Author: Chief Editor

Gov. Kayode Fayemi of Ekiti State has suspended the ongoing teachers recruitment exercise over economic crisis posed by the Coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic. The governor directed immediate refund of money paid by successful candidates in the recruitment exercise conducted by the State Teaching Service Commission (TESCOM). Mr Babatunde Abegunde, Chairman of TESCOM, who made this known in Ado Ekiti on Thursday said the directive was due to the commitment of the governor to the general welfare of the people in the state and the need not to make new entrants into the public service suffer unduly. The News Agency of Nigeria…

Wife of the President and First Lady, Aisha Buhari, has returned to Nigeria, ending months of speculations on her whereabouts. This came as the Presidency on Thursday kept mum over trending reports on the president’s wife. There was no official confirmation of her return at press time, but sources told The Guardian that the First Lady returned to her official residence in Presidential Villa, Abuja, on Wednesday after six months of sojourn in the United Arab Emirates. Her Senior Special Assistant on Media, Aliyu Abdullahi, declined to confirm or refute reports of her return to Abuja when contacted Thursday evening.…

Vice-President Yemi Osinbajo has stated that the only way to effectively address the massive infrastructural deficit that the country faces is by public-private partnership (PPP) arrangement in one form or the other. Osinbajo stated this Thursday at the opening of a two-day retreat of the National Council on Privatization (NCP), which among other things, is to deliberate on the proposed amendment of the Public Enterprises (Privatization & Commercialization) Act 1999. Citing statistics from the Nigerian Integrated Infrastructure Master plan (NIIMP) and the Economic Recovery and Growth Plan (ERGP) 2017-2020, the VP noted that Nigeria will require at least $2.3 trillion…

A former vice-president and the presidential candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) in the last general election, Alhaji Atiku Abubakar, has condemned the decision of the Federal Executive Council (FEC) to rehabilitate the Port Harcourt refinery with $1.5 billion. Atiku lamented that Nigeria is sinking deeper into debt from N12 trillion to N32.9 trillion today. FEC had approved $1.5 billion (about N600 billion) for the rehabilitation of the Port Harcourt refinery at its virtual meeting held Wednesday and presided over by President Muhammadu Buhari. Atiku, in a statement, he personally signed, said the approval was suspicious, adding that: “That…

However it is, historically, Buhari is not the first Nigeria president to honour presidents of other countries by naming roads after them. Former presidents – Goodluck Jonathan and Olusegun Obasanjo all did the same. And before them was head of state Ibrahim Badamosi Babangida. This week, critics reigned on President Muhammadu Buhari for naming a highway in Abuja, Nigeria’s capital city after Niger Republic’s President Mahamadou Issoufou. Buhari stated that Nigeria-Niger relations are based on a long common border and shared cultural and historical roots over the years. “Relations between the two countries have, over the years, been very cordial…

Thomas Tuchel said “super hungry” Chelsea have their sights set on reaching the Champions League final after Hakim Ziyech ended his goal drought to inspire a 2-0 win against Atletico Madrid in the last-16 second leg on Wednesday. Morocco forward Ziyech grabbed his first goal since October to put the hosts ahead in the first half at Stamford Bridge. Emerson came off the bench to score the late goal that sealed a comfortable 3-0 aggregate victory over the lacklustre La Liga leaders. Adding to Atletico’s misery, Stefan Savic was sent off in the closing stages for elbowing Antonio Rudiger in…

•NDDU sues FG over fund A former Deputy Director-General, Nigerian Law School, Prof. Ernest Ojukwu (SAN), has joined his voice in the argument about who is entitled to the £4.2million United Kingdom government seized from the former governor of Delta State, James Ibori, with the verdict that the state cannot claim the fund. Ibori was prosecuted and convicted by the UK government in UK for money laundering in 2012. According to the law teacher, the court ordered the money forfeited to the UK government and not Nigeria. Ojukwu argued: “There is no court order from the UK making Nigeria or…

Leaders of Southern Nigeria and Middle-Belt, under the aegis of Nigerian Indigenous Nationalities Alliance for Self-Determination (NINAS), yesterday, set modalities to extricate their people from what they described as the “contraption called Nigeria.” At a world press conference at New Bodija, Ibadan, Oyo State, Chairman of NINAS, Prof. Banji Akintoye, and other leaders of the group, comprised of indigenous nations and people of southern and Middle-Belt of Nigeria, complained of injustice in the country and contradictions in the polity and 1999 Constitution. The press conference was organised at the expiration of a 90-day notice of grave constitutional grievances Issued by…

When a man is set in his ways, it’s going to take a miracle to change his fortune. This is because Man is a creature of habits, predictable rituals that set an individual or a people apart from others. A man’s character, some say, determines his destiny. To put it in the way of the academics, who have a preference for opaque grandiloquence, the structure of an entity determines how it functions. In other words, design determines the results that you will likely derive from a device. At amalgamation in 1914, Governor-General Lord Frederick Lugard joined a disproportionately bigger Northern…

“Nigeria stands to benefit by encouraging and pushing more trade, becoming a bigger part of the multilateral trading system and to do that Nigeria has to produce more, add value to products and export more. Right now, Nigeria has 0.26 per cent of world trade and 19 per cent of African trade. You could see that as very small but you could also turn it around to see that it has a big opportunity to make use of what has happened with the Africa Continental Free Trade Agreement” – Director-General of World Trade Organisation, Dr. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, on Monday, March…