxins called neurotoxic three-finger toxins, which stop neurotransmission, signals being sent from the nervous system to the prey’s muscles. However, cobras have a unique type of three-finger toxins that destroy cells, rather than block neurotransmission. These are called cytotoxins.

Our results found spitting cobras have increased the abundance of a different toxin family, called phospholipase A2 (PLA2s), in their venom compared to their non spitting counterparts. Because these cobras spit for defensive reasons, this is the first evidence of a defensive driver of venom evolution in snakes.

Toxic teamwork

Many animals that use venom defensively do so by inflicting rapid, severe pain on their aggressors. We set out to find out whether defensive spitting cobra venom would be especially painful on contact.

To assess pain causing activity, we tested cobra venom on isolated mouse neurons, responsible for sensations in the eyes and face. We suspected spitting cobra PLA2s might activate these neurons and potentially cause pain.

To our surprise, PLA2s were ineffective on their own. It was the cytotoxins, the toxins widespread in spitting and non-spitting cobras alike, that caused activation of the neurons. However, the mixture of PLA2s and cytotoxins caused this activity to increase dramatically.

This suggests spitting cobras increased the abundance of PLA2s in their venom over time, to make the already present cytotoxins much more effective as a pain inducer. The threefold independent evolution of spitting was accompanied on each occasion by the same complex, synergistic changes in venom composition.

Could human ancestors have prompted this evolution?

Venom spitting is a unique behaviour found only in a small handful of closely related snake species. Yet this projectile defence system, and the specific mixture of toxins that cause more pain, evolved three times independently, only within this small group.

This kind of defence must have been stimulated by a very strong selective pressure. We believe several factors make human ancestors the most likely selective agent.

Many primates will pre-emptively kill a snake if they feel threatened, often using projectile weapons or tools, like rocks and sticks. While these may not always be lethal, they can cause severe damage. Bipedal hominins, human ancestors who walked on two legs with forelimbs freed, almost certainly posed an even greater long-distance threat compared to their four-legged relatives. This requires a long distance defence from their serpentine enemies, like spitting.

The timing of the evolution of venom spitting coincides with key dates in the evolution of early human ancestors. The emergence of spitting in African cobras occurred at around the same time as the separation of hominins from the chimpanzees and bonobos lineage, approximately 7 million years ago. The evolution of spitting in Asian cobras occurred alongside the arrival of Homo erectus in Asia around 2.5 million years ago.

Read more: Why do snakes produce venom? Not for self-defence, study shows

In addition, fossils of spitting cobra fangs have been found in ancient hominin sites such as the cradle of humanity in Africa. Current evidence is circumstantial, which means we require more proof. However, venom spitting as a response to trampling by herd animals or being preyed on by birds or mammals is far less supported.

Additional fossils might support or refute our hypothesis. In particular, finding the fossilised remains of spitting cobras that predate the divergence between hominins and chimpanzees would refute our hypothesis.

If our distant ancestors’ tendency to attack snakes with rocks or sticks did trigger the evolution of a specific defensive adaptation in snakes, one that persists to this day, we should ponder our own place in Earth history. Rather than being a lineage apart, our human ancestors might have had a direct impact on how these animals evolved.

Taline Kazandjian, Postdoctoral Research Assistant, Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine; Harry Greene, Professor of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology , Cornell University; Nicholas Casewell, Director of Centre for Snakebite Research & Interventions, Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine, and Wolfgang Wüster, Reader in Zoology, Bangor University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

A Customary Court sitting in Mapo, Ibadan, on Thursday dissolved a 15-year-old marriage between a mother of two, Olubunmi Faseyitan, and her husband, Kolawole, over ”witchcraft” suspicion.

Kolawole, who prayed for the dissolution of his 15-year-old marriage on grounds that his wife was into black magic, said he did everything possible to please her. but it was not enough.

“I abandoned the home to her after she confessed to me,” he said.

He also presented the recorded conversation between his wife and the alleged witch doctor as exhibit before the court.

In her defense, Faseyitan told the court that she never wished death on her husband.

According to her, “all I wanted was to him in bondage and make him sick, until he serves his purpose.”

”I only told the witch doctor to do it in such a way that people would be convinced that his second wife was responsible for the calamity that befell him,” she said.

Delivering Judgement, President of the court, Chief Ademola Odunade, dissolved the marriage after Faseyitan admitted that she asked a witch doctor to ”tie her husband spiritually to milk him dry”.

He said that he dissolved the union in the interest of peace and granted custody of the two children to Faseyitan.

Odunade also ordered Kolawole to pay N6,000 monthly for the children’s upkeep, NAN reports.

Two suspected ritualists arrested for allegedly killing and removing the vagina of a girl in Bauchi State have narrated their roles in the dastardly act.

The duo confessed that they committed the heinous act for N500,000.

The suspects, Abdulkadir Wada (19) and Adamu Abdulrauf (20), in an audio clip obtained by PRNigeria, said they were asked to bring the sexual organ of a female by a native doctor.

The boys from Jama’are Local Government were nabbed by men of the Bauchi State Police Command.

Speaking in Hausa, Wada, the chief culprit, disclosed that he and Abdulrauf had gone to Kwata, the area the latter’s elder brother, who is married, lives.

He recalled that they waylaid a little girl, dragged her into an uncompleted building and strangled her to death.

“Abdulrauf then removed a knife from his pocket and cut off the girl’s private part. It was a marabout, who is now at large, that asked us to get him a female sexual part in return for N500,000,” the teenager revealed.

However, Abdulrauf denied killing their victim.

“Wada who came and met me in our house. He told me that he and one of his friend went to a spiritualist who promised them N500,000 if they bring a female vagina. I told him I am not interested. I discussed with one of my friend called Musa, he advised me to avoid Wada.

“The next day, while I was in my shop doing my mechanic work, I met Wada at the garage. He then gave me an amulet (charm), which I threw inside my pocket. Later on, we met and he asked me to accompany him to a place called Kwata.

“When we got to the area, we saw two young girls at a location. We called them. Wada removed a handkerchief from his pocket and flashed it on one of the girl’s face. After she slumped, he took her into an uncompleted structure and removed her organs as directed by the native doctor.”

They, however, advised desperate and idle youths to shun ritual killing and be wary of bad friends.

Bauchi Police spokesperson, DSP Ahmed Mohammed Wakil said the suspects would be arraigned in court after investigation.