Up to 2.3million Nigerians in less than 24 hours have indicated interest in taking COVID-19 jabs. National Primary Health Care Development Agency (NPHCDA) made this known on Wednesday. This is even amid fears over the safety of the vaccines. Executive Director of NPHCDA, Faisal Shuaib, says there is enthusiasm in Nigeria over Monday’s arrival of four million doses of AstraZeneca COVID-19 jabs.. “I can tell you that there is a lot of excitement about the vaccine arrival. I know some people have their concerns and we are trying but I want to give you an example of the enthusiasm that Nigerians…
Author: Akanimo Sampson
Anglo-Dutch oil and gas major, Shell, is locked in a bitter dispute with the Nembe people of Nembe Local Government Area in Bayelsa State. Well-informed local sources said on Wednesday that the community is bracing to shut down Shell’s facilities over an alleged crude oil theft owned by Aiteo Eastern E&P. The obviously angry Nembe people want the oil major return the alleged stolen crude immediately, claiming that the community has been vindicated. For them, ‘’Shell is a culprit that has been sabotaging Nigeria’s economy. Nembe communities over the weekend staged a peaceful protest and requested the oil company to…
President Muhammadu Buhari’s “No-Fly Zone” over Zamfara State has pitted him with the state Governor, Bello Matawalle. The president’s directive is not going down well with Governor Matawalle who is kicking against it. No-fly zone, known also as a no-flight zone (NFZ), or air exclusion zone (AEZ), is a territory or area established by a military power over which certain aircraft are not permitted to fly. Such zones are usually set up in an enemy power’s territory during a conflict, similar in concept to the aerial demilitarised zone. National Security Adviser, Babagana Monguno, disclosed at the end of the National…
Simply put, pugilism is the art or practice of fighting with the fists, boxing. 2023 All Progressives Congress (APC) presidential aspirant and Kogi State Governor, Yahaya Bello, is a lover of boxing. Though his love for sport is not in doubt, what is at the moment as far as his presidential project is concerned is integrity. Bello’s integrity is being called to question and he has to clear himself beyond reasonable doubt before bracing to succeed President Muhammadu Buhari in 2023. The Kogi governor is a political associate of Buhari. They have been together since the days of Congress for Progressive…
Political unrest in Myanmar is impacting the ability of humanitarian agencies to respond to the needs of vulnerable communities, including internally displaced persons (IDPs) in the country’s conflict-affected areas. Last October, UN agencies in the troubled country expressed ‘sadness’ and ‘shock’ over the killing of two boys, allegedly used as human shields by security forces in northern Rakhine province, earlier that month. The two boys were killed in a cross-fire between Myanmar’s military, known as the Tatmadaw, and the separatist Arakan Army. The incident occurred on October 5, in Buthidaung township – a hotspot for army abuses against children for non-combat…
United Nations Secretary-General, António Guterres, on Wednesday told the General Assembly that human rights have been battered in the COVID-19 pandemic. But, according to him, recovery represents a chance to improve on the status quo and finally ensure dignity for all. The UN chief addressed ambassadors exactly one year after he issued a Call to Action for Human Rights, a seven-point blueprint aimed at boosting equality and reducing suffering everywhere. Amid budget cuts and financial crisis, he appealed for support for the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) and related bodies, noting that funding is critical to achieve transformational change. “Much…
Ghana has recorded a historic first in Africa, for the international partnership to provide equitable COVID-19 vaccine for all. Six hundred thousand doses of the lifesaving COVID-19 vaccine from the United Nations-partnered COVAX initiative have landed the West African country. The joint UN-led COVAX initiative aimed to start shipping about 90 million doses of COVID-19 vaccines to Africa this February, according to World Health Organisation (WHO) early in the month. The immunization rollout will be the continent’s largest ever mass vaccination campaign. WHO Regional Director for Africa, Matshidiso Moeti, highlighted that the deployment is a “critical first step” to ensure countries access to vaccines. “Africa has watched other regions…
World Food Programme (WFP), an agency of the United Nations, is targeting to capture 461 million schoolchildren, most of them vulnerable children, into its global school meals basket this 2021. This, will however, depend on steady flow of funds to the agency. Before the devastating strike of the COVID-19 pandemic, 388 million schoolchildren, which represent one in two children globally, were receiving school meals. This is the highest number in history, according to the State of School Feeding Worldwide report. Even at that, millions of other vulnerable schoolchildren were not reached before COVID-19 because of funding challenges. Disturbingly, the pandemic risks reversing a…
In a seeming bid to boost rice production and self-sufficiency in the commodity, the Buhari administration has availed rice farmers in Kano State early maturing seeds. This is in addition to no less than 40 smallholder farmers in the state who have received inputs from the Federal Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development (FMARD) to improve the livestock value chain. The initiative is part of the responses of the ministry to the negative effect of the COVID-19 pandemic on farmers and the country’s economy in general. From each geopolitical zone in Nigeria, six states were selected to participate in the…
An independent United Nations expert in June 2019 said that, with a premature death every five seconds, air pollution is a violation of human rights, pointing out that the failure of governments across the world to ensure clear air, constitutes a “violation of the rights to life, health and well-being, as well as the right to live in a healthy environment.” UN’s Special Rapporteur on human rights, and the environment, David Boyd, ahead of the 2019 World Environment Day, which had air pollution as its theme, called on states to take urgent action to improve air quality in order to fulfill their human rights obligations. Air pollution is a deadly, man-made problem, responsible for the early deaths of some seven million people every…
Like Nigeria, hunger in Central America has zoomed from 2.2 million people in 2018 to close to eight million people this 2021. 2020 Nobel Peace Prize Laureate, World Food Programme (WFP), an agency of the UN says the situation in El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras and Nicaragua has increased almost fourfold over the past two years as a result of the economic crisis caused by COVID-19 and years of extreme climate events. Of the eight million figure 1.7 million people are in the ‘Emergency’ category of food insecurity and require urgent food assistance, WFP says. Many people too in Nigeria are facing hunger…
Worried by the ugly state Nigeria has found its self under the watch of President Muhammadu Buhari, some concerned pro-democracy and human rights activists are currently making patriotic efforts to salvage the country from the brink of collapse. They are hammering out a fresh People’s Constitution that is expected to be ready by December. This is coming as Catholic Bishops’ Conference of Nigeria (CBCN) is ringing an alarm of an imminent collapse of Nigeria as a country. The activists are however, working as members of the Constitution Drafting/Coordinating Committee of the People’s Constitutional Dialogue, initiated by the National Consultative Front…
Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development, Sabo Nanono, is rallying farmers in the country to support the economic diversification agenda of the Buhari administration through increased agricultural production, processing and value addition. His ministry is also strengthening ties with the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) in a bid to develop a strategic plan for the Nigerian cashew industry spanning the next 10 years. The ministry in a statement said Nanono signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with the USDA-West Africa PRO-Cashew Project to expand the value chain and create more job opportunities. The cashew project in Nigeria, according to…
Thirty Taliban militants were killed when a bomb exploded during a bomb-making class at a mosque in Afghanistan’s Balkh province, The Defense Post, a US newspaper concerned with defence news around the world reports. Quoting AFP, an international news agency, the newspaper also reports that a jihadist attack in the North-East axis of Nigeria forced many people to flee after Islamic State-affiliated insurgents overran a key military base. The Islamic State West Africa Province (ISWAP) group that split from the Boko Haram movement in 2016 has become a dominant threat in the region, attacking soldiers and bases while killing and kidnapping passengers…
Chemical reactions driven by the geological conditions on the early Earth might have led to the prebiotic evolution of self-replicating molecules. Scientists at Ludwig-Maximilians Universitaet (LMU) in Munich last August reported on a hydrothermal mechanism that could have promoted the process. Now, a study done by the university’s physicists is demonstrating that fundamental characteristics of mopolymeric lecules, such as their subunit composition, are sufficient to trigger selection processes in a plausible prebiotic setting. Before life emerged on Earth, many physicochemical processes on our planet were highly chaotic. A plethora of small compounds, and polymers of varying lengths, made up of…
At the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan (NAOJ), astronomers are busy testing a method for reconstructing the state of the early universe by applying it to 4000 simulated universes using the ATERUI II supercomputer. This is emerging as the Kavli Institute for the Physics and Mathematics of the Universe (Kavli IPMU) is home to many interdisciplinary projects which benefit from the synergy of a wide range of expertise available at the institute. One such project is the study of black holes that could have formed in the early universe, before stars and galaxies were born. Such primordial black holes (PBHs)…
The negative effect of aflatoxins on crops and animals has affected health, productivity, and reduced the market value of agricultural products internationally, going by the outcome of a study carried out in Kenya. A bio-control product, Aflasafe KE01, has therefore, been introduced to tackle the situation. It will be facilitated by the farmer’s willingness to pay and factors that will affect their decision. Aflatoxins are a family of secondary toxins produced by certain fungi found on a wide range of commodities including maize and groundnut. The primary fungi that produce aflatoxins are Aspergillus flavus and Aspergillus parasiticus found in warm and humid regions of the world.…
With the Sunday arrest of Senator Rochas Okorocha in Owerri, the Imo State capital, by the police, the festering political acrimony between the former Imo Governor and his successor, Hope Uzodinma, has taken a turn for the worse. Spokesman for Nigeria Police in the state, Orlando Ikeokwu, who confirmed Okorocha’s arrest says law enforcement agents moved to Akachi Road, Owerri, when they received a distress call that an estate sealed by the state government has been forcibly opened by some men led by the senator. Ikeokwu adds that the Imo State Command of the Police calmed the situation and invited…
Bitter outpouring is greeting the ongoing civil war in the Orlu axis of Imo State in Eastern Nigeria. The worrisome bombing of Orlu by the Nigerian military is coming 51 years after the Chukwuemeka Odumegwu-Ojukwu’s Biafran War better known as Nigerian Civil War. Odumegwu-Ojukwu, who was born on November 4, 1933, and joined his ancestors on November 26, 201, served as the military governor of the defunct Eastern Region in 1966 and the leader of the breakaway Republic of Biafra from 1967 to 1970. He was active as a politician from 1983 to 2011, when he died aged 78. Ojukwu was in Kano, when Major Patrick Chukwuma Kaduna Nzeogwu on January…
UN Secretary-General, António Guterres, has expressed grave concern over an outbreak of violence in the Somali capital of Mogadishu. In a statement issued by his spokesperson, Farhan Haq, at the weekend, the UN chief called on all parties to “exercise restraint and calm”. Gunfire erupted between Somali government troops and opposition supporters during a protest march against delayed elections that turned violent. Demonstrators said that the Government forces had attacked them first and residents reported sporadic shooting and that rocket-propelled grenades had been fired, according to news sources. The violence followed fighting overnight that had subsided by Friday afternoon. Political impasse While lawmakers were due to select a new President on February 8, the process has been delayed. “UN Secretary-General urges the Federal Government of Somalia and federal member states leaders to urgently come together and finalise political agreement on the way…
UN human rights office, OHCHR, has welcomed progress on the investigation in Colombia of people falsely presented as having been killed in combat as “an important step in fighting impunity”. So-called “false positives” cases refer to civilians that have been extra-judicially killed by the Colombian army and then falsely labelled as enemies in order to inflate body counts and receive promotions or other benefits. “On Thursday, the Special Jurisdiction for Peace, which was set up to prosecute crimes committed during the armed conflict, announced that it was investigating the killing of 6,402 people, far higher than the initial figure of some 2,000 that they received to investigate”, said OHCHR Spokesperson Liz Throssell. She underscored the extremely important and legitimate work of victims’ groups and non-governmental organisations in combatting impunity and obtaining justice, calling their contributions “essential…
Around four million Nigeriens are in need of assistance this 2021, according to the Humanitarian Needs Overview released by the Humanitarian Country Team in Niger. International Organisation for Migration (IOM) Niger is planning to scale up its level of assistance in areas that have been affected by different crises, including natural disasters and insecurity as a result of increasing activity by violent extremist organisations in Niger. IOM’s Global Crisis Response Platform provides an overview of IOM’s funding requirements in 2021 and beyond. The Platform is updated regularly. Niger, one of the Sahel region’s busiest transit countries for migrants, faces multiple emergencies.…
A study has revealed that food security is achievable in Nigeria by reducing mycotoxin and other fungal metabolite contamination, and can contribute significantly to alleviating poverty, increasing food security, and improving nutrition. The findings suggest that there should be enlightenment and awareness of solar tent-dried plantain chips and other agricultural products to improve food safety during processing and preservation for human consumption. Plantain, technically known as Musa paradisiaca L., is a tropical staple found in Central and West Africa. They are often cooked green but may also be dried or ground for use as a meal. And the plantain meal can be refined further to flour. Fresh plantains are rich in potassium; a 100 g fruit provides 499 mg of potassium. They also provide adequate levels of minerals such as iron, magnesium,…
Recent chilly allegation by Ned Nwoko, a former member of the House of Representatives, that his kinsmen in Idumuje-Ugboko, Delta State, want to kill him over his acquisition of land to build a private university in the community, is currently taking a new twist. While the billionaire raised the alarm at a press briefing in Abuja on Thursday, in 2015 he reportedly grabbed 90 hectares of land in Idumuje-Ugboko, and used security agents to intimidate members of the community who challenged his acquisition of the land. In the two-part investigation published in December 2020, Premium Times uncovered how he dislodged many poor farmers…
UN Secretary-General, António Guterres, told Munich Security Conference at the weekend, ‘’COVID-19 pandemic recovery is our chance”, adding, “2021 must be the year to get back on track.’’ While acknowledging that today’s vulnerabilities go “well beyond” pandemics and public health, the UN chief said by exposing deep fissures and fragilities, COVID-19 has x-rayed the world. Speaking via videoconference, he said “our global tests and challenges are getting bigger and more complex. Yet our responses remain fragmented and insufficient.” He stressed the need for available and affordable inoculations for everyone, everywhere. “Vaccine equity is crucial for saving lives and for saving economies”, he said. “Countries need to…
United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) has highlighted the dire situation of some three million displaced children in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) who are facing brutal militia violence and extreme hunger. Whole villages have been set ablaze, health centres and schools ransacked, and entire families – including children – hacked to death, in a series of merciless attacks in eastern DRC by fighters using machetes and heavy weapons, UNICEF said in a news release. Communities have been forced to flee with only the barest of possessions. UNICEF Representative for the DRC, Edouard Beigbeder, said “displaced children know nothing but fear, poverty,…
In Nigeria’s poultry sector, the multifaceted Technologies for African Agricultural Transformation (TAAT) project has registered another success story. A team of youth agripreneurs trained by the Empowering Novel Agribusiness-led Employment (ENABLE-TAAT) programme recorded a gross profit of over ₦1.00 million, about $2,580, in eight weeks. TAAT’s overall goal is to radically transform African agriculture into a competitive sector by deploying productivity enhancing technologies and focusing on nine priority areas. They got a return on investment of about 45% after two live-broiler production cycles. They attributed their success to the technical delivery of the ENABLE-TAAT agribusiness park initiative and the backstopping and…
Launching a major report on the environment on Thursday, UN Secretary-General, António Guterres, said without nature’s help, “we will not thrive or even survive.” He told a virtual press briefing on the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) report, Making Peace with Nature “for too long, we have been waging a senseless and suicidal war on nature. The result is three interlinked environmental crises.” Pointing to climate disruption, biodiversity loss and pollution, which “threaten our viability as a species”, he detailed their cause as “unsustainable production and consumption”. “Human well-being lies in protecting the health of the planet”, said Guterres. According to the UNEP report, the…
An alleged levy from an oil exploring company in Anambra State, Eastern Nigeria, has shattered the relative peace in the affected communities. The orgy of violence that follows has claimed the lives of four persons, and scores of houses burnt. The people of Ogwuikpele community in Ogbaru Local Government Area, and those of Azia in Ihiala Local Government Area of the state were locked in inter-communal violent clashes. The mayhem has led many residents to flee Ogwuikpele, an oil-bearing community, thus signaling the beginning of ‘’oil curse’’ in Anambra, a phenomenon all the other oil-producing states: Abia, Akwa Ibom, Bayelsa,…
A global rights group, Human Rights Watch has taken on President Muhammadu Buhari’s All Progressives Congress (APC) administration following the latest school incident in Niger State. The rights group is accusing the Buhari administration of reneging in its obligation to ensure programmes and policies to prevent and respond to attacks against schools and to fight impunity for such attacks. Researcher in the Africa Division of the group, Anietie Ewang, says Nigeria endorsed the international Safe Schools Declaration in March 2015, as a commitment to safeguard education in armed conflict. According to her, President Muhammadu Buhari ratified the declaration in 2019, making a commitment that the…
