Author: straightnewsng.com

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…

President Muhammadu Buhari, Wednesday, said the Federal Government was doing its best to correct and reverse the terrible mismanagement the country had experienced in previous administrations in the country. President Buhari, who stated this when he received a delegation of non-career Ambassadors, who were at State House, Abuja, to congratulate him on his re-election, said: “With some luck, our best will be good enough.” He said Nigeria was trying to live within its means, adding that government was determined to upgrade the country’s profile, both locally and internationally. The President said it would be inexcusable for government not to take…

A principal suspect in the controversial Malabu oil scandal, Wednesday, appeared as a witness before an Italian Court in Milan. Abubakar Aliyu is alleged to have acted as a “middleman” for top officials of former President Goodluck Jonathan’s administration in the long-running controversy. He is being questioned in Italy over his role in what had been described as one of Africa’s most controversial corrupt oil deal. The Malabu scandal involved the transfer of about $1.1 billion by Shell and ENI through the Nigerian government to accounts controlled by Dan Etete, a former Nigerian petroleum minister. From accounts controlled by Mr…

The Federal Government, Wednesday, joined eight other countries in the world to ban the use of Boeing 737 Max 8 and Max 9 planes by any airline operator in Nigeria airspace. The Ethiopian Boeing 737 MAX 8 plane had on Sunday crashed a few minutes after take-off in Addis Ababa, killing all 157 people aboard, including two Nigerians. But Air Peace Airline in a swift reaction, Wednesday, said the federal government’s order banning the use of Boeing 737 Max 8 aircraft from flying in Nigeria’s airspace does not affect it since it had no such aircraft type in its fleet.…