Lokoja, the capital of Kogi State, is facing one of its worst disasters ever. Four persons, which included a three-year-old baby, according to press report, were swept away to their deaths last week by a flood which broke its barriers. Ibaji Local Government Area of the state is the worst hit by a flood that broke the confluence of the Niger and Benue rivers coursing through Lokoja. Travelers passing through the 196-kilometre-Lokoja-Abuja highway which connects the North and South got stranded and the road literally cut off. The Niger and Benue rivers had broken their banks, resulting in a flood…
Author: Editor-in-chief
Yesterday, it was 62 years since Nigeria got her independence from colonial Britain. While some countrymen say the October 1 celebration rituals are worthy of flinging the cymbals, some others say it is a day to drench ourselves in sack clothes and ashes reminiscent of mourning moments for biblical Israelites. For decades, until the October 1 saturnalia began to lose its savour, successive governments made a good job of conflating the frills of the rituals as a representation of our national joy and unity. Children looked forward to the symphony of the National Day orchestra, the perfect chemistry of matching…
A Federal High Court in Abuja has summoned the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) and the Accord party on a motion for joinder filed by Ojoge Adekunle Olaitan and Olaniyi Abideen Ayoki against the Accord Party in a suit seeking to disqualify the Governorship candidate of Accord party, Chief Bayo Adelabu and all the National Assembly and state assembly candidates from the 2023 general elections. SOUTH-WEST NGR, recalled that whilst other major political parties were conducting their Congresses to elect National chaiman and executives, The Accord party did not conduct any which is against the statutory provisions of the electoral…
In what seems to affirm that he wears controversies like apparel, vice presidential candidate of the All Progressives Party (APC), Kashim Shettima, leapt into yet another at the twilight of last week. On Thursday at the 96th-anniversary celebration of the Yoruba Tennis Club in Ikoyi, Lagos state, Shettima was quoted to have said that Nigeria needed the “hospitality” of General Sani Abacha, Nigeria’s despotic military ruler; Nigeria’s own contribution to the list of infamous rulers who ruled the world with infernal ruthlessness. As the controversy over what he actually said raged, Shettima came out with a clarification: He actually said…
Mr. Seye Famojuro, an ally of incumbent Governor Seyi Makinde of Oyo State has been fingered in an alleged land acquisition spree of choice places and locations in Ibadan, Oyo State capital. A political pressure group, Ibadan Progressives Elites (IPE) on Sunday regretted that “this guy, Otunba Seye Famojuro continues to be in the news of recent, for wrong reasons.” “Recently he was alleged to be the mastermind of how a contractor’s men were kicked out of Agbowo Shopping Complex awarded by the Governor for a sum of N4.9billion in a Lease Agreement that had gone awry,” IPE stated in…
Like a prude confronted with sexually explicit images, the world didn’t hide its shock at Nigerian-born American professor, Uju Anya’s negative comments last week on the late British monarch, Queen Elizabeth II. The world had waited with bated breath at manifest indications that Elizabeth’s last hours had come. Amid this apprehension, the associate professor of Applied Linguistics, Critical Sociolinguistics and Critical Discourse at Carnegie Mellon University launched her salvo. It came in the form of a tweet that brimmed with bile and hate. She had tweeted: “I heard the chief monarch of a thieving, raping genocidal empire is finally dying.…
For close to four years now in Oyo State Government, a dark horse keeps running government activities and living larger than life attitude on all cabinet members, agencies of government and contractors alike. His words are laws and no one dares question his order or directive even if the State Governor, Mr. Seyi Makinde felt otherwise? He is notorious and now an household name and in most political arenas nicknamed Senior Governor in the State. He is Mr. Seye Famojuro, better known as Makinde’s pointsman and man Friday! He neither holds any political office, nor appointive positions, observes say he…
The Local Government Chairmen, Council Workers under the Nigeria Union of Local Government Employees (NULGE) waiting on Oyo Assembly to join some State Houses of Assembly across the federation that have passed the Local Government Autonomy, to do same in Ibadan, may not have their dream realised under the current Assembly leadership. Reason? The Executive arm led by Governor Seyi Makinde has pointedly told the lawmakers to put further consideration of the bill in abeyance. An opposition lawmaker in the Assembly who craved anonymity told journalists on Wednesday in Ibadan that the Governor, contrary to his avowed commitments to councils’…
To understand the profligacy, indiscretion and misplaced priority in the purchase of N1.14 billion ($2.7 million) –worth of 10 luxury vehicles by the Muhammadu Buhari government for neighbouring Niger Republic, ostensibly to shore up that country’s security, at a time when there is excruciating hunger in the land and terrorists are probably a mile away from the Aso Villa seat of government, you have to go way back to the year 1972 or so, to the reply of the late president of Niger Republic, Ahmadu Diori, when asked why Niger supported Nigeria as against secessionist Biafra in the Nigerian Civil…
Now that the wise, prudent, babes and suckling have come to the gruelling realisation that Nigeria is gradually coming to a deadly repose under President Muhammadu Buhari; it is nice seeing everyone in frenzied scampering. Legislators in Abuja, like vipers stirred off their places of comfort, are spitting venom. The political elite, seeing from afar the impending expiry of their inordinate suck of the Nigerian nectar, are confused and disconcerted. Abuja, their nest of filch, is becoming too hot for comfort. The same Abuja is also fast assuming the violent notoriety of Afghanistan and Tel Aviv. Islamic fundamentalists and terrorists…