{"id":3517,"date":"2014-12-06T07:19:10","date_gmt":"2014-12-06T07:19:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/newsroom247.com.ng\/?p=3517"},"modified":"2014-12-06T07:19:10","modified_gmt":"2014-12-06T07:19:10","slug":"how-nigeria-south-africa-moved-to-swap-synagogue-collapse-victims-bodies-for-arms","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/newsroom247.com.ng\/?p=3517","title":{"rendered":"How Nigeria, South Africa moved to swap Synagogue collapse victims\u2019 bodies for arms"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/newsroom247.com.ng\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/12\/jonathan-and-zuma.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-3518\" alt=\"jonathan-and-zuma\" src=\"http:\/\/newsroom247.com.ng\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/12\/jonathan-and-zuma.jpg\" width=\"200\" height=\"118\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>While Nigerians wait for closure on the $15 million arms money seized by South African prosecutors, authorities in the two countries appear to have agreed on an unholy barter to exchange bodies of South Africans who died in the Synagogue Church collapse in Nigeria, for South African-made arms needed by Nigeria to fight Boko Haram, The Mail and Guardian, one of South Africa\u2019s most respected newspapers, has reported.<\/p>\n<p>South Africa confiscated the money from arms brokers who travelled there to procure arms for the Nigerian military.<\/p>\n<p>Mail and Guardian said it saw two letters written by Jeff Radebe, the South African special envoy in charge of facilitating the repatriation of the bodies, to JP \u201cTorie\u201d Pretorius, of the Directorate for Priority Crime Investigations, also known as the Hawks, and Dumisani Dladla, head of South African National Conventional Arms Control Committee, NCACC, secretariat, seeking to assist the Nigerian government to get the weapons, despite two court orders freezing the money and continued probe into the dubious deals by investigators.<\/p>\n<p>On November 16, with the supervision of Mr. Radebe, 74 bodies were repatriated to South Africa following the September collapse of the Synagogue Church in Lagos, Nigeria.<\/p>\n<p>Majority of the dead were South Africans who visited the church hoping to receive miracles from the founder, T. B. Joshua.<\/p>\n<p>Many in South Africa hailed Mr. Radebe as a hero for being able to secure the release of the bodies.<\/p>\n<p>But the news that he might have entered into a sinister swap agreement with Nigerian officials to accelerate the return of the bodies has cast a pall over that heroic persona.<\/p>\n<p>The South African government has dismissed the Mail and Guardian\u2019s account as an attempt to \u201cdiscredit the collaborative efforts of the South African and Nigerian governments to repatriate the bodies of South Africans that died in Nigeria\u201d.<\/p>\n<p>But the paper, in a follow-up report, said it stood by its findings, as they were backed by documents and confirmations from government officials\u2026<\/p>\n<p>Source:Premiumtimes<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>While Nigerians wait for closure on the $15 million arms money seized by South African prosecutors, authorities in the two countries appear to have agreed on an unholy barter to exchange bodies of South Africans who died in the Synagogue Church collapse in Nigeria, for South African-made arms needed by Nigeria to fight Boko Haram, [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":3518,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"spay_email":"","footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3517","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-national"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"http:\/\/newsroom247.com.ng\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/12\/jonathan-and-zuma.jpg","jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4oswh-UJ","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/newsroom247.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3517","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/newsroom247.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/newsroom247.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/newsroom247.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/newsroom247.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3517"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/newsroom247.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3517\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3519,"href":"http:\/\/newsroom247.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3517\/revisions\/3519"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/newsroom247.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/3518"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/newsroom247.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3517"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/newsroom247.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3517"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/newsroom247.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3517"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}