Author: straightnewsng.com

Global System for Communication, GSM giant, MTN, Monday, criticised Nigeria Labour Congress, NLC, for picketing its corporate head office in Lagos and other operational offices across the country over alleged refusal to allow its employees join union freely, among others. While denying preventing its employees to freely unionise, MTN accused NLC leaders of violence and attacking some of its employees at its Ikoyi office. MTN in a statement by its Corporate Relations Executive, Tobechukwu Okigbo said, “We do not prevent our employees from associating amongst themselves as they deem fit and owe our employees the obligation to ensure they are…

The Federal Government, Monday, expressed concerns over the debt of N500 billion electricity Distribution Companies, DISCOs’ is owing the Nigeria Bulk Electricity Trading Company, NBET. Mr. Babatunde Raji Fashola, minister of Works, Power and Housing, while addressing newsmen on development in the power sector that DISCOs’ debt profile to NBET was on the increase in spite of reports of crazy estimated billing of customers. Fashola said, “As things stand, my office still receives daily reports by text, e-mails and letters of exorbitant bills by DISCOs to consumers without meters, but the remittance by DISCOs to NBET is not increasing. “NBET also…

France reached the World Cup final for a third time as a header from Samuel Umtiti gave the 1998 champions a 1-0 victory against a vibrant Belgium team on Tuesday. The tournament favourites must wait 24 hours to discover whether they will play England or Croatia in Sunday’s final in Moscow’s Luzhniki Stadium but they will approach the game full of confidence. Belgium started the stronger of the two teams in Saint Petersburg but Umtiti’s header from a corner in the 51st minute was the crucial breakthrough as the defender stole the limelight from jet-heeled Kylian Mbappe and Antoine Griezmann.…

The Akwa Ibom state government has launched a blistering media campaign against a PREMIUM TIMES journalist, Cletus Ukpong, whose investigative reports exposed the rot in public schools in the oil-rich state. The six-part investigative series, which have prompted debates on the state government priorities and spending, detailed the harrowing experience pupils, students, and teachers go through in the state’s broken education system – where some poor kids have to sit on bare floor in roofless classrooms to learn, and poorly paid teachers, who sometimes go for months without salary, go as far as collecting money from students to allow them…

Akwa Ibom State Governor, Udom Emmanuel The Akwa Ibom state government has launched a blistering media campaign against a PREMIUM TIMES journalist, Cletus Ukpong, whose investigative reports exposed the rot in public schools in the oil-rich state. The paper lied that the PREMIUM TIMES reporter duped the uncle of millions of naira from a road contract awarded to the family which it said led to the man’s ‘untimely’ death. Elizabeth Ukpong, the widow of the late professor, has refuted the lies. The late politician was 78 when he died in 2013. “Your Excellency, it is so sad and it breaks…

Giant dinosaurs lived on Earth much earlier than previously thought, according to a team of excavators in Argentina who discovered the remains of a species 200 million years old. The species, baptised Ingenia prima, was about three times the size of the largest Triassic dinosaurs from its era. It was discovered in the Balde de Leyes dig site in San Juan province, 1100km west of the Argentine capital ­Buenos Aires. The find was published in the specialist Nature Ecology & Evolution journal on Monday and ­revealed in Argentina by San Martin University’s Scientific Dissemination Agency. “As soon as we found…

US First lady, Melania Trump expressed her elation over the triumphant culmination of the life-saving mission as the final four boys and their soccer coach were successfully removed from a flooded cave in Thailand on Tuesday, capping a herculean international rescue effort that appeared bleak just days ago. “Wonderful to hear all 12 boys & their coach are out of the cave in #Thailand. What an amazing & heroic global effort! Wishing them all a speedy recovery,” Mrs. Trump tweeted. The dramatic days-long rescue mission was accomplished around 6:30 p.m. local time Tuesday, less than nine hours after the last…

Prince Uche Secondus, the National Chairman of the PDP, leaked plot by the regime of President Muhammadu Buhari to either arrest or jail vocal members of the opposition before 2019 general elections. Secondus, therefore, submitted that members of the opposition were ready to be arrested, intimidated and even killed as the presidential election approaches. He said this when the 39 political parties met in Abuja on Monday to sign a Memorandum of Understanding, MoU, to field a single presidential candidate in 2019. He said that the Buhari regime had been carrying on as if it had cowed every Nigerian, warning…

An Indian police force has told its officers to lose weight or face suspension from service. The chief of Karnataka State Reserve Police (KSRP) told the BBC that he was worried about the increasing number of obese personnel in the force. Bhaskar Rao added that he took the decision after more than 100 officers died in the last 18 months because of lifestyle-related illnesses. This is not so in Nigeria where Nigeria Police Force has many obese officers who suffer from similar problem and are unable to contain with gruelling security challenges. The Indian officers will be provided help to…

The Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, has charged President Muhammadu Buhari to speak up on allegations of illegal award of oil contracts worth $25 billion (N9 trillion) under his stewardship. The party said the alleged complicity of the Buhari Presidency, coupled with Mr. President’s failure to address the reported fraudulent contracts awarded through the Nigeria National Petroleum Corporation, NNPC, has earned the nation a huge embarrassment of being labelled a ‘kleptocracy’ in the international arena. The party was reacting to allegations of corruption contained in a new book authored by former United States Ambassador to Nigeria, John Campbell, and…