Author: straightnewsng.com

A new report by United Nations Children’s Fund, UNICEF, has said poor diets and a failing food system were responsible for at least 13.1 million cases of malnutrition among children in Nigeria. Already, Nigeria has the second highest proportion of children suffering malnutrition after the Democratic Republic of Congo in the West and Central Africa region, according to the report. The report released in commemoration of World Food Day entitled ”The State of the World’s Children 2019: Children, food and nutrition,” said: “At least 1 in 3 children under five is either undernourished or overweight. Almost 2 in 3 children between…

The Federal Government has announced the deportation of seven nationals of the Democratic Peoples Republic of Korea, DPRK, for life. The development was disclosed in a statement issued by the Public Relations Office of the Nigerian Immigration Service Wednesday in Abuja. The statement read: “The Comptroller General of Nigeria Immigration Service, Muhammad Babandede, has carried out the deportation of the following seven Democratic People’s Republic of Korea DPRK nationals from Nigeria for life. ”They are; Jo Sun Phil, Hang Sung Chol, Che Chun Hyok and Pak Yong Gon. Others are Ri Yong Il, Ri Hak Su and Ri Tong Nam.…

The Independent Corrupt Practices and Other Related Offences Commission, ICPC, said Wednesday it recovered over 200 property, including plazas, bungalows and mansions, from suspected corrupt individuals in the last eight months. The Chairman of the Commission, Professor Bolaji Owasanoye, who stated this at a meeting with the management of the Nigerian Institute of Advanced Legal Studies, NIALS, in Abuja, boasted that the agency was on course to recover additional 100 houses from corrupt elements, adding that this would increase the number of seized assets to 300 before the end of the year. Owasanoye said the commission was working with the Federal…

The Senate, Wednesday, was told that the 600 state-owned enterprises in the country gulped not less than $3 billion on yearly basis with little or no returns into the public purse. The Upper Chamber was also informed that the N2.28 trillion deficit in the N10.33 trillion 2020 budget could best be funded by proceeds from privatization of moribund national assets than borrowing from foreign and local loans. Speaking in Abuja during an interactive session with the Senator Theodore Orji, Peoples Democratic Party, PDP-led Senate Committee on Privatization, Alex Okoh, the Director General of the Bureau of Public Enterprises, BPE, said…

As the negotiation meeting between the Federal Government and the organised labour on the Consequential Adjustment on the new minimum wage ended in a deadlock Wednesday night, some state governments in the country may be perfecting plans to short change their workers. Apart from Ekiti and Kaduna State governments that have started paying their workers from Grade levels 01-06, other states are yet to pay or agree on the template for payment. Five months ago, for example, Akwa Ibom State government inaugurated a 14-member committee to work out modalities for the implementation of N30,000 new national minimum wage for workers…

By Akanimo Sampson Fifty-three migrant family groups comprising 64 children, 29 women and 33 men were last week air-lifted from the city of Matamoros (Tamaulipas, Mexico) to San Pedro Sula (Honduras). The International Organisation for Migration (IOM), a United Nations agency, organised a charter flight for the 126 migrants who expressed their decision to return voluntarily to their country of origin. IOM deployed all efforts and collaborated closely with the Honduran Embassy in Mexico and with the National Migration Institute of Mexico to arrange for this first charter flight in its Assisted Voluntary Return (AVR) programme. In the days preceding…

By Akanimo Sampson The United Nations migration agency, the International Organisation for Migration (IOM) has assisted 142 stranded Ethiopians to safely return home from Djibouti. The returnees who were en-route to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia were stranded in Djibouti where smugglers abandoned them after robbing them of their money, leaving them with no means to continue their journey or return to Ethiopia. “I worked as an assistant loader for a truck for two years to save four thousand birr ($135)”, Edris Ahmed (name changed) told IOM. “We paid 2,000 birr ($70) for the smuggler to get us to…

By Akanimo Sampson At a major conference on the brain drain phenomenon at the headquarters of the International Organisation for Migration (IOM) for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), the United Nations agency warned that Central and Eastern European countries are seeing dramatic shifts in their migration patterns, changing the makeup of communities and posing heretofore unseen challenges. With 57 participating States in North America, Europe and Asia, OSCE is the world’s largest regional security organisation. It works for stability, peace and democracy for more than a billion people, through political dialogue about shared values and through practical work that…

By Akanimo Sampson The Director-General of the International Organisation for Migration (IOM), António Vitorino, has said that continued military operations in Syria will have devastating consequences for the seven million people living in the Northern axis of the troubled country. According to the big boss of the United Nations migration agency, ‘’the cycle of successive displacement is particularly concerning.’’ Many of Syria’s 6.1 million internally displaced have been repeatedly forced from their homes, in some cases after they have returned to their communities. Between May and August of this year, fighting displaced an estimated 400,000 Syrians in the northwest of the country. Vitorino said…

A Ghanaian clergyman has asked Governor Udom Emmanuel of Akwa Ibom State “When you get to that top, return my sword to me.” Presenting a well-decorated sword to the governor in his church, Archbishop Nicholas Duncan-Williams, founder of Action Chapel International in Accra, Ghana, noted “But until then keep it. May the Lord guide you and as you hold this sword in your hand maintain it until you climb to the mountain!” Excited Duncan-Williams, who played host to the governor during a recent three-day Prophetic encounter gathering, recalled “Before the election, I lifted up a sword over you here and…