President Muhammadu Buhari has ordered that $150 million be withdrawn from the National Sovereign Investment Authority (NSIA).
This was made known by the Minister of Finance, Budget and National Planing, Zainab Ahmed, in Abuja while speaking with journalists.
Ahmed said the withdrawal would be made from the NSIA stabilisation fund to augment disbursements by the federation accounts allocation committee to the three tiers of government.
Nollywood actress Funke Akindele and her husband Abdulrasheed Bello a.k.a JJC skills, were on Monday sentenced to 14 days community service each by a Magistrate court in Lagos.
The court also ordered them to pay a fine of N100,000 each.
Below is their charge.
The Actress and her husband had earlier pleaded guilty to a one-count charge for hosting a gathering of over 20 persons, contrary to the social distancing directives of the Lagos State Government.
According to the regulation, anyone found guilty is liable to one-month imprisonment or N100,000.
They were arraigned at the Samuel Ilori Courthouse of the Magistrate Court in Ogba, Lagos.
Virus thought to have originated in China’s Wuhan has killed over 53,000 people and infected more than 1 million.
The World Health Organization (WHO) has declared the new coronavirus outbreak, which originated in Wuhan, China, a global pandemic.
As of April 3, over 53,000 people have died from the disease and there have been more than 1 million confirmed cases worldwide, according to data collected by the Johns Hopkins University in the United States.
Here is what you need to know:
The coronavirus family causes illnesses ranging from the common cold to more severe diseases such as severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) and Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS), according to the WHO.
They circulate in animals and some can be transmitted between animals and humans. Several coronaviruses are circulating in animals that have not yet infected humans.
The new coronavirus, the seventh known to affect humans, has been named COVID-19.
Common signs of infection include fever, coughing and breathing difficulties. In severe cases, it can cause pneumonia, multiple organ failure and death.
The incubation period of COVID-19 is thought to be between one and 14 days. It is contagious before symptoms appear, which is why so many people get infected.
Infected patients can be also asymptomatic, meaning they do not display any symptoms despite having the virus in their systems.
China alerted the WHO to cases of unusual pneumonia in Wuhan on December 31.
COVID-19 is thought to have originated in a seafood market where wildlife was sold illegally.
On February 7, Chinese researchers said the virus could have spread from an infected animal to humans through illegally trafficked pangolins, prized in Asia for food and medicine.
Scientists have pointed to either bats or snakes as possible sources.
Should I worry? How can I protect myself?
The WHO declared the virus a global pandemic on March 11, and said it was “deeply concerned by the alarming levels of spread and severity” of the outbreak.
The WHO recommends basic hygiene such as regularly washing hands with soap and water, and covering your mouth with your elbow when sneezing or coughing.
Maintain “social distancing” – keeping at least 1.8 metres (six feet) between yourself and others – particularly if they are coughing and sneezing, and avoid touching your face, eyes and mouth with unwashed hands.
Avoid unnecessary, unprotected contact with animals and be sure to thoroughly wash hands after contact.
AL JAZEERA NEWS
By Desmond Ekwueme
Dr. Chikwe Ihekweazu is a epidemiologist and public health physician. He was appointed the Chief Executive Officer of Nigeria Centre for Disease Control (NCDC) on 15 August 2016 by President Muhammadu Buhari.
Chikwe was born to a Nigerian-German parents. His father is a Nigerian doctor and the mother, a German professor. Chikwe holds an MBBS from the University of Nigeria and a Masters in Public Health from Heinrich-Heine University, Germany.
His mother was Professor Edith Ihekweazu, a German. She was a professor of linguistics and first female HOD, Foreign Languages at UNN but died at a young age of 50 in 1991 in a motor accident. She was also the first female dean, Faculty of Arts of the university. Whe she died her children including Chikwe were still very young. In 2018 UNN began a process of immortalising her for the pioneering work she did in the university when the Department of Foreign Languages instituted the Edith Ihekweazu Memorial Lecture.
Chikwe married his wife Vivianne Ihekweazu in 2003 and they have two children.
He co-founded EpiAFRIC and Nigeria Health Watch as managing partner and editor respectively. In 2011, he moved to Johannesburg, South Africa with his family to become the co-director of the Centre for Tuberculosis at the South Africa National Institute for Communicable Diseases, Johannesburg, South Africa and later as a medical epidemiologist consultant at United Kingdom’s Health Protection Agency.
He is currently the Chief Executive Officer, Nigeria Centre for Disease Control (NCDC). He was the acting director of the Regional Centre for Disease Control for West Africa. Following Nigeria’s National Assembly bill and act, Nigeria Centre for Disease Control (NCDC) became an independent agency on 13 November 2018 and Chikwe emerged the first Director General of the agency.
During the 2019-2020 COVID 19 Pandemic , he was part of a team of experts of the World Health Organisation on a joint mission to study the epidemic in China. In 2007, Chikwe attended his first TED conference in Tanzania. It was reported by Nature that Chikwe criticized Nigeria for being unprepared for epidemics in his blog- 2009–10 H1N1 influenza pandemic, “Nigeria needs a central, well-resourced centre for infectious disease prevention and control, or one day we will pay the price the hard way”.
Ihekweazu has been in the frontline of the battle with Covid-19. He has been attending to scores of cases day and night…and coming very close to the pandemic….eyeball to eyeball. He takes all the risks and faces all the horrifying and terrifying challenges. He has been taking records and history of patients and linking with his colleagues at the WHO seeking more precautionary solutions and measures just as vaccines are expected for cure of the pandemic.
What can we wish, demand or request other than for God to keep protecting Ihekweazu and his family! In the Lord’s hands we commit Ihekweazu and his career!
LAGOS – The Media Rights Agenda (MRA) on Monday condemned the increasing cases of attacks by law enforcement and security agencies on journalists covering the Coronavirus pandemic and other issues and called on the Federal Government to ensure respect for the fundamental rights of journalists and the media.
In a statement issued in Lagos, MRA’s Programme Director, Mr. Ayode Longe, said: “We are constrained to remind the Federal Government that it has obligations under various international instruments which it has voluntarily acceded to, particularly Article 66(c) of the Revised Ecowas Treaty, to ensure respect for the rights of journalists. We are gravely concerned by the rampant cases of attacks by law enforcement and security agents on journalists carrying out their professional duties as well as the obstruction of such duties. This situation is unacceptable and will no longer be tolerated.”
He cited as one of the latest of such incidents, the attack on March 28, 2020 by an operative of the Department of State Security (DSS) on the Imo State correspondent of Leadership newspaper, Ms Angela Nkwo-Akpolu, while she was taking pictures of a hotel in Owerri where guests were forcibly quarantined by security agents allegedly because the hotel failed to comply with government’s directives on checking the spread of COVID-19.
The DSS operative was reported to have manhandled Ms Nkwo-Akpolu, forcibly seized a pair of prescription eye-glasses belonging to her as well as her ipad and deleted several pictures she had taken. The security agent stopped short of beating her up and smashing her ipad on the ground owing to the intervention of other journalists present at the scene.
In yet another incident, at about 4.00am on March 30, 2020, a group of soldiers manning a checkpoint at Mbiama, a border town between Rivers and Bayelsa States, attacked a circulation vehicle belonging to The Punch newspaper, which was on its way to distribute copies of the newspaper in states in the South-South zone, and damaged the car.
According to the driver of the vehicle, Mr Sunkanmi Olusola, when he got to Mbiama, the soldiers stopped him and the driver of the circulation vehicle of The Nation newspaper and refused to allow them to continue their journey. His appeal to the soldiers to allow them leave apparently angered one of them who brought out a knife and slashed one of the vehicle’s front tyres into shreds. Mr. Olusola said the soldier had initially tried unsuccessfully to smash the windscreen of the Passat Golf 3 car before deciding to use the knife to tear the tyre.
Condemning these incidents, Mr. Longe described as tragic the frequent resort to violence and brutality by law enforcement and security agents in their dealings with members of the public, including journalists, without any civility or respect for the basic constitutional rights of citizens.
He said: “these incidents are doubly tragic because a free press and respect for the rule of law are necessary conditions in a democracy. Unfortunately, these security agents have consistently demonstrated that they are either not aware of these fundamentals of democratic rule or that they have no regard for them. This cannot be allowed to continue unchecked.”
Mr. Longe noted that at a time such as this when the world is confronting an unprecedented public health challenge in the Coronavirus pandemic, the role of the media is more important than ever before, given the imperative of citizens having access to accurate information about the nature of the threat it poses and the means to combat it, among other issues.
He argued that “In a situation such as this, there can be no justification for these types of actions by the Government or its law enforcement and security agencies. The Government has a heightened responsibility to ensure that journalists and the media are able to perform their duties. This should necessitate taking extraordinary measures to protect journalists and their work and fully implementing all laws aimed at ensuring that journalists and citizens have uninhibited access to information. Unfortunately, we are constantly faced with a situation where the Government, which should be the protector, is the principal impediment.”
Mr. Longe called on Yusuf Magaji Bichi, the Director General of the DSS, and Lieutenant General Tukur Yusuf Buratai, the Chief of Army Staff, to call their officers and men to order and provide them with the necessary training about their human rights obligations to citizens and internationally recognised acceptable modes of engagement by law enforcement agents with citizens and civilian populations.
Sundiata Post
By Femi Fani-Kayode
In view of the Covid 19 scourge this is the time for us to look within, to pray to our God, to gather our strength and to preach love, unity and peace.
However that does not mean that we should act as if all was well before the arrival of the demon called Covid in our shores. It does not mean that we should close our eyes to the bitter truths of our pitiful condition and statehood and our insufferable and seemingly insurmountable predicaments or take them off the ball.
It does not mean that we should forget about our quest to break the heavy chains that have held us bound and turn our backs on the quest to liberate our people.
The coronavirus has come and in God’s name and time it will go. It’s ugly and unwelcome prescence does not mean that we should close our eyes to the monumental problems of our country and lose sight of the seemingly insurmountable challenges that we as a people are facing.
This is all the more so when we are saddled with a Federal Government and a President who have proved to be more incompetent, clueless and ineffectual than ANY other in our entire history and who appears to have an unnatural love for cows and an incredulous affinity with Islamist terrorists.
Due to the countless calls and numerous enquiries that I have received over the last few days, I am constrained to state clearly and unequivocally where I stand and what I consider to be the way forward for Nigeria. For the record those views are as follows.
Nigeria as a nation is no longer viable or tenable. It would take a miracle to keep us together as one for anything more than the next five years. Whether we like it or not, break-up is the future and unity is the past.
That is what I sense and that is what I see. And the truth is that that may well be the best thing for us all.
Too many innocent souls have been slaughtered over the last 106 years in the name of keeping Nigeria one and too many are being killed and persecuted today for the same nebulous and moribund cause.
Outside of that, can there be any understanding between one that believes that he alone has the power over the future and destiny and over life and death and that boastfully proclaims that he was “born to rule” and another that he considers to be nothing more than a “worthless slave”?
Can there be any love between a cruel, barbaric, retrograde, barren, callous and unrepentant “master” and a resourceful, refined, productive, generous, kind and civilised “servant” who refuses to bow to him or kiss his feet?
Can there be any fellowship between light and darkness? Can there be friendship between the children of God and the sons of Belial? Can anything wholesome and good come out of being unequally yoked?
Can you put a lion and a hyena in the same cage and expect a benign result? Can a tiger and a vulture live together in peace?
Can the bold and noble eagle and a cold-blooded and murderous snake walk as one? Can a vicious and heartless scorpion sleep in the same pen as a harmless and loving lamb? Can a ravenous and hungry wolf live in peace with Little Red Riding Hood?
The answer to all these profound, fundamental, germane, philosophical and soul-searching questions is a resounding NO!
The ethnic nationalities and zones of our country must and will exercise their inalienable and lawful right of self-determination in due course. For us this is a response to what we consider to be an existential threat and a matter of survival.
That is the future that the overwhelming majority of Nigerians in the younger generation hope and pray for and it is only a matter of time before it comes to pass.
The Fulanisation and Islamisation agenda of Usman Dan Fodio, Ahmadu Bello, Muhammadu Buhari and their collaborators and allies which has been rigorously, clinically, surreptitiously and ruthlessly implemented over the last 220 years cannot and shall not succeed. It has failed woefully and it has finally come to an abrupt end.
The old British contraption and vassal state known as Nigeria is dead and buried. We are about to enter into a new, prosperous, fruitful and exciting era which will witness the emergence of between two to five new and independent sovereign nations, the total emancipation of our people and the final establishment of liberty, freedom and justice for all.
To our collective oppressors and their powerful friends and allies in high places we say the following: you cannot keep us together against our will and by the force of arms and you shall not subject us to another one hundred years of tyranny, slavery, wickedness, savagery, barbarity, cruelty, humiliation and bestiality.
We would rather die a thousand deaths than acquiese to your evil designs and bow to your unconciable subjugation.
After Lady Corona leaves our shores we shall continue the struggle. And be rest assured that at the end of it all, by the grace and power of the Living God and He that holds the world together by the power of His word, we shall prevail.
By Chris Anyokwu
Lately you were sighted
in these parts, folk claiming
it’s your doppelganger, a rogue decoy
to fool the credulous believers
Without a doubt, we know of the Legend
of Sleeping Hollow, of our Prime Worker
of the controls droning at high noon
whilst locusts play havoc with our yellowing stalks
What does it matter if our laden vineyard
is turned a balding Sahara,
forest giants and undergrowth made history
in the wake of the Angel of Death?
We can only pray the season of wakefulness
is nigh at hand for Rip van Winkle
to rouse the somnabulist hordes
to stay the hand of the Invisible Visitor.
Chris Anyokwu is an Associate Professor at the Department of English, University of Lagos (UNILAG), Nigeria.
By Chris Anyokwu
Yesterday
was a surfeit of conceited farts
Paradise on bubble,arpeggios of satieties thrummed the air
titillations of coital palate,loud cannons of cranial feats.
The string-pullers? Lords of instant extinction and supersonic surfers of the superhighway…
Some blared deific trumpet of scions of Cupid, others
their Terminator physique,many more gods’ bits of wood
Revelled in the tintinnabulation of gold coins
with its power spin-offs…
Yes, Gods roamed the earth
and their worshippers burned suppliant tapers
to gain themselves Nirvana
Today’s all quiet
a planetary sepulchre encroaches
as the dying bury their dead
you can hear a pin drop
from Cancer to Capricorn
as elephants and ants duck
under common eaves
to wait out a spring nightmare
red in tooth and claw
sickle in hand, ripping reaping
a dark heavy harvest
Gods’ magic wands wilt in sulphuric tongues of fire
teaching homilies of humility
a salve which calcified at dawn
now, a race of blind beggars trudges on,a long long day into night.
Chris Anyokwu is an Associate Professor at the Department of English, University of Lagos (UNILAG), Nigeria.
Co-author of popular early learners English handbook, Brighter Grammar, Phebean Ajibola Ogundipe has died at the age of 92.
Ogundipe died on 27 March 2020 in Charlotte, North Carolina, in the United States, where she was buried on the same day.
A statement by announcing the death read, “We are sad to announce that on March 27, 2020 we had to say goodbye to Phebean Ajibola Ogundipe (Charlotte, North Carolina). Family and friends can light a candle as a loving gesture for their loved one. Leave a sympathy message to the family in the guestbook on this memorial page of Phebean Ajibola Ogundipe to show support.
“A burial was held on Friday, March 27th 2020 at 11:00 AM. “IN LIEU OF FLOWERS please send donations by mail to All Nations Assembly, 508 South Cherry Road, Rock Hill, SC 29732 or St. Andrews UMC, 1901 Archdale Dr, Charlotte, NC 28210.”
Aside Brighter Grammar, she also co-authored the New Practical English for Senior Secondary series with P.S. Tregidgo and wrote other books, including Up-country Girl: A personal journey and truthful portrayal of African culture.
VANGUARD
Gemma Mullin, Digital Health Reporter
It comes as Britain attempts to ramp up mass testing after capacity appeared to lag behind other major nations, including the US and Germany.
To meet demand and boost production, the government has enlisted private companies to help – with plans for thousands of kits to be made available within the coming weeks.
But in a blow to production one of those suppliers sent an email on Monday to government laboratories in the UK warning that a delivery of “probes and primers” would be delayed because it was contaminated, the Telegraph reported.
Eurofins, which is based in Luxembourg, admitted there had been “an issue” but said other private providers had suffered the same problem.
It’s unclear how the components were contaminated and senior health sources told the newspaper that the delay wouldn’t significantly impact the UK’s testing programme.
It comes as Boris Johnson chaired a meeting of his Cabinet by videolink on Tuesday, as he continues to self-isolate in Downing Street after testing positive for coronavirus.
The Prime Minister has faced heavy criticism over shortages of personal protective equipment (PPE) for frontline NHS staff as well as the slow rollout of testing.
All Cabinet ministers dialled into the meeting, with only civil service chief Sir Mark Sedwill and a small number of officials in the Cabinet room in Downing Street, following the rules and keeping two metres apart.
The Prime Minister told the meeting: “The rising death toll in recent days showed the vital importance of the public continuing to stick to the social distancing guidance which has been put in place by the Government, based on scientific and medical advice.”
Former health secretary Jeremy Hunt has voiced further concerns about the lack of testing in the UK after it emerged the Government had still not hit its target of 10,000 tests a day.
This is despite earlier claims by Mr Hancock that the target had been reached.
The World Health Organisation (WHO) has urged countries to “test, test, test” as a key part of its strategy to beat the virus.
But officials have admitted the UK does not have the same capacity as other countries that are testing more, including Germany which is conducting around 70,000 per day.
Mr Hunt told the Guardian: “The big advantage we now have is evidence that testing works in other countries.
“We can see that Asian countries have been spectacularly more successful than European ones in avoiding mass lockdown.”
It comes as a 19-year-old with no underlying health conditions has died in hospital after testing positive for Covid-19, NHS England has said.
The teenager was among 367 new deaths in England’s hospitals announced on Tuesday.
All patients were aged between 19 and 98 years old, and all but 28 – aged between 19 and 91 – had underlying health conditions, NHS England said in a statement.
A total of 1,789 patients have now died overall in UK hospitals as of 5pm on Monday, the Department of Health said, up by 381 from 1,408 the day before.
The Sun, UK
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