The newspapers for Monday, March 5, focus on Boko Haram activities in the northeast and the concerns raised by the NNPC over cross-border smuggling of petrol to neighbouring countries.
A top military source has faulted a House of Representatives member, Goni Bukar and other politicians speaking on the whereabouts of the Dapchi schoolgirls and the identity of their abductors.
The Nation reports that the source who described the politicians as confusionists said instead of granting many interviews to the media, politicians should disclose where the girls are if they know their location.
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“This is how some of these politicians will stay in Abuja and will be granting interviews to you media people, claiming this and that, yet they are not anywhere near their constituencies.
“I have been in Maiduguri since Tuesday and all the nation’s top military and security brass have been in Maiduguri and Yobe axis, pursuing all the leads. The investigations are not only on-going, painstaking and multi-dimensional, but what I can tell you now is that we are not leaving any stone unturned," the source said.
Meanwhile, Boko Haram fighters invaded Rann, a town in Kala Balge local government area of Borno state, on Thursday, March 1, and kidnapped some persons.
Vanguard reports that a nurse who was contacted by International Committee of Red Cross, (ICRC) in Rann for a period of three months was kidnapped in the attack.
The Vanguard newspaper for Monday, March 5, photo credit: Snapshot from Naij.com
Shortly before she was kidnapped, Hauwa Mohammed, said in a message via Whatsapp that her parents be informed of her kidnap by the insurgents.
Another friend of the victim, Abdulhameed Algarzali, who is the editor-in-chief of a local newspaper in Maiduguri, said the nurse assumed work two weeks ago.
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Meanwhile, the group managing director of the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC), Maikanti Baru, has announced that the corporation was spending N774m daily (about N23.99bn monthly) as subsidy on the 50 million litres of Premium Motor Spirit consumed across the country.
The Punch reports that Baru who made the disclosure on Sunday, March 4, expressed concerns that the growth of filling stations had energised unprecedented cross-border smuggling of petrol to neighbouring countries, making it difficult to sanitise the fuel supply and distribution matrix in Nigeria.
The Punch newspaper for Monday, March 5, photo credit: Snapshot from Naij.com
The Guardian reports that the NNPC boss said it had become lucrative for smugglers to use the frontier stations for smuggling of products across the border due to the obvious differential in petrol price between Nigeria and the neighbouring countries.
The Guardian newspaper for Monday, March 5, photo credit: Snapshot from Naij.com
He said: “NNPC is concerned that continued cross-border smuggling of petrol will deny Nigerians the benefit of the Federal Government’s benevolence of keeping a fix retail price of N145 per litre despite the increase in PMS open market price above N171 per litre.”
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Source: Naija.ng