Lawmakers
United Nations, Ethiopia reach aid pact for war-hit Tigray
Ethiopia and the United Nations reached an agreement on Wednesday to channel desperately needed humanitarian aid to a northern region where a month of war has killed, wounded and uprooted large numbers of people. The pact, announced by U.N. officials, will allow aid workers access to government-controlled areas of Tigray, where federal troops have been battling the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) and captured the regional capital. The war is believed to have killed thousands, sent 45,000 refugees into Sudan, displaced many more within Tigray, and worsened suffering in a region where 600,000 people were already dependent on food aid even before the flare-up from Nov. 4. Aid agencies had sounded the alarm about a growing humanitarian crisis and been pressing for access, after hundred...
Senator screening: Opposition parties canvass support for Mahmood Yakubu
File Photo A coalition of opposition political parties led by the National Chairman of Action Alliance, Kenneth Udeze, on Thursday stormed the National Assembly canvassing support for the reappointment of Prof. Mahmood Yakubu as Chairman of the Independent National Election Commission. Armed with banners urging the Senate to expedite action on Yakubu’s confirmation, Udeze said the performance of the Professor in his first five-year tenure, informed their action. Yakubu was already in the Senate wing of the National Assembly ahead of his screening billed to start by 2 pm while the rally was ongoing at the gate of the sprawling complex. Udeze said Yakubu had been cleared in the past, his performances in the last five years should be a good reason to confirm him. He listed some of the achieve...
US mulls Houthi ‘terror’ label as groups say civilians to suffer
United States lawmakers, international aid groups and rights advocates are warning the outgoing Trump administration against reported plans to label Yemen’s Houthi rebel group a “foreign terrorist organisation”, saying it would worsen the world’s worst humanitarian crisis. The post US mulls Houthi ‘terror’ label as groups say civilians to suffer appeared first on TODAY. You Deserve to Make Money Even When you are looking for Dates Online. So we reimagined what a dating should be. It begins with giving you back power. Get to meet Beautiful people, chat and make money in the process. Earn rewards by chatting, sharing photos, blogging and help give users back their fair share of Internet revenue.
Ethiopia: From historic peace to the brink of war
As Ethiopia’s Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed replaces his army chief on Sunday amid an escalating conflict in the northern Tigray region, here are the key developments since Abiy came to power in 2018: First leader from biggest ethnic group In February 2018, prime minister Hailemariam Desalegn resigns after several years of anti-government protests. In April, Abiy is sworn in as premier, becoming the first leader from the Oromo ethnic group, Ethiopia’s largest. Ethnic divisions Oromos and the country’s second-biggest group, the Amharas, had fuelled the protest movement over perceived marginalisation at the hands of the ruling coalition, dominated by the Tigrayan group. But with the authoritarian coalition now dissolved, ethnic violence has emerged as a persistent problem under Abiy, regularly r...
House of Reps committee rejects aviation budget
The House of Representatives Committee on Aviation led by Rep. Nnolim Nnaji on Thursday refused to hold a budget session with the Minister of Aviation, Sen. Hadi Sirika, and heads of the sector’s agencies. The infuriated lawmakers, said the won’t treat their budget, because they failed to present their 2021 proposals ahead of the scheduled date for defence. Ministries and heads of agencies, are customarily required to lay their proposals, days before the scheduled dates for defences. The chairman Nnaji in his opening remarks at the scheduled budget meeting with the Minister and the chief executives of the agencies, frowned at the failure of the Ministry to forward the documents as earlier request by the Committee. “Honourable Minister, I don’t know how you expect us to continue this meetin...
Water Resources Bill: Minister decries misinformation of Nigerians
The Minister of Water Resources, Mr Suleiman Adamu, has said that Nigerians are being misinformed about the Water Resources Control Bill. The minister made the statement while interfacing with the House of Representatives Committee on Water Resources in Abuja, following the public outcry that trailed the passage of the bill. Newsmen recall that sequel to a motion of personal explanation by Rep. Benjamin Mzondu (PDP-Benue) the house withdrew the bill which had already been passed on the grounds that it was not gazetted. The minister recalled that the bill was presented in the 8th Assembly and there was a two-day public hearing with Rep. Aliyu Ahman-Pategi as chairman. According to him, there was no issue at all until some unpatriotic Nigerians gave bad and dangerous colouration, and tried t...
#EndSARS: Lagos PDP attacks governor over curfew
The Lagos State chapter of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) has described Gov. Babajide Sanwo-Olu’s 24-hour curfew over unabated #EndSARS protests, as confrontational and ill-advised. The PDP in a statement on Tuesday in Lagos by its Publicity Secretary, Mr Taofik Gani, said Sanwo-Olu’s decision could aggravate the agitations by the protesters. “The PDP opines that the decision is confrontational, ill-advised and capable of inflaming the already compressed “beast” in the peaceful demonstrators against Police brutality and other government induced vices in the state. “The governor must consequently take responsibility for any degeneration into maiming, killing and oppressive arrest. “The governor has again showed that he acts copy and paste in governance,” Gani said. According to him, the...
774,000 jobs: Ministry raises federal lawmakers’ slots
There were strong indications on Sunday that the much awaited 774,000 unskilled jobs for Nigerians would take off in October. It was gathered that following a series of negotiations, the Ministry of Labour and Productivity had increased the slots allocated to each member of the National Assembly. It was learnt that each senator would present 1,000 beneficiaries, while a member of the House of Representatives would present 50 beneficiaries from each of the local government areas in their constituency. The lawmakers were said to have rejected the 30 and 25 slots per senator and Rep member respectively, which was initially allocated to them by the ministry in August. A senator confirmed to newsmen on condition of anonymity that he had directed his aides in his constituency office to liaise wi...
Court ruling paves the way for Facebook to settle its facial recognition lawsuit
Facebook won preliminary approval late on Wednesday from a federal court for settlement of a lawsuit that claimed it illegally collected and stored biometric data of millions of users without their consent. The social media company had in July raised its settlement offer by $100 million to $650 million in relation to the lawsuit, in which Illinois users accused it of violating the U.S. state’s Biometric Information Privacy Act. The revised settlement agreement resolved the court’s concerns, leading to the preliminary approval of the class action settlement, Judge James Donato wrote in an order filed in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California. “Preliminary approval of the amended stipulation of class action settlement, Dkt. No. 468, is granted, and a final approval h...
Senator Akpabio: NDDC received N15 trillion in 19 years
The Minister of Niger Delta Affairs, Senator Godswill Akpabio, has faulted the National Assembly inquest into the financial activties of the Niger Delta Development Commission (NDDC) between February and July 2020 rather than embark on a comprehensive probe of the interventionist agency’s 19 years of existence. The NDDC, he stated, received over N15 trillion in the last 19 years, with nothing on the ground to justify the huge funds, wondering why the lawmakers decided to probe five months’ activities in the commission. Speaking when members of the Independent Marketers Association of Nigeria (IPMAN) visited him in Abuja, Thursday, he noted that discretionary probe would not address the problem of the commission, which he described as cesspit of corruption. He, however, assured Niger Delta ...
Senate invites finance, works ministers, others over road projects
The Senate committee on finance has invited the Minister of Finance, Zainab Ahmed, over the funding status of three federal government legacy road projects estimated to cost N2.7 trillion. Also to appear before the panel are the Minister of Works and Housing, Babatunde Fashola, Accountant General of the Federation, Ahmed Idris, and the Managing Director of the Nigeria Sovereign Investment Authority (NSIA), Uche Orji. The chairman of the panel, Solomon Olamilekan, gave the directive during an interactive session with the NSIA boss on Tuesday. The legacy projects are the Abuja-Kano road, Lagos-Ibadan expressway and the Second Niger Bridge. They are funded and implemented through a tripartite agreement between the ministries of finance, works and the NSIA. Orji, who was invited for the same r...
House of Reps quizzes NDDC over N70.495 billion awarded contracts
The House of Representatives at the weekend flagged off its investigation into the N70.495 billion allegedly paid by Niger Delta Development Commission (NDDC) to 1,773 contractors as mobilization fees without resorting to site, between 2008 and 2012. Chairman, House Committee on Public Accounts, Hon. Wole Oke who presided over the investigative hearing into the audit queries from the Auditor General for the Federation (AuGF) for the period under review, underscored the need for the NDDC acting Managing Director, Prof. Pondei Kemerbrandikumo to provide details of the projects and list of all defaulting contractors along with a statement of accounts showing the recovered funds as alluded to by the NDDC acting Director of Internal Audit, Mr Itu Eno Ubi who argued that only the sum of N19 bill...
