Author: straightnewsng.com

New Liverpool midfielder Fabinho says the club have the depth and talent to challenge champions Manchester City for the Premier League title this season. Liverpool’s 84 league goals were bettered only by City last season but defensive inconsistency cost them dear as they finished fourth in the league and were beaten by Real Madrid in the Champions League final. In addition to Brazilian Fabinho, manager Juergen Klopp has also added fellow midfielder Naby Keita, forward Xherdan Shaqiri and goalkeeper Alisson Becker to the squad. “We have a very good team and we will be able to fight for the title…

Dr. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, former World Bank Vice Chairman and Robert Zoellick have joined Twitter as directors as the communication giant reshuffled its board. Marjorie Scardino will step down from the Board for personal reasons at the end of the year. Scardino joined Twitter in 2013 and became the first female board member. Mrs. Okonjo-Iweala is also a one-time Nigerian finance minister who diligently served under the administrations of ex-President Olusgun Obasanjo and Goodluck Jonathan. “Ngozi and Bob are distinguished leaders with unparalleled global perspective and policy expertise,” said Omid Kordestani, Executive Chairman of Twitter. “We are confident they will be…

Complaints of alleged lopsided appointments into federal boards and parastatals by President Muhammadu Buhari sharply divided Senators along the North and South political blocs in the country, thus throwing the Senate into a rowdy session. For more than half an hour, the hallowed chamber, Thursday, temporarily turned market over alleged bias by President Buhari in his federal appointments, just as he was accused of favouring Northerners, particularly Katsina State extraction, his home state. Subsequently, the Senate mandated its Committee on Federal Character and Intergovernmental Affairs, led by Senator Tijani Yahaya Kaura, APC, Zamfara North, to probe all appointments of the…

The Akwa Ibom State Government has come under severe criticisms by some international organisations for sponsoring a smear campaign against a PREMIUM TIMES assistant editor covering South-South region of Nigeria, Straightnews has gathered. Mr. Cletus Ukpong, the assistant editor whose name and photograph appeared in fake stories in local newspapers in Akwa Ibom immediately PREMIUM TIMES began running his investigative series which exposed the rot in public schools in the oil-rich state. The stories were fabricated by the state government and syndicated to newspapers with the intent to get at the journalist because of his investigative work, Straightnews learnt. One…

FIFA has ranked Nigeria 25th in the just-concluded World Cup finals in Russia after its untimely exit from the tournament won by France for the second time in their football history. According to the records from FIFA statistics department and made available Wednesday, the failure of the Mikel Obi-led team to survive the late surge by Lionel Messi’s Argentina side in the last group match played at Saint Petersburg means that the team’s ranking at the quadrennial was better at the Brazil edition held in 2014 where Nigeria was eliminated in the second round by France. A report Straightnews monitored…

The Abuja Division of the Court of Appeal, Thursday, reserved judgment on the appeal seeking to re-order the proposed sequence for the 2019 general elections. A full panel of the appellate court headed by its President, Justice Zainab Bulkachuwa, adjourned the matter for judgment, after it heard the appeal that was lodged by the National Assembly. The NASS had in the Appeal marked CA/A/485/2018, which was filed on June 14, prayed the court to declare that it has the constitutional powers to amend the Electoral Act to re-order the election sequence already released by the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC. In…

Benue State governor, Samuel Ortom, may have shelved his decision to leave his ruling All Progressives Congress, APC, following a trouble-shooting meeting he had with the National Chairman of the party, Comrade Adams Oshiomhole, in Abuja Thursday. Speaking with journalists at the national secretariat of the party in Abuja, Ortom said the party leadership had assured him that no individual in Benue State could push him out of the party. “I was given a red card by a senator…but the leadership of the party told me that the decision of the party leadership at the national level is superior to…

The United Nations, UN, has said that the demarcation of the Cameroon-Nigeria border continues to face challenges due to insecurity in areas affected by the presence of Boko Haram. This is contained in a ‘Report of the Secretary-General, Antonio Guterres, on the activities of the United Nations Office for West Africa and the Sahel, UNOWAS’. Guterres also cited the unrest in the English-speaking regions of Cameroon as partly responsible for the challenges faced by the Cameroon-Nigeria Mixed Commission. “Insecurity in areas affected by Boko Haram continued to hinder the activities of the Cameroon-Nigeria Mixed Commission in the…

The first black woman to be crowned Miss Universe Great Britain in the pageant’s 66-year history has called it “a great achievement.” Dee-Ann Kentish Rogers, who’s also a competitive athlete and recently passed her exams to be a barrister, says the massive response to the fact she’s a black woman has “kind of startled” her. “Although I’ve been preparing for this pageant for a long time, I’ve just been preparing as Dee-Ann,” she tells Newsbeat. “Now that I’ve won the pageant, I’ve come to the realisation that I’ve not only won the pageant as Dee-Ann, but as a black woman.”…

The House of Representatives at a plenary, Wednesday, directed Central Bank of Nigeria, CBN, to immediately withdraw mutilated, dirty and oiled notes from circulation and replace them with new ones. Already, one hundred naira is lacking in circulation and in most cases the mutilated currency is seen everywhere which causes users grave concern in business transactions. Disturbed by black-marketing of mint Naira notes on the streets in some parts of the country, the House mandated its Committee on Banking and Currency to investigate the allegation. The lower chamber of the National Assembly equally resolved to constitute an…