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The Women Aid Collective, WACOL, has rejected some portions of the report presented by the Panel of Enquiry set up by the Enugu State Police Command to investigate alleged assault on a female lawyer and some other staff of the organization. Four policemen from the Abakpa Area Command of the Nigeria Police Force had allegedly invaded the WACOL office in Enugu and brutally assaulted some of the staff on duty, including a female lawyer, Mrs. Goodness Ibanga. Following the development, the Commissioner of Police in the State, CP Ahmed Abdurrahman constituted the panel of enquiry headed by a senior police officer in the command. In its report presented on Monday, the Panel, however, said its investigations showed that the alleged beating was false, even as it claimed no WACOL property was damaged. It said it only discovered that there was ‘dragging’, and that the policemen involved in the act would be punished. In a reaction, the Executive Director of WACOL,...

There was jubilation in Enugu State, Tuesday, as civil servants marched through the streets of Enugu to the Government House, to thank Governor Ifeanyi Ugwuanyi for being the first governor of the state, since the inception of democracy in 1999, to pay them the minimum wage without rancour. The jubilant workers, who were led by the leadership of the Organized Labour in the state, comprising the State Chairman of the Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC), Comrade Virginus Nwobodo, his Trade Union Congress (TUC) counterpart, Comrade Benneth Asogwa and Chairman of the Joint Public Service Negotiating Council, Comrade Igbokwe Chukwuma Igbokwe, among others, marched from the State Secretariat in GRA, through Garden Avenue, Ogui road and Bisala down to the Government House at Independence Layout. It was such an emotional event as the workers sang solidarity songs while also thanking Gov. Ugwuanyi for paying them the agreed new minimum wage, during the weekend. They displayed banners and...

PRESIDENT Muhammadu Buhari on Sunday warned local communities in Katsina State not to mete out capital punishment on any suspected bandits they catch, rather they should hand them over to the law enforcement authorities. The President said that meting out capital punishment on the bandits could lead to cycle of revenge and counter revenge. While condemning the latest round of attacks on farmers by bandits in Damkal and Tsanwa villages in Batsari local government area of Katsina state, President Buhari said that killing people in the name of revenge was not acceptable. According to the statement issued by the Senior Special Assistant to the President on Media and Publicity, Mallam Garba Shehu, the President gave the warning in his reaction to the incident in which many homesteads were razed by fire with many people killed at weekend. President Buhari in the statement warned that “no one in the country has a right to take laws into his hands by the way of self-help or reveng...

The Federal Government of Nigeria says it has met the demands of the United States for it to reverse the visa restrictions slammed on Nigeria.  A statement yesterday by Mohammed Manga, Director, Press & Public Relations, Ministry of Interior, said the minister, Rauf Aregbesola, made the call in Abuja yesterday while receiving the American Ambassador to Nigeria, Mary Beth Leonard and her team. The minister said, as chairman, Presidential Committee on the Citizen Data Management and Harmonization, he was bold to say that Nigeria had complied with most of the issues of concern raised by America, including, but not limited to the uploading of over 700 stolen/lost passports on the Nigeria Immigration Service’s database.  He called on the US to consider the long standing relationship between both countries and reverse its visa restrictions on Nigeria. He appealed to the US to review its visa validity to Nigerians from two years limit to at least five ye...

Muyiwa  Folohunso is the Chief Executive Officer of Divergent Enterprise, the parent company of  Nigeria’s biggest pig farm,  Pork M oney. I n this interview,  he  talks about  the country’s  investment climate, economic diversification, among o ther issues . Excerpts. The Federal Government  of Nigeria  maintains its determination to diverse the economy, do you think that is achievable? It is definitely achievable. The diversification of the economy is probably the only option left for development. This is because the economy cont inues to  rely so much on crude  oil.  The numbers speak for thems elves. Oil accounts for 80 per cent of government’ s revenue and 90  per cent  of foreign exchange earnings. No country ,   especially one that is blessed with a lot of natural resources like Nigeria,  can totally depen d on one economic sector .  I believe that there are great opportun...

Medical staff transfer a patient of a highly suspected case of a new coronavirus at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Hong Kong, China The highest level of court in China, Supreme People’s Court, is expected to give an approval on Friday for the mass killing of coronavirus patients in China as sure means of controlling the spread of the deadly virus. The State tells the court that China is on the verge of losing its health workers to Coronavirus as at least 20 health workers contract the virus daily. The State argues that coronavirus patients admitted at hospitals only have their deaths delayed and infect many others while receiving care at the hospital. China has been under criticism for human rights violations and organizations have questioned China’s approach in dealing with the Coronavirus outbreak and it is believed the country has already killed many of its coronavirus patients. The State mentioned in a document to the court that the country may lose its entir...

Following an assessment of the 92 political parties in Nigeria, the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, Thursday, said only 18 political parties survived, including one registered after the elections and another that obtained a court order to avoid being deregistration. At a press conference in Abuja, Mahmood Yakubu, INEC Chairman, announced that the commission decided to re-register 74 of them. Yakubu said the affected parties failed to meet the criteria provided for by section 225A of the 1999 Constitution (as amended). The conditions, according to the said section, include: “breach of any of the requirements for registration as a party, failure to win at least 25 percent of the votes cast in one state in a presidential election or 25 percent of the votes cast in one local government area, and failure to win at least one ward in a Chairmanship election, one seat in the national or state assembly election or one seat in a councilorship election." Here a...

Top Nigerian actor, Ufuoma McDermott, has sponsored 100 Nigerians to see Merry Men 2 at IMAX Cinema in Lekki, Phase 1, Lagos.  L-R: Ayo Makun, Producer of the movie Merry Men 2; Adedoyin Ayomide, Operations Manager,  PorkMoney; Ufuoma McDermott, Star Actor of Merry Men 2; and Ozioma Ubabukoh, Principal Consultant,  Plexus Media Interlinks, during a Meet & Greet with Ufuoma McDermott/Free Movie Viewing of Merry Men 2 in Lagos, on Saturday. PorkMoney said that it took the decision to support the project “in order to inculcate in young Nigerians the need to live a life devoid of crime and imbibe sound moral virtues, using the lead character Zara Aminu (played by Ufuoma McDermott) as a case study.” PorkMoney is one of the largest privately owned pig farms in West Africa.  Speaking at a ‘Meet and Greet’ session with fans and journalists after the movie viewing on January 25, 2020, McDermott said that given the evolving age of Information and Commu...