• As Iraq holds on to 1,400 foreign wives, children of suspected ISIS fighters

President Muhammadu Buhari has been scheduled to address the 72nd session of the United Nations General Assembly in the United States on Tuesday, September 19, 2017.

The President of Nigeria is listed as number seven on the provisional list of speakers.

Buhari is expected to speak after the leaders of Brazil, the United States, Guinea, Switzerland, Jordan and Slovakia.

Since his return to Nigeria on August 20, 2017, after 103 days of medical leave in London, Buhari has not attended any public event outside of Aso Villa and his country home in Daura, Katsina State.

Also, he has attended only one Federal Executive Council meeting since he returned three weeks ago.

Acting on the President’s instruction, Vice-President Yemi Osinbajo recently visited flood-ravaged Benue State where thousands have been displaced.

Osinbajo, while representing the President, has also received members of the United States Congress as well as the United Kingdom Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs and his team at the Villa.

The Vice-President has also presided over every economic meeting including the 15th Annual meeting of the Board of Governors of ECOWAS Bank Investment and the National Industrial Council Meeting which had in attendance Africa’s richest man, Aliko Dangote, and many other captains of industry.

However, the Senior Special Assistant to the President on Media and Publicity, Garba Shehu, confirmed to our correspondent on the telephone that Buhari would attend the UN General Assembly.

Shehu said, “I cannot tell you the time he will be going because it can change but I know he is expected to be the eighth speaker at the UN. So, he will be there and he will speak.”

In the meantime, Iraqi authorities are holding 1,400 foreign wives and children of suspected Islamic State fighters in a camp after government forces expelled the jihadist group from one of its last remaining strongholds in Iraq, security and aid officials said.

Many of them say they are from Russia, Turkey and Central Asia, but there are also some from European countries, the officials said. They have mostly arrived at the camp south of Mosul since Aug 30.

An Iraqi intelligence officer said that they were in the process of verifying their nationalities with their home countries, since many of the women no longer had their original documents.

It is the largest group of foreigners linked to Islamic State to be held by Iraqi forces since they started expelling the militants from Mosul and other areas in northern Iraq last year, an aid official said. Thousands of foreigners have been fighting for Islamic State in Iraq and Syria.

A senior security official said the authorities were trying to find a safe place to house the families while negotiating with embassies for their return home. They are not allowed to leave the camp.

Reuters reporters saw hundreds of the women and children sitting on mattresses crawling with bugs in tents in what aid workers called a “militarized site”. Turkish, French and Russian were among the languages spoken.

“I want to go back (to France) but don`t know how,” said a French-speaking veiled woman of Chechen origin who said she had lived in Paris before.

She said she did not know what had happened to her husband, who had brought her to Iraq when he joined Islamic State.

The security officer said the women and children had mostly surrendered to the Kurdish Peshmerga near the northern city of Tal Afar, along with their husbands. The Kurds handed the women and children over to Iraqi forces, but kept the men – all presumed to be fighters – in their custody.

Many of the families had fled to Tal Afar after Iraqi troops pushed Islamic State out of Mosul on Aug 30.

Iraqi forces retook Tal Afar, a city of predominantly ethnic Turkmen that has produced some of Islamic State`s most senior commanders, last month. Most of its pre-war population of 200,000 have fled.

Citizen with additional report from Zee