As investigations proceed on penultimate Friday’s bombing of the United Nations building in Abuja, the world body has asked the Federal Government to releasethe Closed Circuit Television footage of the premises before and during the bombing, the Empowered Newswire reported.
Although the UN and United States officials are largely involved in the probe, official UN sources said on Friday that it was the responsibility of the Nigerian security agencies to provide thedetails to the UN.
This was against the backdrop of complaintsby the UN Nigerian Coordinator, Daouda Toure, that the UN officials were merely reading details of the investigations in the newspapers.
Speaking to a Canadiannewspaper during the week, the UN Under Secretary-General, Gregory Starr, who was in Nigeria in company with the Deputy Secretary-General, Asa-Rose Migiro, requested that the Nigerian authoritiesshould release the video images to the UN.
“We did have CCTV cameras up,” Starr reportedly said, furtherraising questions on the extent of cooperation between the UN officials and Nigerian security agencies probing the bomb attack.
It was not clear whether the request had been granted, but UN Deputy spokesperson, Eduardodel Buey, told Empowered Newswire on Thursday afternoonthat the UN was awaiting developments on the investigations into the bombing from the Nigerian government and would make formal statements later.
The province newspaper of British Columbia, Canada, reported the UN top security official, Starr, as saying, “We are trying to recover the images from there.”
He was quoted as saying that job “is really a Nigerian government and FBI responsibility. We hope we will get some images from them.”
He said the CCTV cameras may assist in the probe of the terrorattack, which so far has killed 23 people, making the casualty figure higher than the 2003 attack on the UN in Baghdad, Iraq.(Punch Newspaper)
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