Author: straightnewsng.com

Akwa Ibom State is one of the 15 Nigerian states that are classified fairly miserable. The Chief Executive Officer of Financial Derivatives Company Limited (FDC), Mr. Bismarck Rewane, further mentioned Katsina, Kebbi, Kaduna, FCT, Nasarawa, Kogi, Benue, Enugu, Delta, Imo, Bayelsa, Rivers and Ebonyi, the remaining fairly miserable. Rewane who made this known in a paper entitled NIGERIA: Resource Rich & Cash Poor; Plenty Potential …Little Actual he presented to mark the 60th Independence Anniversary of Nigeria listed nine states in the country could be classified as fairly prosperous. These states, according to him, are Kwara, Oyo, Osun, Ekiti, Ogun,…

The bulk of budgetary allocation for education sector will be spent on payment of salaries and other entitlements to 10,500 professors in the country, the Minister of State for Education, Chukwuemeka Nwajiuba has said. Nwajiuba who said this in an interview with The Punch, slammed the  Academic Staff Union  of Universities and further told them that no sector in the country was getting enough money. He accused the union of using strikes to drive public school students abroad and to private universities. Nwajiuba said “Actually, there have been a lot of people asking me as minister what I think is the…

Hoffenheim centre-back Kevin Akpoguma has stated why he decided to commit his international future to the West Africans. The 25-year-old defender explained that the potential in the Nigeria national team swayed him to switch his allegiance away from Germany. The defender, born to a German mother and a Nigerian father, has featured in a number of games for Germany at youth level. His recent form in the Bundesliga has also been a talking point, making 18 league appearances for the Kraichgauer last season to help his side finish sixth in the campaign. Despite starring for German youth teams, the 25-year-old confirmed…

Despite Federal Government’s directive for tertiary institutions to reopen in the country, members of Association of Staff Union of Universities may not call off their months-old industrial action due to continued implementation of Integrated Payroll and Personnel Information System (IPPIS). IPPIS is said to be an information Communications Technology (ICT) project initiated by the Federal Government of Nigeria (FGN) to improve the effectiveness and efficiency of payroll administration for its Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs). This is as President Muhammadu Buhari has reiterated the Federal Government’s position on payment of salaries of University lecturers, insisting that those lecturers who were…

Bayelsa State Government has not hidden its odium for the proposed National Water Resources Bill 2020, pledging to join other progressive forces to resist it at all cost. Arriving at this decision at the weekly meeting of the State Executive Council Wednedsay in Yenagoa, the council presided over by Senator Lawrence Ewhrudjakpo, the state deputy vowed to resist the law seen as another draconian Land Use Decree in disguise. The National Water Resources Bill 2020 that has passed its second reading on the floor of the Senate was returned by House of Representatives for re-gazetting. It has attracted a wide-ranging…

The Nigerian Government has budgeted N13 trillion for the 2021 financial year. President Muahmmadu Buhari presented the budget proposal to National Assembly on Thursday. Compared to budget presentations done in previous years, Buhari was only accompanied by Vice President Yemi Osinbajo and a few ministers, while the others participated virtually. The 2021 budget is tagged Budget of economic recovery and resilience. According to the president, “the main thrust of the 2021 budget is to complete as many ongoing projects as possible”, while giving priority to the ones that most affect the people. “Personnel costs remain the largest single item of…

For the first time in history, two women have jointly won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry. Professor Emmanuelle Charpentier and Professor Jennifer Doudna won the 2020 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for their work developing a method for genome editing. The award takes the number of women who have ever won the Nobel Prize in chemistry from five to seven. Both scientists will equally share 10 million Swedish kronor (£866,000) for their discovery of “one of gene technology’s sharpest tools” – the CRISPR/Cas9 genome editing technique, or “genetic scissors” as the committee described it. “Using these [scissors], researchers can change the DNA of animals,…

Joshua Cheptegei  broke the 10,000m track world record on Wednesday in Valencia with a time of 26mins 11.00 seconds. He lowered the previous mark of 26min 17.53sec set by Kenenisa Bekele in 2005 in Brussels. This was the 24-year-old 10,000m world champion’s third world record this year and cemented his standing as the new middle distance maestro. In February he claimed the world 5km road record in Monaco. Then, after a period of Coronavirus lockdown in his native Uganda, he returned to Monaco and, in his first race back, wiped almost two seconds off Bekele’s 16-year-old track world record time…

Some prominent Nigerians have felicitated Ahmed Nuhu Bamalli over his successful emergence as the new Emir of Zazzau. In a message signed by Ja’afaru Ibrahim Sani, the Commissioner for Local Government Affairs, Nasir El-Rufai, the Kaduna State governor, Wednesday announced the appointment of the new emir after weeks of apprehension, 17 days since the stool became vacant. Mr Bamalli succeeds Shehu Idris, the 17th Fulani emir of Zazzau who reigned for 45 years before his death on September 20. Princes from three of the four dynastic lines of the emirate jostled for the post with four of them believed to…

Nigeria has escaped a $1.5 billion liability in an application for arbitration filed by two oil companies. Abubakar Malami, Minister of Justice and Attorney-General of the Federation (AGF), said in a statement the International Centre for Settlement of Investment Dispute in the United States gave the judgment during its sitting on Tuesday. The oil companies — Interocean Oil Development Company and Interocean Oil Exploration Company — had in 2013 filed the request for arbitration before the tribunal. They had sought for settlement of investment disputes against Nigeria over a contract between the two parties. But in the statement issued on…