Author: Chief Editor

Organisers of the Aisha Buhari Invitational Women’s Football Tournament have confirmed that FIFA President, Gianni Infantino, CAF President, Dr. Patrice Motsepe, FIFA General-Secretary, Fatma Samoura, and other world football dignitaries would be at the six-nation tournament scheduled to hold in Lagos between September 14 and 20, 2021. The football showpiece which is in honour of Nigeria’s First Lady, Her Excellency, Aisha Buhari will have in attendance women football powerhouses in Africa namely hosts, Nigeria, Cameroon, Ghana, South Africa and merging powers, Mali and Morocco. Main mover of the event, NFF President and FIFA Council Member, Amaju Pinnick conveyed the information…

England Manager, Gareth Southgate, has condemned as “unforgivable”‘ the racial abuse targeting his three players who missed penalties in Sunday’s Euro 2020 final defeat to Italy. Marcus Rashford, Jadon Sancho and Bukayo Saka were the victims of a stream of abuse on Twitter and Instagram following the 3-2 shoot-out loss at Wembley. While some people identifying as England fans used racial slurs in blaming the trio for the defeat, other offensive messages were accompanied with “forza italia” hashtags. England’s players have made a strong stand against racism at the tournament, taking a knee before their games including Sunday’s final. “For…

The Chief Executive Officer of Monimichelle Sports Facility Group, Ebi Egbe, has declared that for Nigeria to fully benefit from Amaju Melvin Pinnick’s position as FIFA Council member, he (Amaju) would need to remain as president of the nation’s soccer governing body, NFF. Egbe in a release made available to the media yesterday, pointed out that the country cannot afford to have another person leading the soccer federation when the incumbent has risen to the pinnacle of football administration at the global level. He noted that administering football and other sports was quite different from partisan politics where one takes…

President Cyril Ramaphosa on Monday said the deadly unrest gripping the country is unprecedented in post-apartheid South Africa as he deployed troops to help police crush the violence and looting sparked by the jailing of ex-president Jacob Zuma. Soldiers were sent onto the streets of the country’s two most densely populated provinces of Gauteng, which houses the country’s economic hub Johannesburg and KwaZulu-Natal, Zuma’s home province. “Over the past few days and nights, there have been acts of public violence of a kind rarely seen in the history of our democracy,” said Ramaphosa in a televised address to the nations,…

Former Governor of Zamfara State, Senator Sani Yerima, has stated that there was a need for the country to use technology as much as possible to sanitise its electoral process. Yerima’s intervention came following recent media reports suggesting that electronic transmission of results by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) has been expunged from Electoral Act Amendment Bill 2021 due for passage before the National Assembly. Section 50 (2) of the Electoral Act Bill, which is presently before the National Assembly, makes no provision for INEC to transmit results of any election electronically. The Section states: “Voting at an election…

Plants 250,000 trees to curb desertification In preparedness to surmount the challenges of flooding, which have caused the destruction of lives and property, the Ekiti State Government has embarked on the construction of bridges and dredging of waterways to avert such occurrences. The state government has also taken actions to rejuvenate the depleted nine forest reserves in the state and also acquired new lands for the plantation of indigenous trees to check desert encroachment in the state. The state Project Coordinator of a World Bank initiative, Nigeria Erosion and Watershed Management Project (NEWMAP), Dr. AKinyemi Akinyugha, stated these in Ado…

Gareth Southgate urged England to use the pain of their Euro 2020 final defeat against Italy to fuel success in the future as the Three Lions boss accepted the blame for their heartbreaking penalty shoot-out defeat. England failed to win their first major title since the 1966 World Cup as Marcus Rashford, Jadon Sancho and Bukayo Saka all missed penalties at Wembley on Sunday. Southgate’s side had made a dream start thanks to Luke Shaw’s second-minute goal, but Italy showed their class to hit back through Leonardo Bonucci’s second-half equaliser. When it came to penalties, Southgate gambled by sending on…

England had everything going for them except the guile to overcome a well-drilled Italian side. It was the most important final game in English football history since 1966, but the Three Lions could not muster firepower needed to subdue an Italian side, who were looking for their first international crown since the 2006 World Cup in Germany. Before the game, every England supporter believed that yesterday was the ordained day for the Three Lions with full royal support to win an international competition since they won the 1966 World Cup. They scored the first goal in less than two minutes,…

Whichever way one looks at it, the raid carried out by the Department of State Services (DSS) on the residence of Sunday Igboho in Ibadan is callous, blood-thirsty and not synonymous with a government that lays a claim to civil and democratic ideals. Having regard to the raid’s antecedents, there can be no justification for it, notwithstanding the face-saving explanation it offered at the end of the operation to the effect that its team was attacked by Igboho’s men; or that it acted on a tip-off that Igboho had stockpiled arms in his house. That explanation was, at best, an…

Ondo State Governor, Oluwarotimi Akeredolu has lamented the devastating effects of pollution, erosion and flooding on Niger Delta people, saying environmental degradation has led to the death of several children in the region. Akeredolu stated this at the commissioning and handing over of the erosion control and road improvement works by the Ondo State government in Owo Council of the state at the weekend. He said flooding had caused severe pollution, decline in agricultural output and untimely death of children, noting that the intervention and completion of the erosion and road works had changed the situation. Akeredolu, who commended the…