Tuesday, April 4, 2023 Edition

L-R: Capt. Ibrahim Bamaiyi, Brigade of Guard; Kelechi Nwakwo, Head, Corporate Planning Strategy and Risk Management, Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC); Prof. Umar Garba Danbatta, Executive Vice Chairman/Chief Executive Officer, NCC; Rita Wachuku, Head, Policy and Process Review, NCC; Dr. Abraham Evwiekpaefe, Head of Department, Computer Science, Nigerian Defence Academy (NDA); Fiyinfoluwa Ajakaiye, Lecturer, NDA and Nnena Ukoha, Head, Corporate Communications, NCC, during a one-day educational visit of Officer Cadets of the NDA to the Commission’s Head Office in Abuja on Monday.

KDSG bans social activities linked to violence in parts of Chikun LGA

From: Femi Oyelola, Kaduna

The Kaduna State Government has banned social activities linked with the violence of Sunday night and Monday which left two citizens dead and six others injured in Sabon Garin-Tirkaniya.

This was contained in a statement by the State Commissioner of Internal Security and Home Affairs

Samuel Aruwan and made

available to the media in Kaduna yesterday.

The decision according to Aruwan was taken after a thorough appraisal of the security situation by the military, police and Department of State Services, as well as an emergency meeting with traditional and religious leaders of the area at the 312 Artillery Regiment Kaduna.

The social activities observed in the community, which are now prohibited with

immediate effect are listed as follows: Kidan Bishi Kidan Gala and Hunting expeditions.

“The government has also directed the arrest of anyone linked with the peddling of hard drugs in Nasarawa and Sabon Garin Nasarawa.

“Furthermore, three suspects have been arrested in connection with the violence. In addition to the killing of two citizens, six persons were injured and are presently receiving medical

attention. Several vehicles and properties were also destroyed.

“Governor Nasir El-Rufai has commended the prompt action of the military and police in preventing the violence from escalating beyond the area.

“The Governor also allayed the fears of the families that lost their loved ones, affirming that the matter would be investigated conclusively,” the statement reads.

Stakeholders score Nigerian fertiliser sector’s productivity high

Stakeholders in the Nigerian fertiliser industry have scored the sector’s productivity and performance very high.

The experts gave the commendations in separate interviews with the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) on Monday in Lagos.

The Executive Secretary, West African Fertiliser Association (WAFA), Mr Innocent Ikuku, said Nigeria is the highest producer of urea in the whole of West Africa.

Ikuku said that the industry had recorded tremendous improvement in the last five years.

“The Nigerian fertiliser industry is one that has transformed significantly over the last five years.

“From having only a single manufacturer of urea, which was Notore in about 10 years ago, we come to a place now where we have three fertilisers manufacturers.

“Nigeria presently has capacity for more than five million tonnes of urea production annually. So, Nigeria is producing urea beyond what is able to consume.

“So, it means in terms of urea, there is enough supply for the market,” Ikuku told NAN.

He, however, noted that the other inputs required to make fertiliser balance, namely phosphate and potash, were still imported.

He said that the gap must be bridged for further growth and development of the sector.

Ikuku said: “Nigeria is

gradually becoming the hub for fertiliser production and distribution for the whole of West Africa.

“This is because Nigeria is where you have excess nitrogen that can be supplied to other countries in West Africa.

“And we have installed capacity for blending that is far beyond what the country needs.

“So, Nigerian fertiliser sector is basically just taking off and if the environment remains friendly and we allow private sector to keep investing as they should, the sector is going to boom in the near future.

“And by implication this affects West African countries and that will improve access to fertiliser and consumption,” Ikuku said.

On his part, Mr Moses

Negedu, analyst, Fertilizer Producers & Suppliers Association of Nigeria, commended the growth of the sector.

Negedu, however, said that the sector would experience more growth with the right policies.

“The Nigerian fertiliser sector is a green industry and we believe that since it is growing, there is potential for more growth.

“If we harness the government and private sector coalition then, the fertiliser industry has great potential for growth both for the domestic and international market.

“We must put in place the right policies to steer more growth in the Nigerian fertiliser industry,” Negedu said. (NAN)

L-R: Company Secretary, Mr. Olumide Hanson; Managing Director/CEO, Mr. Tunde Hassan-Odukale; Non Executive Director, Mr. Hadiza Aliko-Mohammed; Non Executive Director, Dr. Ademola Odeyemi; Non Executive Director, Mrs. Adebisi Lamikanra and Non Executive Director, Mr. Odein Ajumogobia all of Leadway Assurance at the 51st Annual General Meeting of Leadway Assurance held in Lagos.

Society for Corporate Governance Nigeria (SCGN) is seeking to partner with Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) on specialised and industry-specific trainings for Executives and Board of Directors in the telecom industry.

The President of SCGN, Mohammad Ahmad made this known when he led the organization leadership on a courtesy visit to NCC on Monday, in Abuja.

Ahmad, represented by Tijjani

APC Senatorial candidate tasks

Tinubu, Uba Sani on people’s welfare

From: Femi Oyelola, Kaduna

The All Progressives Congress (APC) Kaduna South

Senatorial Candidate in the just concluded 2023 general election Hon. Bulus Banquo Audu has urged other contestants to move on by joining the winners of presidential and Kaduna guber race in improving the welfare of the people.

In a press statement made available to the media in Kaduna yesterday, Hon. Audu stressed the need for putting the interest of the country and Kaduna state above personal advantages.

While congratulating presidentelect Bola Tinubu and his running mate Kashim Shettima, the senatorial hopeful expressed optimism of a better and an economically vibrant country under the leadership of the incoming administration.

NGO seeks partnership with NCC on industryspecific trainings

Borodo, a Director and fellow of the society, said that the NGO would also like to partner with the NCC in the area of capacity building initiatives for the sector.

“The Society for Corporate Governance Nigeria would like to partner with the commission on capacity building initiatives for the sector and the organisations regulated by it.

“The society hereby expresses her interest to partner with the commission on Specialised and Industry-Specific Trainings for Executives, Board of Directors, and the Executive Management of organisations in the Telecommunications industry around Board Leadership, Governance and Sustainability.

“The society would like to express her interest in collaborating with the commission to sensitise and create awareness of the guidelines within the sector and organisations regulated by it.

“We can provide framework for compliance and reporting of the anticipated corporate governance guideline.”

Ahmad said that the partnership was to promote good corporate governance and foster best practices in the communications sector and in the country.

“We strongly believe that the partnership will strengthen the commission’s position as a promoter of good corporate governance and setting an example to other regulators as a champion of excellence and progress,” he said.

Ramadan Timing Day 13

Danbatta said that the SCGN and the commission have had fruitful professional relationships, adding that the NGO was instrumental to the development of the telecommunications Industry Code of Corporate Governance issued by the NCC in 2014.

He said that it was a pioneer code, which was carefully designed to enhance governance in the Nigerian communications industry and which led to the development of similar instruments by other sectors.

Danbatta said NCC had commenced the development of guidelines for the communications sector, adding that members of the SCGN have been part of that process.

He said the NCC had recognised that critical elements of its statutory mandate can only be realised when sector players adhered to best corporate governance and ethical standards.

“This is why we pioneered the development of sectoral Corporate Governance Codes and this is why we insist on the highest possible governance and ethical standards for our licensees.

“This is also why we consider it of utmost importance to strengthen our relationship with stakeholders like the SCGN,”Danbatta said.

He said one of the most important strategies that the NCC had adopted was to harness stakeholder views in the development of its regulatory interventions.

SCI

says

media crucial to climate change campaign

From: Femi Oyelola, Kaduna

Save the Children International (SCI) said media campaigns were crucial to climate change response.

The Advocacy and Campaign Coordinator of SCI, Farouk Abdulkadir asserted this during a one-day media chat on climate change, organised by Media Working Group, of SCI in collaboration with the Nigeria Medical Association, Kaduna State Chapter supported by Save the Children International.

According to Abdulkadir, there is a need for a working synergy among stakeholders in finding sustainable solutions to addressing the impact of climate change on the wellbeing of the people.

He opined that government agencies and the public need to understand the multisectoral nature of health and how failure in one sector affects the other, including the environment.

“When stakeholders from different sectors work as a team, we can build roads to hospitals, equip health facilities and break barriers to accessing quality health services.”

In his response, NCC’s Executive Vice-Chairman, Prof. Umar Danbatta, represented by the Executive Commissioner Stakeholders Management, Mr Adeleke Adewolu, said the visit was one of great importance for several reasons.

Danbatta also said that SCGN, in its role as a frontline advocacy group for sound governance and ethical business conduct, had been a worthy partner of the commission.

He said that the commission looked forward to many more years of fruitful professional relationship with the SCGN and its members at large.

NAN

Expert wants leaders-elect to adopt insurance for more IGR

Mr Ekerete Gam-Ikon, an insurance expert has advised elected leaders at all levels to adopt insurance as their strategic action toward improving Internally Generated Revenue (IGR) in states.

Gam-Ikon, the Convener of Insurance September, an insurance platform, in a document on Sunday said the revenue could be generated by making those without insurance coverages to pay a fine.

The expert urged the leaders to direct members of their constituencies and states to register for health insurance scheme.

He said the leaders should also ensure that public buildings including offices, schools, markets, religious places, hotels and every public place were insured against risks of fire outbreak, collapse and flood.

Gam-Ikon advised the leaders to

ensure that all their contracts were insured against non-performance and delayed delivery date.

The expert suggested that the contracts would include supplies and projects.

“Coordinate with the necessary legislative instruments to ensure insurance is fully operational in your Constituency and state.

“With all your people having health insurance coverage, you will address the major challenge of healthcare.

“Next is to ensure they live in safe and secured environments.

“Insurance is the best kept secret of rich people and rich nations.

“Start asking questions now and let the answers you get embolden you to consider doing something different in governance in our country using insurance,” he said.

(NAN)

(Source: Society for the Propagation of Islam Kaduna)

TIPS ON HEALTHY ‘IFTAR’

Choose lean proteins to get the benefits with little saturated fats. Include fish, skinless chicken or turkey and low-fat dairy to have as part of your iftar meal. If you’re vegetarian, you can select other protein sources such as legumes, beans and nuts.

(HealthyEating #Alarabiya.net)

FHA raises alarm over alleged land grabbers’ activities in FCT estates

By Mashe Umaru Gwamna

Federal Housing Authority (FHA), yesterday raised an alarm over the alleged activities of land grabbers in its estates in Apo/Guzape, Gwarinpa and Lugbe in the Federal Capital Territory (FCT).

The Authority in a statement signed and issued in Abuja by its Head, Public Affairs, Mr. Kenneth Chigelu, advised Nigerians to refrain from doing business with them.

FHA disclosed that it does not relate with agents or third parties in any of its transactions, adding that one Mr. Abdullahi M. popularly known as Elephant is not an agent or partner of

FHA.

“The attention of the authority has been drawn to the activities of Land grabbers in the authority’s estates in Apo/ Guzape, Gwarinpa, and Lugbe, with the sole intention of defrauding unsuspecting members of the public.

“The syndicate’s mode of operation is to distort the authority’s layout, by placing fake beacons on the land, taking innocent members of the public to such places, with the pretence of giving them FHA land allocations thereby defrauding them.

“The authority therefore through this medium brings the activities of these unscrupulous persons to the members of the public, and wishes to state as follows:

Members of the public should refrain from transacting any business with such persons and other third parties on any matter relating to Federal Housing Authority.

“That one Mr. Abdullahi M ( popularly known as ELEPHANT) is not an agent or partner of FHA and has not been appointed to deal on behalf of the Authority concerning any parcel of land belonging to FHA. That authority does not relate to agents or third parties in any of its transactions.

“That any claims by anyone of being appointed as an agent by the authority is false and should be disregarded. Members of the public should be mindful of purported letters of allocation of the

authority’s lands, with the signature of a former Managing Director; Arc. Terver Gemade, appended by the syndicate, purportedly headed by this Abdullahi. M (AKA ELEPHANT), with which members of the public are been defrauded.

“Members of the public should contact the Nigeria Police Force or any Law enforcement agency in case there are reasons to suspect any dastardly or unwholesome transactions or activities in any of Federal Housing Authority’s estate all over the country.

“Also, all the authority’s transactions on land and houses must be channeled through the office of the Managing Director and Chief Executive of the authority”, the statement said.

Buhari appoints Kadiri 5th substantive Rector in Offa Poly

President Muhammadu Buhari has approved the appointment of Engr. Dr. Kamoru O. Kadiri as the 5th Substantive Rector of The Federal Polytechnic, Offa.

A statement issued yesterday by Olayinka Iroye, Director Information, Public Relations & Protocols at the Polytechnic said the appointment letter signed and personally handed over to Engr. Dr. Kamoru Kadiri by the Honourable Minister of Education, Mall. Adamu Adamu in his office dated 3rd April 2023 is with effect from 29th March 2023. The appointment is a Five (5) years single term.

Before his appointment as a substantive Rector, he was the Director of Affiliate Degree Programmes and Industrial Collaborations and was later appointed as Ag. Rector of The Polytechnic Iresi, Osun State on a one-year sabbatical in 2021.

Engr. Kamoru Kadiri was born on 8th July 1968 in Osogbo. He attended Ansarudeen Primary School, Isale Osun, Osogbo, and enrolled at the St Charles’ Grammar School, Osogbo in 1985.

He began his Engineering career at The Polytechnic Ibadan, where he obtained his National Diploma in Electrical Electronics Engineering in 1988. He proceeded to Obafemi Awolowo University Ile-Ife, for his B.Sc in Electrical/Electronics Engineering. Engr. Dr. Kadiri possesses three Master Degrees, (MBA University of Ado Ekiti,

MILR University of Ilorin, and M.Sc from Babcock University) and a Doctoral Degree (PhD) with a specialization in Networking and telecommunications also from Babcock University. He was at the University of Groningen, Netherlands for bench work where he was exposed to stateof-art equipment to complete his Ph.D. thesis.

He joined the services of

The Federal Polytechnic Offa in November 1996 and rose through the ranks to become a Chief Lecturer. He was a former Head of the Department of Electrical/ Electronics Engineering, and former Chairman of the Academic Staff Union of Polytechnics (ASUP) FEDPOFFA Chapter.

He is a Registered Engineer and a FeIlow, Institute of Data Processing Management of

Nigeria; Fellow, the Nigerian Society of Engineers; Member, the Nigerian Institute of Management (AMNIM); Member, Nigerian Institute of Engineering Management (NIEM); Member, Engineering Regulation Bureau and Legislation Board of Nigerian Society of Engineers and Fellow, Nigerian Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers.

He is an accomplished

APC urged to zone Senate president seat to North-West

The All Progressive Congress (APC) National Leadership has been urge to zone the Senate President position to North West Zone of the country for the unity of the party.

A Chieftain of the Party in Kaduna Alhaji Muhammadu Multala made the call in an interview with newsmen in

the state.

According to him, North West deserved the Senate seat looking at the number of votes recorded for the party during the president election.

Alhaji Multala also advocated for Senator Jibril Barau popularly known as (Maliya) from Kano State to be elected as Senate of the 10th Assembly.

The politician also explained that the South West has a President, while North East has Vice President.

He said Senator Barau as a forth timer in the National Assembly is the most qualified to occupy the seat from the North West zone.

“ Our National party leadership needs to zone the Senate position to

scholar who has contributed to knowledge and research with over 50 published journals, seventeen (17) published refereed conference proceedings, twenty five seminar papers, and twenty (20) single-authored textbooks in various fields of Engineering.

Dr. Kadiri has two patented inventions and eleven (11) literary works with the Copyright Commission of Nigeria.

North West because it was the zone where Senator Barau Jibril came from. He is also an experienced Senator which made him the most qualify among all those who indicated interest for same position,” he said.

He urged other members of the Senate with similar interests especially from other zone to drop it for Barau.

L-R: , President, Global center for leadership ànd Good Governance, Comrade Ogedengbe Ayodele Monday, Country Director, Vote Must Count international Initiative (VMCII), Dr. Barry Avotu Johnson and the President, African Emancipation Movement for Good Governance , (a support group for Obidatti presidency), Hon. Lucky Obiyan, during the VMCII World press conference on the 2023 general election / kicking against the penalty Impose by NBC on Channel Television, held yesterday in Abuja. Photo: Justin Imo-owo.

Nigeria attained highest rating in fight against terrorism in 2022 – COAS

By Tobias Lengnam with Agency report

The Chief of Army Staff (COAS) Lt.-Gen. Faruk Yahaya, says it is on record that Nigeria recorded its highest rating in the fight against terrorism in 2022 since 2011 till date.

Yahaya said this at the opening of the Chief of Army Staff First Quarter Conference 2023 on Monday in Abuja.

He said the efforts in Operation Hadin Kai (OPHK) in synergy with the sister services and other security agencies had significantly curtailed terrorism and insurgency that hitherto bedeviled the North East part of the country.

He said the continuous injection of trained troops and special equipment through Operations Lake Sanity and Desert Sanity to complement efforts by OPHK had been rewarding.

According to Yahaya, the insurgents and terrorists no longer have freedom of action.

He added that it had amongst other benefits resulted in massive surrender by the adversaries.

“These efforts, expectedly have enhanced troops poise and greatly improved the security situation and public confidence in the North East.

“In the past 11 years, from 2011 to date, Nigeria recorded its

Boko Haram

From Umar Dankano, Yola

highest rating against terrorism last year, 2022.

“This is indeed a commendable effort and achievement by all of you, the other sister services, stakeholders and indeed our able predecessors,” he said.

The COAS said the Nigerian army was channeling more efforts towards consolidating on the successes with a view to completely neutralise the insurgents that fail to surrender.

He said that the outcome of the 2022 COAS Annual Conference in the North/West region of the Country had created the necessary impact that had continued to improve the success of army operations in the region.

He said the intensified offensive operations to eliminate bandits and other criminal elements in the regions had also yielded positive results.

According to him, the Nigerian army troops deployed for Operations Hadarin Daji and Forest Sanity have projected forces and intensified offensives to clear bandit enclaves.

“These operations have destroyed criminal hideouts, neutralized several bandits and subjected the remaining elements to situations where they are mostly either targeting civilians or on the run.

“We must therefore maintain the tempo and leave no stone unturned to sustain these commendable efforts.

“The peaceful conduct of the last general elections across the country including in spite of the sense of insecurity created by criminal elements in the South East region, was a testament to army’s resolve to ensure security in the nation.

“This, according to him, was made possible through successful conduct of Operation Safe Conduct 2023 across the nation which saw the Nigerian army along with the other services and agencies ensuring successful general elections.’’

He said additional efforts through Joint Task Force Operation UDO KA paid off in the South East.

He said this had resulted successful elections in the region; though IPOB/ESN and their supporters had threatened that there would be no elections in the zone.

“The elections or no election neither IPOB nor ESN nor any other group of individuals should threaten the integrity of this nation as enshrined in the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria.

“Accordingly, elections were therefore held in the South East and successfully too, just like in other parts of the country.

“Generally, our operations and decisive actions against the criminal elements have impacted positively on the security situation in the region, giving confidence to law abiding citizens in the South East.

“The Nigerian army will continue to perform its constitutional roles in collaboration with the sister services and other security agencies as well as civil authorities in the region,” he said.

The COAS commended personal over their professional conduct and apolitical disposition as well as their strict adherence to his directives and guidance during the just concluded general elections.

Yahaya said that various groups, organisations and distinguished individuals had commended troops’ efforts during the elections.

According to him, concerted efforts, commitments and dedication to duty by field commanders, officers and soldiers to ensure successes in various operations across the country are also commendable.

Yahaya urged participants of the conference to make deliberate efforts to come up with genuine and frank opinions and suggestions, as well as painstakingly evaluate the ongoing operations.

He also directed that

deliberations should be focused on achieving the overall objective of better re-positioning the Nigerian army to deliver on its constitutional roles.

The Chief of Policy and Plans (Army), Maj.-Gen. Anthony Omozoje, said the conference was deeigned to consolidate on the successes attained so far in all army activities.

Omozoje said that conscious efforts would be made to painstakingly appraise all operations with a view to finding better ways of improving on their successes.

According to him, the interactions therefore would focus on achieving the overall objective of better re-positioning the Nigerian army to deliver on its constitutional roles.

The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that the COAS uses the event to present a Toyota Hilux vehicle each to 14 deserving Army Warrant Officers as their official vehicles.

He also unveiled some locally produced Mine Resistant Ambush Protected (MRAP) Vehicles manufacture by the Defence Industries Cooperation of Nigeria and partners for army operations as well as inauguration of Historical Park. (NAN)

kill 4, destroy property worth millions in Adamawa

The Adamawa state police command has confirmed that Boko Haram killed four people during an attack on Dabna community in Hong local government area.

Spokesman of the command,

SP Suleiman Nguroje disclosed the development in a press release on Monday, stressing that the commissioner of police in the state, CP Afolabi Babatola has directed deployment of more operational asset and immediate arrest of culprits.

“Commissioner of police CP Afolabi

Babatola strongly condemned the recent attack of DABNA Community, Dugwaba District by yet to be identified people in Hong local government area which resulted in the unfortunate killing of three and destruction of properties.

“Consequently, the CP has ordered

the immediate arrest and investigation into the matter with a view to ensuring peace and justice.

“The CP warns that attacks on innocent souls would no longer be tolerated under whatsoever guise, as the command holds the lives of citizens sacrosanct.”

The members of Natives group, during their solidarity March in support of Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) successful conducting of free, fair and credible, Presidential and Governorship election at the entrance of INEC Headquarters, yesterday in Abuja. Photo: Mahmud Isa

Nigerian media inaugurates National Complaints Commission

The Nigerian media on Monday inaugurated a nine-member board of the National Media Complaints Commission (NMCC), otherwise known as the National Ombudsman, to strengthen public confidence in the media.

The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that the commission was inauguration in Ikeja, Lagos by the Nigeria Press Organisation (NPO).

NAN reports that NPO comprises Newspaper Proprietors’ Association of Nigeria (NPAN), Nigerian Guild of Editors (NGE), Nigeria Union of Journalists (NUJ), and Broadcasting Organisation of Nigeria (BON).

Malam Kabiru Yusuf, the President of NPO and President of NPAN, at the inauguration, said

that the commission would `watch the watchdog.

According to him, NPO is the umbrella body of owners, editors and reporters of print and online journalists in Nigeria, taking the responsibility of regulating its work and conduct.

“In deference to the dictum, that journalism is too important to be left to journalists, we have opted for a mechanism of co-regulation.

“This is done with the help of other actors like the civil society, especially the bar and non-media Non Governmental Organisations.

“Radio and television are already regulated, but the print, which is the oldest, and online, which is the newest, have escaped such control.

“The former warned by the lessons of history and the latter, by

the amplitude of technology.

“Powerful and privileged Nigerians, irritated by the nosiness of the media, often express the wish for some checks on its powers. I sometimes think that such people take freedom for granted,” he said.

Yusuf, however, said that some journalists seemed all out to prove that their pen was indeed a sword for slaying real or imaginary enemies.

“The Ombudsman will call such people to order, to appreciate that the power of the press should be used for good, not for selfaggrandisement.

“To be effective, the physician has to heal himself, before he can apply the cure to others.

“We have selected a strong team to administer this medicine,” he added.

According to him, the ninemember commission will be chaired by Mr Emeka Izeze, former Editorin- Chief and Managing Director of the Guardian Newspapers.

“Izeze is one of our very best. To work with him, we have selected other leading lights of our profession and that of our partners,” he added.

Yusuf listed other members of the commission to include: Malam AB Mahmoud, former President, Nigerian Bar Association; Prof. Chinyere Okunna, Deputy Vice Chancellor, Paul University, Awka; and Dr Hussaini Abdu, Country Director Care International.

Also among are: Mr Lanre Idowu, Editor-in-Chief, Diamond Publications; Mrs Eugenia Abu, Veteran broadcaster and author; Mr Edetean Ojo, Executive Director,

Media Rights Agenda.

Mrs Dupe Ajayi-Gbadebo, lawyer and former Editor, and Chairman, House of Representatives Committee on Information, are also part of the team.

“We expect the commission to serve as an independent forum for resolving complaints about the press quickly, fairly, and free of charge.

“It must maintain high standards of Nigerian journalism and journalists’ ethics; and defend the freedom of the press and the right of the people to know.

“We invite all stakeholders in the Nigerian project to support this initiative. The media is wary of government regulation because politicians tend to have short-term goals.

“We are happy to submit to peer-regulation, by collaborating with civil societies, business and the professionals,” he added.

Yusuf commended the working committee, made up of the NPAN, NGE, NUJ and the Guild of Online Publishers, which worked together to develop the ombudsman mechanism.

Responding, Izeze commended stakeholders for the initiative and the confidence reposed on NMCC members.

He said that the commission was not to gag the media.

NAN

Benue Govt gets debt swap, reduction by 84b

From Uche Nnorom, Makurdi

Benue State government and the Federal government have agreed on debt swap in reduction of the overall debt of the State.

Nigeria records success in genetic improvement of livestock for milk – NABDA

Prof. Abdullahi Mustapha, the Director General of National Biotechnology Development Agency (NABDA), said Nigeria recorded success through the genetic improvement of livestock for milk and meat production.

Mustapha said this in an interview with the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) on Monday in Abuja.

“We are successful in terms of inseminating the cows and now we are waiting for the first generation (F1) to be produced.

“These F1 are going to be genetically checked to see what characters they have taken,’’ he

said.

The D-G said the success in terms of inseminating the cows and success in the area of maintaining the pregnancy were all recorded.

“Now, we’re just waiting for the delivery of the first generation cows in April and that is a success story, which means that Nigeria will have its first breed of these livestock.”

Mustapha expressed delight that the climatic condition the new breed of cattle were going to face would be normal and congenial to them.

He said that was because they had made sure that the semen used in inseminating the cows

possessed similar characteristics with Nigeria’s condition.

He assured that harmonising the semen with Nigeria`s climatic condition had been taken care of, which was the major issue farmers faced with already developed variety of livestock imported into the country.

“So, in our own case, if we have done it to suit our climatic condition, it means that this is a success.

“What we are hoping to see is the character they have taken in producing the milk quantity.

“At least we are expecting 50 litres per cow a day and if we are

lucky to have it, that also reflects success,” Mustapha said.

The NABDA boss hinted that their target was to inseminate 2,500 to 5,000 cows this year when they have the resources with the possibility of inseminating more than that.

He lamented that the basic challenge inhibiting insemination of this number of cows for productivity centered on resources.

He said with adequate resources, the project would continue as they would increase the number of cows to be inseminated.

“So, that is a success story and I’m glad you asked me this.”NAN

The State Commissioner for Finance David Olofu who disclosed this yesterday while briefing Journalists after the Executive Council meeting,said the State along with other States participated in interventions from the Federal Government which amounted to 84 billion naira.

Olofu mentioned these interventions between 2015 to date to include, Budget Support facility which was provided for both states and LGA, bailout facility, commercial bank loans, repaper bank facility, Small and Medium Enterprises Development Fund, World Bank Racks, UBA facility which was structured into federal govt fund, counterpart funds, bridging finance from UBA and CBN funds.

The National Co-ordinator, the Native, Comrade Smart Edward leading other members and supporters in a peaceful rally to INEC office for conducting a credible free and Fair election and drumming support for the president - elect, Sen.Bola Ahmed Tinubu , held yesterday in Abuja. Photo-; Justin Imo-owo

2 nabbed over alleged killing of Police constable in Niger

From Yakubu Mustapha Minna

Niger state police command has arrested 2 suspects for allegedly killing a police constable, Nasiru Yusuf in Minima Village of Lavun Local Government Area of Niger State.

The two suspects who allegedly committed the act are presently in police net in the Niger State capital Police Public Relations Officer, DSP Wasiu Abiodun, noted that the incident occurred when the assailants attacked the two police

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TUDUNWADA GOMBE, GOMBE STATE INVITATION FOR TECHNICAL AND FINANCIAL BIDS FROM INTERESTED CONTRACTORS FOR THE YEAR 2022 TETFUND ZONAL INTERVENTION

operatives on duty in the area.

According to Abiodun, there was a complaint of assault in the area and two policemen were detailed to the scene at Minima village for an enquiry and possible arrest.

He added that in the process, the two policemen were attacked by villagers, who inflicted injuries on them, explaining that they were taken to the Federal Medical Centre, Bida, for treatment and one of them, Police Custable Nasiru Yusuf, was later confirmed dead in the hospital, while the other officer is still receiving treatment.

Cleric says praises, worships exalt a nation

From: Femi Oyelola, Kaduna

The Senior Pastor of House of Purpose Ministry, U/Sunday in Chikun Local government Area, of Kaduna state, Apostle Yakubu Yusuf has urged Nigerians to continue to praise God in all situations they find themselves in, saying praise and worship exalt a nation

Apostle Yakubu who to the Media yesterday at the forthcoming Music Concert put together by the Voice of Purpose choirster titled” Bethel Experience” urged Nigerians to continue in true worship to heal the land of its current challenges.

According to him, to exalt means to

think and if you can’t think, you can’t speak out for someone, adding that the Lord was calling on Nigerians to think and reflect so as to be able to speak highly of God and praise His name.

Apostle Yakubu therefore admonished Christians not to be a spectator during praise and worship, but key into it because God always does merverlour things when his creatures gives him the desire praise and worship.

Speaking on the programme, Minister in charge of House of Purpose Ministry Choir, Pastor Uchenna Henry Abba said it is the third in a roll of the program slated for 9th April, 2023 and will be unique.

Medical expert highlights need for regular physical exercise

Dr Olaolu Modupe-Oni, Medical Director, HealthGate Medical Centre, has highlighted the need for regular physical exercises to improve brain health, manage weight and reduce the risk of diseases

Modupe-Oni gave the advice on Saturday at an inter-house sports competition, organised by Holy Child Educational Home, with the theme, “The champion in Me”, in Abuja.

He said: “We need to get active and exercise our bodies.

“There are diseases that stem from children not being active. Also being active helps them in their educational endeavours.

“Children need these exercises because it is not only adults that are obese, we also have children obesity.

“Competitions help in the release of positive endorphins when you exercise

and it is essential to us all,’’ he said.

He noted that children rarely exercise but focus more on the digital devices like the phones, laptops, computer games and television, which gives them little time for exercises, hence, they are prone to obesity and other diseases.

“We live in a digital era, kids are always in front of laptops, ipads, television and they hardly get any physical activity done.

“These kind of engagements also foster healthy competitions, cooperation amongst them and a sense of camaraderie, and provides academic guidance,’’ he said.

He also advised parents to disclose the medical history of their children to school authorities to enable them know the activities that the students can engage in that will not affect their health.

Rep Abdulraheem joins race for Speaker

Rep. Abdulraheem Olawuyi (APCKwara) has joined the race for the Speaker of the House of Representatives for the 10th National Assembly.

Olawuyi, who is representing Ekiti, Isin, Irepodun and Oke-ero Federal Constituency of Kwara, confirmed that he would officially declare his intention on April 4, in Abuja.

Olawuyi, who is the Chairman, House Committee on Emergency and Disaster Preparedness, said this in a statement he personally issued to newsmen in Abuja on Saturday.

The lawmaker said he has consulted widely on his intention to contest the position and expressed delight at the feedback.

Olawuyi, a third termer and ranking member in the House of Reps, said he believed he possed the needed experience to make the office of the speaker better, if elected by his colleagues.

He said other lawmakers, serving and newly elected members of the House of Reps would be in attendance at his official declaration.

“I assure you that, if elected, I will strive to promote policies that will benefit all Nigerians from various backgrounds and will work with all parties to unite the country.

“I am genuinely looking forward to meet fellow lawmakers, share my vision with them, and listen to their ideas on how to improve the lots of the people, if elected as the speaker,” Olawuyi stated. (NAN)

1.0 INTRODUCTION

The Gombe State University, Gombe state intends to commence the execution of YEAR 2022 TETFUND INTERVENTION PROJECTS. In compliance with public procurement Act 2007, the university here by invites interested and competent contractors with good track record of similar project to submit tender for the projects below;

2.0 SCOPE OF

WORKS

LOT-1: Procurement, Installation, testing & commissioning of 50kva solar power mini grid

LOT-2: procurement and installation of computers and networking, Digital scanners

3.0 ELIGIBILITY

REQUIREMENT

Mandatory Requirement:

Interested and competent contractors should submit the following certificates along with their technical Bids:

i. Evidence of registration with the Corporate Affairs Commission (CAC)

ii. Valid Tax Clearance Certificate

iii. Evidence of current compliance with PENCOM

iv. Evidence of current Industrial Training Fund (ITF) compliance Certificate

v. Evidence of current Nigerian Social Insurance Trust Fund (NSITF) compliance Certificate

vi. Evidence of Registration with Bureau of Public Procurement (BPP) National Database of contractors, consultant and other service providers by submission of Interim Registration Report (IRR)

Other requirement

i. Detailed Company Profile with the Curriculum Vitae of key Managerial and Technical personnel with evidence of registration with relevant professional bodies

ii. Verifiable and documentary evidence of at least three (3) similar jobs executed in the last five (5) years including letter of Awards, Valuation Certificates, job completion certificate and Photographs of the projects.

iii. Company’s Audited Accounts for the last Three (3) years (2020- 2022);

iv. Evidence of Financial capability to execute the project by submission of a letter from a reputable commercial bank in Nigeria;

v. Sworn Affidavit disclosing whether or not any officer of the relevant committees of Gombe State University or the Bureau of Public Procurement is a former or present Director, shareholder or has any pecuniary interest in the bidder, and to confirm that all information presented in the bid are true and correct in all particulars;

vi. A letter of authority empowering the University to verify any claims contained in the submitted document.

4.0 COLLECTION OF TENDER DOCUMENTS

Tender documents are to be collected from the Physical Planning and Development Directorate upon presentation of evidence of payment of non-refundable tender fee of N10,000.00 only, at the Bursary Department of the Institution from 4th April, to 16th May, 2023 between the hours of the 10:00am to 4:00pm daily.

Only qualified contractors that are eligible at the time of this publication (going by the eligibility criteria listed above) will have their financial bids openned.

5.0 SUBMISSION OF TENDERS

Two (2) copies each of the tender documents “Technical” and “Financial” are to be submitted in separate and sealed envelopes and marked “TECHNICAL TENDER DOCUMENT” and “FINANCIAL TENDER DOCUMENT” respectively.

Both sealed envelopes should be put in an A3 sized envelope and marked TECHNICAL AND FINANCIAL BIDS for the project title …………………………………………………………………… which should be then addressed to:

The Registrar, Gombe State University, P. M. B. 127, Gombe, Gombe State

The bidders name and address should be well printed at the reverse side of the envelope.

6.0 DEADLINE OF SUBMISSION

All completed document should be submitted to the registrar’s office, Gombe State University, Gombe, not later than 6 weeks from 4th April, 2023. Submission closes by 12:00 noon on the 16th May, 2023.

7.0 OPENING OF TENDERS

Tender documents will be opened on 16th May, 2023 by 12:00pm in the Senate Chambers located within the administrative building of the University.

• Civil Society Groups, Non-governmental Organizations, Professional Bodies, Bidders representatives not below managerial level and interested members of the public are hereby invited to witness the bids opening exercise.

• Please note that only Technical Bids shall be opened while qualified bidders shall be invited for financial bid opening at a later date.

8.0 IMPORTANT INFORMATION

i. Bid must be in English Language and signed by an official authorised by the bidder

ii. Delivery by courier will be accepted.

iii. Any bid submitted after the deadline for submission would be returned un-opened.

iv. Gombe State University is neither committed nor obliged to award any contract to any bidder.

Signed: Registrar

Niger State election tribunal receives 11 petitions

From Yakubu Mustapha Minna

The Niger State National Assembly Election Petitions Tribunal has so far received no fewer than 11 petitions from the February 18, 2023 elections.

The candidates of the

People Democratic Party (PDP) presented 7 petitions while the candidates of All Progressives Congress (APC) filed 4 cases.

According to report, the cases obtained by journalists are the case between Isiyaku Ibrahim (SAN) of the PDP against Independent National Electoral

Commission (INEC), APC and Senator Musa Mohammed Sani, disputing the outcome of Niger East Senatorial District Election.

Also, Shehu Mohammed Abdullahi of PDP filed a petition against INEC, and Governor Sani Bello Abubakar of APC against the declaration of the latter as the

winner of Niger North Senatorial Election.

Similarly, Senator Bima Muhammed Enagi of APC filed a petition against Jiya Peter Ndalikali of PDP and INEC for the declaration of Ndalikali as the winner of Niger South Senatorial District Election, amongst others.

Benue Govt gets debt swap, reduction by 84b

Agroup, the Alia Alliance, has urged Benue governor-elect, Rev. Hyacinth Alia to strive to meet the huge expectations of the people who voted him to bring about changes in the state.

The group gave the advice when its officials led by the Board Chairman of the Alliance, Mr Peter Ashiekaa, paid a congratulatory visit to the governor-elect on Sunday in Makurdi.

The Chairman said that the victory was a resounding testimony to the people’s resolve to change and redirect the path and course of their history.

“It is also a resounding statement of the people’s confidence in your ability to lead them out of the woods to a Benue of growth and prosperity.

“We pray God to guide and direct you, and give you the knowledge, wisdom and strength needed for your journey.

“As a group, we at the Alia Alliance are proud to be associated with this process and the outcome, and we pledge and commit to supporting your administration in all ways possible to ensure your success,” he added.

Also speaking, Mr Jimmy Ajim, a member of the board, commended the governor-elect for his doggedness “that calmed all the storms before, during and after the general elections”.

Give late Wayas state burial, Tinubu Vanguard urges govt

Apolitical support group, Tinubu Vanguard, has urged the Federal Government and the government of Cross River to take over burial arrangements of late Senate President, Joseph Wayas.

The Director-General of Tinubu Vanguard, Dr Johnny Benjamin, said this in a statement on Sunday.

The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that Wayas, a former Nigerian Senate President in the Second Republic, died in a London hospital on Dec. 1, 2021, after a

protracted illness.

He was 80 years old.

According to Benjamin, the National Leadership of Tinubu Vanguard, calls on both the Federal and Cross River governments to take over the burial arrangements of Wayas and give him a national burial were in order.

“We deeply regret to identify many undisclosed factors that contributed to the death of this great man who spent a better part of his life serving his fatherland.

“Wayas lived a worthy life devoid of abuse of power while

serving this great nation in different capacities, especially as President of the Senate,” he said.

Benjamin described the late politician as a shining star, who set a strong and positive model for the admiration and emulation of the younger generation.

He said the neglect of his remains in a foreign hospital was a national embarrassment.

“He lived a moderate life, such that he never saw the opportunity to serve as an avenue to enrich himself, rather, he diligently rendered

the desired service to the nation.

“We, therefore, call on the government of Cross River and leadership of the National Assembly, to as a matter of utmost importance, ensure immediate settlement of all outstanding issues with the foreign hospital and return his body to be given a national burial.

“We also call on the National Assembly to pass a resolution to name a national monument, preferably a library, after the former Senate President,” he said. (NAN)

Ajim who is also the President of Ior Gboko Foundation, said they would partner with Alia to transform, empower, reform and uplift Benue indigenes, to build a better state.

In his response, the governorelect thanked the group for its support and pledged to work hard with divine directions to meet the people’s expectations.

“God rewards hard work, especially when you don’t count the cost, it pays more.

“I am not coming for money, I have learnt to work and make money, I am not coming to seek fame, I have worked to make a name.

“We need to work together to develop the state, it is ours and nobody will do this for us, and we are not doing this for anyone but for ourselves.

“God has chosen me not

Islamic Cleric Shaik. Dahiru Bauchi,- Former Sports Minister Salamon Dalung,- and General overseer of Christ evangelical and life intervention ministry, Pastor Yuhana Buru,- during the Former Sports minister Lead Northern Christians Cleriecs to Shaik Dahiru Bauchi’s hause for Ramadan breakfast, on Monday 3/4/23

German foundation commits €5m to agriculture intervention in Nigeria

The AFOS Foundation, a Germany-based autonomous and charitable organisation, says it is investing about 5.5 million euros as Intervention in Nigeria’s agriculture sector.

The Chief Executive Officer and Country Representative of the foundation, Mr Oladipupo Akoni, said this in a statement on Monday.

He was speaking at the first stakeholders roundtable in Lagos.

According to Akoni, the foundation was developed to support micro and small businesses and the rising

middle class in developing and emerging nations.

“AFOS foundation has invested heavily towards development of the sector through capacity building, value-driven organisational development, management development, corporate governance, and product development interventions.

“It is strengthening the Nigeria agricultural sector by improving the performance of smallholder farmers, agricultural companies, microfinance banks, as well as their networking across the sector’s value chains.

“Since the commencement of its agricultural project activities in Nigeria in 2017, AFOS Foundation has reached over 45,000 smallholder farmers in Nigeria with the resultant positive impact on their skills, productivity and earned incomes.

“We target to reach 60,000 smallholder farmers by the end of 2024,” he said.

He said that to consolidate on its achievements in Nigeria projects were now focusing on improved agricultural practices for smallholder farmers.

“We are also focusing on institutionalised dual vocational

training systems, value-based management training, and development of an agricultural training centre.

“These are in addition to micro-insurance product development, agric finance training and sensitisation for the microfinance sub-sector, ” he said.

He said that the projects would be of immense benefit to the country’s agriculture sector.

“The ongoing project will have tremendous impact on the Nigerian agricultural sector by addressing its skills and development challenges.

“It will also address capacity

replacement, especially in this era of massive emigration,“ he said.

The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that AFOS Foundation is a charitable foundation developed to support micro and small businesses and the rising middle class in developing and emerging nations, is strengthening the Nigerian agricultural sector by improving the performance of small farmers, agricultural companies, microfinance banks (MfBs), as well as their networking across the sector’s value chains. (NAN)

Group endorses Wase as 10th Speaker, House of Representatives

Agroup- PL-25: Twenty-five APC Progressive Leaders, has endorsed Ahmed Wase, Deputy Speaker of the House of Representatives, as its preferred candidate for 10th Speaker of the House.

Mr Lekan Ogunleke, the Secretary of the group, made the disclosure in an interview with the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) on Sunday in Abuja.

Ogunleke said that Nigeria needed a team player like Wase as the 10th Speaker of the House to build on the achievements of Femi Gbajabiamila, the outgoing speaker.

He added that the next speaker must have the ability to carry all lawmakers along in spite of political divide.

“This is because a lot of first-timers will be coming into the house, a perfect team player

and an experienced leader would therefore be needed as the speaker to ensure stability and good leadership.

“Wase will be a perfect fit as the country’s next speaker because of his long legislative experience,” he said.

Ogunleke said the group was formed in 2019 to promote the ethos and values of the progressive party saying it was committed to good governance, charity, philanthropy, progressivism, egalitarian society and due process.

Mr Ade Omole, a member of the group who also spoke with NAN, said the 2023 general elections showed that power had returned to the people.

He added that the introduction of the Bimodal Voters Accreditation System (BVAS) by

INEC was the game-changer in the Presidential and National Assembly election as it returned power to the people.

This, Omole said, was because the device had made rigging nearly impossible during the election.

He said that there were surprises at the poll and the bookmakers got their permutations wrong following major upsets and earthquakes that characterised the election.

“Even the APC lost Lagos State which is one of its strongholds to the Labour Party which had never happened in the country’s political history.

“Sen. Abdullahi Adamu, the APC National Chairman also lost his senatorial zone to the Social Democratic Party’s candidate, Sen. Ahmed Wadada who emerged the winner of the

Nasarawa South Senatorial District election.

“At least seven outgoing governors could not win the election in their bid to cross over to the senate after their second term as governors,” he said.

Omole said that Gov. Ifeanyi Ugwuanyi of Enugu State also lost Enugu North Senatorial District to Labour Party’s Okechukwu Ezea, while Gov. Okezie Ikpeazu equally lost.

He added that all these would certainly play up ih the 10th Assembly as many first-timers and new lawmakers would be coming in, saying that a strong match with great legislative experience would be needed as the speaker.

He described Wase as a fine gentleman with unparalleled legislative experience that could perfectly fit into that position, saying there was no need to look further.

Empowering women economically’ll address SGBV -Oxfam

Oxfam Nigeria, an International NGO, says empowering women financially and economically will make them independent.

The organisation said it would also make them self-reliant which was critical to their life, as it would end Sexual, Gender Based Violence (SGBV) in Nigeria.

Ms Helen Akinyemi, Oxfam’s Programme Manager on Gender Justice, said this during a community-based assembly of rural women in Abuja, in partnership with Nigeria Women Economic Development (NigWED) project to address SGBV.

Akinyemi said that poor economic status and financial dependence of women had further exposed them to violence and rendered them more vulnerable to abuse.

“Most of the issues discussed, you will realise that most of the contributory factors of GBV lie in the economic development of women.

“We want them to know what to engage in that will generate income and help them to participate actively in the productive sector.

“All these will help to resolve gender issues, because when you solve one,

you are solving the other. They are interconnected,’’ she said.

According to her, Oxfam has carried out several sensitisation and advocacy exercise to end all forms of violence against women, children, Persons with Disabilities (PWDs) and other vulnerable groups.

“ The feedback has been so encouraging that is why we are here again and we were asked to bring it down to the women in rural community level.

“ Because these are the people that are most affected and they don’t have the necessary information, sensitisation and their consciousness are not being raised.

“It is something that they too can go back to their communities, as most of the attendees here are women leaders, and have group of women that they work with.

“So, they will take it back to these groups as well as the communities and households to sensitise them and achieve the change that we are looking for in ending GBV,’’ she said.

According to her, the attendees were also educated on where, when and how to seek help when faced with violence or witness any.

She said: “There are safe houses in

Nigeria, but most of these women don’t know. So this is part of the reasons we are here to pass the information across.’’

Mr Lugard Okonobo, DirectorGeneral, NigWED project, said the meeting was to sensistise women on how to be financially independent, sustain their businesses and how to make it thrive amidst economic violence.

“Our organisation focuses to addressing economic violence.”

He, however, expressed sadness with issues like double taxation for women.

“For some of them, their goods are seized at the markets place.

“Some don’t know how to check their taxes, some are married and their husbands are capitalizing on their ingenuity and education level to suppress them by taking over their economy.

“For those who are subjected to SGBV, we try to provide some economic empowerment programmes to sustain them,’’ he said.

He said NigWED, with the support of other partners, had empowered over 500 women with technical support, capacity building, infrastructure, amongst others, to support their business.

Responding to issues raised by some of the SGBV survivors, the DG urged

the women to utilise the opportunity to be financially independent and generate sustainable business for themselves.

“Some are facing abuse, we have to sit down to look critically and find out the causes because for every effect and reaction, there is a cause.

“These things are subject to communication, discussion, dialogue. And with understanding, there will be a solution,’’ he said.

Mrs Blessing Airujuwan, a survivor, said the meeting with other persons and sharing her experience had helped in addressing depression caused by violence and neglect in her marriage.

Airujuwan, therefore, encouraged other women facing any form of abuse and violence to immediately seek help to enable them survive and regain their sanity.

Similarly, a widow and mother of two, Mrs Rebecca Amana, stressed the need for women to be financially independent to reduce some of the factors that exposes them to GBV.

Amana commended the organisers for their support and for providing a platform for the women to share their stories, seek help and get supports to reduce the burden they carry.

Benue APC accuses govt of shortchanging citizens

Fom Uche Nnorom, Makurdi

The All Progressives Congress, APC, Benue State chapter has said it can not fold its arms and watch the Ortom-led PDP in Benue State sustain the short-changing of Benue people and destroying the state.

The party in a statement at the weekend signed by its Publicity Secretary Dan Morgan Ihomun, alleged fraudulent award of contracts and backdating of same.

This is just as the party also, asked the outgoing Ortom administration to come clean on the issue.

“How can a government that has failed to build a Cargo Airport in Benue State after two attempts in almost 8 years suddenly award contract to build a Civil Airport in the remaining two months of the lifespan of such administration?

“Why will a government which has not been able to pay salaries and pensions, suddenly in the twilight of its administration suddenly begin the ill promotion/appointment of selected people and illegal recruitment of more people into the service?

“What has the Ortom administration done with the huge resource that have accrued to Benue State from the federation account?

“Benue State is heavily in debt without corresponding development, why does the Ortom-led PDP government still want to take more loans and overdrafts? What have they done with the already borrowed monies?

“What is the number of the Civil Servants on the Benue State payroll and how much is the salary wage bill of the State?

The APC maintained that the governor-elect, Rev. Fr. Hyacinth Alia, is a free citizen of Nigeria and has the right under the Constitution of Federal Republic of Nigeria (1999 as amended) to advise government and its agencies.

Unions back tenure extension for NASENI EVC by Buhari

By Stanley Onyekwere

The staff unions in National Agency for Science and Engineering Infrastructure (NASENI), have hailed the decision of the federal government of Nigeria to extend by two years the tenure of the Agency’s Executive Vice Chairman, Prof Mohammed S. Haruna.

This move, they say will in no doubt help to consolidate on various ongoing federal government interventions through NASENI in the various sectors of economy such as agriculture, power, youth empowerment, aviation, security and transportation, to mention a few.

They made this assertion yesterday while briefing the media, after the day one of the joint action congress of the staff unions in NASENI, namely, Non-Academic Staff Union of Educational and Allied Institutions (NASU), and Technical Staff Association of NASENI (TSAN).

TSAN President, Com. Oluwaseyi Ogungbenro, who spoke for: NASENI Joint Union, said NASENI under the watch of

Prof Mohammed.S Haruna has demonstrated uncommon capacity in utilising Science and technology to turn around the fortunes of this nation through its various programs, interventions, research output, technology transfer, collaborations, reverse engineering and much more.

Ogungbenro added that the further years granted Prof M.S Haruna will help to ensure Nigeria is self sufficient in food security, stand out in home grown technology in weapon production, develop first ever aircraft in West Africa, develop capacity for solar cell production, finish the production line for home grown transformer production and ensure agricultural and industrial tools manufacturing for food safety and industrial revolution etc.

He said: “All these and other ongoing programs of the agency birthed by this great technocrat will definitely turn around the economy of this great country in the nearest months.

“It is therefore the smartest move by his Excellency, the President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, President Muhammadu Buhari to grant Prof Haruna tenure extension

to help the incoming government and Nigerian economy.

“We wish to state unequivocally that the entire workforce in NASENI stands with NASENI management under the leadership of Prof M.S. Haruna and accept the tenure extension of our dear Executive Vice Chairman Prof Mohammed S. Haruna in good faith and with great joy and gladness.

“The Unions therefore profoundly thank Mr. President for the political will to reposition NASENI under the presidency and implement NASENI act as regards its funding”.

He continued: “However, it may interest you to note that till now NASENI has only been able to access 8% of the funds approved by National Assembly and signed by the President. If NASENI has been able to do so much in one year with 8%, one can only imagine what NASENI will achieve if granted access to 100% of its approved funding.

“We therefore graciously and firmly appeal to relevant authorities: The Honorable Minister of Finance Budget and National Planning,

Federal Inland Revenue (FIRS), Nigerian Governors Forum and National Economic Council to ensure the release of the remaining funding without further delay because NASENI remains the economical and technological solution for myriad of problems confronting this great nation.

“The advanced nations of the world are where they are today in their military might and competitive economy mainly because of the robust spending on science and technology.

“We also wish to use this medium to call on all responsible for ensuring new salary structure for NASENI to expedite action to further motivate NASENI workforce who now works round the clock to reposition the agency.

“Working under Prof M.S Haruna has made the staffers of the agency work 25hours a day so as to ensure the country is technologically turned around to meeting its various challenges and solve its economic problems. There is no better motivation to workers than effective and adequate wages”.

L-R: Co-ordinator, NASU NASENI Family, Comrade Tijani Wakili, President, Technical Staff Association of NASENI, Dr. Oluwaseyi Ogungbenro, Representative of NASU for NASU in NASENI and Institute, Comrade Emmanuel O. Chukwu and National General Secretary of Technical Staff Association of NASENI, Comrade Oyebanji Taofeeq, during the press conference by the joint staff unions in NASENI, at the headquarters of NASENI, yesterday in Abuja.

FCT DOAS Director accused of revenue collection scandal in AMAC

By Usman Shuaibu

The Director in charge of the FCT Department of Outdoor Advertisement and Sinage (DOAS), Dr Babagana Adam, has been accused of revenue collection scandal rocking the Abuja Municipal Area Council (AMAC) currently.

The Chief Executive Officer of Takushara Nigeria Limited/ ADM Media Venture, Comrade Amagbo Donald, who made this accusation while briefing

newsmen on Friday in Abuja. Comrade Amagbo Donald is a consultant engaged by the administration of Abuja Municipal Area Council to assist in revenue collection from signpost within the Area Council.

Donald also accused Dr Babagana Adam of using undesignated account which he is the sole signatory to collect government revenue, adding that DOAS Director was known to be diverting council revenue into personal

account for so long now.

He said “The self-acclaimed Director of DOAS is the sole signatory to the account, which is even ill act. DOAS has no law establishing it, Babagana Adam is running a one-man show. EFCC, DSS, Police and ICPC should checkmate the DOAS Director for fraudulent activities in the name of revenue collection”.

Adam’s led – DOAS has no law establishing it, but the Director was discrediting AMAC and deforming

professionals empowered by the council’s authorities to regulate and raise revenue through legitimate means”, he explained.

He, however, recalled that the court judgment by justice Muyiwah Idris from FCT High Court had nullified DOAS –FCT as an MDA of government or an agent of AMAC, calling on the FCT Minister Mallam Muhammad Bello Musa to stop DOAS Director from shaddy deals as well respect the several court judgments.

Photo: Mahmud Isa

Balancing the conversation around empowering the girl child: The foundation for nation building

By Ogaga Darlington Ossai

Do you really need to be naked to show that you are confident or that you love your body as it is?. When you tell them to dress well they call it ‘body shaming’. So you don’t know that you are the one shaming yourself by exposing your privates in public. Only a mad person walks naked without Shame.

According to UN Charter:The concept of gender equality has been established within the core guiding principles of the United Nations, and unequivocally reflects a commitment to the equality of men and women in all aspects of the human endeavour. More specifically, the Charter of the United Nations (Articles 8 and 101) stipulates that there shall be no restrictions on the eligibility of men and women to participate in every capacity and under conditions of equality in its principal and subsidiary organs.

Again, according to the BEIJING DECLARATION FOR ACTION in the section on “Women in power and decisionmaking”, presented at the 1995 United Nations Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing, states that the United Nations must take measures to ensure women’s equal access to and full participation in power structures and decision-making.

From documents like these and more on gender equality we see so much being said about ensuring level playing grounds for the girl child but let me ask you, apart from extreme areas such as Afghanistan where recently women were banned from schooling or participation in public life, are there restrictions in most nations prohibiting women from expressing their potentials?

The forgoing is my perspective on empowering the girl child.

The girl child is not as vulnerable as we are socialising them into thinking thry are. What the girl child becomes we program into them from the home. Right from birth you see the girl child wrapped in pink and the boy in blue. The girl child is taught to be soft and need protection from the brothers. I tell the girls I mentor, when next someone prays for you that you will marry a Senator, Governor or CEO ask them why can’t you be those things yourself.

Why can’t he pray that your husband will marry a female Governor, Lawyer and Engineer? We groom girls to think they need defending, hence thry grow vulnerable not knowing they can stand and defend themselves. We current have too many negative role models for the girl child today. As parents we must start teaching our girls from home today that they must rely on their BRAIN POWER than their BODY POWER.

I feel very offended most times when I see in musicals where the boy dresses properly and the girls which are theirvideo Biden would be half naked. Something is wrong with that depiction. Too many so-called female role models giving poor examples by calling nudity in public glear “body modeling” or “body advocate.”

Do you really need to be naked to show that you are confident or that you love your body as it is?. When you tell them to dress well they call it ‘body shaming’. So you don’t know that you are the one shaming yourself by exposing your privates in public. Only a mad person walks naked without Shame.

The next thing you will hear them say “you can’t shame the shameless”. Many parents of the girl are their problems. The height of parental failures I have seen recently is a mother wearing torn designer jeans and her daughters wearing same they will shamelessly share such trash in social media. How can you be smiling in such state? It’s a show of crass ignorance by such parent. It’s obvious you don’t know that children will multiply the errors you allow them practice.

Where we find ourselves today as a society is caused, mostly, by negligent parenting. I once heard a mother tell her daughter that came to report that her husband was violent and beat her up at the slightest provocation, that beating is part of marriage. She actually asked the girl, do you know the kind of beating I took from your father….whaaaat!?!?! How can you justify an anomaly just because you were a victim? Many years ago as a chapel pastor in a boarding school, one of my female students came crying to me that she was harassed by some female teachers who were calling her names. They called her loose because of the way she dresses.

This girl was used to wearing very tight outfits, even her hours wears in the hostel. You need to see her during the weekend’s where they are allowed to dress in casuals, when she puts on sport wears, it’s either too short or too tight. When I probed into it she opened up to me that her mum buys those things for her and her mum usually get angry when she refuses to put them on. So who do now blame thst she is accustomed to it?For me, to empower the girl child is not to give her undue advantage in the name of equality advocacy. We should not take the advocacy to the gallery. How many women came out in the last elections in Nigeria? How many Women would have VOTED for a female president? Even United Nations that has a charter and one of the SDGs dedicated to women, how many women do

they have in their high ranking committee? Until we see a female UN Secretary General emerge, it can still be seen as lip service.

The girl child should be made to know that like my sister’s in Delta State: Arimobi Miracle( who is a female civil engineer), Favour (The number road girl who recycles used tires for great furnishing), she can be an engineer/an advocate and compete with men in these fields. For me to empower the girl child is to give her the opportunity to express the innate gift and to express to the full her deepest potential.

To create a level playing ground for her and her male counterpart, Know this woman, no one will stand up and give you a seat on the table of men. You can see how vicious men fight themselves over a place on the table. If you want a place on the table, step up and fight for it. No one will give you power on the plater of gold, you must show your worth. You can’t keep emphasizing your ‘body power’ over your mind power and expect men to respect your gender.

You must first rise up and advocate for sanity amongst your gender. Let’s Let’s you talking to yourselves. Yiumare even more than the men in numbers, so instead of advocating for more appointments for our gender, why not rally yourselves together and vote one of your own? Why not lobby a legislature with your number mass? I say this at the risk of being misinterpreted, the advocacy for gender equality by the female gender questions their understanding of their self image and awareness.

What gives you the impression that you are not equal and why would you fight to be equal with someone you are already equal with. God made them male and femal, equally with no superior or inferior abilities. The differences were created by our upbringing and process of socialization.Let balances our Advocacy.

Let’s advocate for both the boy child and the girl child. This is why I fault any advocacy that focuses solely on the rights of the girl child neglecting the boy child. You forget that a boy child that is poorly raised is a danger trap for a well raised girl child. Give your girl child all the training, that boy child you neglect today will be her husband tomorrow. Let’s be balance and raise both kids right. I am never in support of any one-sided advocacy, either for the boy child or the girl child.

COMRADE AMB DCN OGAGA DARLINGTON OSSAI is FCGESocial Commentator, Human Rights Activist and Peace Advocate

Economy: Nigerian bankers and the banks

By Terka Jam

Again Nigerians are letting the commercial banks off the hook without as much as a slap on the wrist for their role in the current economic recession. In the gang running our banking sector, somehow, we have managed to create a super caste that is above the law. They know that nothing has happened to them in the past when they gambled away shareholders’ and depositors’ funds, which has now reassured them that there is no price to pay for putting the country on the brink with their cowboys’ attitude towards what they should have treated as their responsibility to the rest of us.

It is okay for Nigerians and even government officials to engage in the ongoing self flagellation in which there is the acceptance of the blame for not diversifying the economy. It is overlooked that government can only drive the economy towards diversification to an extent while the private sector takes it up from there. In all the years that preceded this eventual fallout I challenge our commercial banks to dare publish their loans portfolio and show which ones deliberately targeted support for local industries and manufacturing.

Their preference has always been for extending short term facilities to importers with tenure that averages the time it takes to ship products from the factories in Europe and China to Nigeria. Companies that have to go through the growth process of building factories and manufacturing are automatically not eligible because of the longer tenure. So, in addition to stifling domestic growth the banks also encouraged the offshoring of Nigerian jobs.

Next to manufacturing, mortgage would have been another boost to the economy as construction of new homes would have generated employment on a scale that will yield multiplier effects. But not the Nigerian commercial banks for whom 30 years is too long a time to wait for borrowers to exit their mortgage facilities. That is why is common in Abuja, which tends to have the most number of new homes being built, to see repayment period of 24 months for a house priced at 45 million naira.

There are interventions funds that are lying dormant with specialized institutions, including the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), which have remained unaccessed because our

commercial banks cannot be bothered with the concessionary rates stipulated by the institutions providing the credit. The returns have to be able to justify the jet set lifestyle of our overpampered bankers for the loans to be worth processing for our small and medium scale enterprises.

In addition, the banks would rather extend jumbo uncollateralized credit facilities to elites pals of the directors than to give same to hardworking businesses. The N6.6 trillion debt held by the Assets Management Company of Nigeria (AMCON) is a testament to how Nigerian commercial banks nudged us into this situation without anyone holding them accountable for their actions. Curiously only 6% of the Eligible Bank Assets (EBAs) that AMCON purchased is represents exposure from manufacturing.

Those years of granting toxic loans to their associates were conveniently concealed by the practice of round tripping that allowed them to hide steady losses from the public. Sadly, irrespective of CBN intervention, sharp practices around currency speculation is one that the bankers’ clique are not willing to let go of as recently proven when the apex bank had to suspend all but one of them from forex sale to bureau de change (BDC).

Commercial banks’ spurning of CBN’s directive goes beyond playing hanky with forex. They also serially disregarded the Treasury Single Account (TSA) until the big stick was again wielded. Their failure to comply with the directive was borne out of a desire to maintain the business as usual regime that ensures corruption continues to thrive. Proof of this is their penchant to hide under the depositors’ confidentiality to frustrate the tracking of stolen funds. That stolen funds passed through their systems without alerting authorities to suspicious transactions as required by anti-money laundering laws speaks volume of their commitment to seeing the nation survive.

All these serial violations directly affect the economy and in a bad way too. So, even when we blame past government for not implementing safeguards, these commercial banks are in reality responsible for 70 percent of our economic problems because they abdicated their core mandate in preference of speculative activities that add no value to the economy, if anything they made it worse.

It is therefore worrisome that these same guys are metamorphosing under the cover of “the private sector”, the same one they depleted by starving financing. The bankers or private sector as they have labelled themselves are complaining that there is no economic team. One would expect that they know by now that President Muhammadu Buhari knows the antics of the Lagos gang that gets into public committees to sabotage the government from the inside using privileged information they get in the course of being part of the economic team.

The years they were part of the economic team was the same period they used to pervert the system such that policies were manipulated to suit their insatiable acquisitiveness. They practically came up with their own committee which took over regulatory and enforcement roles over from the apex bank – the world over once an industry places self regulation over institutional regulation then there is need to be worried. The killing off of government institutions is not a fluke. If government organs are in place performing functions as prescribed by extant rules and regulations in line with financial manuals there would be no need to accept gate crashers and scams from Lagos to come and meet in Aso Rock under any name.

This is the era of change. We know the antecedent of the names demanding economic team. They played roles in previous bank consolidation bazaar that was carefully orchestrated to defraud Nigerians who lost money through Initial Public Offers, and Private Placement platforms and deposits that got threatened. As soon as the last of the banks was done collecting money from Nigerians they crashed the value of the shares and left investors with shreds of tissue paper in their hands, which they were made to believe were share certificates.

That and other frauds before and after it were possible because those running the commercial banks have compromised the system through the access they got through being members of the economic team.

This latest attempt by commercial banks to again infiltrate the government to surreptitiously become part of the economic team must be resisted. If not by the government definitely by the populace.

Jam writes from Abuja.

Middle class: It kept fading away

By Micheal A. Adeniyi

My friends, You know I have alway advocated for a simple living and high thinking, this is because I just won’t like any deviation from the Biblical strait and the narrow. In a sense, being a middle-class was nice I can say for sure after collating stories and history of the past from various older Nigerians

As a young Nigerian it is a surety that my talk of Middle class is not the way it was before now and ‘ not the way we are today’, My father use to take me back in time, then people were not poor, tho some had no money they have properties, some had little and none had a lot, but were all happy and nursed radical ideas over cups of Palmwine, tumblers of filter Juice shake or glasses of cold water, depending on the state of the health of their wallet.

They all enjoy healthy living as the Middle-class, The Middle class are the labour force and once you are working, you are comfortable. But today ” The working calss seems to be the lazy class: The poor ones. I don’t know about others who read this article, but I was transported to my growing up years not thinking of hunger, darkness, bad roads and all sort. Almost everyone was baring very rich pockets of privately-owned accounts which were also islands of relative affluence, their was less corruption Nigeria was one sprawling colony where everybody was equally a middle class citizen. We belonged to what was referred to as the ‘second-class’, quite unlike today’s middle-classes. Values, and not only the monthly salary daddy brought home, defined this amorphous segment of Nigeria society.

Tho people do say ‘Cut your coat according to your cloth’. My mother would not tire of reminding me, ‘Waste not, want not’. Food was never thrown into the garbage bin, it was recycled and reborn with exotic names, possibly coined to gloss over the misery of having to make do with shortages or she gets them packaged for the less privileged, those with defects and couldn’t work .

We were not poor, nor were our neighbours, including those in the extended neighbourhood. We were, as I said, a Middle class. Our parents counted their Naira and Kobo. We wear local designs and imported shirt that are not expensive. We wore shoes bought during festive season at discount sale. Home Sewn trousers was the owner’s pride and the beholder’s envy.

Simple living, high thinking was the glory, student were stars, workers were not beggers and looters were dishonourables, civil servants could afford to pay a gatekeeper, cleaner and so forth, they also help reduce unemployments. In a sense, being a middle class was nice, the rich were to be tolerated but not emulated.

In the last 16years the way we were was largely on account of corruption. Before then our economy, governed by, Agricultural export, and father said it was the only economy they knew. What we knew today was a oil version:

Materialism was not a guarantor of happiness. We were happy.

Since the past 16years we started suffering as we have to cope with eternal shortages, Salary structure was downtrodding, some looted our economy causing us to stand in long, serpentine queues at interviews, Lies and corruption in hand, for our quota of rice, wheat, sugar, salt, cooking oil and automobiles those saviour in those pre-genset and power-backup days, kerosene and Petrol. We today celebrate if we got a fraction of what we were entitled to after waiting patiently for hours and after casting our votes.

We today visit bookstores for school notebooks made of paper that were so bad it would tear without pen being put to it. Telcoms too will cut you off halfway through the few minutes you were entitled to on calls or data.

Today, the baby food we bought was adulterated in that order. We are now happy with books bought from second hand book stalls and long playing records bought with money saved over a month.

We weren’t happy to make do with ‘Made in Nigeria’

merchandise and drool over ‘Made in USA’ two-in-ones. At home, medicine foil was saved and recycled to scrub utensils, and newspapers and magazines were sold separately as they latter fetched more money. Creativity and skill, the means of doing without what would be considered necessary anywhere else in the world, for instance in repairing an iron plug or making a radio with burned out valves work, became a national passion and a profession for many.

Never mind the iron, repaired laboriously with a bit of this and a bit of that, would either over-heat or remain stone cold, and the radio would have more hiss and cackle than decipherable sound. We never innovated nor designed, we copy-catted and produced wretched replicas of which we were immensely proud of most especially because neither the government or citizens are promoting our products.

Fine electronic, much in demand, were made from China. They were then stamped ‘Made in USA’ , when we can have made in Aba or so the joke went.

Unlike before now when life in my Nigeria was predetermined, as were ambitions pre-defined. Most of those who went to Public School dreamt of three ‘F’s, that would follow in normal studies as our education system crumbles, In those days if you were able to land a job with the Government: A flat, a fridge and a Car were yours and even when you got bored just move on. To new jobs, new cities, new lives. Because of the fading people baulked at the thought of staying on the Middle class , they all sailed forth in search of a living, if not fame and fortune, either by crook or chance. That’s how the Middle class became Poorer or richer and yet fading away. And that’s how Nigeria changed, gradually at first and rapidly later, making the pursuit of wealth a perfectly legitimate and respectable aim in our life, now their is only a two class in Nigeria the First class or the Poor Class, middle class kept fading daily.

Michael A. Adeniyi is a Public Affairs Analyst.

Ensuring qualitative education in Nigeria

By Ahmed Yunusa Kailani

Education is essential to the development of every nation. It is widely believed that any nation that has poor educational system stands the risk of repression in all sectors of human endeavor.

Nigeria is endowed with both human and natural resources. The population of children and youths in the country who needs standard education is increasing by the day and yet the educational sector is deteriorating due to so many challenges.

As the saying goes, charity begins at home, one of the key and most important ingredient of building and maintaining a standard educational system in a nation is having a very good and solid foundation with the primary and secondary schools.

The most common opinion amongst Nigerians today is that the standard of education has fallen to a grounded level. The teachers, who are the primary providers of basic education especially at the primary and secondary schools level, cannot shy away from shouldering this blame of falling standard of educational system in the country.

Recently, the Kaduna State Governor, Malam Nasiru El-Rufia conducted a competency test for the primary and secondary school teachers in the state which surprisingly, a huge number of them failed the test. When the providers of basic education don’t have basic education themselves, this raises the question of what kind of students are we producing in the country.

Apparently, not everyone who teaches in school possesses the basic knowledge and methodology of imparting knowledge to students. Back in the days, we had Grade I, II, III, teachers who were trained to passionately teach students effortlessly. Today the revise is the case. We now have teachers who don’t only lack the basic knowledge and methodology to teach, but teaches because its second choice option.

But you can’t completely blame these teachers, some of the conditions in which these teachers teach are totally disheartening. I spoke with a friend who is a secondary school teacher and according to him, “ Teachers are not so treated well. Whereas some Nigerian schools are still using blackboards and chalks in the 21st Century”, Adding that many countries have even gone beyond the use of whiteboard to interactive classroom system, coupled with teaching aid. While teachers in many countries are well remunerated, they maintained that teachers in Nigeria are not only underpaid, many are being owed salaries for several months”.

Many have also blamed this menace on agencies such as the Teachers Registration Council of Nigeria (TRCN), National Universities Commission (NUC), and National Board for Technical Education (NBTE) and National Commission for Colleges of Education (NCCE) who are saddled with the responsibilities of registration of teachers and regulating their training.

Many of our teachers are sub-standard and unqualified and there is need to tighten quality assurance. We need to retool teachers better in a fast-evolving ICT world to enable them take full

advantage of ICT to deliver the curriculum. We need better resource for our schools so that Nigerian teachers will have better working environment.

What happens to the days when parents review their children books, asked questions and monitor their assignments at home? The reverse is the case today, only few parents monitor their children academic activities. Some of the parents don’t even care, all they want to see is end of session report card whether it’s genuine or not. Parents as major stakeholders in bettering the standard of education in the country must ensure adequate monitoring of their children academic activities meticulously.

All hands must be on deck, government, regulating agencies, parents, guardians, and more importantly, teachers must ensure that quality and standard knowledge as well as morals is instilled in the students, quality academic equipment’s such as white marker board, computers, public address systems among others are provided to schools in other to create conducive teaching and learning environment.

Teachers should be well screened and trained by appropriate agencies before giving teaching job in any school level. Also Parents Teachers’ Association (PTA) meeting should be held at least twice a month as it will not only cement the bond between the parents and the teachers, but will also provide both parties to devise ways of bettering the quality and standard of the education sector in the country.

Ahmed Yunusa Kailani is a Public Affairs Analyst.

Group wants Zaria man as 10th Kaduna Assembly Speaker

As the race for the leadership of the 10th Kaduna State House of Assembly (KSHA) hots up, the Coalition of Kaduna Young Professionals on Monday appealed to the leadership of the All Progressives Congress (APC) to consider member-elect, Ahmad Muhammad DanAsabe as the next speaker.

The group also called on other aspirants who are eyeing the speakership position of the next assembly to reconsider their aspirations and join hands with Ahmad in the interest of fairness, and equity, especially as the governor-elect and deputygovernor-elect came from zone 2 and zone 3 respectively.

To this group, in addition to competence, physical, and mental ability, Ahmad hails from a Zaria local government, which has been giving APC bulk votes since 2015.

The Convener, Amb. Ishaq MSani at a press conference in Kaduna said, having been elected for the third term, Ahmad is eminently qualified to head the next State Assembly.

To him, “it behoves the leadership of the APC and the good people of our dear state, to ensure that its post-election choices and direction reflect the urgency of sustainability in line with the sustain manifesto of the Governor-Elect, our dynamic leader per excellence Sen. Uba Sani, which is centred on safety and security among others.

“We know of course, that the conversation about the next Kaduna state House of Assembly leadership has been on for the moment even though informally.

“But we wish to place on record that consolidating and continuing with the excellent achievements of the present administration under the incoming administration of Sen. Uba Sani requires the enthronement of competence, credibility, and expertise above s sentimental considerations for the leadership of the 10th assembly position.

TETFund, FARA launch ARIFA innnovation platform

By Maryam Abeeb

The Tertiary Education Trust Fund (TETFund) has partnered Forum for Agricultural Research in Africa( FARA ) to establish and launch Agricultural Research and Innovation Fellowship For Africa (ARIFA)innovation platform in Nigeria.

It is learnt that ARIFA is aimed at producing a new generation of fit-for purpose workforce to reengineer the African agri-food sector to provide the change

factor for rapid agricultural transformation in the next 10years.

In the first phase of ARIFA, TETFund identified six institutions for the establishment of IPs, namely Abubakar Tafawa Balewa University, Bauchi (ATBU), University of Benin(UNIBEN), University of Lagos, (UNILAG), Micheal Okpara University of Agriculture, Umudike (MOUAU), University of Maiduguri(UNIMAD) and University of Jos( UJ).

The Executive Secretary of TETFund, Arch. Sunny Echono during his opening remark at the event in Abuja, explained that the funds intervention in ARIFA will impact on faculties and departments across Nigeria’s tertiary institutions resulting in the delivery of science -led solutions for improved livelihoods while sustaining and advancing academic rigor.

He explained that TETFund has supported over 120 scholars.

He added that the preadmission process of the

second phase of the Program has since commenced, and TETFund remains committed to supporting another 500 sets of fellows.

According to him, TETFund recognized the ARIFA model as an innovative strategy for revitalizing pedagogy that will strengthen the institutional capacities of Nigeria’s tertiary institutions and contribute to building the knowledge- based economy through its Centers of Excellence (CoE) across the country.

MAGI presents starter packs to 100 trained uouths in Niger

From Yakubu Mustapha Minna

ANon Governmental Organization identified as Millennium Africa Global Initiative (MAGI) has presented starter pack kits to 100 trained participants to empowered the youths and women in Niger state.

The National Coordinator of MAGI, Ambassador Marshall Okoro applauded the Niger state government through the Ministry of Youth for the overwhelmed partnership to ensure the empowerment of 100 beneficiaries.

Ambassador Okoro urged

the benefiting persons to make judicious use of the items for what it was meant for to be self employed.

He explained that the organization has embarked on various vocational training program for the youths and women over the years.

The Niger State Secretary to the State Government SSG Alhaji Ahmed Ibrahim Matane who was represented by Abdulaziz Mohammed Kobo appreciated MAGI for the sustainable training of youths and women over the years, urging for its continuity.

SCI says media crucial to climate change campaign

From: Femi Oyelola, Kaduna

Save the Children International (SCI) said media campaigns were crucial to climate change response.

The Advocacy and Campaign Coordinator of SCI, Farouk

Abdulkadir asserted this during a one-day media chat on climate change, organised by Media Working Group, of SCI in collaboration with the Nigeria Medical Association, Kaduna State Chapter supported by Save the Children International.

According to Abdulkadir,

there is a need for a working synergy among stakeholders in finding sustainable solutions to addressing the impact of climate change on the wellbeing of the people.

He opined that government agencies and the public need to understand the multisectoral

nature of health and how failure in one sector affects the other, including the environment.

“When stakeholders from different sectors work as a team, we can build roads to hospitals, equip health facilities and break barriers to accessing quality health services.”

From: Femi Oyelola, Kaduna

The Supreme Leader of the Natives Comrade Smart Edward (right) presenting copies of their press release to the representative of INEC Chairman/ Director of Security Lebari Nduh Samson during their solidarity March in support of Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) successful conducting of free, fair and credible, Presidential and Governorship election at the entrance of INEC Headquarters, yesterday in Abuja. Photo: Mahmud Isa

Imo senator assures of Buhari’s assent to ICT bill before handover

By Christiana Ekpa

Senator representing Imo North Senatorial District, Frank Chukwuma Ibezim on Monday assured that President Muhammadu Buhari will assent to the Institute of Information and Communication Technology Bill before handing over on May 29, 2023.

Ibezim gave this assurance against the backdrop of concerns that there may be no time for the President to assent to the bill which he sponsored and whose public hearing took place on Monday, April 3, 2023, at a time the transition of the current administration to a new government is ongoing.

He further expressed optimism that President Buhari will sign the bill before leaving office because the proposed Institute of Information and Communication Technology is important and critical to nation building and a veritable tool for economic and socio-cultural development.

Earlier in his presentation at the public hearing on the bill, “Institute of Information and Communication Technology, Nsu, Imo State” by the Senate Committee on ICT and Cyber Security which was chaired by Senator Yakubu Oseni, Senator Ibezim stressed that ICT has become a major source of culture in businesses and other fields.

He said: “Information Technology helps us to understand the workings of our immediate world. Social media, which is an integral part of ICT, is a major source of modern culture and entertainment and it requires us to learn and use critical thinking skills.

“Technology is extremely important in the workplace as a means of communication. Today’s businesses heavily rely on information technology, as it allows businesses to expand more quickly in view of access to proper means of promotion and innovation.”

Meanwhile, the public hearing report of the bill is expected to be submitted to the Committee of the Whole on Tuesday, April 4, 2023.

Court grants leave to serve Gov Umahi, others notice of petition

By Musa Baba Adamu

The National and State House of Assembly Election Petition Tribunal in Abakaliki has granted an ex-parte order to candidates of the Labour Party, LP, Linus Okorie and Eze Emmanuel, to serve Governor David Umahi and Emmanuel Uguru a notice of petition and processes.

Okorie is a senatorial candidate of the Labour Party for the Ebonyi South Senatorial Zone while Eze Emmanuel is a candidate of the Labour Party for Abakaliki/Izzi Federal House of Representatives.

Okorie, a former House of Representatives member, is challenging the victory of Governor Umahi as the Ebonyi South Senator-elect while Eze Emmanuel is challenging the victory of Uguru Emmanuel as the House of Representative memberelect in the just concluded general elections of February 25th 2023.

The counsels to the plaintiffs, Victor Nwonu and Friday Ogazi, who appeared for Okorie and Eze respectively, alleged that the defendants, Umahi and

Uguru have been avoiding being served the notice of petition and processes and that all efforts to get them served have proved abortive.

Nwonu said: “Our application today was to serve the respondents, Governor David Umahi and the All Progressives Congress, APC. You know it is difficult to access the governor because of his security aides. We also sought the leave of the court to serve INEC and APC at their Abakaliki office addresses rather than serving them at their Abuja offices. And the court granted all our applications.

“We also filed an ex-parte order to inspect the INEC electoral materials some time ago and the court granted it.”

Ogazi on his part said: “We sought the leave of the court to serve the 1st respondent, Emmanuel Uguru by other means because since we filed the petition, he has been avoiding service and all efforts to get him (Uguru) proved abortive.”

In her ruling, the presiding judge, Justice Mabel Omovie Ogheneyerowo granted that

Gov Umahi

the defendants, Governor David Umahi of the ruling All Progressives Congress, APC, be served at the APC party secretariat located at the Akanu-Ibiam International Conference Centre

Abakaliki, while the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, be served at its office located at No. 10, Town Planning Road Abakaliki, capital of Ebonyi State.

Edo Labour Party says alleged suspension of National Chairman, Abure null and void

By Ikechukwu Okaforadi

Edo State Chairman of Labour Party, Lucky Ogbaloi yesterday said the purported suspension of the party’s national chairman, Julius Abure, by his Ward 3 Esan North Senatorial Zone in the state is null and void.

He said this to journalists when a delegation from the constituency stormed the party’s national Secretariat in Abuja, Ogbaloi said that it was against the LP constitution for any group to suspend the national chairman who is a product of a national convention.

He explained that “In the constitution of the Labour Party, no state, no local government, no ward has the right or whatsoever to assemble anywhere to suspend a national chairman who is a product of a national convention”.

The state party chairman and leader of the delegation added that “It’s nonsense

when a few boys assemble themselves in Abuja and make the pronouncement they made.

“For once, they are not part of the party, they are not at the ward, they are not at the local government and they are not recognized at the state level.

“Those who did it don’t even understand the message they were asked to deliver.

“It may be possible in other political parties but not in the Labour Party. So whatever they have done has no effect on the leadership of the party.

“So we are saying that Barr Julius Abure remains the national chairman of our party and we have since passed a vote of confidence on him and he shall take this party forward.

No reasonable person will come and be talking about the suspension of a chairman who had delivered on the election that we just have concluded”.

On his part, Thompson

Ehiguese, the national chairman’s Ward 3 Chairman, stressed that those who suspended Abure are not members of the party.

“I am the ward chairman. We heard that there are some persons impersonating to be the ward chairmen and ward executives of ward 3 Esan North Senatorial zone. I am the chairman of ward 3 in my local government and with me here is my secretary.

“We are here to dismiss the information about the suspension that is not correct. Ward 3, Uromi where the national chairman came from. I am his ward chairman.

“The truth of the matter is that those who claimed to have suspended the national chairman are not members of the party.

Their names are not in our party register. They are not even from Esan and they are not from ward six. We are taking a major action against them. They are impersonators and they will be arrested”.

Others present at the rally are Patrick Obed, the Local Government Chairman for Esan East, Uromi.

He said, “We are here to pay solidarity visit on the National chairman comrade Julius Abure along with other LG chairmen from Edo State “The recent suspension describes it as a rumour and as a rift. The reason is that he is the national chairman and at the Local Government level we have not suspended him at the ward level and at the senatorial level we have not suspended.

“He has been good to us, he has been working assiduously to move the party forward and I believe those claiming to be members of the party who suspended him, I don’t know them facially they are carrying a black rumour which is a dent on our party.

I believe they are members of the opposition party, they are impostorq to members of our party. They may be sponsored by opposition”.

POLITICS

By Musa Baba Adamu

The All Progressives Congress, APC, in Delta State has announced the expulsion of the Deputy Senate President Ovie Omo-Agege, from the party.

Omo-Agege was expelled for alleged anti-party activities and other unnamed offences.

The expulsion letter dated March 31st was signed by the Chairman, Ulebor Isaac.

According to the letter, the party unanimously resolved and adopted the expulsion of

Delta APC expels Deputy Senate president Omo- Agege

the lawmaker with immediate effect.

The letter partly reads: “The State Executive Committee of all Progressive Congress Delta State in a meeting held on the

31st March, 2023 at the State Secretariat, Asaba, after due deliberation of the Notice of Resolution of Expulsion of Senator Ovie Omo-Agege as a member of the party by the

executive committee of the Orogun Ward and Ughelli North Local Government.

In accordance [with the] provision of Article 21.2 (1) (II)(VII) 21.3 and 21.5(g) of

the constitution 2022 (as amended), we unanimously resolved and adopted the expulsion of Senator Ovie Omo Agege as a member of the party.”

APC knocks Governor Adeleke over rising cases of kidnapping in Osun

By Ikechukwu Okaforadi

The All Progressives Congress (APC) in Osun State has called on Governor Ademola Adeleke to stop treating with levity, security issues affecting the state.

The Party also noted that it was worried over the insecurity in Osun, particularly before, during and after the general elections across the country.

The party in a statement by its acting chairman, Tajudeen Lawal on Monday, also recalled that no fewer than 30 members of the opposition APC members were allegedly killed by thugs, reportedly sponsored by the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP).

While insisting that Governor

Adeleke is not getting it right in securing the lives of residents and their property, the party lamented that in the past week, specifically on Wednesday and Friday, two kidnapping incidents occurred along the Osogbo-Ikirun road.

“As of the time of making this statement with the exception of a woman whose release was secured by the police on Sunday, the victims were said to still be in captivity.

A caring governor would have either condemned the two kidnapping incidents in his territory within three days or rushed back from Abuja as the number one security officer of the state.

“It is saddening that as I speak, Governor Adeleke has no comment of

condemnation to his credit on all the murder incidents that happened so far in his four-month-old administration.

“His handling of Osun affairs has shown that governance of a state is not a tea party which is the reason why it is not the best arrangement to make the state a laboratory for greenhorns in the management of the affairs of human beings and resources,” the acting state APC chairman hinted.”

Osun APC justified its claim of thuggery activities being on the rise by narrating how Governor Adeleke denied being attacked by thugs, only for them to be arraigned in court.

Recall that the Nigeria Police, Osun Command had disclosed that a female passenger among those abducted on

Friday along the Osogbo-Ikirun Road, has been released.

Yemisi Opalola, the Osun Police Command spokesperson also disclosed that efforts to secure the release of the other abductees have commenced.

In the early hours of Friday last week, passengers in a commercial vehicle travelling on the Osogbo-Ikirun Road were abducted, except the driver, who managed to escape.

Osun has been generally referred to as one of the most peaceful states in the country until the 2023 general elections where pockets of violent attacks were recorded.

The most affected part of the state was the Osun East Senatorial District comprising of the Ife and Ijesa zones.

The National Co-ordinator, the Native, Comrade Smart Edward leading other members and supporters in a peaceful rally to INEC office for conducting a credible free and Fair election and drumming support for the president - elect, Sen.Bola Ahmed Tinubu , held yesterday in Abuja. Photo-; Justin Imo-owo

Labour Party frays invasion, occupation of Owerri Secretariat by Uzodimma’s men

By Ikechukwu Okaforadi

The national leadership of the Labour Party has expressed shock over an alleged invasion and occupation of its Secretariat in Owerri, yesterday by the agents of Imo state Governor, Hope Uzodimma, including thugs and police men drafted from the government house.

A statement issued yesterday by the National Secretary of Labour party, Mallam Umar Farouk, said such illegal occupation was akin to similar invasion on the same Secretariat on Wednesday March 15, 2023.

“Unlike the March invasion, where no reason was given by the state government on why it took such unlawful action against our political party, this time, they said that the action was due to a Court Order. But as at the moment, no such Order to our knowledge was given. No Order has been presented to us by the court or their agents. The Police men presently occupying our Secretariat have not even shown us the Order. At the moment, all our officials and staff have been barred from accessing the Secretariat.

“We have contacted the office of the Inspector General of Police (IGP) on the on going development in the state, and it

has been confirmed that the Force is not aware of any security breach whatsoever in the state to warrant the occupation of our Secretariat.

“The Police have also informed us that it has not detailed any of their officers and men to the Labour Party Secretariat in Imo state; and that the officers may have been drafted from the State House in the state.

“The Labour Party however is not unmindful of the efforts of the Imo State governor, Hope Uzodimma to hijack the leadership of the Party in Imo

state.

“These actions have confirmed the information available to us of plots by the governor to plant some surrogates wearing the garments of aspirants in the party. This game plan, as archaic as it seems, has been detected and punctured, the consequences being the aggression unleashed on the party by the state government.

“The leadership of the Labour is determined to bring the needed changes the people of Imo state have yearned since inception of this present dispensation.

The state has been deprived of good and quality leadership. The resources of the state have being balkanized and liquidated by the administrations in the past. This is in spite of the fact that the state is not lacking in personalities with decent background and pedigree in services to the state.

“Labour Party is therefore assuring the state that it will field as its governorship candidate, a person with proven integrity in both personal and public life; and with OBidient blood running in his/her veins. No amount of

intimidation by Governor Hope Uzodimma and his army of thugs will deter the party from fielding and winning the governorship election.

“We therefore call on all the members of the Labour Party and OBidient family in Imo State to be peaceful even in the face of the present provocation as the party will do everything within the books to retrieve our Secretariat from the state security officers and sponsored thugs that are presently occupying our Secretariat”, the statement said.

Court reinstates impeached Plateau Assembly Speaker, Ayuba

By Christiana Ekpa

Plateau High Court sitting in Jos on Monday reinstated Abok Ayuba as Speaker, Plateau House of Assembly.

Ayuba was impeached on Oct. 28, 2021, by members of the State Assembly.

Ayuba, however, challenged his impeachment, which he described as illegal, saying that it contravened the rules of the assembly.

The Presiding Judge, Justice Nefisa Musa, who delivered the judgment, granted the plaintiff’s prayers.

Musa said the procedure adopted for the removal of Ayuba was illegal.

Ayuba, who went from the court straight to the Assembly Complex, said he was vindicated from the illegal impeachment.

He thanked the Plateau people for standing by him during his travails.

“I and my honourable colleagues, today we give God the glory once again for this victory for democracy in Nigeria once again.

“We are here on the premises of the House of Assembly because all of us were elected to represent our various

constituencies.

“We still have some months left for us to continue the assignment that was duly given to us by our various constituencies.

“Even though there was a crisis some time ago, today the court has given these terms against that illegality that was done,” he said.

The reinstated speaker said by the grace of God, sitting would continue in the house peacefully, without any rancour.

Ayuba said his camp would not fight anybody, adding that they were all members

of the assembly and that all were Plateau people and also Nigerians.

According to him, they would all work together for the betterment of Plateau and Nigeria.

“I’m ready to work with the executive, we’ve never in any way said that I would never want to continue to work with them.

“That is the only thing that will give us peace in this state.

“Anybody that was in court today knows that the court has defined everything about the purported impeachment,” he added.

Gov Uzodimma with Peter Obi

Delta, Akwa Ibom, lead as states share N9.3tn in three years

The 36 states in Nigeria shared a total of about N9.3tn as federal allocation between June 2019 and December 2022, a period of 43 months, which formed the bulk of the second tenure of the President, Muhammadu Buhari.

Data sourced from 43 monthly reports of the Federation Accounts Allocation Committee, as released by the National Bureau of Statistics indicated that Delta State got the highest allocation during the period under review, while Akwa Ibom and Rivers states followed.

The NBS had yet to upload the FAAC reports for the months of January, February and March 2023, when checked on Sunday by one of our correspondents.

For the 43 months period that was reviewed by our correspondents, it was observed that Delta State got the lion share of about N843.8bn, Akwa Ibom received about N643.2bn, while Rivers got about N642bn.

Further findings showed that Sokoto State got the leased allocation during the three years and seven months period, as it received N119.1bn.

It was followed by Osun State, which got the second least allocation of N126.4bn during the review period, while the state that got the third lowest allocation was Cross River, with N141.71bn.

Our findings further showed that other states, including Abia, Adamawa, Anambra, Bauchi and Bayelsa received about N188.75bn, N221.86bn, N204.54bn, N200.5bn and N543.6bn, respectively.

Benue, Borno, Ebonyi, Edo, Ekiti, Enugu and Gombe received N192bn, N233.9bn, N171.3bn, N247.5bn, N148.4bn, N196.3bn and N156.6bn, respectively.

For Imo, Jigawa, Kaduna, Kano, Katsina, Kebbi, Kogi, Kwara and Lagos states, their various FAAC allocations during the period under review were N215.96bn, N223.7bn, N242.5bn, N308.4bn, N233.7bn, N204.3bn, N193.3bn, N154.1bn and N457.4bn respectively.

The remaining states of Nasarawa, Niger, Ogun, Ondo, Oyo, Plateau, Taraba, Yobe and Zamfara, received allocations of N179.5bn, N189bn, N147.8bn, N202.8bn, N225bn, N149.7bn, N267.9bn, N184.3bn and N167.3bn respectively.

It was observed that the states shared about N1.47tn from June

to December 2019, while in 2020 they shared a total of about N2.29tn.

In 2021, the 26 states of the federation, excluding the Federal Capital Territory, shared about N2.35tn, while in 2022 the FAAC disbursed about N3.16tn to the states.

This brings the total allocation that was shared by the states during the 43-month period to N3.27tn.

Meanwhile, economic analysts have said the level of development in states is not commensurate with the allocations received by the governments.

Economic and financial experts confirmed that state governments, particularly those of oil-producing states, had failed to develop their areas with the trillions of naira received as allocations from FAAC every year.

They called on civil society and other anti-corruption groups to start scrutinising the financial expenditures of state governments, stressing that most governors embezzled the allocations from FAAC.

“State governors are too powerful in their states and have used that privilege to steal a lot of money from the coffers of their states,” a former President of the Association of National Accountants of Nigeria, Dr Sam Nzekwe, stated.

He added, “Take Rivers State, for instance, that state should not be telling you that it has no money to fix roads and carry out other

basic infrastructural development in key areas of the state.

Akwa Ibom CJ pardons 45 inmates

“A lot of money goes to Rivers, Delta and Akwa Ibom states. This is aside from what they also generate internally. If they use the money they get the way it is supposed to be used, there will be less problems in these states.

“But the majority of the money ends in the pockets of the governors. The Kaduna State governor recently said he knows a governor who stashed N500m of these new naira notes in his house. You can see that they loot money and fail to deliver projects in their various states.”

Also reacting to the development, the Director, Centre for the Promotion of Private Enterprises, Dr Muda Yusuf, noted that the refusal of public officials to publicly defend their expenditure accounts had deepened corruption in government.

He said the quality of personnel in government offices must be scrutinised, adding that the digitisation of government processes would ensure transparency and reduce corruption.

Yusuf said, “The issue of accountability, transparency in public expenditure, that ensures value for money is a very big problem in the public sector generally.

“The amount of exposure to these shortcomings is a function

of how much revenue is at the disposal of each government, agencies, department.

“The higher the amount at their disposal, the higher the proportionate level of corruption, and this affects the way government finances are managed. The impact and degree varies with the level of opportunities that they have.”

Yusuf further called for citizen participation, stressing that citizens should do more in interrogating the finances of state governments.

“As citizens we need to do a lot more in terms of advocacy, demand more accountability for whatever expenses that are procured and also demand that the State House of Assembly should be up and doing to ensure proper checks and balances.

“Digitisation may be good to get transparency and manage projects, but the bigger issues are the persons involved in the process. What is more important is the quality of those who are in governance.

“We need to have persons committed to transparency and accountability and better financial management, as well as those who are prudent in spending,” he stated.

On his part, a professor of Economics at the University of Ibadan, Prof. Adeola Adenikinju, said the level of poverty in many rural areas of the oil producing states that got higher allocations, was appalling.

He said, “In many of the areas in the oil producing communities, you see a lot of poverty and deprivation. Infrastructure, electricity (in the areas) is not available, yet these people cannot carry out their primary operations because their land is polluted.

“So, it is very incumbent on the state government to ensure that these people are able to enjoy the benefits derived from oil production in their communities.”

Another professor of Economics at the Olabisi Onabanjo University, Prof. Sheriffdeen Tella, said some of the states had no development plans to guide them on what to spend on.

He pointed out that the case of Rivers State was, however, clear due to multiple projects it inaugurated in recent months.

He, however, stated that the case of Delta and Akwa Ibom states was different, because the states had less visibility in the media as regards developments in them.

Tella said, “The case of Rivers is clear with multi-projects commissioning in the last few months. One cannot say kudos to Delta State and Akwa Ibom State, as there is less visibility in the media on developments in those states,l.

“Although Akwa Ibom was trying to industrialise at a point. Not much was heard later. Do these states have development plans to guide them on what to spend funds on? No.”

From Abubakar Y Ojimaojo ABUJA

Federal Government’s borrowing from China has grown by 209.15 per cent under the Major General Muhammadu Buhari (retd.) administration.

This is as total bilateral loans rose by 219.91 per cent from $1.58bn as of June 2015 to $5.07bn as of December 2022. Total borrowing from China rose from $1.39bn to $4.29bn in the period under review.

Available data from the Debt Management Office revealed that Chinese loans make up 84.73 per cent of the total amount Nigeria owes to other countries of the world. The remaining 15.27 per cent is spread across France, Japan, India, and Germany.

According to the DMO, loans from China are concessional loans with interest rates of 2.50 per cent per annum, have a tenor of 20 years, and grace period (moratorium) of seven years.

Chinese loans rise by 209% under Buhari, hit $4bn

As of September 30, 2021, the DMO listed 15 projects there were being funded with Chinese loans in a document titled, ‘Status of Chinese loans as at September 30, 2021.’

The more listed loans include the Nigerian 40 Parboiled Rice Processing Plants Project (Fed. Min. of Agric & Rural Dev.), Nigerian Railway Mordernisation Project (Lagos – Ibadan section), Nigeria Rehabilitation and Upgrading of Abuja – Keffi –Markurdi Road Project, Nigeria Supply of Rolling Stocks and Depot Equipment for Abuja Light Rail Project, and Nigeria Greater Abuja Water Supply Project.

While Nigeria has drawn

consistently from China’s well under Buhari, China-Exim Bank declined recently declined an earlier agreement to grant Nigeria a loan of $22.79bn.

The loan had been approved under the 2016–2018 Federal Government External Borrowing (Rolling) Plan by the Senate and the House of Representatives on March 5, 2020, and June 2, 2020, respectively. This may impact the Nigerian Railway Modernisation Project (Kaduna–Kano segment), with the contractor (CCECC Nigeria Limited), and the Federal Ministry of Transportation, engaging China Development Bank for a loan of $973.48m.

In 2021, the immediate past

Minister of Transportation, Rotimi Amaechi, alleged that China was becoming sceptical of borrowing Nigeria money because of a National Assembly probe of the Federal Government’s ability to pay back its loan.

While answering questions on Politics Today, on Channels Television, Amaechi alleged that the probe prevented China from granting more loans to Nigeria.

He added that the combined effort of the Senate President and Speaker had stopped the probe, which had helped.

Recently, the President of the World Bank, David Malpass, told The BBC that he was concerned about some of China’s loans to

Oil Prices Surge On Shock Output Cuts

From Abubakar Yunusa ABUJA

World oil prices soared Monday after several top producers led by Saudi Arabia sprang surprise output cuts that defied US calls for higher production to keep inflation down.

Crude futures surged almost eight percent at one stage after multiple members of the OPEC+ exporters’ alliance unexpectedly slashed production by a total of more than one million barrels per day in a bid to stabilise the market.

The shock reduction, unveiled Sunday by Algeria, Iraq, Kuwait, Oman, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, will start in May and last until the end of the year.

It came on top of a decision from OPEC+ member Russia to extend a cut of 500,000 barrels per day.

‘Caught markets off guard’ Sunday’s move “caught the markets off guard” and reversed recent oil-price gains, noted ActivTrades analyst Ricardo Evangelista.

“With the fizzling out of the banking crisis and the return of optimism to the markets, the price of the barrel was already showing signs of recovering,” he noted.

“The OPEC+ announcement compounded this dynamic, taking oil prices back to pre-bankingcrisis levels.”

The cut was the biggest since OPEC+ had late last year axed two million barrels per day in a move which had also angered Washington.

The news sparked bumper gains for European energy majors and lifted London and Paris stock markets on Monday, although Frankfurt dipped.

BP and Shell shares jumped about 4.5 percent in late morning London deals, while TotalEnergies won a similar proportion in Paris.

Higher oil prices boosts profits and revenues for the sector.

However, the shock weekend development also fanned concerns over a fresh spike in consumer prices that could put pressure on central banks to push interest rates even higher — and dent the global economy.

“There’s real concern that the surprise decision… will prompt central banks to maintain interest rates higher for longer, due to the inflationary impact, which will hinder economic growth,” said Nigel Green, head of financial

consultancy deVere Group.

Global equities had been buoyed Friday after data highlighted easing inflation in the eurozone and the United States.

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine also sent oil and gas prices soaring last year, fuelling rampant energy bills and decades-high inflation around the world.

That sparked a series of aggressive interest rate hikes, particularly from the US Federal Reserve, in a bid to tame elevated

consumer prices.

Green added that Sunday’s shock oil output cutback “will only add to pressing global inflationary squeezes”.

“The oil price rises can be expected to increase the cost of production and transportation, reduce consumers’ purchasing power, disrupt supply chains, and lead to higher inflation expectations.”

Crude prices have come down over the past year as concerns

developing economies in Africa.

He noted that the terms and conditions of these loans need to be more transparent. This is as countries including Ghana and Zambia appear to be struggling to repay their debts to Beijing.

He said, “What I encourage strongly is that they be transparent in their contracts. That’s been one of the problems; if you write a contract and say ‘but don’t show it to anybody else’, that’s a minus. So, get away from that.”

He warned, “For governments in Africa, they shouldn’t be offering collateral as an inducement to make a loan, because it locks it up for generations. That’s been happening with China.”

about a possible recession caused by higher borrowing costs have offset supply worries sparked by sanctions on Russia over its war on Ukraine.

“The production cut… clearly shows OPEC was not happy with the movement in the oil price which had fallen over recent months,” said National Australia Bank’s Tapas Strickland.

Key figures around 1000 GMT Brent North Sea crude: UP 5.0 percent at $83.89 per barrel

DMO offers April FGN savings bonds at N1,000 per unit

From Abubakar Yunusa,ABUJA

The Debt Management Office (DMO), on Monday, offered two Federal Government of Nigeria (FGN) savings bonds for April at N1,000 per unit.

According to the DMO, the first offer is a two-year FGN savings bond due on April 12, 2025, at an interest rate of

10.033 per cent per annum.

The second offer is a threeyear FGN savings bond due April 12, 2026, at an 11.033 per cent per annum interest rate.

“The offer opens on April 3 and closes on April 7.

“Minimum subscription is N5,000 with multiple of N1,000 thereafter, subject to a maximum subscription of N50 million.

“Interest is payable quarterly

while bullet repayment (principal sum) is on maturity,” the DMO said.

It said that FGN savings bonds qualified as securities in which trustees could invest under the Trustee Investment Act.

“They also qualify as government securities within the meaning of the Company Income Tax Act (CITA) and

Personal Income Tax Act (PITA) for tax exemption for pension funds.

“They are listed on the Nigerian Stock Exchange Limited and qualify as a liquid asset for liquidity ratio calculation for banks.

“They are backed by the full faith and credit of the FGN and charged upon the general assets of the country.’’

External reserves fall by $1.46bn in two months -CBN

From Abubakar Yunusa ABUJA

The country’s external reserves fell by $1.46bn between January and March, figures obtained from the Central Bank of Nigeria have revealed.

The reserves ended February 27, 2023 at $36.67bn.

Figures obtained from the CBN’s data on movement of external reserves on Sunday showed that the reserves, which stood at $36.99bn as of the end of January, 1, 2023, fell to $35.53bn as of the end of March, 30, 2023.

At the last Monetary Policy Committee in Abuja in March, the Governor, CBN, attributed the decline in the external reserves to the fall in crude oil price.

“The committee, however, noted the marginal decline in the level of gross external reserves to $36.13bn in February 2023, from $36.4bn in January 2023, a decrease of 0.7 per cent, reflecting the downtrend in crude oil prices, as global uncertainties persist,” he said.

According to the CBN data, Nigeria’s external reserves fell by $3.43bn in 2022, from $40.52bn as of

the end of December 31, 2021, to $37.09bn as of the end of December 29, 2022.

Earlier in 2022, the CBN launched a programme tagged ‘RT200 FX Programme’ to boost forex supply in the

country through the non-oil sector in the next three to five years.

Emefiele, while unveiling the programme, said, the RT200 FX Programme was a set of policies, plans and

programmes for non-oil exports that would enable Nigeria to attain $200bn in FX repatriation, exclusively from non-oil exports, over the next three to five years.

He said the programme’s

five key anchors were valueadding exports facility; nonoil commodities expansion facility; non-oil FX rebate scheme; dedicated non-oil export terminal; and biannual non-oil export summit.

NGX suspends trading in shares of Sterling Bank

Nigerian Exchange Limited (NGX) says it has suspended trading in the shares of Sterling Bank Plc.

In its weekly report of market activities, the local bourse said the suspension took effect on Thursday.

NGX said the suspension was in preparation for a restructuring of the bank.

“Trading License Holders and the investing public are hereby notified that trading in the shares of Sterling Bank Plc (the Bank) was suspended on Thursday, 30 March 2023,” the report reads.

“The suspension is necessary to prevent trading in the shares of the Bank in preparation for the Scheme of Arrangement between the Bank and the holders of its fully paid ordinary shares of 50 Kobo each for restructuring of the Bank.

“The suspension is required for the purpose of determining the shareholders who will qualify for the scheme.”

Sterling Bank is concluding arrangements for its transition from a commercial banking group to a holding company (HoldCo).

Once substantive authorisation is received, the bank gets a licence to veer into other businesses within financial services including pensions, insurance, asset management and fintech.

The NGX also said its top five price gainers of the week which ended on March 31, 2023, were Oando, Ikeja Hotel, Champion Brew, Royal Exchange and UPDC PLC.

On the flip side, Prestige Assurance, NCR (Nigeria) PLC, CWG PLC, Dangote Sugar Refinery and United Capital PLC led top five losers.

From Abubakar Yunusa, ABUJA

Alleged land grabbing: FCTA raids, demolishes estates at Idu

By Stanley Onyekwere

In a clear move to curtail the rising proliferation of illegal estates, officials of FCT Administration yesterday raided and removed several estates in residential area of the Idu Industrial Area, in Abuja Municipal Area Council (AMAC).

In particular, the FCTA officials mainly from the Department of Development Control accompanied security operatives stormed and pulled down perimeter fences and few buildings at different stages of construction at the sites of White City Estate, City Palace Estate Prime Ville by Hulumi village, near the Idu Train Station.

Speaking during the exercise, Director, Development Control Department, TPL Mukhtar Galadima, said the removal was part of the measures to check instances of people just coming to parcel land, and allocate it to themselves without recourse to the relevant authorities of the government.

Galadima noted that most of them are fenced while some of them are about excavating, but their advertisement has gone round the globe, adding that “ the FCT Administration is seriously committed to see that we do away with this kind of illegality”.

He explained that the Department is discussing with the Department of Urban and Regional Planning, which is the custodian of the Abuja Master plan, to hasten and conclude the process of design of the phase IV of the Federal Capital City (FCC), which the affected area is part of it.

“A month ago, we had a press briefing, where we intimated the citizens about the rising cases of land grabbing in the FCT especially those using the social media to advertise their commodity, so the removal exercise is part of the actualisation of our briefing on the menace.

“Today, we are at Idu Train Station, where we have seen instances of people just coming to parcel land, and allocate it to themselves without recourse to the relevant authorities of the government, that is why

we have to make good our promises that we are going to tackle the menace.

“The estates are uncountable, because they just parcel and fence them. Everywhere have been fenced, that is why we had to nip it at the bud. And the longest marking here was done in 2018 or 2019, and since then, the developer has not continue to develop.

“It is part of the residential area that would support the Idu industrial area, so whatever people are doing now it is just illegality.

“And we have been creating awareness on why people should not just buy land on social media as they should go to the right authority to get things right. The FCT Administration is serious committed to see that we do away with this kind of illegality”, he stressed.

He however, warned that it is just the begining of the removal exercise, as they are returning back tomorrow to continue with adequate reinforcement and heavy duty equipment to do the work.

The Representative of the DG/CEO, Raw Materials Research Development Council (RMRDC), Mr. Muhammed S.Musa (middle), National President, Youth Farmers Develiopment Initiative (YFDI), Comrade Chilota Onyeka (5th left), the Representative of the Federal Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development (FMARD), Mr. Lawal O. Lawal (4th left) and the Vice Principal, Federal Government Boys College Apo. Àbuja (2nd left), with students and officials from various schools in FCT, during the tree planting to celebrate 2023 international Day of Forests (IDF). at the FGBC Apo. Seedlings was donated by Federal Ministry of Environment., held yesterday in Abuja.

Minister inaugurates committees to boost agric dev’t in Abuja

By Stanley Onyekwere

The FCT Minister of State, Dr. Ramatu Tijjani Aliyu, has inaugurated two committees to help boost agricultural development in the Territory.

Specifically, the committees are the Steering and Inter-Agency Technical Committees of the Agro-Climatic Resilience in Semi-Arid Landscapes (ACReSAL), and the Special Agro-Industrial Processing Zones (SAPZ) Projects in the FCT.

While inaugurating the committee, the minister expressed gratitude to President Muhammadu Buhari, for approving the partnership on the projects which would go a long way in bringing about the avowed promise of leaving behind a legacy that will chart an unhindered course for sustainable economic development in Nigeria.

Aliyu, noted that the first of these projects was the Agro-Climatic Resilience in Semi-Arid Landscapes (ACReSAL) which was facilitated by the World Bank to help northern part of Nigeria and the FCT to address critical challenges of regional desertification control and land scape management.

According to her, “Project aligns with the goal of the President Muhammadu Buhari’s administration to set out broader landscape restoration of 4 million hectares of degraded land, and the promise of lifting 100 million Nigerians out of poverty by 2030”.

She further stressed that the implementation

would take place in the six Area Councils of the FCT; particularly in the rural communities, and would carter for the farmers and farm groups, the women and youth with their groups.

On the other hand, the minister noted that the concept of the Special Agro-Industrial Processing Zones programme (SAPZ) which is co-financed by the African Development Bank, the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) and the Islamic Development Bank (IsDB), aims at mobilizing private sector entities to develop value chains for selected strategic crops and livestock in the participating states.

Aliyu said the programme would significantly drive the modernization of the FCT agricultural sector, reduce food imports, enhance value addition in livestock value chain, staple food crops and create new economic zones of wealth and jobs creation in rural areas.

The minister revealed that the steering committee of the projects are the apex decision-making bodies for the operation of the projects in FCT and has the responsibilities of providing guidance and taking decisions on the recommendations forwarded by the State Technical Committee and State Project Management Unit (SPMU)

Also speaking at the inauguration, Mandate Secretary Agriculture and Rural Development Secretariat, Mallam Abubakar Ibrahim, noted that several states across the federation have already keyed into the programmes and

today’s inauguration marks the official take-off of the programmes in the nation’s capital.

Ibrahim stressed that the projects aim at addressing environmental challenges as well as reinvigorating the livestock sector to enhance sustainable agricultural production and improved food and nutrition security.

He, however, assured that in view of the huge expectations on the projects, membership of the two committees were carefully drawn from relevant secretariat’s departments and agencies (SDA’S) of the FCT Administration.

Responding on behalf of the committee members, the FCTA Permanent Secretary, Mr. Olusade Adesola, noted that the implementation of these two projects in the FCT could not have come at a better time than now when the capital city is in dire need of the implementation of innovative programmes that have the capacity to rapidly guarantee the attainment of food and nutrition security and improve the quality of lives of the growing population of the FCT.

According to him, “There is no gainsaying the fact that the issues of climate change and global hunger are interwoven, and experts have warned that unless urgent and necessary measures are taken, nations face immense threat of global food crisis”.

He assured the minister that members of these committees would put in their best to ensure that the objectives of the projects are realised.

Photo: Justin Imo-owo

world news

Marlene Schiappa: French minister criticised over Playboy photoshoot

AFrench government minister has sparked outrage after she posed for the cover of Playboy magazine.

Marlene Schiappa, the minister for the social economy, was fully clothed for the shoot. It will appear on the cover of the April edition in France.

But the move has drawn the ire of both her political opponents and colleagues.

Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne told Ms Schiappa that her decision “was not at all appropriate, especially in the current period.”

In recent weeks France has seen a series of violent clashes between police and striking workers, who are angry at President Emmanuel Macron’s planned pension changes.

His proposals would raise the retirement age by two years to 64.

Prime Minister Borne’s criticism was echoed by Green MP and fellow women’s rights activist Sandrine Rousseau, who questioned the timing of the move. She told the BFM TV channel: “Women’s bodies should be able to be exposed anywhere, I don’t have a problem with that, but there’s

Darya

a social context.”

The pictures will be accompanied by an interview on women’s and gay rights, as well as abortion.

On Saturday, Ms Schiappa defended her decision to appear in the magazine, writing on Twitter: “Defending the right of women to do what they want with their bodies: everywhere and all the time. In France, women are free. Whether it annoys the retrogrades and hypocrites or not.”

Ms Schiappa, 40, is regular guest on French TV talk shows and was a feminist author before embarking upon a career in politics. She has written about the challenges of motherhood, women’s health and pregnancy.

Whilst serving as equalities minister in 2018, Ms Schiappa brought in legislation outlawing catcalling and street harassment.

But this is not the first time she’s been involved in controversy.

Back in 2010 she authored a book which provided sex tips for overweight people, perceived by some critics to be reinforcing harmful clichés.

And in 2017 she was accused of staging

Trepova: Russia

Russian investigators have detained a woman in the hunt for the killers of prowar blogger Vladlen Tatarsky in a blast at a St Petersburg cafe.

In video released by authorities - most likely recorded under duress - Darya Trepova is heard admitting she handed over a statuette that later blew up.

But in the footage released, she does not say she knew there would be an explosion, nor admit any further role.

More than 30 people were wounded in the bombing in Russia’s second city.

Tatarsky had been attending a patriotic meeting with supporters in the cafe as a guest speaker.

A video circulating on social media showed a young woman in a brown coat apparently entering the cafe with a cardboard box.

Images showed the box being placed on a table in the cafe before the woman sat down. Another video showed a statue being handed to Tatarsky.

In a brief excerpt of her interrogation released by the ministry, Darya Trepova, 26, appeared under duress as she sighed repeatedly.

When her interrogator asked if she knew why she was detained, she replied: “I would say for being at the scene of Vladlen Tatarsky’s murder... I brought the statuette there which blew up.”

Asked who gave it to her she responded: “Can I tell you later please?”

Russia’s anti-terrorism committee alleged the attack was organised by Ukrainian special services “with people co-operating with” opposition leader Alexei Navalny.

Navalny’s Anti-Corruption Foundation, which has released a series of exposes of corruption involving the Putin entourage, said it was “very convenient” for the Kremlin to blame its critics.

Mr Navalny has been in jail ever since he returned to Russia from Germany in January 2021. He survived a nerve agent attack in Russia in August 2020, which was blamed on Russian FSB security service agents.

Foundation head Ivan Zhdanov said everything pointed to FSB agents themselves. “Naturally we have nothing to do with this,” he said, adding that Russia needed an external enemy in the form of Ukraine and a domestic

a visit to a so-called “no-go area for women” in Paris.

The editor of the French-language edition of Playboy backed Ms Schiappa’s decision to

appear in the magazine, describing her as the most “Playboy compatible” of ministers in Mr Macron’s cabinet, due to her strong and vocal support of women’s rights.

releases tape of suspect in cafe killing of Vladlen Tatarsky

one in Navalny’s team.

Ms Trepova was detained in a St Petersburg flat owned by a friend of her husband’s, Russian reports said.

On the day of Russia’s full-scale invasion last year she was reportedly detained for a number of days for taking part in an anti-war protest.

Russian investigators arrived at the scene of the explosion at the St Petersburg cafe

The cafe, Street Food Bar No 1 near the River Neva, was once owned by Yevgeny Prigozhinwho runs Russia’s notorious Wagner mercenary group which has taken part in much of the fighting in Bakhmut in eastern Ukraine.

Prigozhin said he had handed it over to Cyber Front Z, a group that calls itself “Russia’s information troops” and said it had hired out the cafe for the evening.

Prigozhin paid tribute to Tatarsky, whose real name was Maxim Fomin, in a late-night video which he declared was filmed from the town hall in Bakhmut.

He displayed a flag which he said had the words “in good memory of Vladlen Tatarsky”.

Tatarsky, a vocal supporter of Russia’s war in Ukraine, was not a Russian official, nor a military officer. He was a well-known blogger with more than half a million followers and, like Prigozhin, had a criminal past.

Born in the Donetsk region of eastern Ukraine, he said he joined Russian-backed separatists when they released him from jail, where he was serving time for armed robbery.

He was part of a pro-Kremlin military blogger community that has taken on a relatively high-profile role since Russia’s fullscale invasion of Ukraine began in February 2022.

Tatarsky is among those who have gone so far as to criticise the Russian authorities, slamming the military and even President Vladimir Putin for setbacks on the battlefield.

Unusually, Tatarsky took up arms in combat operations and reported from the front line. He claimed to have helped launch combat drones and build fortifications.

Last September, he posted a video inside the Kremlin where Mr Putin was proclaiming the annexation of four part-occupied Ukrainian regions.

“We will defeat everyone, we will kill everyone, we will rob everyone as necessary. Just as we like it,” Tatarsky told his followers.

The military bloggers have provided information about the war in a country where many have become frustrated with the lack of accurate information from official sources.

Information provided by the Russian military, Kremlin-controlled television and state officials has been criticised for being inaccurate.

Last week, several official Russian sources shared a video allegedly showing Ukrainian troops harassing civilians. Western analysts proved using open-source information that the video had been staged.

Some pro-Kremlin bloggers also slammed the video as a crude fake. Much of the bloggers’ pro-Russian material is not factual either.

Who was behind Tatarsky’s murder is unclear, but it is reminiscent of the killing of Darya Dugina, a vocal supporter of the war and the daughter of a Russian ultra-nationalist. She died in a car bomb attack near Moscow last August.

Russian officials have already hinted that Ukraine is to blame for the explosion. Ukrainian presidential adviser Mykhailo Podolyak blamed

the blast on a Russian “internal political fight”, tweeting: “Spiders are eating each other in a jar.”

The Ukrainians have proved themselves as more than capable of carrying out drone attacks and explosions deep inside Russian territory in recent months. They rarely admit involvement but often drop hints.

Mercenary leader Yevgeny Prigozhin said he did not think it was the Ukrainian government: “I think there is a group of radicals operating, which unlikely has something to do with the government.”

The blast could be linked to political infighting in Russia, as Kyiv has said. There are now a lot of angry men carrying guns in Russia.

With the military running low on troops, convicts have been let out of prison, handed weapons and sent to the front. Russian authorities have also conducted large-scale recruitment campaigns for volunteer fighters and recruited some 300,000 men in a “partial mobilisation”.

The Kommersant newspaper recently reported that the number of murders committed in Russia last year rose for the first time in 20 years.

Source: BBC

Jupiter, Venus, the Moon, and Mars should all be easily visible, however Uranus and Mercury might be more of a challenge

Darya Trepova declined to say who gave her the statuette but Russian authorities have blamed opposition figures

Marinica leaves Malawi job after criticising fans

Malawi are hunting for a new head coach after announcing that Mario Marinica’s contract will not be renewed.

The announcement comes just days after the Romanian hit out at Malawi fans following a 4-0 defeat to Egypt in Lilongwe, claiming they were more interested in supporting the Pharoah’s “superstars” than the home players.

That defeat means Malawi now only have a slim chance of reaching next year’s Africa Cup of Nations in Ivory Coast.

At the previous tournament in Cameroon, Marinica, who initially took over as technical director in November 2021, guided the Flames to the last 16 for the first time in the country’s history, where they were beaten 2-1 by Morocco.

Malawi must beat both Guinea and Ethiopia in their final two group games to have any chance of reaching next year’s Cup of Nations in Ivory Coast

A statement released by the Football Association of Malawi announced that, “by mutual consent, it has been agreed with Mr Mario Marinica not to enter into negotiations for renewal of his contract when it expires on 30 April 2023.”

It also revealed that the 58-yearold will be “on scheduled annual leave” up until that date and thanked him for “bringing great joy and pride” to Malawi for their historic Afcon run in Cameroon.

Rwanda’s ruling party elects woman to deputise Kagame

Rwanda’s ruling party, the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF-Inkotanyi), on Sunday elected its first woman vicechairperson as President Paul Kagame retained the chairmanship position.

Consolee Uwimana was elected by 1,945 votes - about 93% of the votes cast.

Observers say promoting her is the party’s way of giving more power to women and keeping the ethnicity quota balanced in its top leadership.

Ms Uwimana is a veteran banker and businesswoman who served as a senator until 2019.

Rwanda’s next general elections is scheduled for 2024.

President Kagame has been president of the East African nation since 2000. A controversial referendum in 2015 removed a two-term constitutional limit for presidents.

On Sunday, Mr Kagame got 99.8% of the total votes to retain leadership of the ruling party.

Rwanda has one of the world’s highest proportions of women in parliament and government

Kenya finds`new

strains of sexually transmitted diseases

Kenyan researchers have found two new strains from two common sexually transmitted diseases among a group of women in a town in western Kenya.

More than 400 women above the age of 15 were diagnosed with gonorrhoea and chlamydia with new mutations.

The researchers from the Kenya Medical Research Institute fear that the disease could spread to neighbouring Uganda as the town, Busia, is along the border where truck drivers stop.

This group of people are at an increased risk of getting HIV and sexually transmitted disease.

The researchers are planning to conduct more studies to establish how widespread the disease is and whether the new mutations can be treated by standard antibiotics.

They said the changes on the genetic makeup of the virus had not been seen before.

Senior South Sudan officials accused of abuses

UN human rights experts have accused senior government officials and military officers in South Sudan of committing serious abuses, including widespread attacks against civilians, killings and rape.

A new report says the state continues to fail in its duty to protect civilians and to ensure accountability for violations.

Amongst those recommended for prosecution are the governor of Unity State, Joseph Monytuil, and Lieutenant General Thoi Chany Reat of the South

Sudanese military.

They are accused of state sanctioned extrajudicial killings carried out last August. They deny the allegations.

The UN report says sexual violence against women and girls remains systematic in South Sudan. (It says impunity for serious crimes is a central driver of the violence and misery that civilians face.)

Nigerian police search for abducted female students

Police in north-west Nigeria have launched a search and rescue operation for two female students who’ve been abducted from a university hostel in Zamfara state.

They said an armed gang broke into the private hostel in Gusau and locked up two guards before kidnapping the students.

The incident has heightened fears of insecurity in Zamfara which has in the past seen numerous kidnappings for ransom.

In February last year gunmen abducted almost three hundred female students from a boarding school in Zamfara.

They were released after several days in captivity. In August fifteen students and four members of staff were seized from an agriculture college.

Ivorian tech inventor wins World Literacy Award

An Ivorian technology entrepreneur

and smartphone designer has won the World Literacy Award 2023.

The award “recognizes individuals and organizations annually for their outstanding endeavours that promote literacy learning,” according to the website for the prize.

Alain Capo invented a smartphone that lets people communicate in at least 16 of the languages spoken in Ivory Coast.

Last year, he told the Reuters news agency that he had made the phone so that people who cannot read and write were able to use smartphones.

Speaking at the ceremony at Oxford University in the UK, Mr Capo said he felt honoured: “It’s an amazing honour to receive this award and the global acknowledgment of the work in literacy as we increase access to education and literacy for all.”

He also spoke about what drives him: “I’ve seen, first-hand, the inequalities of education worldwide, and it inspired me to step up and make a difference.”

Nigerian rapper Portable charged with assault

Popular Nigerian musician Habeeb Okikiola, aka Portable, was on Monday arraigned in a court in south-western Ogun state on six counts of assault-related charges, which he denied.

After spending the weekend in police detention, the “Zazoo Zeh” singer has now been granted bail.

Reports say the rapper and singer resisted arrest and insulted officers who went to detain him last week.BBC

Mario Marinica (left) joined Malawi’s FA after a spell with Indian Super League side Kerala Blasters

N ews F rom A si A

Bakhmut: Wagner raises Russian flag but Ukraine fights on

The head of Russia’s Wagner mercenary group says he has raised a Russian flag over Bakhmut’s city hall in Ukraine.

In a night-time video, Yevgeny Prigozhin said Bakhmut was now Russian “in a legal sense”. However he admitted Ukrainian forces were still concentrated in western districts.

Ukraine has insisted its army still holds Bakhmut - an eastern city which Russia has spent months trying to capture.

The General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine said on Sunday evening that while Russia hadn’t stopped its assault on the city, “Ukrainian defenders are courageously holding the city as they repel numerous enemy attacks”.

President Volodymyr Zelensky’s chief of staff, Andriy Yermak, has urged people to “calmly respond to the fakes of those who invent a ‘victory’ that does not exist in reality”.

Ukraine’s Deputy Defence

Minister Hanna Maliar said the Wagner claim was “a funny fake”.

In the video, Mr Prigozhin said a tribute to Russian military blogger Vladlen Tatarsky, who died in an explosion at a St Petersburg cafe on Sunday, had been written on the flag.

The BBC has not been able to verify the footage.

Analysis by the Institute for the Study of War said that, as of Sunday, Ukraine still held much of the city - although Russian troops were attempting to envelop it from the south and east.

According to the ISW, the city council building is in part of the city recently claimed by Russia, as it approaches from the east.

Wagner - officially called a private military company - has suffered heavy losses during fighting in Bakhmut.

Many of its recruits are convicts released from Russian prisons drafted in to swell the group’s numbers.

Troops from the regular

Russian military are also fighting in Bakhmut, as well as the Wagner troops.

Thousands of Russian and Ukrainian soldiers have died in the fight for control of the city - and it’s thought Russian losses have been far higher than Ukraine’s.

Bakhmut has little strategic value, but Ukraine has seen it as an important drain on Russia’s military equipment and manpower.

Russian commanders hope taking Bakhmut might give them a springboard for further territorial gains.

As the UK Ministry of Defence noted in December, capturing the city “would potentially allow Russia to threaten the larger urban areas of Kramatorsk and Sloviansk”.

Meanwhile, Ukrainian forces are expected to launch a fresh offensive in the coming weeks to try and regain territory that is currently under Russian

occupation. The operation is expected to begin when long-promised

Western supplies, including German Leopard tanks, arrive in the country.

Darya Trepova: What we know about accused in Russian blogger Vladlen Tatarsky’s killing

The detention of Darya Trepova for the murder of Russian prowar blogger Vladlen Tatarsky has raised questions about the young woman’s background and politics.

Russia media reports say Ms Trepova, 26, handed Tatarsky a statuette which was believed to contain the explosives that killed him. Later in a video released by the Russian Interior Ministry, she is seen admitting she brought the statuette to the cafe where the blast took place.

However, her statement was most likely obtained under duress, and she does not say whether she knew about the explosives.

Russian officials say the murder was planned by Ukrainian security services with the help of the AntiCorruption Foundation (FBK), headed by jailed Russian opposition leader Alexey Navalny, of which they say Ms Trepova is a supporter.

But friends and family say that while she was an anti-war activist - she was reportedly detained at a

protest at the start of the war - her views were not radical and she was not capable of murder.

Her husband Dmitry Rylov suggests she may have been duped.

So what do we know about Darya Trepova?

An acquaintance told the BBC that she went to school in the town of Pushkin outside St Petersburg, adding that she “didn’t seem to have any political views then”.

Other sources say she later enrolled at St Petersburg state university, though it is not clear at what faculty, and she is not believed to have finished her course.

According to another friend, she worked for a long time at a vintage clothes shop in the city, but left her job a month ago to move to Moscow.

It is not clear how long she has been married to Mr Rylov.

In an interview for the Agentstvo telegram channel, friends of Ms Trepova said that their marriage was a “joke” and they were really just friends.

But some reports say the pair

were both arrested at an anti-war rally on 24 February last year, at the start of the invasion of Ukraine.

Ms Trepova was detained for 10 days, apparently for ignoring police requests for the crowd to disperse.

Mr Rylov is said to be a member of a small fringe opposition group called the Libertarian Party, which was involved in the demonstrations. The party said he had emigrated.

It also told the Telegram channel SOTA that Ms Trepova had no connection to the party, and that it condemned Tatarsky’s killing.

Some reports say Mr Rylov is also wanted in connection with the killing.

He told SVTV News that she could not have willingly committed murder. “I believe that my wife was duped,” he said.

“Yes, it’s true that neither of us support the war in Ukraine, but we believe that such acts are impermissible.

“I’m 100% sure that she would never have agreed to anything like this if she had known about it.”

Reports say Russian investigators have not ruled out the possibility that Ms Trepova did not know what was in the statuette. Also, Russian media said

the young woman had been in correspondence with Tatarsky - the victim of the cafe blast - and had attended previous events he was involved in.

Malaysia ends mandatory death penalty for serious crimes

Malaysia’s parliament has voted to remove the country’s mandatory death penalty, potentially sparing more than 1,300 prisoners on death row.

The country has had a moratorium on executions since 2018.

But lawmakers on Monday overwhelmingly voted to remove the death penalty as the mandatory sentence for 11 serious crimes, including murder and terrorism.

Judges will retain discretion to impose capital punishment in

exceptional cases.

But for the most serious crimes, the courts will now hand down life imprisonment sentences of up to 40 years, or corporal punishment such as caning, lawmakers said.

The reforms still need to clear the country’s upper house but are widely expected to pass.

Speaking in parliament on Monday, Malaysia’s deputy law minister said capital punishment was irreversible and had not worked as a deterrent to crime.

“The death penalty has not brought the results it was intended

to bring,” said Ramkarpal Singh.

There are 34 criminal offences punishable by death in Malaysia11 of which before Monday carried the mandatory death penalty.

The new laws once enacted will apply retrospectively, allowing those on death row 90 days to seek a review of their sentences.

There are currently 1,341 such prisoners in the country, more than 60% of whom had received a mandatory sentence according to an Amnesty International assessment.

The legislative process of overturning the country’s death

penalty began last June, when the former government under Prime Minister Ismail Sabri Yaakob announced it would abolish the death penalty as a mandatory punishment.

However Malaysia has been debating abolishing capital punishment for over a decade now. The two critical bills to reform the laws were introduced into parliament last week following a year of political debate.

Rights groups have hailed the reform as a major step forward for Malaysia and the wider South East Asia region, with Human

Rights Watch saying it hoped it might influence neighbouring countries.

Last year, neighbouring citystate Singapore executed 11 people for drug trafficking offences. The military government in Myanmar also handed down its first death sentences in decades, executing four pro-democracy activists.

According to official data, some 1,318 prisoners were hanged between 1992 and 2023 in Malaysia.

Source: BBC

Yevgeny Prigozhin uploaded a video in which he claimed to raise a Russian flag over Bakhmut’s city hall

Darya is said to have worked in a vintage clothes shop in St Petersburg

Emahoy Tsegué-Maryam Guèbrou: The barefoot nun who became Ethiopia’s ‘piano queen’

Emahoy Tsegué-Maryam Guèbrou, the composer and piano-playing nun who died this week at the age of 99, had an extraordinary life, which included being a trailblazer for women’s equality and walking barefoot for a decade in the isolated mountains of northern Ethiopia.

Listening to one of her works can be disconcerting.

It sometimes feels like being tossed around in a small boat at sea, constantly off balance, with little to hold on to. The time signature appears to shift and the scale drifts in and out of familiarity.

The sound of the pioneering pianist reflected the way her life oscillated between parallel worlds.

She was trained in Western classical music but was equally the product of traditional Orthodox Christian chants and tunes.

Her unique musical voice led one critic, Kate Molleson, to argue that Emahoy should be included alongside more familiar names when considering great 20th Century composers.

As a young person, Emahoy was a free-spirited modern woman but she spent much of her later life as a reclusive.

She became a devout nun who lived a humble life in a monastery in a remote part of her country. But in an earlier time she had moved in the high society of the capital, Addis Ababa, where she performed in the court of the country’s last Emperor, Haileselassie I.

Most of her important musical works - recognisable in their complexity and apparent effortlessness - came in the 1960s and 1970s.

This was during a time when her contemporaries in Addis Ababa were blending Western beats with the Ethiopian pentatonic - or fivenote - scale to create a unique fusion of sounds and styles that would later be dubbed Ethio-jazz.

The genre is marked by shuffling soul and funky music as well as big-band swing pieces.

But Emahoy’s compositions and style were distinct. They were just her and her piano producing an intimate, meditative - and unsettling - melancholy informed by a fascinating life punctuated by the momentous events her country experienced during the last century.

She was born in Addis Ababa in December 1923 into a prominent aristocratic family. Her father was a mayor of the historical city of Gondar in the country’s north.

Her given name was Yewubdar - Amharic for “the most beautiful one”- a name she used until she was ordained as a nun at the age of 21.

And with her family came privilege and opportunities.

As a child she was sent to Switzerland with her sister - the first Ethiopian girls to have been sent abroad for education. It was in a Swiss boarding school that she first encountered Western classical music and at the age of eight began playing violin and the piano.

In Europe she felt alienated. “Loneliness grew up with me like a childhood friend,” she said in a book about her father’s life written by her brother, Dawit Gebru.

Music was her consolation.

Upon her return to Ethiopia at the age of 11 she was already an outgoing young girl with an appetite for fashion. But then war and tragedy knocked.

In 1936 Benito Mussolini’s Italy invaded Ethiopia. Three members of her family were killed and she was forced into exile on an island in the Mediterranean. The killing of her relatives left a strong impression on her - later she would compose a song, The Ballad of the Spirits, in their memory.

After five years of occupation, the Italians left Ethiopia and Emahoy returned home where she began work at the ministry of foreign affairs - the first female secretary there. And she drove cars - a rarity for a woman - when the majority of Ethiopians used a horse and cart for travel.

She was determined that her gender would not get in the way.

“Even in my teenage [years] I would say: ‘What is the difference between boys and girls? They are equal,” she told music journalist Molleson for a 2017 BBC documentary about her life.

A few years later she was once again on road.

This time to the Egyptian capital, Cairo, to study music under the Polish violinist Alexander Kontorowicz.

She practised nine hours a day but it was the searing heat that she could not handle. As a

Sadness was always next to me like a friend,” Emahoy was quoted as saying in her brother’s book

consequence, she returned to the cooler climes of Addis Ababa with her teacher, who was appointed the head of the Imperial Guard Band.

While she seemed to enjoy the favours of the emperor for whom she played her music, not all in the aristocratic class were impressed. So when she was given the chance to continue her studies at the Royal Academy of Music in London, she was not permitted to travel - a decision for which her family blame some senior officials.

It changed the trajectory of her life.

Emahoy was heartbroken and sick to the point of being admitted to hospital. Subsequently she took a deep dive into religion. Eventually, she abandoned music - and the city - for a hilltop monastery in a remote part of northern Ethiopia.

She became a nun, shaved her head and stopped wearing shoes.

The death of the monastic community’s archbishop and problems with the soles of her feet led her to return to the capital in her 30s after 10 years of isolation, Molleson says.

She resumed playing music. She continued to shun the spotlight but her compositions took off around this time.

Her years of solitary musings - and the dramatic episodes of her eventful life - were reflected in her compositions. Titles such as The Homeless Wanderer, Mother’s Love and Homesickness hinted at what was on her mind.

“Sadness was always next to me like a friend,” Emahoy was quoted as saying in her brother’s book.

Ethiopian music commentator Sertse Fresibhat called her early works “deep and thoughtful, [composed] at a young age” that received the adulation they deserved only decades later.

She went on to make recordings in Germany in the 1960s and early 1970s to raise money for homeless charities, but only gained notoriety in the West more recently.

Much like her contemporary Ethio-jazz musicians, she was introduced to the wider audience by French musicologist Francis Falceto. His series of Éthiopiques albums were compilations of archive music from the 1960s and 1970s.

Her collection, released in 2006, gained acclaim and led to her work being used in films and adverts.

But by that time she was living in an Ethiopian Orthodox Church monastery in Jerusalem, Israel.

In 1984, when Ethiopia was in the midst of a civil war and in the grips of a Marxist military regime,

she left for the Holy Land and lived the remainder of her life there.

She continued to practise and compose and in her new-found fame welcomed musicologists and critics to discuss her work. She also enlisted Israeli pianist Maya Dunietz to take her manuscripts, and get them published.

In her home country she is often referred as “the Piano Queen”.

Her tunes are everywhere -

some are played during periods of national mourning, while others provide background for audio books and radio shows.

But it is possible that many are unaware that they are her compositions.

They have a sense of timelessness that will no doubt continue to find ears and an audience thrilled to learn more about her near-100-year life.

Source: BBC

Emahoy, seen in this undated picture, was once part of Addis Ababa’s glamorous high society

After 10 years in a monastery in northern Ethiopia, Emahoy returned to the piano

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THE

League clashes against AC

By Amaechi Agbo

Victor Osimhen has assured Napoli fans that he would be available for the Champions League quarter-final clashes against rivals, AC Milan.

The 24 years old was ruled out of Napoli’s Sunday’s Serie A clash with 4th placed Milan after picking up an injury while on International duty with his country, Nigeria.

Osimhen who played all 180 minutes in Nigeria’s double header 2023 Africa Cup of Nations, AFCON qualifiers last month but failed to score, returned to the club with adductor issue which will see him out of action at least for 10 to 12 days.

However, he is targeting the Champions League quarterfinal with the same opponent, as the first leg is at San Siro on April 12, then the decider at the Stadio Diego Armando Maradona on April 18.

“It is nothing serious, but I want to take these 10-12 days to rest and recover,” Osimhen told TG5.

“I hope to be there, but I have also been told and I am convinced that I will be on the pitch against Milan.”

Meanwhile, the Partenopei are at least 19 points clear at

the top of the table and that could well be extended this weekend, especially as Inter lost 1-0 at home to Fiorentina.

“We are all happy and giving our best to make our dream come true. We are close to the objective and can’t wait for that dream to become reality. Naples is extraordinary, so passionate. I have never received so much love and I can’t wait to celebrate the title with them in the stadium and in the streets.”

Football Italia reports that Osimhen has become a hero to the young fans of Napoli, many of whom try to emulate their icon by copying his protective mask and bleached hair, though some also tried a bit too hard and ‘blacked up’ for carnival.

The Nigeria international was asked about the issue of racism and what can be done about it in 2023.

“I will use everything at my disposal to defeat racism. It is not nice to be judged by the colour of your skin. Every parent must make their children understand it is wrong.

“My partner is white, so are many of my friends and I love them all. This racism has to end, because it psychologically damages so many kids.”

By Amaechi Agbo

Former captain, Desire Oparanozie has promised fans that “my best will be your reward” for their support after she was recalled to the Nigeria senior female national football team, the Super Falcons.

The 29 years old was recalled into the Randy Waldrum’s 23-woman list for the two World Cup warm-up matches in Turkey in April.

The Wuhan Jianghan University of China Super League star have been previously omitted from the national team set up including the 2022 Women’s Africa Cup of Nations, WAFCON in Morocco last year where the team recorded their worst continental

campaign in 10 years as well as the Mexico Revelation Cup in February.

Her continued omission, no doubt, had generated hited debate with many being critical of the Nigeria Football Federation, NFF over their continued witch-hunt of the player, as fans and stakeholders questioned her absence from the team.

Since leading the Super Falcons players to demand for their entitlements in France during the 2019 FIFA Women’s World Cup hosted there, and despite her apology thereafter, NFF has continued to omit her from the team set up. She lost her captain armband consequently after the the tournament which the team reached last 16.

However, NFF bowed to pressure and recalled her to the team, a move the player expressed gratitude to the fans and promised to repair them with good performances

“The show of love and support I’ve recieved these past days has been incredibly overwhelming. I’m thankful to everyone of you for your genuine support

“My best will be your reward.” Oparanozie said on verified Twitter handle on Tuesday.

Waldrum called up team captain Onome Ebi, and forwards Asisat Oshoala and Rasheedat Ajibade to the camp of Super Falcons ahead of next month’s international friendly matches in Turkey.

The nine-time African

champions have a date against World Cup-bound Haiti women’s national team at the Emir Sports Complex in Antalya, Turkey on Friday, 7th April, before taking on World Cup co-hosts New Zealand at the Mardan Sports Complex also in Antalya on Tuesday, 11th April.

ALL THE INVITED PLAYERS:

Goalkeepers: Chiamaka Nnadozie (Paris FC, France); Yewande Balogun (AS SaintEtienne, France); Inyene Etim (Abia Angels)

Defenders: Onome Ebi (Abia Angels); Osinachi Ohale (Deportivo Alaves, Spain); Ashleigh Plumptre (Leicester City, England); Glory Ogbonna (Besiktas JK, Turkey); Rofiat Imuran (Stade de Reims, France); Michelle Alozie (Houston

Dash, USA); Oluwatosin Demehin (Stade de Reims, France)

Midfielders : Halimatu Ayinde (FC Rosengard, Sweden); Christy Ucheibe (SL Benfica, Portugal); Ngozi Okobi-Okeoghene (FC Levante Las Planas, Spain); Deborah Abiodun (Rivers Angels); Toni Payne (Sevilla FC, Spain); Regina Otu (AS Saint-Etienne, France)

Forwards: Asisat Oshoala (Barcelona Femenin, Spain); Rasheedat Ajibade (Atletico Madrid, Spain); Esther Okoronkwo (AS Saint-Etienne, France); Ifeoma Onumonu (NY/NJ Gotham FC, USA); Uchenna Kanu (Racing Louisville, Kentucky, USA); Desire Oparanozie (Wuhan Chegu Jianghan, China); Gift Monday (UDG Tenerife, Spain)

“I will be back for Champions

Milan” - Osimhen Assures Napoli Fans

“My best will be your reward” – Oparanozie Promises Fans After Falcons Return

Victor Osimhen

AC Milan Thrash Napoli In Victor Osimhen's Absence

Serie A league leaders, SC Napoli had a night to forget on Sunday as they were thrashed 4-0 by visiting AC Milan in what is regarded as the Champions League quarter-final rehearsal with their talismanic goals scorer, Victor Missing due to injury

In the first of three matchups between Milan and Napoli this month, the defending Serie A champion routed this season’s runaway leader 4-0 on Sunday ahead of two more clashes in the Champions League quarterfinals in two week's time.

Rafael Leão scored twice and Brahim Diaz set up one goal and scored another to hand Napoli its heaviest defeat of what otherwise has been an extraordinary season.

“We’re happy with the performance but it’s just one game,” Milan coach Stefano Pioli said. “Tonight’s result has nothing to do with the Champions League games, because that’s a different competition. That will be a very balanced contest.”

Napoli’s only other losses in the Italian league this season both came by scores of 1-0, to Inter Milan in January and to Lazio a month ago.

Napoli was also beaten 2-0 by Liverpool in the final match of the Champions League group phase but that loss came after the Partenopei had already clinched a spot in the round of 16.

Otherwise, Napoli’s only other defeat in 2022-23 came against Cremonese on penalties in the Italian Cup.

Milan moved up to third place, 20 points behind Napoli and four points behind Lazio.

Milan controlled from the start at the Diego Armando Maradona stadium and Diaz set up Milan’s early opener for Leão with a perfect through ball. Leão — last season's MVP — then did the rest by chipping in over Napoli goalkeeper Alex Meret.

Diaz produced some more fireworks when he faked out Mario Rui to score with a deflection from close range in the 25th.

It marked the first time that Napoli conceded twice in the opening 25 minutes of a Serie A game since a match against Juventus in Aug. 2019.

Boxing: President Buhari lauds

Joshua’s victory against Franklin

By Amaechi Agbo

Nigeria President, Muhammadu Buhari has celebrates the victory of Nigerian-born British boxer, Anthony Joshua, over Jermaine Franklin on Saturday night.

The President in a releases signed by his Special Adviser on Media and Publicity, Femi Adesina, commended the triumph of the gifted pugilist over a formidable opponent.

Extolling the mentality of Joshua, who did not allow personal setbacks and obstacles to dent his resilient spirit, the President says the former three-time world heavyweight champion has demonstrated that by hard work, patience, dedication, persistence and humility, those who dare do win.

“President Buhari lauds Joshua for his courage and discipline, on and off the ring, and prays that this success will be a stepping stone to one of the greatest comebacks in boxing history.

“The President believes that the accomplishments of Joshua on the world stage will continue to inspire many upcoming professionals, particularly sportsmen and women, not to be discouraged by temporary defeats and setbacks.

“He wishes Joshua a bright future and fulfilling career,” the statement reads.

Anthony Joshua returned to winning ways with a unanimous points victory over Jermaine Franklin at London’s O2 Arena.

The British heavyweight, 33, controlled the contest against the durable American but it was not the explosive early finish many expected.

Anthony Joshua started another journey en route the top, defeating Jermaine Franklin in a keenly contested Boxing match that stretched to 12 rounds.

Joshua won the bout by unanimous decision (118-111, 117-111, 117-111)

Tempers flared after the final bell as the two fighters squared up to each other, prompting their teams to enter the ring and be separated by security.

It is Joshua’s first win in more than two years, having lost consecutive bouts to WBA (Super), IBF and WBO world champion Oleksandr Usyk.

“No knockout, so no good. It is a brutal sport, but knockouts are everything. I’m

not too happy,” Joshua told 5 Live Boxing.

“I could have thrown more shots, and I should have, no excuses. But I will. That is part of coming back; you have to be your own biggest critic.”

He also called out fellow Briton and WBC champion Tyson Fury, saying: “I try and provide for the fans. I know who they want. They said Tyson Fury - the ball is in his court.”

Bala Nikyu resigns as Nassarawa United Coach after poor run of form

With eight defeats, two wins and two draws in 12 matches, Bala Nikyu, Technical Adviser of Nasarawa United FC, has parted ways with the Club on mutual consent after three seasons at the helm of affairs.

The former Nigeria U-17 female national team coach’s exit from the Solid Miners followed the team’s extremely poor results in the ongoing 2022/23 Nigeria Premier Football League Season, particularly the 1-2 home loss to newcomers, El-Kanemi Warriors FC of Maiduguri on matchday 12 on Saturday, 1st April, 2023, at the

New Jos Stadium.

Nassarawa United are in danger of relegation to the second division, Nigeria National League, NNL after collecting just 8 points from 36 in 12 league matches in the abridged league and are 9 on Group A table which has ten clubs

Coach Nikyu thanked the Club and its wonderful supporters for the opportunity given to him to serve, describing Nasarawa United as a big and amazing club with so much to offer.

The Management of Nasarawa United headed by

Chief Barr. Isaac Danladi, has welcomed the decision of Coach Bala Nikyu to throw in the towel, and wished him the best in his future endeavour.

Subsequently, the Management has confirmed that Head Coach, Abubakar Arikya, will become Acting Technical Adviser pending the appointment of a substantive Technical Adviser, with Samson Keshi Marwa, Balarabe Ibrahim and Ibrahim Yahaya Sabo working as his assistants.

Barr. Danladi told the Club’s Media: “This is not the best time for us as a Club in the league.

“We thank the Coach for his

wisdom to step down from his role. Yes, the results are not what we ever envisaged, but we hope this is the best for both parties, going forward.

“We have but six league matches remaining and we have a herculean task on our hands to stabilize in the league.

“There is no better time to join forces than now. Everyone has to be at his best to ensure the highest possible result for our darling Club and our teaming supporters.”

Bala Nikyu was first appointed as Nasarawa United Coach in November 2018 and later reappointed in 2021.

Anthony Joshua (in white) defeated Franklin Jermaine on Saturday night

Jurgen Klopp says he is still Liverpool manager ‘because of the past, not this season’

Jurgen Klopp has said he is still Liverpool manager “because of the past” rather than his team’s current form.

Brendan Rodgers and Graham Potter were sacked on Sunday, meaning a record 12 Premier League managers have been dismissed this season.

Liverpool are in danger of their worst league finish under Klopp, whose team visit Chelsea on Tuesday, but his position is yet to come under scrutiny.

“If it was my first season it would be slightly different,” said the German.

“I’m aware of the fact that I’m sitting here because of the past, not because of what we did this season.”

Klopp, 55, has helped Liverpool win club football’s major honours during seven and a half years at Anfield, making him the longest-serving manager in the Premier League.

The Reds have lost their past three

games in all competitions and are eighth in the league, the position they finished in 2015-16 - the season in which Klopp took over from previous manager Rodgers.

“We have smart owners, they know about the situation,” he added.

“There is no need [for me] to be afraid, I am here to deliver, I’m not here as a talisman or for murals on house walls.

“I know I’m still here because of what happened in the last few years.

“I don’t like the fact that I pretty much have to rely on that. Is it right or not? We’ll see in the future.”

Liverpool challenged Manchester City for the Premier League title in three of the previous four seasons, winning the club’s first top-flight title in 30 years in 2019-20.

However, they are 30 points behind current leaders Arsenal after Saturday’s 4-1 defeat at City.

With 11 games left, Klopp’s side are eight points off the Champions League

qualification places.

“I’m fully in, there’s no doubt about that, but we have to sort it,” he said. “We cannot continue playing like we do from time to time. That’s not allowed.

“I’m really disappointed about us, that we do these kind of things, but it happened. Now we have to find a way out and that’s what we’re constantly working on.”

‘If you don’t reach expectations, you have to accept the decisions’

Speaking at Monday’s news conference to preview Liverpool’s game at Chelsea, Klopp joked that he was the Premier League’s “last man standing”.

“I think probably the elephant in the room, from your point of view, is why I am still sitting here, in this crazy world,” he said.

Over in Klopp’s native Germany, Bayern Munich sacked Julian Nagelsmann on 24 March to replace him

with Potter’s predecessor at Chelsea, Thomas Tuchel.

Antonio Conte (Tottenham), Rodgers (Leicester) and Potter were then dismissed in the space of seven days.

“It’s a strange week,” said Klopp. “The season gets into a decisive part and people are afraid of maybe not reaching their targets.

“But I would say for all four their football managing future is still bright so it’s not a disaster. It’s a situation they probably don’t like but it’s part of the business.”

Klopp said that 12 Premier League managers being sacked this season was “an awful number, but it is how it is”.

He added: “Some clubs are underachieving this year. We are, other clubs are too.

“There are expectations out there, rightly so, and if you don’t reach them then you have to accept the decisions.”

Tinubu deftly skips land mines to victory

Jose Mourinho linked to Chelsea return

Roma manager, José Mourinho insists contracts are ‘not the most important thing’ in football amid reports of a potential return to Chelsea in the summer.

The Giallorossi boss is under contract at the Stadio Olimpico until June 2024, but his future at the club remains uncertain.

When asked whether he plans to remain at Roma for the final year of his contract, Mourinho replied: “I don’t speak about my future with my friends or journalists.

“Our CEO Berardi said a few months ago that I would have stayed, but it’s his interpretation of things and the same applies to [journalist Ivan] Zazzaroni. From a contract perspective, I have another year left, but contracts sometimes are not the most important thing.”

Mourinho was speaking at a post-match press conference after a 3-0 win over Sampdoria on Sunday, which allowed the Giallorossi to reach Inter in the top four in Serie A.

Zazzaroni wrote on Il Corriere dello Sport last week that Mourinho had decided to remain at Roma, but the Special One’s latest claims mean he hasn’t yet made a decision over his future in the Capital.

Multiple reports in Italy claim Mourinho expects more investments in the summer transfer window to remain at the club.

The 60-year-old is reportedly among the candidates to take over at Chelsea next season and several fans have been calling for his appointment on social media.

The Blues sacked Graham Potter on Sunday and will be looking for a new manager for 2023-24 after appointing Bruno Saltor as an interim coach until the end of the current campaign.

From the very beginning when Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu, the Jagaban of Borgu kingdom and former governor of Lagos , (Nigeria’s commercial nerve centre) signalled his intention to vie for Nigeria’s topmost position hurdles had been placed to the right and left of him to make him fall by the wayside and thus scuttle his ambition. But he scaled over them, deftly. He thereby confounded his critics. Political observers are doffing their hats and head gears to him. For with his emergence as winner of Nigeria’s most keenly followed presidential election, he proved thereby that he is a master of the game, a strategist.

Result of the presidential election is not surprising for someone like Asiwaju who had been preparing for decades, building up political capital towards this day. The battle for who should take over from President Muhammadu Buhari within the APC’s fold started surreptitiously when Buhari constituted his cabinet in November, 2015. Recall that Babatunde Fashola was assigned three portfolios, namely, Works, Housing and Power, thereby making him a ‘super minister’. It was learnt that the raison d’etre was to empower him to be able to challenge Asiwaju in the next cyle of elections. Recall also that in the initial years as ‘super minister’ there was some friction between federal and Lagos governments over federal projects in the state, notably federal roads and abandoned federal assets. The minister was said to have exhibited a disposition that was not in best interests of Lagos state. However, over time this frosty relationship was upturned and Minister Fashola played a prominent role in Jagaban’s victory, being in charge of the situation Room. One can say that Asiwaju effectively ‘killed’ the plot to groom one of his godsons as a presidential candidate.

Planning ahead, Tinubu had succeeded in getting one of his allies(former Edo state governor, Adams Oshiomhole) to take over from the pioneer APC chairman, Oyegun. Having a buddy as the ruling party’s chairman is one of the powerful structures an APC presidential aspirant should count on his side since the Party’s National Working Committee led by its Chairman is the organ that organises primary election to pick the party’s flag bearer. Somehow Asiwaju’s opponents within the APC sniffed the scent and succeeded in convincing President Muhammadu Buhari to dissolve the Oshiomhole-led APC NWC before expiration of its tenure.

By VICTORIA NGOZI IKEANO

It was replaced by an Interim Committee chaired by the Yobe State governor, Alhaji Mai Mala Bunu. Although this Committee was to last for only six months, it had its tenure extended again and again. This was amidst complaints by some chieftains that it was an aberration because a political party should be run by elected officials. As the timeline given by INEC for conduct of primaries by political parties drew nearer it became imperative for the Bunuled Interim Committee to hand over to elected officials. And so the machinery for this was put in motion. Interested APC members began their campaigns in earnest in anticipation of a battle royale. Asiwaju’s camp of course had a candidate they were supporting and hoped would win. But in the 11th hour former Nasarawa state governor and senator, Turakin Keffi, Alhaji Abdullahi Adamu joined the race as Mr. President’s preferred Chairman, the consensus candidate. All other chairmanship contestants duly stepped down one after the other for him.

The election itself was a fait accompli on the appointed day. Majority of the APC National Working Committee members were elected by affirmation, consensus, save for very few posts like the woman leader that was voted for. With installation of a chairman that is not ‘beholden’ to him, Tinubu’s opponents within the party apparently thought they were having an upper hand as preparations for the primaries to pick the party’s presidential flag bearer gathered momentum.

The run up to the primaries was characterised by intrigues,

twists and turns. Sensing that the mood of the nation is to have a southerner succeed President Buhari a northerner, Asiwaju’s opponents within the corridors of power tried to railroad former President Good luck Jonathan and CBN governor Godwin Emefiele into the race. Emefiele later discreetly dropped off. Many believed Jonathan was being lined up as a consensus candidate. But this too came to naught.

At the screening exercise all aspirants said that they would consent to a consensus candidate But Tinubu declined, opting instead, for election. Still, the party’s hierarchy and some other stakeholders continued to push for a consensus candidate. The general view amongst them was that their presidential flagbearer should emerge the same way the chairman was chosen, through consensus. And so the date for the primary was postponed again and again, in an apparent desperate search for a consensus APC presidential candidate.

From the blues, senate president, Ahmad Lawan was thrown up as the “consensus” candidate. But President Babangida disowned him, stating in writing that he had no “annointed” candidate. And so notwithstanding the screening committee’s effort at pruning down number of contestants, the northern governors’ work at limiting the primary to only five southern aspirants, the floor was thrown open to all. So, all 23 aspirants (the largest number of presidential aspirants for any political party) slugged it out on the D-Day. Here, Tinubu triumphed in his quest for an elective primary.

The vice president was thought to be favoured being Buhari’s right hand man so to speak. To the amazement of many, some of the aspirants began to step down one after the other for Jagaban. And he won the primary election with a wide margin!. ‘No be juju be that’ the average Nigerian would say in local parlance.

Then came the campaigns. What would the ruling party’s presidential flag bearer be campaigning on in view of the fact that the poverty, unemployment and inflation statistics are not good for the ruling APC? The main opposition party seized on this by urging Nigerians to vote APC out because of its perceived ‘poor performance’. Asiwaju maintained that he would continue with the ‘good works’ of President Buhari whilst improving on others. In particular he urged the electorate to judge him by his personal achievements as Lagos state governor.

And then few weeks to the presidential election Jagaban’s opponents within his own ruling APC played their trump card against him. An excruciating nation wide fuel and cash scarcity that was to cause further disenchantment with the party and anything associated with it. Somehow and miraculously, Asiwaju scaled over this last and hardest hurdle confounding his opponents; although it had the effect that he did not win with a landslide and that he lost in some key states like Lagos, Kano and Kaduna. Still, Asiwaju won by over two million votes. My respects sir! And still, his die hard critics in yet another desperate bid to stop him are broaching the idea of an interim national government to scuttle his swearing win. I sense that this historic event shall pass relatively peacefully on May, 29, after which we shall be writing about the challenges confronting the. Bola Tinubu Presidency

“

The main opposition party seized on this by urging Nigerians to vote APC out because of its perceived ‘poor performance’. Asiwaju maintained that he would continue with the ‘good works’ of President Buhari whilst improving on others.