Author: straightnewsng.com

The Presidential Election Petition Tribunal sitting in Abuja yesterday ordered the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, to grant President Muhammadu Buhari and the All Progressives Congress, APC, access to all the electoral materials used for the February 23 presidential election. The Tribunal, in two separate rulings by a three-man panel of Justices of the Court of Appeal, led by Justice Abdul Aboki, ordered the electoral body to forthwith, make available to President Buhari and the APC both used and unused ballot papers it deployed across the 36 states of the federation and the Federal Capital Territory for the purpose of…

The Senate Adhoc Committee on a New National Minimum Wage Bill, 2019, has concurred with the House of Representatives, recommending N30,000 as the accepted minimum wage for the Nigerian workers, against the N27,000 proposed by the Federal Government. The committee, which is chaired by the Deputy Chief Whip of the Senate, Senator Francis Alimikhena, All Progressives Congress, APC, Edo North, met yesterday at Senate Room 431 New Building, concurred with members of the House of Representatives that had earlier recommended a wage of N30,000. A source told Vanguard yesterday that at the meeting of the committee, the chairman, Senator Alimikhena,…

The Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board, JAMB, has announced that its 2019 Universal Tertiary Matriculation Examination, UTME, would begin on Thursday, April 11. JAMB also announced that it has fixed Monday, April 1, 2019, for its 2019 mock examination earlier scheduled for Saturday, March 23,2019. JAMB’s Head of Media, Dr Fabian Benjamin, said in a statement yesterday that the change was due to certain circumstances beyond the Board’s control. The statement read: “Candidates who had indicated interest in the mock examination at the point of registration and have since printed their mock examination notification slips need not print another one.…

The office of the Special Adviser to the President on Niger Delta and Coordinator, Amnesty Programme, yesterday dismissed reports of looting of starter packs and vandalism of property at its training facility in Bayelsa State. Murphy Ganagana, Media aide to the Special Adviser to the President on Niger Delta and Coordinator, Amnesty Programme, Prof. Charles Dokubo, who issued the refutal in a statement, described the report as not only nonsensical, false, preposterous, mischievous, wicked, but also a calculated attempt to smear Dokubo’s hard-earned reputation. The statement read: “The attention of the Office of the Special Adviser to the President on…

The rising debt profile of Nigeria on yearly basis came to the front burner yesterday as senators began debate on the general principles of the 2019 Appropriation Bill of N8.83 trillion presented before the National Assembly by President Muhammadu Buhari. Senators, who raised the alarm over the increasing debt profile, however, called on the government to put caution above everything. According to the senators, if serious caution is not taken, it will return the country to a highly indebted one that it experienced prior to the 2005 debt relief granted it by the Paris Club. Debate on the Appropriation Bill…

Facebook Inc on Thursday struggled to restore its services fully after a 17-hour partial outage made the world’s largest social network inaccessible to users across the globe, driving a wave of online complaints. The number of reports on the crowd-sourced Down Detector website, one of the internet’s most used sources of numbers on outages, peaked at just over 12,000, gradually falling to a couple of hundreds. However, with thousands of users complaining on Twitter under the hashtag #facebookdown, a number of media reports put the number affected in the millions. The BBC and a handful of other media outlets said…

Two world-class players showing exemplary soccer skills in the UEFA Champions have been nominated for the Santander Player of the Week crown. Juventus talisman, Cristiano Ronaldo wooed millions around the world with a stunning hat-trick against Atletico Madrid on Tuesday night. His treble predictably saw him become one of the four nominees for the coveted UEFA Champions League Player of the Week crown, sponsored by Banco Santander. Ronaldo will go toe-to-toe with three-time Player of the Week winner, Lionel Messi following his wondrous display against Lyon at Camp Nou on Wednesday night.

By: Israel Umoh In the just-concluded state House of Assembly election held on Saturday, March 9 in Akwa Ibom, the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP swept the 25 seats in the house, remaining Essien Udim State constituency whose election was inconclusive. The All Progressives Congress, APC, being an opposition party in the state, won none. Indeed, PDP in the state polled 519,374 votes representing per cent 75.7 per cent while APC scored 166,434 representing 24.3 per cent of the total votes cast for the two parties. In all, the two major political parties polled 685,808 votes during the state House of…

Liverpool manager Jurgen Klopp said his team proved ‘the club is back where it belongs’ on the grandest European stage after their emphatic win over Bayern Munich. Klopp did not disguise the magnitude of the 3-1 victory, suggesting the calibre of opponent made it one of the statement triumphs of his reign. “It is a big night,” said Klopp. “We set the bar for Liverpool, for this wonderful club,that we really are back on an international landscape of top football. We all think that is where the club belongs and I am really happy about the result. I knew we…

Lionel Messi scored two goals and set up two more as Barcelona moved into the Champions League quarter-finals with a 5-1 win over Lyon at the Nou Camp. Three weeks after the sides battled out a goalless first-leg draw in France, Messi opened the scoring with a 17th-minute Panenka-style penalty, and Philippe Coutinho then made it 2-0 just after the half-hour mark. Lucas Tousart pulled a goal back for Lyon in the 58th minute, before Messi added his second in the 78th and then teed up Gerard Pique and substitute Ousmane Dembele. While he could not match Cristiano Ronaldo’s hat-trick…