Angry youths on Wednesday blocked a major road in Asaba to protest the alleged killing of a young man for refusing to pay N100 bribe to policemen along the Ugbolu-Asaba road.
They carried the corpse of the young man in protest to the premises of the police headquarters in Asaba, the Delta State capital.
For Easter celebrations, the Federal Government has declared Friday and Monday as holidays.
This information was released by the interior minister, Rauf Aregbesola, in a statement on Wednesday that was signed by the permanent secretary of the ministry, Shuaib Begore.
Aregbesola urged Christians to imitate the qualities of selflessness, camaraderie, forgiveness, kindness, love, peace, and patience that were characteristics and deeds of Jesus Christ, as demonstrated by His earthly ministry.
The minister likewise urged Nigerians of all faiths to use the occasion of Easter this year to pray for an end to all security issues in the country.
“Security is everybody’s business. I, therefore, urge Nigerians and foreigners resident in our country to display a high sense of citizenship and public spiritedness by supporting the efforts of all security agencies in bringing peace and security of lives and property of the citizenry,” Aregbesola said.
The minister assured that the Federal Government is doing all necessary to ensure a peaceful government transition following the peaceful conduct of elections.
Aregbesola also enjoined all Christians at home and in the Diaspora to love their neighbours through acts of kindness and generosity of spirit, with the well-to-do sharing their substance with the less privileged around them.
He assured Nigerians that the nation is on the path to greatness and urged them to positively deploy their creative energy to realise it.
The Senate adjourned its regular session on Wednesday until April 25, 2023, so that senators could observe Easter and Eid-El-Fitr holidays.
Just before the end of the plenary in Abuja, the Senate President, Ahmad Lawan, made the announcement.
He stated that during this time, lawyers would be able to take part in their various religious activities and get some well-earned rest.
details soon…
A Federal Capital Territory FCT High Court has issued an order restricting the Labour Party’s National Chairman, Mr. Julius Abure, National Secretary, Farouk Ibrahim, and two other individuals from holding themselves out as party national officers.
The National Organization Secretary, Mr. Clement Ojukwu, and another individual have also been prohibited from posing as National Officers.
On Wednesday in Abuja, Justice Hamza Muazu issued the restraining order after ruling on an ex-parte application that was brought by Senior Advocate of Nigeria SAN James Ogwu Onoja.
Onoja had described to the court in the application how the restrained national officers were alleged to have falsified several FCT High Court documents to conduct illegal substitutions in the most recent general election.
Among the documents were the receipts, seals and affidavits of the Court to carry out criminal activities. The Senior lawyer who tendered several documents confirmed to the Judge that the Chief Registrar of the Court wrote the Labour Party to disown several documents used for the alleged criminal activities by Abure and three others. Onoja said following their indictment by a police investigation, the four people are to be arraigned in court adding that warrants for their arrest have already been obtained. In a brief ruling, Justice Muazu held that the application and the supporting affidavits have a good case for the request to be granted. The Judge subsequently ordered that the four people should immediately stop parading themselves as National Officers of the Labour Party.
Details later…
In order to “seek clarity” regarding a recent government decree that prohibits women from working for the international organization throughout the nation, the United Nations mission in Afghanistan will speak with Taliban representatives in Kabul on Wednesday.
Since taking control in August 2021, the Taliban government has put a variety of restrictions on Afghan women, including prohibiting them from many government jobs and higher education.
The Taliban’s first administration, which ran from 1996 to 2001, was accused of repeatedly violating human rights, particularly those of girls and women, according to the UN. The growing restrictions are similar to those during that administration.
On Tuesday, the UN said the Taliban government had extended a ban on women working for non-governmental organisations to the world body.
“UNAMA received word of an order by the de facto authorities that bans female national staff members of the United Nations from working,” spokesman for the secretary-general, Stephane Dujarric, told reporters, adding that the UN had heard “from various conduits that this applies to the whole country”.
The UN had so far been exempt from a December order for all foreign and domestic NGOs to stop women from working across the crisis-stricken nation.
Dujarric said no written order had yet been received, but that the UN was to hold meetings with the Taliban on Wednesday in Kabul to “seek some clarity”.
For UN chief Antonio Guterres, Dujarric said, “any such ban would be unacceptable and frankly, inconceivable”.
“This is the latest in a disturbing trend undermining the ability of aid organisations to reach those most in need,” he added.
“Female staff members are essential for the United Nations to deliver lifesaving assistance,” he said, noting that the UN is working to reach 23 million people with humanitarian aid in Afghanistan.
A foreign aid worker said the ban on UN women will have a huge impact.
“Women employees identify women beneficiaries, that’s how it works across agencies, and that work will be further affected with the extension of this ban to UN women staff,” he told AFP on condition of anonymity.
The UN employs around 400 Afghan women — the bulk of some 600 female staff members working in Afghanistan, according to UN figures. There are about 3,300 Afghans in total in the 3,900-strong UN workforce in the country.
“It’s very difficult to imagine how we deliver humanitarian aid without our female staff,” Dujarric said, noting that “obviously, given the society and the culture, you need women to deliver aid to women”.
After the ban was announced last year, several NGOs suspended their entire operations in protest, piling further misery on Afghanistan’s 38 million citizens, half of whom are facing hunger, according to aid agencies.
Days of discussions led to an agreement that women working in the health aid sector would be exempt from the decree, and UN staff, including those in the aid sector, were never beholden to the ban.
Last month, however, UNAMA chief Roza Otunbayeva told the UN Security Council she feared the Taliban government could extend the ban imposed on women working for NGOs to the UN’s women staff.
In a tweet, the agency earlier on Tuesday expressed “serious concern that female national UN staff have been prevented from reporting to work in Nangarhar province”.
Taliban government spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid told AFP he was seeking information on the matter in Nangarhar.
Since surging back to power, the Taliban government has imposed an austere interpretation of Islam.
Authorities have barred teenage girls from secondary school, women have been pushed out of many government jobs, prevented from travelling without a male relative and ordered to cover up outside of the home, ideally with a burqa.
Women have also been banned from universities and are not allowed to enter parks or gardens.
UN special rapporteur on human rights in Afghanistan Richard Bennett said in a recent speech in Geneva that the Taliban authorities’ policy “may amount to the crime of gender persecution”.
According to the Kano State Fire Service, a commercial bus caught fire on Tuesday, killing three female passengers and injuring 13 others.
In a statement he gave to Kano newsmen, the service’s public relations officer, Alhaji Saminu Abdullahi, confirmed the incident.
According to him, the Toyota Hiace bus with the license plate XE 222 TRN, a commercial vehicle, caught fire near the Government Technical College in the state’s Nassarawa Local Government Area.
He claimed that the incident happened as the bus traveling from Ajingi LGA to Kofar Wambai caught fire.
According to the statement, firefighters and officers of the Federal Road Safety Corps were able to extinguish the fire and save the majority of the victims.
Abdullahi, who said three women in the bus were burnt beyond recognition, gave two of their names as Surayya Umar and Zeenai Babaji.
Abdullahi said the remaining 13 victims, who sustained various degrees of injury, were taken to the Murtala Muhammad Specialist Hospital, Kano, for treatment.
He said that the driver, Muhammed Gali, 35, and his bus conductor Hassan Danladi, 30, were also rescued without any injury and handed over to the police.
The fire service official, who attributed the cause of the accident to a speeding limit violation and a burst rear tyre, implored motorists to drive with caution.
Falz, a well-known Nigerian rapper, has claimed that despite his recent confrontational song questioning the 2023 elections, he has not gone into hiding.
The singer insisted that he is not afraid of dying in a recent interview with Arise TV, claiming that life in Nigeria has no purpose.
It was recalled that Falz and Vector performed the diss track “Yakubu,” which was named after Prof. Mahmood Yakubu, the chairman of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC).
The rappers criticized Yakubu in the song, among others, for electoral fraud and misusing the N300 billion given to the electoral body.
Falz, who joined the program from the United Kingdom via Skype during the interview, said he was afraid to travel. He said, “I knew that was going to come up when you announced that I was doing this from London. As I said earlier on, this is not the first time, this is not the second time, and this is not the third time.
“I have released tons of records that are very confrontational. And I was on the ground. I’m always on the ground when I released these records.
“It is not to say that I’m running anywhere. Absolutely not. Everyone knows where to find me. If anyone wants to find me. But I have no reason to fear anything. And I always say this when people ask me ‘How do you do these things without any fear of consequences?’
“And this is the same answer that I always give: the kind of life we are living already is one which we are more or less fading away already. It’s not a meaningful life that we have in Nigeria as a country.
“What’s the worst that could happen? It’s death. I don’t fear death. I would rather go down fighting for a just cause. I would rather be remembered as someone that lived a life that was meaningful rather than someone that for example was walking down the road and got run over by a danfo [bus] because he was driving recklessly.
“Or, someone that got a heart disease and could not save himself because there are no hospitals capable of saving him in Nigeria.”
Renewed Hope Advocates (RHA), a group that supports Bola Tinubu for president, has accused Femi Gbajabiamila, speaker of the House of Representatives, of spreading a rumor that he would be named Bola Tinubu’s chief of staff.
According to reports that surfaced on Tuesday, Gbajabiamila is going to be Tinubu’s new chief of staff. The report asserted that the Speaker has begun performing tasks like planning Tinubu’s schedule.
In a statement by the Director General, Olufemi-Daniels Agbaoku, the group said the report was false because there was no such consideration on the card at the time of the said report.
Agbaoku said the Speaker had become “inexplicably desperate” about the job.
He added that Gbajabiamila was the one selling the narrative, with a view to being favoured for the job by Asiwaju Tinubu over and above anyone else.
According to The Nation, Agbaoku advised Tinubu to ignore the pressure being mounted by Gbajabiamila and his cronies and go for a more competent hand with the right temperament, mindset, and credibility for the job.
He noted that the president-elect can not be struggling with the legitimacy of his mandate at the moment and still battle the credibility crisis of his Chief of Staff.
He said the president’s office could not be traded on such a “pedestrian altar of man knows man.”
President Muhammadu Buhari has ordered the Executive Vice Chairman (EVC) of the National Agency for Science and Engineering Infrastructure (NASENI), Professor Mohammed Sani Haruna, to vacate office immediately.
According to a statement from the Office of the Secretary to the Government of the Federation, Prof. Haruna has been mandated to hand over his office to the next most senior officer in the establishment.
The statement said the action follows the reversal of the extension in office granted by the President from 2nd April, 2023 to 2nd of April, 2025 due to the fact that the EVC had completed two tenures of five years each in the organization.
In a statement circulated by Willie Bassey, Director, Information office of the SGF on Tuesday, noted that the President appreciates the contributions of Professor Haruna in the development of the engineering infrastructure sub-sector of the economy, and wishes him success in his future endeavours.
DAMATURU – Yobe State Governor Mai Mala Buni presented President Muhammadu Buhari with his Certificate of Return today at the Aso Rock Mansion.
President Buhari wished the governor a fruitful term that will bring the people greater democratic benefits.
Governor Buni received praise from the President for his outstanding first term performance, which convinced Yobe state residents to elect him to a second term.
On my visit to Yobe state early this year, I was impressed with the projects you carried out, he remarked.
Buhari prayed for the governor’s prosperity and expressed faith in his ability to perform better in his second time in office.
