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Saturday, June 25, 2011

BREAKING NEWS: Nollywood Acress, Uche Jumbo Survives Auto Crash Accident

News filtered in this morning that actress uche jombo just survived a fatal car crash which saw the car spining round and round like a carousel out of control and then hitting another  fast coming car headlong.


On lookers who were at the scene of the accident where a lot of people converged as early as 1am this morning (saturday 25,2011)swear the other car cut open into two while the fj cruiser driven by the actress is an almost write off.

Accident happened along lekki/chevron area around 12midnight.

Monday, June 20, 2011

Abacha's bad telephone habit saved my life – Diya

Former Chief of General Staff, Oladipupo Diya, the second in command to the late dictator, Sani Abacha, disclosed on Wednesday that Abacha’s bad habit of not picking telephone calls saved him from being executed in 1998.

Diya made the disclosure in Ibadan at the launch of a book titled “City on the Hill,” a biography of Bishop Emmanuel Bolanle Gbonigi.

He said it was an irony that the bad habit of Abacha of not answering his telephone calls, which many people had complained about, actually saved him from the hangman’s noose.

He recalled that the prayers of Nigerians made Abacha to ignore several telephone calls made by a General Officer Commanding (GOC) who wanted to confirm the execution order.

After some junior officers had come with the execution order, Diya recounted, the GOC insisted that he would personally confirm it from Abacha before giving a “go ahead order.”

However, according to him, several telephone calls made to Aso Rock by the GOC for nearly six hours were not answered by either Abacha or his aides.

Then the GOC ordered that Diya and others to be executed should be returned to detention.

Speaking on the role played by Yoruba leaders during his ordeal at the hand of Abacha, Diya commended Gbonigi for being courageous to be the first person to tell Abacha not to execute him.

He said before the alleged coup plot, Abacha had hated hearing anything from Gbonigi as he regarded the clergyman as a “NADECO Bishop.”

via Daily Independent

Nigerian 'Islamists' fire at card players, kill two

KANO, Nigeria (AFP) – Suspected members of a radical Islamist sect which bombed Nigerian police headquarters on Sunday opened fire on a crowd of card players killing two in a northern city, a senior military officer said.

Two motorcycle-riding gunmen suspected of being members of Boko Haram pumped shots into a crowd of people playing cards outside a house in the city of Maiduguri and disappeared into alleyways, said the officer who did not want to be named.

"The group of men were playing cards under a tree outside a house when two men on a motorcycle believed to be Boko Haram members opened fire on them, killing two people and seriously injuring five others," the officer told AFP.

"The attack is a typical Boko Haram (shoot-and-run) style," the military officer said.

Boko Haram claimed Nigeria's first suicide bombing last week which killed several people at the police headquarters in the capital Abuja.

The sect has staged attacks targeting government institutions, politicians, churches and beer drinking spots in what has become a low-level insurgency since last year. Dozens of people have been killed.

Card playing among young men is a common pastime in the scorching hot Maiduguri and many other northern cities where friends hang out under trees in the afternoon and play.

Disturbing Photos of Last Weeks Bomb Blast at Force HQ. (Graphic Pics)

Burnt cars and human flesh at the police hq car park after a suicide bomber targetted the police headquarter in Abuja.

wazuruike, MASSOB leader threatens: I may join Boko Haram

The leader of the Movement for the Actualization of the Sovereign State of Biafra (MASSOB), Chief Ralph Uwazuruike has threatened that his group may abandon its non-violent approach and toe the line of the Boko Haram since the Federal Government understands the language of violence.

Uwazuruike, in an exclusive interview with Daily Sun in Owerri at the weekend said both groups were calling for the division of the country in different ways, saying while the Boko Haram adopted violence approach to press their demands, the latter (MASSOB) engaged in non-violent method to achieve the same objective.

According to him, it had taken MASSOB over 12 years preaching the gospel of Biafra sovereignty through non-violence, government had not deemed it necessary to invite the group for discussion but regretted that within a short space of time of the Islamic group’s bomb attack across the country, government had extended olive branch to it.  “I congratulate them because it has taken me more than 12 years to preach the same language that they are saying today that Nigeria needs to be divided at least between Christians and Moslems, but the Federal Government has ignored me for 12 years.”

“Now, within a very short space of time the Boko Haram people have said the same thing I was saying through non-violence, the Federal Government has invited them and of which the group, (Boko Haram) has ignored the government and continue what they are doing.”  The MASSOB leader made it clear that if he had his way, the group would join the Boko Haram and the entire nation would be in flames, since it was the only language the Federal Government understood.

 “I am telling you that if I have my way now, I will join the Boko Haram and the entire country will turn into crisis, since it is what the Federal Government wants. I am saying it today that, I congratulate the Boko Haram people and I wish they will continue in their efforts and if I have my way, I will join them.”  He regretted that, whenever the MASSOB embarked on a peaceful demonstration, government, through its security agencies would clamp down on them, even maiming and killing them in the process.

 He, however, advised the Boko Haram not to bomb the rural areas, where common people reside, but, should focus attention on those who were clamouring for oneness of the country because of what they gained from the national treasury.  He dismissed the insinuations that members of the Boko Haram group were invisible, alleging that some members of the nation’s security agencies belonged to the sect. Alleging further, the MASSOB leader said the Boko Haram were being sponsored by top politicians and business tycoons in Nigeria.

 Uwazuruike, who dismissed those who claimed that members of the Islamic group were invisible, said the sect were human beings made up of flesh and blood but decided to make themselves invisible because they were committing crimes.  He warned: “It is not only the Boko Haram that can throw bombs and they are not the only people that are courageous to be suicide bombers, any other person who believes in whatever he is doing can be a suicide bomber, but we are considering the fact that we can still achieve the same purpose by peaceful means without anybody dying.”

via Sun Newspapers

Likely Ministers in Goodluck Jonathan's Cabinet

The list of probable ministerial nominees for the federal cabinet is taking shape as President Goodluck Jonathan has submitted more names to the Department of State Security Service for screening, preparatory to their presentation to the senate for confirmation.

But their names would only be forwarded to the senate if they scale through security scrutiny.

Among those on the fresh ministerial nomination list are the acting National Chairman of the Peoples Democratic Party, Dr. Haliru Bello, the party’s national secretary, Alhaji Kawu Baraje and former Managing Director of Nigerian Breweries Plc, Mr. Festus Odimegwu.

Others are former African female speedster on the track and field, Mrs. Mary Onyali-Omagbemi, Michael Onolemhehe, an architect and Alhaji Bukkar Tijjani.

Bello, a former Minister of Communication under President Olusegun Obasanjo, will be representing Kebbi State in the cabinet, if he scales the security hurdle. Baraje, on the other hand, is from Kwara State.

Their nomination is in fulfilment of an agreement the president reached with the party’s NWC members when they met with him last month at the Obudu Mountain Resort, Cross River State, where he had gone for a retreat after the general elections.

At that meeting, the president had conceded to their request that some of them be appointed to the new cabinet.

It is also in keeping with the tradition of the PDP-led federal government started by its first president, Olusegun Obasanjo and sustained by his successor, the late President Umaru Musa Yar’Adua to reward members of the party’s National Working Committee for their contributions to the election of the president.

During his time, Obasanjo named some NWC members as ministers and special advisers. Among them were Mrs. Josephine Anenih, a former national woman leader, who was his Special Adviser on Women Affairs until 2006 and Venatius Ikem, former national publicity secretary, who was appointed special adviser in 2005.

The late Yar’Adua, on his part, named one of Baraje’s predecessors, Chief Ojo Maduekwe, as foreign minister and Mr. John Odey, former national publicity secretary, as minister of information.

Jonathan later reassigned Odey to the Ministry of Environment and Housing, in a cabinet reshuffle after Yar’Adua’s death last year.

The implication of Bello and Baraje’s nomination is that the PDP may be heading for an earlier national convention.

Its national convention is slated for March next year, but if the two of them make it to the cabinet, the party would have to hold an earlier convention to replace them.

Onolemhehe, a former Minister of State for Defence in the Obasanjo administration, hails from Edo State.

His nomination could foreclose the return of the former Minister of State for Works, Mr. Chris Ogiemwoye, who is also from the state.

He may, however, stand a narrow chance of being nominated if Jonathan decides to select the zonal nominee to represent the south-south zone in the cabinet from Edo State.

Festus Odimegwu, who vied for the party’s gubernatorial ticket in Imo State in 2007 shortly after the NB Plc eased him out over his involvement in politics, was among ministerial nominees whose name was sent for security screening on Monday.

Onyali-Omagbemi will be representing Anambra State while Tijjani will represent Borno State.

THISDAY further learnt that the name of the Managing Director of the World Bank, Dr. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, who was Obasanjo’s Minister of Finance and later foreign affairs, was among those slated for screening, an indication that she might have accepted Jonathan’s offer to serve Nigeria again.  She will be representing Abia State in the FEC.

It was, however, unclear Saturday if the former Minister of Finance, Dr. Olusegun Aganga, would be returning to the cabinet like some of his colleagues.

In a related development, controversy is still raging over who would represent Delta State in the cabinet.

The wife of the former PDP national chairman, Col. Ahmadu Ali (rtd), Dr. Mariam Ali, is said to be under pressure to withdraw her petition against the election of Senator Ifeanyi Okowa representing Delta North Senatorial District, as a pre-condition for her consideration as the state’s nominee.

Former Minister of State for Education, Chief Kenneth Gbagi, may also not return to the cabinet, as it was gathered that he no longer enjoys the confidence of South-south Elders Forum leader, Chief Edwin Clark. Clark is said to have nominated Dr. Cairo Ojougboh as the Delta representative.

Ojougboh’s nomination is said to have received the blessing of Clark and a former Economic Adviser to Obasanjo, Chief Philip Asiodu, and other top stakeholders from Delta State.

A presidency source confirmed that under the circumstances, Jonathan would have to pick between Ali’s wife and Ojougboh.

If this sails through, Delta State may have two ministerial nominees as Mr. Godsday Orubebe, who was Minister of the Niger Delta in the last cabinet and is believed to be returning,  is said to represent the south-south geo-political zone.

The official in the presidency revealed that only Cross River State in the south-south has no nominee for now.

He disclosed that the SSS last Wednesday screened 11 former ministers ahead of their presentation to the senate for confirmation.

Some of the former ministers sighted at the SSS headquarters, otherwise known as the ‘Yellow House,’ included former Minister of Petroleum, Mrs. Diezani Alison-Madueke; former Minister for the Federal Capital Territory and the former Minister of State of the same ministry, Senator Bala Mohammed and Navy Captain Caleb Olubo-lade (rtd), respectively; former Minister of Defence, Prince Adetokunbo  Kayode and Orubebe.

Others were former Minister of Education, Prof. Ruqqayatu Rufa’i; former Minister of Labour, Chief Emeka Wogu, his former Health counterpart, Prof. Onyebuchi Chukwu and former Minister of Justice and Attorney-General of the Federation, Mr. Mohammed Bello Adoke.

The screening, however, has been delayed by Thursday’s bomb blast at the Force Headquarters, Abuja, as all security agencies have deployed their resources to fishing out the perpetrators.

The blast has also disrupted the screening of the nominees by the police, which sources said would resume next week.

So far, Jonathan has sent an estimated 20 names as nominees for security clearance.

Source: THISDay

Saturday, June 18, 2011

Data Entry Operator Wanted at Taafoo (OND/HND)


Job Description

Taafoo is an online retail service that enables individuals to shop through our platform, meet new interesting people and merchants to reach those individuals who visit taafoo. Original started in August 2009 as a messaging platform for connecting individuals with celebrities, we have evolved quickly to meet the needs of the Nigerian internet user.
With a membership community of over 250,000 Nigerians, we believe that our greatest asset is our flexibility in satisfying our consumers and providing a safe environment for them to shop and meet each other.
We are looking to recruit an interested and qualified person for the position described below

Functional Requirements:
  • Uploading Product description and pictures to taafoo.com
  • Taking pictures of products that need to be uploaded to taafoo.
  • Uploading advertisement data.
  • Description of products. 

Skills Required:
  • Fast Typing Skills.
  • Ability to use a digital camera.
  • Ability to differentiate colors (Not color blind).
  • Creativity

Deliverables:
  • Number of Items uploaded

Educational & Professional Qualifications:
  • OND or HND degree holders only
Click here to apply

Some pictures of a flooded Lagos...



Breaking: Omawumi gives birth to a baby girl !!!

Sexy singer, Omawumi Megbele is now a mother. The award winning singer welcomed her first child a girl in faraway America. The name of the child hasn’t been confirmed yet.

Sources close to her notified us that she put to bed early Saturday, June 18, 2011 at 2AM.

Omawumi also stated via Blackberry Messenger (bbm) ‘A child is God’s reward – Psalm127:3B…Welcome sweetie!’,

The identity of the father still remains unknown but sources say the baby father could be the owner of the Lagos club Zamunda.

Congratulations to Omawumi Megbele.

"We saved 16.7bn in Katsina State without borrowing a kobo" - Katsina Gov


By KINGSLEY OMONUBI & INALEGWU SHUAIBU
Katsina state governor, Ibrahim Shema who was sworn in May 29 for a second term, in this interview with explains that the primary responsibilities of government are to provide for the general well being of the people.
He throws light on how his administration in the last four years, saved N16. 7billion and provided projects that touch the lives of the people without borrowing a kobo for four years.
How has it been governing Katsina State in the last four years?
I have always said that power belongs to God and he gives it to whoever he pleases. First of all I thank God for giving me the opportunity to serve.
Ibrahim Shema
Through his mercies, we have done so many things in the last four years to improve the lives of our people. In agricultural sector, education, commerce and health, we have shown that we are here to work for the people. We have put together a 250 bed hospital, the first of its kind to be built and owned by a state government. In the entire northern Nigeria , there is only one such hospital in Kano .
But now this administration has completed a 250 bed hospital. The equipment has been ready, they are on their way, they will soon be here and a 100 percent payment has been made for them. The rural mobile ambulance scheme will be monitored very well because that touches on the very lives of the rural communities.
Every ambulance goes from village to village, to attend to the needy and when there is need for referrals, the ambulances are used to carry people to medical facilities in the state. We did not leave out sporting events. We have expanded and improved most of our sporting facilities.
We are currently building a 35, 000 capacity stadium in the capital in Katsina. In infrastructure, the housing projects will continue. We have built 1, 772 houses in the last two years and this was all done from the purse of the government. We did not borrow a kobo from any bank. We have done road infrastructure.
There is huge demand for road infrastructure in the state. So far, we have built 27 road projects that are new. Eight that we met on ground that were new. Over 500 kilometers of road that were built by this administration and we are still going strong on that. And we will continue to build and build roads where we have the need for them in this state.
Tourism development was not left out. We improved the quality and the statues of the hotels which are owned by the state government to a three star hotel status. We will try to see what we can do in the transport industry, we have the state transport company that have about 50 vehicles that were there for all this years.
There has never been any change in the issue of the number and size of transport companies that we have in the country. But at the same time, we felt the need for us to expand the services to the people. We introduced different varieties of transportation mix. We introduce some township bus services that did not exist before we came in. we introduce students bus service scheme that carry students points to point, from home to school at the cost of N10 per drop.
These buses have been doing very well in three major towns of Katsina, Daura and Funtua and we have introduce car hire service, still within the state transport company and we introduce long distance bus services that goes from Katsina to Maiduguri, Katsnia to Lagos, Katsina to Onitsha, to the South-East, South-South and to the furthest points of the north.
The company has equally introduced an inter-country transportation between Niger Republic and Nigeria . So they even got an award as the best transport company in Nigeria . The programmes I have just enumerated are just some few of the things I can just remember off hand. And I can tell you that whatever I say here, we are going to make it better insha allahu. But there are some fundamental areas that we pay serious attention to.
Employment generation especially youth employment and water supply. Because of the demand we receive from the communities, water seems to be our number one priority and we provided over 2000 bole holes since the inception of this administration. We bought three brand new drilling machines from Germany , the best in the market now in the whole of Europe . And we placed one in each Senatorial district.
Education is not left out. We have made scholarship available to our boys and girls in institutions abroad. We have some that are studying environmental engineering in the Americas . We have some that are in Sudan training in Arabic computing, calligraphy and printing and we have some that are studying medicine, pharmacy and BA nursing. These are sponsored directly by the state government.
And what we do when we send a child to go and read a particular course, maybe medicine or pharmacy, we compute his entire course fee from the beginning of the course to the end of it and we pay lump some, the entire amount of his tuition, accommodation, everything, we pay the whole amount into the coffers of the university, so they pay him monthly.
His entire course is guaranteed, he does not have to come back to me for money year after year or month after month. Still on education, we have been able to pay TSS (teachers’ salary scheme) for teachers in primary and secondary schools. We have improved the salary of university lecturers to the new salary approved by the Federal Government; we have negotiated and have arrived at some figures.
We have increased the salaries of health workers, and you know all this government workers’ salary have been negotiated by the state government. We have paid about 80 percent across the board what the Federal Government has agreed to pay workers and we continue to improve on the quality of service of our civil servants by sending them on training regularly.
We have been paying our salaries as and when due. This administration has never paid salary beyond 23rd of each month in the last four years and we pay leave grants every year. In January of each year ,we give civil servants, states and local government leave grants. And indeed we closed the four-year tenure with a bonus of one month salary for every staff of government in local and state and staff in tertiary institutions as well. So every staff in Katsina state has got one month salary bonus at the end of this administration.
As far as the issue of staff development and welfare is concern, we have been consistently giving promotion to our staff at all levels. We have paid our pension and gratuities as at when due and the beautiful part of all the things I have enumerated, Katsina state never borrowed a kobo from any institution.
We do not owe any contractor. All contractual obligations are met, the only contractors that have any claim on government are those that have on- going projects and we do not pay until they reach a stage for payment. We do not owe any contractor any money. And still as I mentioned in my speech, we had N16.77 billion liquid cash in the coffers of the state government. We did invest in stock and you know the stock market has crashed and we invested in special trust funds.
During your swearing in, you talked about the American experience of opponents joining hands with government, have you reached out to your opponents after winning the election and how are you going to run this inclusive government?
Firstly, as far as I am concerned, politics should be a civilized contest between two people. Obviously in every contest, there must be winners and losers. In this respect, we won the election in Katsina state. There are elections we lost, for example in the presidential ,we got about 26.7 percent in the state and Buhari got victory here but we did not complain. We are civilized enough to understand and appreciate that you must lose some places yet PDP was lucky to have won all over Nigeria .
So, the 26 percent that we got was enough for President Jonathan as a complementary support from this state. What is however important is that politicians should learn to put this nation first before their personal interest and ambition. When we go out to campaign, what every politician tell the public is that look, if you elect me, I will do ABCD for you. I will do better things than what the present government is doing.
That is what we all tell our people. But once you are not elected, a person is seen as an enemy of the people because he will be working even against the government of the day that is trying to work for the people. That is not the correct way to do politics. People should bring all hands on deck to join governors that have won interest of the people. I cited the example of Clinton . She was the strongest opponent of Democratic Party primary elections in America and she lost the election. It was a very tough fight between them.
Everybody saw it, she easily might have won the election, but God in his wisdom gave it to Obama and when Obama emerged as a President, Hilary joined him and when the election was won, she took the position of the Secretary of state which is basically equivalent to a foreign minister here. You can imagine and she did that for the interest of the nation and her people.
But here in Nigeria , everybody who loses will go to court; bitter court fight ensues until two, three years down the line. He has not contributed anything to the development of the people, he is not helping the government of the day to operate and at the end of it all, a circle of fresh hate and anger is built and we start running around in circles. That is not good politics.
You have listed so many projects and the evidences are there. How were you able to achieve this without borrowing any kobo, yet you left so much in the state account, how were you able to achieve this?
It is possible when you have a simple approach to governance. First like in every thing you do in life, we made plans. We started by making the plans because like what Moa Se Tung said ‘To fail to plan is to plan to fail’, so we started by planning and conceptualizing what we want to do.
When I was campaigning in 2007, I was looking at the activities of government in the state and I was opportuned to be an attorney general here in the government of Yar’Adua. So, I knew quite well how they are operating. So I had a plan of what should be in place for Katsina to move gradually in terms of development. After the planning, I also observe that Nigeria is littered with so many uncompleted projects since independence.
And the problems and projects that have been put in place, some of them have been there. Some roads have been built since the 70s, nobody cares to maintain them. So I have seen them and I felt that there is the need for us to deal with the projects that have not been completed. Because when you start a project and you invest huge amount of money in it and you abandon it, the waste is colossal.
The money you put there has gone to waste. The opportunity to build and complete to allow people to use it is not there. So I felt I had to complete every project I inherited from the government before me. And I made a public statement at my first outing as a governor that I was going to complete every project from the Yar’Adua administration. And the on going projects I met were colossal. For example, the expansion of Katsina airport was just awarded shortly before we came in.
It was awarded at the end of November, mobilization was done in February, March and in April there was election and handing over. So ,I made it my business to stay on the neck of the contractors to be on the site every fortnight of every project that is on going. And that gulped up two third of the budget at that time. Now, besides using the airport for specific purposes which was the intention, we have a big burden aircraft landing in Katsina, We have introduced commercial flight which was not there before.
We handled hajj operations to convey people from Katsina to Jeddah four times for four years in a roll. After we finished that, we looked at what is the next major project. We had the university project that was just awarded. Obasanjo laid the foundation of the university when he came here on the last campaign train of President Yar’Adua, so you can imagine, the foundation was just laid. I told the contractors to sit with our government officials and give me a time line of completion.
Week by week, I want to know where the contractor will be and what the financial requirement is. So, we did a financial floor and from that we know from week A to C, they will have achieved this level, they will have required this money. So we kept the money for that purpose. In 18 months, we finished that university. We furnished it; we put equipment, laboratory equipment, computers and everything and we moved the students from the temporal site to the permanent site.
Look a the Turai Yar’Adua Child Mortality Hospital which was just awarded when we came in. We have some other projects like the expansion of Funtua road, there were water projects. We targeted 18 months completion of all the projects but we overshot the target with three months. The university gulped about N11.8 billion and the hostels were quite modest. It took about N800 million.
We had eight road projects inherited from the previous administration and were just awarded when we just started, there are so many. We have finished all those projects. How did I manage to finish all these? I have a floor. I worked out how much I was getting per month. It was about N3. 4 billion. I have a salary bill of about N1.2 billion, with overheads, it is about N1.5 billion. So I had N1.9 billion to play with. Then, I felt there is need for me is to find additional source of income.
We tried to work on the issue of revenue generation for the state. We made about N130 million monthly from internally generated revenue. So ,we try to do our best to expand it by hiring some consultants. It was not much and by and large, the revenue will always come from Vat, tax but they were able to jack it up to N250 million and then we started placement with banks as deliberate policy.
And we were asking the banks the give us the highest amount of interest rates anybody can give. From eight percent, we were able to get 14.5 percent and we negotiated. So we are making between N500 to N600 million from our deposits. And then we created another account within the commercial bank, UBA. Every bank now will give us a check at the end of every month of what is the due interest accrued to a state and we lodge it in that specific account. Within eight months, we have built about N20 billion reserves.
So we calculated all our projects that are on ground including the new ones and we said okay, how much we need to spend in a month in all the projects we are doing. In one month, we will decide that we are going to spend N1.5 billion, another month we say we are going to spend N1 billion because we know what is coming in from the federation account.
We know what we are generating internally, so our cash floor was managed between incoming fund and IGR and what reserve we have to keep. So in that order, there is no project that went out of contest. Then, our costing method equally helped. We made sure we have high professional people who will do evaluation for us for the job and we ensure reasonable profits.

via Vanguard Newspapers

Boko Haram promises fiercer attacks, training members in Somalia


KANO, Nigeria — A Nigerian Islamist sect that staged a series of deadly attacks mainly in the country's north on Wednesday threatened "fiercer" attacks and said it would not enter into talks with the government.
The Boko Haram group, which had two days ago laid down conditions for any talks with government, also disclosed for the first time that it had links with Islamists in Somalia.
"Dialogue with President (Goodluck) Jonathan has collapsed," because of the statements made by the inspector general of police and governor of northern Borno state, the group said.
It said it was angered by the police chief Hafiz Ringim's declaration that "the days of Boko Haram are numbered".
"Very soon, we will wage jihad...We want to make it known that our jihadists have arrived in Nigeria from Somalia where they received real training on warfare from our brethren who made that country ungovernable...," said the group in a handwritten statement.
"This time round, our attacks will be fiercer and wider than they have been," it said, adding it will target all northern states and the country's capital Abuja.
The statement in Hausa, a widely spoken language in the north, was anonymously delivered to journalists in the northeastern city of Maiduguri, capital of Borno state, where the attacks are concentrated.
The sect admitted links with a foreign Islamist group connected to Al-Qaeda, although security experts had already speculated that it had established ties with Islamists in north Africa.
The statement purportedly emanated from "Jama'atu Ahlis-sunnah lidda'ati wal Jihad", another name the sect calls itself.
Boko Haram had on Monday issued a statement setting conditions for ceasefire and dialogue with the government, which included the strict application of sharia law in the 12 predominately Muslim states in the north.
Also known as the Nigerian Talibans, the group launched an uprising in 2009 which was put down by a brutal military assault that left hundreds dead.
The sect, which has pushed for the creation of an Islamic state, has been blamed for shootings of police and community leaders, bomb blasts and raids on churches, police stations and a prison.