Author: Chief Editor

•Meets opinion leaders tomorrow •Abdulsalami peace committee convenes today With growing insecurity across the country, secessionist agitations and ethno-religious crisis, the Minister of Information and Culture, Alhaji Lai Mohammed, has warned that Nigeria is heading for the brink, urging that there is an urgent need to pull it back. “Despite huge human and material resources the country is heading for the brinks and there is an urgent need to pull it back from this catastrophe,” he said in a letter inviting leaders of opinion to a town hall meeting scheduled for tomorrow in Kaduna. Also concerned by the raging strife…

•DIG Baba appointed in acting capacity Monday’s coordinated attacks on the Imo State Police Command headquarters and the Nigerian Correctional Service (NCoS) facility in Owerri by gunmen claimed its first major casualty yesterday with President Muhammadu Buhari firing the Inspector-General of Police, Mr. Mohammed Adamu. THISDAY checks showed that the president was so angry with the audacious assaults on two key security points in the state that he approved the immediate replacement of Adamu with a Deputy Inspector-General of Police, Mr. Alkali Baba, in an acting capacity. Adamu, who was on the spot assessment of the scenes of the attack,…

Premier League leaders Manchester City blamed a £126 million ($175 million) net loss last season on a series of factors caused by the coronavirus pandemic. City’s revenue for the year to the end of June 2020 fell 11 percent to £478.4 million, with the Premier League and Champions League finishing after the accounting period. Delayed income from the postponed fixtures, including broadcast earnings, and player sales will show up in next year’s figures. “Clearly, the 2019/20 accounts in isolation are not the best representation of the reality of the season with delayed player trading and numerous games being played after…

Manchester United head to Spanish surprise package Granada while Arsenal take on Slavia Prague, but Ajax against Roma may be the tie of the round. AFP Sport looks ahead to the Europa League quarter-finals ahead of the first legs on Thursday at 1900 GMT: – Emery the Europa League expert – Dinamo Zagreb (CRO) v Villarreal (ESP) Unai Emery won the Europa League in three consecutive years with Sevilla and took Arsenal to the 2019 final. When he was appointed by Villarreal last summer he said he dreamed of winning a trophy with a club that has been one of the most…

•Admits true loyalists hard to get after office Former President Goodluck Jonathan has said he resisted ‘politics of whom you know’ when allocating positions during his reign. He made the submission yesterday while commissioning the N2.2 billion 6.2-kilometre Sabon Kaura-Miri highway in Bauchi State. His words: “I didn’t know Bala Mohammed when I made him Minister of the Federal Capital Territory (FCT). In Nigeria, we have this thinking that you must know somebody before securing ‘juicy’ ministries. “But that was not my own way of doing things. Bala Mohammed is a good brother and son. Even when he was the…

Eze Onyekpere The President, Major General Muhammadu Buhari (retd.)’s frequent medical trips abroad silently raise a lot of legal, policy and social questions. These questions have remained unresolved over the years of the current regime. A lot of Nigerians who would have directly raised these questions on the propriety of such medical tours have been blackmailed to grumble without raising the relevant questions. This discourse attempts to contextualise the President’s medical tours within the policy and developmental milieus of Nigeria. Section 1 of the National Health Act establishes a National Health System under the leadership of the Minister of Health…

Tunde Odesola I laughed upon remembering Chief Zebrudaya Okoroigwe Nwogbo alias 4:30, and a proverb came to mind: “If death are strike dead the slow-motion chameleon with reckless abandon, why shall it not quench the jumpy-jumpy frog with instant automatic alacrity? Tell me!” Chief Zebrudaya, the patriarch of Nigeria’s funniest English sitcom, New Masquerade, didn’t vocalise the above-written proverb, that’s my inexpert creation. If he verbalised the proverb, Zebby, as his beautiful wife, Ovularia, lovingly calls him, would crack up viewers with his bombast while the funniest clowns in the history of clowning, Giringory Akabogu and Clarus, would burst out…

A chieftain of the All Progressives Congress (APC) and former senator representing Rivers South-east, Senator Magnus Abe, yesterday raised the alarm that the party in the state was clearly heading for imminent danger due to impunity and clear disregard for political realities. Abe, who was responding to claims by Senator Andrew Uchendu who belongs to a faction of APC in the state loyal to the Minister of Transportation, Mr. Rotimi Amaechi, said it was sad that he (Uchendu) was not seeing the danger befalling the party in the state. Uchendu had mockingly urged Abe to “stop crying” and join hands…

The leadership of the striking resident doctors under the umbrella of National Association of Resident Doctors (NARD) has been summoned by the House of Representatives Committee on Health next Thursday to discuss issues relating to their ongoing industrial action. The President of NARD, Uyilawa Okhuaihesuyi, who confirmed the meeting to THISDAY in a telephone conversation yesterday, however, said the association was yet to receive any invitation to resume talks with the federal government over their strike, which is now in its fifth day. When asked about the update on their strike, Okhuaihesuyi said: “We heard that there may be a…

Fellow Nigerians at home and abroad, good morning and a very happy Easter to you all. Our theme for today’s State of the Nation Broadcast is “The Conspicuous Handwriting on the Wall,” inspired by the account in Daniel 5 verses 1-6 and 13-29. I quote: Daniel 5:1-6. As you may recall, on January 15, 2011, I was invited by the then General Muhammadu Buhari to run with him on the platform of Congress for Progressive Change (CPC) in the 2011 presidential election. After initial hesitation, and upon much consultation, I eventually accepted the invitation on the last day for submission…