Vice President
Atiku Abubakar: Nigeria needs urgent rescue
Former Vice President Atiku Abubakar has declared Nigeria is in dire need of urgent rescue. Nigeria, he said, has been badly damaged and broken. He decried the unbearable and alarming conditions Nigerians are living with, lamenting hunger was ravaging as farmers have deserted their farms for fear of being killed. These were contained in a statement in Abuja on Sunday by Hon. Oladimeji Fabiyi, who stood in for the Waziri Adamawa at the weekend in Gombe State during the inauguration of the leadership of the North-east zone of the Nigeria Youth Congress for Atiku. “The hunger in the Northern Nigeria and indeed the entire country is getting to an unbearable and alarming rate as our farmers, fathers and mothers can no longer go to farm. “Agriculture is one of the comparative advantages the Nort...
Ex-President Obasanjo: Why Peter Odili didn’t emerge Umaru Yar’Adua’s running mate
Former President Olusegun Obasanjo has disclosed the behind-the-scene details of how former Rivers Governor Peter Odili lost out in the race to emerge late President Musa Yar’Adua’s running mate in 2007. Odili was a leading contender for the vice presidential slot but lost out in dramatic manners at the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) national convention in Abuja. Obasanjo, who was handing over after a two-term rule, said Odili was favoured for the slot but was dropped because of corruption cases with the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC). Speaking on Sunday in a virtual interview with historian and academic Toyin Falola, Obasanjo said: “Now, we needed a running mate for Yar’adua. There were two possibilities – the first possibility was Peter Odili. “Peter Odili was a much str...
Joe Biden nominates veteran diplomats for top State posts
Democratic President-elect Joe Biden on Saturday nominated U.S. foreign policy veteran Wendy Sherman, a key negotiator of the 2015 nuclear deal with Iran, to be the No. 2 official at the State Department. Biden also nominated Victoria Nuland, a retired career foreign service officer who was the top U.S. diplomat for Europe, NATO ambassador and State Department spokeswoman, to be Under Secretary for Political Affairs, effectively the third-ranking U.S. diplomat. Sherman, who has a masters degree in social work, was the State Department counselor from 1997 to 2001, a period when she was also policy coordinator on North Korea. From 1993 to 1996 she served as assistant secretary of state for legislative affairs. Because of her association with the Iran deal, which was fiercely opposed by Repub...
Presidency: Boko Haram weaker now than in 2015
As the country marks the 2021 Armed Forces Remembrance Day, Friday, the Presidency has declared that the activities of Boko Haram insurgents have been weakened compared to what obtained in 2015. This is even as it said that more than 2,403 criminals, including terrorists, bandits, kidnappers and criminals of other sorts, were reportedly eliminated by the Nigerian Armed Forces, in coordinated operations across the country between March 18 and December 30, 2020. The event is billed to hold in the early hours of the day at the National Arcade, opposite Eagles Square, Three Arms Zone, Abuja. The Special Adviser to the President on Media and Publicity, Femi Adesina, in a statement titled “Security checklist, as Nigeria marks Armed Forces Remembrance Day, by Presidency” flaunted the Buhari admin...
Joe Biden receives second dose of coronavirus vaccine on camera
Joe Biden on Monday received the second dose of the Pfizer/BioNTech Covid-19 vaccine on camera, as part of an effort by the President-elect’s incoming administration to reassure the country of the safety of the vaccines. Biden was administered the shot in his left arm by Ric Cuming, chief nurse executive at ChristianaCare’s Christiana Hospital in Newark, Delaware, according to Biden’s transition team. The President-elect said he would be announcing his plan to “get the entire Covid operation up and running,” including the necessary costs, on Thursday. Biden said he had a meeting with members of his team later Monday afternoon. Biden said he was “not afraid of taking the oath outside,” and that his team has been getting briefed, when asked if he had any fears about taking the oath of office...
Republican senator: Donald Trump must ‘go away as soon as possible’
A second Republican senator in the United States has called on Donald Trump to step down after some of the president’s supporters overran the Capitol building in Washington, DC this week in a deadly riot. In an interview with NBC’s Meet the Press news programme on Sunday, Pennsylvania Senator Pat Toomey said Trump should resign for the good of the country. “I think the best way for our country is for the president to resign and go away as soon as possible,” he said. Toomey said president’s resignation is the “best path forward, the best way to get this person in the rear-view mirror for us”, but added that he did not believe Trump would step down before his term ends on January 20. He also said the president’s role encouraging the riot was an “impeachable offence”. Momentum has been buildi...
Nigerian government begs residents not to reject coronavirus vaccines
Federal authorities have appealed to Nigerians not to be hesitant to take the COVID-19 vaccine when it gets to Nigeria. Coordinator of the Presidential Task Force (PTF) on COVID-19, and head of Nigeria’s primary healthcare agency, Dr. Faisal Shuaib, made the appeal at the PTF briefing on Thursday in Abuja. Nigeria intends to get 42 million COVID-19 vaccines to cover one fifth of its population through the global COVAX scheme, the PTF had earlier announced. The initial vaccines would come as part of Nigeria’s plan to inoculate 40 percent of the population in 2021 and another 30 per cent in 2022, with 100,000 doses of the Pfizer vaccine arriving by the end of January 2021. The COVAX scheme was set up to provide vaccines to poorer countries including Nigeria whose 200 million people and poor ...
Atiku Abubakar receives coronavirus vaccine
Former Vice President, Alhaji Atiku Abubakar, has received Pfizer coronavirus vaccine on Thursday. Confirming the news, Publisher of Ovation magazine, Chief Dele Momodu, displayed Atiku’s picture when he was administered the vaccine by a medical practitioner. Though Dele did not mention the place Atiku took the vaccine but information reaching newsmen said it was in Dubai. In one paragraph sentence, Dele wrote: “Former Vice President The Wazirin Adamawa ALHAJI ATIKU ABUBAKAR receives Pfizer Covid-19 jab vaccination…” Former Vice President The Wazirin Adamawa ALHAJI ATIKU ABUBAKAR receives Pfizer Covid-19 jab vaccination… pic.twitter.com/286BCmBqHD — Dele Momodu Ovation (@DeleMomodu) January 7, 2021 Meanwhile, the Nigeria Centre for Disease Control (NCDC), has recorded 1,664 new COVID-19 ca...
Facebook removes Donald Trump video over US Capitol attack
As rioters stormed the US Capitol on Wednesday, Facebook removed a video from President Donald Trump responding to the violence. The decision came around an hour after the video was posted on the platform. “This is an emergency situation and we are taking appropriate emergency measures, including removing President Trump’s video,” Guy Rosen, Facebook vice president of integrity, said in a tweet Wednesday. “We removed it because on balance we believe it contributes to rather than diminishes the risk of ongoing violence.” This is an emergency situation and we are taking appropriate emergency measures, including removing President Trump’s video. We removed it because on balance we believe it contributes to rather than diminishes the risk of ongoing violence. — Guy Rosen (@guyro) January...
Donald Trump allies in Congress to challenge his loss to Joe Biden
A band of President Donald Trump’s Republican allies planned a last-ditch effort on Wednesday to undo his election loss to Democrat Joe Biden, a bid almost certain to fail that comes on the same day their party is poised to lose its majority in the Senate. The Republican-led Senate and Democratic-controlled House of Representatives were due to meet to formally certify Biden’s victory in the Nov. 3 election in proceedings that could stretch past midnight. In a joint session of Congress, Trump’s allies plan to challenge the results from a handful of states won by Biden. Thousands of pro-Trump protesters converged on Washington ahead of the session at his urging. Some clashed with police overnight. Biden won the election by a 306-232 count in the state-by-state Electoral College and by a marg...
California hospitals overrun even as vaccine is rolled out
Even as high profile figures like U.S. Vice President Mike Pence rolled up their sleeves for COVID-19 vaccinations, patients already ill with the disease crowded emergency rooms and overran intensive care units in California, now a worldwide epicenter. Another 41,000 people tested positive in the most populous U.S. state on Thursday, and 300 died, state public health officials said. In a state with 40 million residents, only about 1,200 intensive care beds remained available by Friday – just 2.1% of the total, the California Department of Public Health said. “We anticipated a surge, but I’m not sure if anyone imagined it would be as bad as it has been,” said Adam Blackstone, a spokesman for the Hospital Association of Southern California. Hospitals are strained under the press of patients,...
Nigerian National Assembly spends billions of naira on constitution review
The perennial constitution amendment exercise by the National Assembly is characterised by proposals that keep resurfacing despite gulping billions of naira yearly, an analysis has shown. The federal parliament had from the 5th to the current 9th National Assembly made several attempts to amend some provisions of the 1999 Constitution to no avail. At every session, the parliament officially spends N1 billion shared equally between the Senate and the House of Representatives. There are reports that the lawmakers spend more than what is appropriated for the exercise. While some amendments were successful, several others suffered serial failures but kept appearing in new proposals. Considering the huge spending, lawyers and civil society groups have pointed out that no significant amendments ...