Military Yet To Beceive $1bn To Fight Boko Haram Insurgency

This photo was taken on August 7, 2018, shows workers unloading bags of chemicals at a port in Zhangjiagang in China’s eastern Jiangsu province. Johannes Eisele / AFP

The end of the pager era is nigh in Japan after five decades as the country’s last provider announced on Monday it would be scrapping its service next year.

Tokyo Telemessage, the only pager service provider left standing, said it had decided to terminate its service to Tokyo and three neighboring regions in September 2019 — describing the development as “very regrettable”.

“Pagers were once a huge hit… but the number of users is now down to 1,500,” the company said in a statement, adding it had stopped manufacturing the hardware device 20 years ago.

Pagers — known as “poke-Beru” (pocket bell) in Japan — became very popular in the 1990s especially among high school girls obsessed by their primitive text messaging functions.

The Nigerian Army has disclosed that it is yet to receive the $1 billion promised by the federal government to fight the Boko Haram insurgency in the northeast.

Army spokesperson, Brigadier-General Sani Usman, disclosed this while speaking on a programme on Nigerian Television Authority (NTA) on Sunday December 2.

During the programme the army spokesman said that the defence ministry had been working to receive the money from the government.

He said, "People should understand also that this is a democratic system in which the procurement, and of course,  the funding of defence-related issues take such a long time. Take for instance the issue of the $1bn approved recently by Mr President, up till now the process is ongoing.

"The Ministry of Defence is still pursuing the matter to the point that when it is done, the armed forces will definitely get more equipment, more arms and ammunition."

He added, "In respect of the effort, we are trying as much as possible to make sure that first and foremost we give timely and accurate information on all our activities and operations, bearing national security concern."

President Muhammadu Buhari, in December 2017, promised to take money from the excess crude account to the defence ministry to counter the activities of insurgents in the country.