Author: straightnewsng.com

The Economic Commission of West African States, ECOWAS, at its 55th Ordinary Session in Abuja, bestowed excellence awards with cash gifts on three persons. One of the beneficiaries was Dr. Ameyo Adadevoh, who died after taking great risk to prevent Ebola virus from spreading in Lagos city, after attending to a Liberian patient, Patrick Sawyer in her First Consultant Hospital, Ikoyi. Adadevoh placed the man in quarantine despite pressures from the Liberian government. And she paid for it, contacting the virus and dying in August 2014 at the age of 57. She was posthumously awarded a $10,000 prize. Kofi Annan,…

The Netherlands have booked a place in the semi-finals of the 2019 FIFA Women’s World Cup in France after a 2-0 victory over Italy on Saturday. This was as holders USA zoomed into semi-finals on Friday night of the Women’s World up after trouncing the hosts France 2-1 while England beat Norway 3-0 to reach semi-fianls too. In the Netherlands-Italy match, Vivianne Miedema and Stefanie van der Gragt found the net with headers during the second half in Valenciennes, and the Netherlands will next face either Germany or Sweden, who meet later today in Rennes. The match holds on Wednesday. A…

By Akanimo Sampson The titanic race for the Creek Haven, the Bayelsa State Government House in Yenagoa, the state capital, is on the front burner of the swampy state criss-crossed by a network of oil pipelines. All the contending political forces, some of them marginal, do not appear to be leaving anything to chance. The governorship race promises to be a bi-polar war between the dominant Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and the invading All Progressives Congress (APC). Apart from these two parties, no other one in the state has any significance to cause a miraculous upset in the battle for…

By Akanimo Sampson The Anglo-Dutch oil and gas super major, Shell, is currently working out another Global Memorandum of Understanding (GMoU) for the development of their host communities in the Niger Delta, Nigeria’s vastly polluted oil and gas region. Shell’s General Manager in charge of External Relations, Igo Weli, who made this known in Port Harcourt, the Rivers State capital, however, pointed out that the existing GMoU has expired. In 2006, Shell introduced a new way of working with communities called the GMoU which has continued to be used successfully by other oil companies. A GMoU is an agreement between…

A former Senior Special Assistant to ex-President Olusegun Obasanjo has said the new move to create Ruga settlements in some parts of the country is nothing but an attempt to ‘Fulanise’ the country. Jonathan Asake, who was a member of the seventh House of Representatives from 2011 to 2015, said this during an interview on Channels Television’s Sunrise Daily on Friday. He said the term ‘Ruga’ was a Fulani word and it was thus hypocritical of anyone to say when it is implemented across the nation, it would not be exclusive to Fulani. Asake, who is from southern Kaduna, said…

By Akanimo Sampson With barely 11 years to the expiration of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) 2030, CSR-in-Action, a conglomerate of three sustainability driven businesses, consulting, training and advocacy says Nigeria is still lagging behind in achieving the goals. Unfortunately for Nigeria, according to the experts’ group, “There are still some challenges that the country faces in the implementation of the SDGs – which translates as the reasons why we are behind in the sustainability journey. “Some of which include limited economic diversification and continued vulnerability to external economic shocks, limited financial resources for investments in SDG-related activities, huge infrastructural…

By Akanimo Sampson Irked by the putrefying stench of massive corruption in the Niger Delta Development Commission (NDDC), an interventionist agency, militants of the oil and gas region are currently demanding a Presidential purge of the commission. The Joint Revolutionary Council (JRC) of the plural militant groups in the polluted oil region in a statement this Friday by their Spokesperson, Cynthia Whyte, is demanding for an immediate and total overhaul of the NDDC and a complete removal of the current acting board members. The Niger Delta armed rebels have also taken note of the ongoing investigation by the Economic and…

A total of N679.7 billion statutory allocation was shared among Federal, states and local governments in the country for May 2019. Federation Accounts Allocation Committee, FAAC, stated this in a communiqué issued at the end of the third Treasury Workshop held in Kano. The gross statutory revenue received for May stood at N571.73 billion, which represents 10 percent or N518.9 billion increases when compared with the N518.9 billion shared in the previous month. FAAC stated: “The distributable statutory revenue for the month is N571.731 billion. The total revenue distributable for the current month (including VAT and Exchange Gain Difference) is…

Dementia affects nearly 47 million people all around the world. Additionally, every year, another 9.9 million more diagnoses are made- two-thirds of those are women. Dementia is a complex syndrome whose causes are many and interlinked, and whose symptoms of memory loss and cognitive degradation vary in severity and pace of onset from person to person. Treatments vary in effectiveness, but currently, it remains a debilitating problem that progressively destroys a persons’ ability to live a normal life. A recent review of the most cutting-edge research in Lancet, however, concludes with a stark revelation: Around one in three cases of dementia…

By Akanimo Sampson Director-General of Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), José Graziano da Silva, has said that political will is the fundamental and necessary ingredient to eradicate hunger and all forms of malnutrition – including overweight and obesity throughout the world. “The idea that to end hunger we must decide to invest in the poorest is now widely accepted by all the countries of the world,” Graziano da Silva said at an event on how to move from commitment to action to achieve Zero Hunger held during the 41st session of the FAO Conference, the United Nations agency’s highest governing…