What could have been a huge fire disaster was in the early hours of Saturday averted when a Premium Motor Spirit (PMS) laden NIPCO truck overturned and spilled its content.
The Operations Commander of the Federal Fire Service, Osun Command, Isaac Femi Akinjobi, revealed to Daily Post that the mishap occured at about midnight on Saturday at the November 27th Interchange, Gbongan-Ibadan road, Osogbo.
According to the Operations Commander, the NIPCO truck was descending from the Interchange and heading towards Dele Yes Sir Area of Osogbo when it overturned and the head detached from the rest of the body.
He stated that immediately the accident occurred at the popular interchange early on Saturday morning around 12 am, the operatives of the Federal Fire Service arrived at the scene at 12:30 am after receiving an SOS call.
Akinjobi disclosed that the situation which has since been brought under control recorded no fire incident and officials of the Federal Road Safety Commission (FRSC) have arrived at the accident scene to route traffic towards Ogo-Oluwa.
“No fire outbreak was recorded so far. As at now the officials of the FRSC are on ground and traffic has been diverted to the other side of the dual carriageway towards Ogo-Oluwa.
“We therefore advice all approaching vehicles heading towards the disaster area to proceed with caution.
“The swift intervention of our men ensured that no lives was lost”, he added.
The Lagos Zonal Office of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, (EFCC), have arrested Ibeh Theophilus Uche, Chief Executive Officer, CEO, 10 Kobo Wine Place, Ikotun, Lagos alongside his mother for their alleged involvement in computer-related fraud to the tune of about N50million in Lagos.
The 28-year-old suspect was arrested in his room in Radisson Blu Anchorage Hotel, Victoria Island, Lagos, following reports about his criminal activities. Uche, who has used aliases like Rachael Armstrong, Keanu Reeves, Rebekah Schwarzenegger, Keanu Private, Elizabeth Hortman and Stefan Paulson, confessed to being into Bitcoin investment scam, romance scam and identity theft, confessing to have defrauded his victims to the tune of about N50m, since he started his criminal activities last year.
Investigations revealed that he had been using a First Bank account belonging to his mother, an accomplice; to launder the proceeds of his alleged criminal activities.
Items recovered include one iPhone 11 Pro Max; iPhone 12 pro max; two MacBook Pro laptops; a PlayStation 5; an iPad and a small Nokia phone. Others are a Mercedes Benz S550 2015 Sedan car and a Lexus RX 350 SUV 2016, among other incriminating items. EFCC Spokesperson, Wilson Uwujaren said he would soon be charged to court.
The son of an indigent woman who was accused of witchcraft has testified in Adamawa State how his mother was subjected to “cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment” by her accusers.
The son told a panel of the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) sitting in Yola that the accusation which started as a neighbourhood gossip was reinforced by a pastor who was later joined by some of his church members in abusing his mother.
The concerned son, who spoke in Hausa before the NHRC’s Special Investigation Panel on Sexual and Gender-Based Violence (SGBV), said things got out of hand one day when while in church, a pastor of the church said he got a revelation that his mother was a witch.
Continuing, he said the people in the church were also mentioning her name and saying she was the only one who could set them free.
“My mother was tortured, beaten to a stupor, injured, and stripped naked for alleged witchcraft, cultism, initiating children and some members of the community into witchcraft,” the complainant said.
A witness before the panel, who reinforced the charge against the woman, said that she was responsible for the death of his father, his two brothers, and a cousin.
A lot of people from the community, including her blood brothers, were willing to testify that she was truly a witch.
The woman’s son, still not convinced, said his mother had been suffering stigmatization and harassments in the community for accusations she knew nothing about, and urged the panel to intervene.
The NHRC Executive Secretary, Tony Ojukwu, who doubles as the Chairman of the NHRC SGBV panel, told everyone present that according to the law of Adamawa State, anyone suspected of witchcraft or any perceived wrong should be handed over to the police and not paraded publicly or inflicted with any form of injury.
The panel ruled that the respondents be investigated for alleged false accusations and offences relating to torture, inhuman and degrading treatment of the victim.
The panel said the accused woman would be investigated for alleged witchcraft under Section 187 of the Adamawa State Penal Code 2018.
The panel also ruled that the sum of N300,000 be paid by the respondents to the victim for the cost of treatment incurred as a result of injuries inflicted on her by members of the community.
The panel indicated that the NHRC would make a formal complaint to the state commissioner of police to investigate the matter.
The witchcraft accusation case was one of 14 petitions officially scheduled before the NHRC panel which began sitting in Yola on Monday.
Proceedings were conducted in confidence, with names of individuals in the different cases kept out of public knowledge.
The NHRC SGBV panel sitting in Yola is a continuation of a nationwide exercise that has taken place in some other centres, including Kano, Lagos and Enugu.
At least 32 people have died after two trains collided head-on in Egypt.
More than 80 people are also said to have been injured in the accident north of the city of Sohag, according to reports.
Dozens of ambulances have headed to the scene and are taking people to hospital, with the country's health minister also said to be on the way.
Pictures on social media show people stood around and on top of the wreckages near a body of water.
Clips also shows passengers emerging from the damaged carriages, with emergency service workers trying to clear away debris.
"The trains collided while going at not very high speeds, which led to the destruction of two carriages and a third to overturn," a security source said.
The cause of the crash, close to the Nile-side town of Tahta, about 365 km (230 miles) south of Cairo, has been put down to the emergency brakes being pulled.
Egypt's railway authority said the brakes were triggered by "unknown individuals", causing one of the trains to stop and the other to crash into it from behind.
The public prosecutor's office said it had ordered a probe into the accident.
There were sporadic shootings on Thursday night in Borno as soldiers protest deployment to a location in the theatre of operation.
The soldiers shot sporadically into the air to express their grievance for the deployment as they did not have the equipment to match the firepower of Boko Haram.
The soldiers from the Maimalari barracks trooped to the Theatre Command in Borno State to protest the deployment.
They accused the military authority of not paying their allowances and giving them dilapidated equipment to fight the insurgents.
Channels TV quoted the Media Coordinator for Operation Lafiya Dole, Colonel Ado Isa, confirming the protest, as he said there was a minor issue involving troops welfare and administrative issues which was promptly addressed.
Recently, the National Security Adviser, Babagana Monguno said money meant to purchase equipment for the military had vanished into thin air.
According to him in an interview with BBC Hausa Services, “No one knows what happened to the money, but God willing, the president will investigate to find out where it went or where the goods went.”
Monguno stated that as long as long as there was no proper investigation, he would not say anything, it said “the money is gone.”
He said the arms purportedly purchased with the money had not been seen.
The NSA added that the new security chiefs said they had not seen the arms purchased with the money either.
Monguno later backtracked, saying he was quoted out of context as he did not categorically say that funds meant for arms procurement were missing under the former Service Chiefs as reported or transcribed by some media outlets from the BBC interview.
Former U.S. President Trump has offered some revisionist perspective about the rioters he incited to storm the U.S. Capitol on 6 Jan.
He said they posed “zero threat” to those inside the building and they were even kissing and hugging the police.
Six people, including a police officer, died during the breach, on a day the Congress was certifying the electoral college votes won massively by President Joe Biden.
Video from the scene showed rioters chanting about hanging former Vice President Mike Pence, and some discussed locating and harming Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.).
However, the former president told Fox News host Laura Ingraham that the rioters were “hugging and kissing” police upon entry.
“Look — they went in, they shouldn’t have done it. Some of them went in and they’re hugging and kissing the police and the guards. They had great relationships,” Trump said.
Some Capitol police officers are under investigation for alleged actions supporting the Capitol breach, including an officer who may have taken a selfie with one of the rioters.
“A lot of the people were waved in and then they walked in and they walked out,” he continued.
“They’re persecuting a lot of those people. And some of them should be — some things should happen to them, but when I look at antifa in Washington even, what they did to Washington and what they did to other locations and the destruction and frankly the killing and the beating up of people … why aren’t they going after antifa?”
Trump also described as “disgraceful” the protective fencing being put in place around the Capitol after the invasion by his mob.
“I think it’s disgraceful — it looks, for the world to watch — absolutely, it’s a political maneuver that they’re doing. It was zero threat right from the start, it was zero threat,” Trump claimed.
The FBI has made hundreds of arrests and charged suspects in connection to Jan. 6 riot.
Many of those arrested have connections to far-right groups such as the Proud Boys or the Oath Keepers.
Yesterday, BBNaija's organisers announced its season six edition and said the winner of the edition will be going home with N90m.
And today, Nigerians woke up to debate on why BBN has been using Ebuka back to back as the show host. They are asking if it is based on gender and why a woman can't also host the show. In a case of not firing Ebuka many are suggesting a woman should join him and Nancy Isime has been NOMINATED.
This has got Nancy currently trending on twitter and it's a hot hot discussion.
It's almost a boys vs girls thing now on twitter with both gender firing at each other, lol. Your take???
A young handsome Bahamas man has shared photos of himself and his chubby girlfriend, Tire Shine on social media saying he doesn't care about her looks but her heart.
Unknown to the man that the photos will go viral all over the world, Nigerians have now gotten a glimpse of it and many have reacted to the photos.
Some mocked them, while some said indeed, no matter how one looks, there is always someone out there for them.
The University of Aberdeen says it will return a Benin Bronze to Nigeria within weeks, one of the first public institutions to do so more than a century after Britain looted the sculptures and auctioned them to Western museums and collectors.
The university said on Thursday that the sculpture of an Oba, or ruler, of the Kingdom of Benin, had left Nigeria in an “extremely immoral” fashion, leading it to reach out to authorities in 2019 to negotiate its return.
Pressure has mounted to return to their places of origin the Benin Bronzes – actually copper alloy relief sculptures and other artefacts taken by colonial powers.
Neil Curtis, Aberdeen’s head of museums and special collections, said the Bronze, purchased in 1957, had been “blatantly looted” 124 years ago by British soldiers.
“It became clear we had to do something,” Curtis said.
Britain’s soldiers seized thousands of metal castings and sculptures from the Kingdom of Benin, then separate from British-ruled Nigeria, in 1897.
The university called it “one of the most notorious examples of the pillaging of cultural treasures associated with 19th-century European colonial expansion”.
“It would not have been right to have retained an item of such great cultural importance that was acquired in such reprehensible circumstances,” said university vice-chancellor George Boyne.
Nigeria’s Minister of Information and Culture Lai Mohammed called the move a “step in the right direction” and urged other holders of Nigerian antiquity “to emulate this”.
Professor Abba Isa Tijani, director-general of Nigeria’s National Commission for Museums and Monuments, said the importance of displaying the Bronze inside Nigeria for the first time in more than 120 years was inexpressible.
“It’s part of our identity, part of our heritage… which has been taken away from us for many years,” Tijani said.
Bill Gates has predicted that the world will be “completely back to normal” from the Covid-19 pandemic by the end of 2022.
The Microsoft founder said the health crisis has been an “incredible tragedy,” but one bright spot has been the arrival of vaccines.
“By the end of 2022 we should be basically completely back to normal,” Gates said in an interview for Polish newspaper Gazeta Wyborcza and television broadcaster TVN24.
His wife, Melinda Gates, also provided a similar timeline earlier this month when asked when she believed global herd immunity could be reached against the virus.
Noting that vaccines probably won’t reach developing countries “en masse” until the end of this year, she said that “it’ll be sometime in 2022.”
“And boy, I think we’re all looking forward to that. There are a lot of people that are suffering, not just in the US but everywhere,” Melinda said on CNBC.
The couple has given at least $1.75 billion through the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to help the global fight against coronavirus.
The funds have gone to aid some vaccines makers, diagnostics as well as potential treatments.
Arinzechukwu Onwurah a Nigerian has won a Student Union election at a Sweden University.
Onwurah won the Student Union President election in Malmo University.
He was the only African to contest the election and well he WON.
The news was shared on social media with the caption;
“It’s a big one for the entire Nigerian students in Sweden as Arinzechukwu Onwurah emerges winner in the just concluded students union election in Malmo university Sweden. Chukwu as he is fondly called emerged winner after contesting with other students.
This is a good news to all Nigerian students in Sweden as people have started jubilating already.
Nigerian students are making us proud in diapora and this is just the beginning of more to come.
Chukwu whose slogan for his manifesto is FIKA which stands for F- fix what is needed, I- interact to enable understanding, K(C)-compromise(democracy)& A-action to serve. Fika is widely known in Sweden for tea. Congratulations Anrizechukwu.”
Former President Donald Trump on Thursday night blasted what he called “softball” questions asked by reporters during President Joe Biden’s first press conference earlier in the day.
Speaking to Fox News host Laura Ingraham, Trump said Biden’s presser was like a “different world” compared to when he faced questions from the Washington press corp.
“It was like softballs, like you’re throwing softballs and it’s just a different world,” the former president said.
“Nobody’s seen anything like it. It’s very sad to watch actually, they’re feeding him questions, they’re easy questions,” Trump said.
The press pool at Thursday’s briefing was limited to 25 reporters and Biden only took questions from a list of journalists whose names and outlets he read from a cue card.
In Thursday’s press conference, Biden at times lost his train of thought, forgetting questions and pausing for extended periods of time.
But Trump didn’t directly attack Biden’s handling of the briefing, instead criticized questions posed by members of the Washington media.
“They were strange questions and they were asked in a very interesting way,” Trump said.
New Zealand lawmakers passed legislation on Wednesday granting mothers and their partners paid leave following a miscarriage or stillbirth.
The legislation, which passed parliament unanimously, provides three days of bereavement to employees who suffer tragic pregnancy outcomes.
New Zealand will be only the second country in the world, India being the other to have such a bereavement allowance.
“The passing of this bill shows that once again New Zealand is leading the way for progressive and compassionate legislation, becoming only the second country in the world to provide leave for miscarriage and stillbirth,” said the initiator of the bill, Labour Party MP Ginny Andersen.
“The bill will give women and their partners time to come to terms with their loss without having to tap into sick leave. Because their grief is not a sickness, it is a loss. And loss takes time,” Andersen said.
Rapper Illbliss has said Burna Boy's success has to be one of the most inspiring and motivational stories of our generation. Illbliss in a tweet was referring to Burna Boy's Grammy win.
Tagging the African giant on Twitter, Illbliss wrote;
''Beyond artistic excellence and authenticity, @burnaboy 's success has to be one of the most uplifting and motivational stories of our generation. Imagine if he had given up after failing to win the first grammy. His tenacity and belief Must be studied! And then applied to life''
Burna won his first Grammy weeks ago with his album -- Twice as Tall.
The singer and Wizkid both won their first Grammy same night.
Rapper Naeto C and Nicole's first child, Marobi is 8.
He turned 8 yesterday, March 25th and his parents held a family get-together to celebrate him.
His mom, Nicole shared photos from the celebration explaining how grateful she is as he is growing older.
Naeto and Nicole got married in July 2012 and welcomed Marobi in March 2013.
More photos and what Nicole wrote celebrating her little man all below...
''ROBI IS 8!! My son and my heartbeat is getting so big.
Marobi is EVERYONE’s sweetheart. You meet him, you fall in love. He’s my testimony, my breakthrough, and a constant source of joy in my life. ??
Happy Birthday, Robi C! You are SO loved, my precious boy.
Happy Eight Years of Parenthood to us! What a journey it’s been, and wowwww I’m so grateful that I chose the right man to impregnate me.
Thank you so much @naetosuperc for being an incredible role model to our children. My kids know how to love and be loved, because of the way you love us. ??
I pray God continues to bless us with all the things we need spiritually and materially to help Marobi, Adarema and Naesochukwu be the very best they can be''
The police in Lagos on Thursday released an American lady, Kari R’ouke, who was arrested and kept in custody over the death of her Nigerian host, Ayomide Michael.
R’ouke’s lawyer, Mr Ebun-Olu Adegboruwa (SAN), announced his client’s release in a statement on Thursday.
The American, who was picked at the airport on February 9 while making her way out of Nigeria, spent about 44 days in the police cell in Lagos.
Her lawyer had raised the alarm over her continued detention by the police, saying he was “scared that something devastating may happen to Kari Ann R’ouke if she is not released forthwith.”
Adegboruwa said the police refused to release the American despite that the Lagos State Directorate of Public Prosecutions said there was no prima facie case against her and three others.
The American was said to have arrived in Nigeria on January 22, 2021 on the invitation of the late Michael.
She and Michael were said to have lodged in a hotel on Victoria Island on the same day, while Michael “became unconscious and lifeless” in the early hours of February 8.
After intercepting R’ouke at the airport, the police had submitted a case file to the Lagos DPP, seeking legal advice on the possibility of prosecuting her and three Nigerians for murder.
But a certified true copy of the DPP legal advice sighted by our correspondent indicated that the Lagos State Director of Public Prosecutions, Mrs A. O. Adeyemi, on behalf of the state’s Attorney General, Mr Moyosore Onigbanjo (SAN), advised against the prosecution of the American and other suspects, citing insufficient facts to sustain murder charges.
Reacting to the eventual release of the American on Thursday, Adegboruwa, in a statement, appealed to the police to show greater respect for the rights of citizens.
He said, “This case has shown the intolerable level of impunity prevalent within the law enforcement agencies, whereby the police did not comply with a valid directive of the Ministry of Justice, which is the body recognised by the law for the prosecution of suspects.
“Kari Ann R’ouke was still being detained even after the police got the legal advice since March 5, 2021.”
