Access
Coronavirus: Nigeria has vaccinated over 1 million people – NPHCDA
The National Primary Health Care Development Agency (NPHCDA) has announced that Nigeria had so far vaccinated over a million eligible people out of its target of 70 percent of the nation’s population. The NPHCDA disclosed this on its official Twitter handle, on Thursday. Newsmen report that for the country to achieve herd immunity against COVID-19, it had set an ambitious goal of vaccinating 40 per cent of its over 200 million population before the end of 2021, and 70 per cent by the end of 2022. The country kicked off vaccination on March 5, 2021, commencing with healthcare workers who are mostly at risk to the infections, being the first responders. It noted that the vaccine roll-out would be in four phases, starting with health workers, frontline workers, COVID-19 rapid response team, l...
JAMB scraps use of email for UTME, DE registration
File Photo The Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB) has said the use of email is no longer required for the Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination (UTME) and Direct Entry (DE) registration processes. The Registrar of JAMB, Prof. Ishaq Oloyede, who made this known while addressing newsmen on Wednesday in Abuja, said email will only be requested at the successful completion of the registration by candidates to access information on the exam. He said as from Thursday, April 15, 2021, candidates will no longer be required to provide any email address during registration, adding that consequently, candidates will have the options to access their profile during or after registration. He said the options include “mobile APP on the candidates’ phone, on the 55019 option (being desig...
All Chinese schools now have access to internet
Andrew Brookes/Getty Images All Chinese schools now have full access to the Internet, and 95.2 per cent of them are equipped with multi-media classrooms, according to a senior official with China’s Ministry of Education. The country has been constantly accelerating informationisation of teaching, and sees it as underpinning the modernisation of education, said Zhong Denghua, vice minister of the education ministry, at a virtual conference attended by ministers of education on the E9 Digital Learning Initiative jointly held by UNESCO and Bangladesh on April 6. Following the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, online courses thrived across the country as a way to ensure normal teaching activities, said Zhong, adding that nearly 300 million teachers and students had learnt or taught online whi...
Reports: Governments ‘gender blind’ to coronavirus’ ‘greater impact’ on women
Governments are putting women and girls at greater risk of the health and socio-economic impacts posed by the coronavirus pandemic, two global studies released Wednesday show. They called on leaders to prioritise gender equity in their response to the health crisis. Two studies, one from a global research partnership led by the Global Health 50/50 Project in London and another by the Center for Global Development (CGD) in Washington, were released Wednesday to coincide with World Health Day that highlight major failings by national governments to consider sex or gender in their COVID-19 policies. Since the start of the pandemic in March 2020, several studies have pointed to the disproportionate impact of the pandemic on women. Many women have shouldered a heftier burden taking on more unpa...
PDP: Imo attacks show Governor Uzodinma’s failure
File Photo The Imo State chapter of the Peoples Democratic Party on Thursday said that the Monday attacks on Owerri Correctional Center and the state Police Command headquarters in Owerri were indications that the state governor, Hope Uzodinma, had failed. At a press conference in Owerri, the state capital, the PDP chairman in the state, Charles Ugwu, urged the governor to stop blame games and take responsibility. The chairman said that the party was disturbed that stranger elements could gain such easy access into the inner recesses of the central points of security administration in the state and struck without any challenge. He said, “We have therefore concluded that lives and property are not safe and secure in the state under the watch of the current regime.” “In his speeches and inte...
Kaduna governor: Bandits have lost rights to life, must be wiped out
Gov. Nasir El-rufai of Kaduna State says bandits terrorising Nigeria have lost their rights to life under the constitution and must be wiped out. El-rufai made this known during a town hall meeting on national security organised by the Ministry of Information and Culture held in Kaduna with theme:”Setting Benchmark for Enhanced and National Unity in Nigeria”. ”The bandits are at war with Nigeria and there is no other way to approach the current insurgency but for security forces to take the war to the bandits and recover forests where they are occupying. “The security agencies mostly react to cases of banditry and abduction, we are in a war with these terrorist challenging the sovereignty of the Nigerian state. “Our security forces must collaborate to take the war to the bandits and terror...
Gunmen attack another Imo police station, kidnap one, injure others
Fear continues to pervade the atmosphere in Imo State as gunmen in the early hours of Thursday attacked the Mbieri Divisional Police Headquarters situated in the Mbaitoli Local Government Area of the state. Our correspondent gathered from an indigene of Mbieri that the fleeing gunmen struck around 1am and immediately released the suspects in custody in the police facility. The gunmen also took away the phones belonging to suspects and the police operatives at the Division. But a police source at Division told our correspondent that the gunmen were repelled by the policemen on duty. The police source said “We resisted them but they overpowered us. They had more sophisticated weapons. They took all the phones they saw, released the suspects when they gained access and vandalised the police b...
Amnesty: Russia may be ‘slowly’ killing Alexey Navalny
Alexey Navalny, the prominent opponent of Russian President Vladimir Putin, is imprisoned in conditions that amount to torture and may slowly be killing him, human rights group Amnesty International said on Wednesday. Navalny, who last year was poisoned with a military-grade nerve agent, was now being subjected to sleep deprivation and did not have access to a doctor he could trust in jail, it said. “Russia, the Russian authorities, may be placing him into a situation of a slow death and seeking to hide what is happening to him,” Agnes Callamard, Amnesty International’s secretary general, said ahead of the publication of the group’s annual report. “Clearly the Russian authorities are violating his rights. We have to do more,” she said. “[They] have already attempted to kill him, they are n...
‘Assault’: Group demands removal of CCT chairman
The Access to Justice (A2Justice) group has demanded the immediate removal of Danladi Umar as chairman of the Code of Conduct Tribunal (CCT) for alleged abuse of power. Umar was caught on video hitting a security man who had told him his vehicle was parked in the wrong space at a popular plaza in Abuja. In his defence, Ibraheem Al-Hassan, CCT spokesperson, said the guard was rude and could not provide a reasonable explanation why Umar should not park in the said space. Joseph Otteh, A2Justice convener, said on Saturday that the assault of the guard is “indefensible and callous, and is a naked and unbridled abuse of power.” “Unfortunately, the police have failed to arrest and charge Danladi Umar for assault, signaling once again, the deep flaws and dysfunctionalities of Nigeria’s law enforc...
Official: Why CCB denies Nigerians access to public officers’ assets information
The Code of Conduct Bureau (CCB) on Wednesday explained why it denies Nigerians access to the details of the assets declared by public officers. The chair person of the bureau, Muhammad Isah, also disclosed that assets declaration would soon become online-based. Mr Isah, represented by his special assistant, Mustapha Musa, spoke in Lagos at a meeting on ‘Promoting Transparency and Accountability in Asset Declaration by High-Ranking Public Officers’. Newsmen report that the meeting was organised by the Socio-Economic Rights and Accountability Project (SERAP). On access to public officers’ assets information, the CCB chair said the bureau never honoured citizens’ requests for such information because the National Assembly had yet to give the guidelines for such public disclosure. He said the...
Coronavirus: Nigeria gets $15 million grant for safe school reopening
The Federal Ministry of Education says Nigeria has received 15 million dollars response grant from the Global Partnership on Education (GPE) for COVID-19 safe school reopening across the country. Hajia Binta Abdulkadir, Director, Basic and Secondary Education in the ministry, said this on Wednesday in Bauchi, at a Cluster Mobilisation and Sensitisation Meetings on COVID-19 Protocols, Surveillance and Safe School Reopening Readiness. Abdulkadir was represented on the occasion by Mr Achede Owoicho, Deputy Director, Basic and Secondary Education and the Focal person for the GPE. The workshop is initiated with the support of the United Nations Children Education Fund (UNICEF). Abdulkadir noted that through the grants, UNICEF had sent WASH and ICT materials to 16 states for preparation of digit...
Feminist group tackles Pete Edochie over ‘misogynistic rants’
The Nigerian Feminist Forum (NFF) has described as unreasonable the comments allegedly made by celebrated thespian, Chief Pete Edochie during an interview he granted to BBC IGBO. In a statement by its Communications Officer, Angela Nkwo, NFF said Edochie in the interview “furthered his misogynistic rants concerning his views on Nigerian women in general.” NFF, therefore, called on Edochie to immediately retract the comments, which it said grossly misrepresented his pedigree as an elder in the Nollywood community. The women group also asked him to issue an apology for the gross misrepresentation and cause for concern he had provided for women to experience, tolerate and accept violence meted out to them by their husbands and partners. The statement read in part: “The Nigerian Feminist Forum...