News & Announcements

A four-story building attached to the Westbrook Hotel in the Garki area of the Federal Capital Territory collapsed on Monday night, trapping many people inside.

The Westbrook Hotel is reportedly owned by a former governor from a state in the South East.
An eyewitness, who requested anonymity, informed Punch about the incident, adding that he observed two trapped individuals being pulled from the rubble and taken to the hospital.

“There is a possibility that there could be some people inside the collapsed building who may have died.
“I saw two people being pulled out from the rubble now and taken to the hospital while rescue operations are ongoing. The emergency responders are not coordinated yet for efficient operations,” he said.

Rescue operations are underway, but reports suggest that the emergency responders are not yet organized for efficient operations.

Worshippers, Clergymen, Friends, and members of Rhema Voice Chapel International in Freetown Sierra Leone, gathered to witness the historic “Turning of Sod” for the building of a magnificent church in the honour of God.

The service was based on the gospel from the book of 1 Chronicles chapter 22 verses 2-5 which in paraphrase , signifies how David gathered strangers to wrought stones to build the house of God.

It was a historic moment when the General overseas of the Apostle John Boateng, in the presence of the crowd, lifted prayers for the Sod Turning Service, and backed with the laying of 12 stones by Clergymen, worshipers, and guests in attendance representing the twelve tribes of Isreal.

The proposed Church Cathedral, no doubt shows the Glory of God upon Rhema Voice Chapel International and how far it has stood the test of time over the years.

A digital review of the structure is a clear indication of what to expect after the project, and it promises to be one of the best places of worship in Freetown, Sierra Leone in terms of architectural design.

The President of Iran, Ebrahim Raisi, and his Minister of Foreign Affairs, Hossein Amirabdollahian, have been confirmed killed in a helicopter crash in mountainous terrain and icy weather.
This development was confirmed to Reuters by an Iranian official on Monday after search teams located the wreckage.

The wreckage was located near the East Azerbaijan province.
“President Raisi, the foreign minister and all the passengers in the helicopter were killed in the crash,” the senior Iranian official told Reuters, asking not to be named because of the sensitivity of the matter.
Iran’s Mehr news agency also confirmed the deaths.

Iran’s President and minister confirmed killed in a helicopter crash
It reported: “All passengers of the helicopter carrying the Iranian president and foreign minister were martyred.”

The helicopter, a US-made Bell 212, was said to have been completely burned in the crash on Sunday.
It reportedly slammed into a mountain peak.

The Organised Labour has told the government to perish any idea of offering N100,000 as the new minimum wage.

The labour also told the government to be serious with the negotiations on the issue of workers’ wages, insisting that it used the lowest minimum in arriving at the N615,000 as the new minimum wage.
Recall that the organised labour, comprising the Nigeria Labour Congress, NLC and the Trade Union Congress of Nigeria, TUC, pulled out of the negotiation meeting last week Wednesday when the government offered N48,000 as the new minimum wage.

However, the Chairman of the Tripartite Committee on the National Minimum Wage, Alhaji Bukar Goni in a letter to the organized labour for a meeting tomorrow indicated interest that the government will shift ground and asked the organised labour to also shift ground.

Speaking in Abuja, the NLC Head of Information and Public Affairs, Benson Upah, said that the organised labour would honour the invitation tomorrow but he advised the government to be serious.
He said, “Our expectations are that the government should be serious this time around. We expect them to take more seriously the issue of wages of workers.”

On whether labour would accept N100,000 as being insinuated, he said, “Well, it will not be fair and these are the reasons. The first reason is that when we demanded N615,000, we broke that down. We used the barest minimum.
“For instance, we put accommodation for N40,000, we also use for feeding N500, tell me where you are going to get food for N500 with a family of six. As I said, we used the barest estimate but beyond that, the government hiked the electricity tariff by two hundred and fifty percent after we made our demand and that has introduced new costs and expenses. So if the government is serious, it should not be thinking about a hundred thousand naira.

“You know that when you create poor citizens, you create a poorer county.” On his part, a member of the NLC delegation on the Tripartite Committee, Prof Theophilus Ndubuaku, said that it would not be kind of the government to offer N100,000.

He said, “I don’t think one hundred thousand naira is the kind of thing we want because it’s far below expectation, we will accept something that can at least keep somebody alive. I don’t think a hundred thousand naira will keep a worker alive in this country; a man with a family of six because our computation is based on the size of the family.

“So, if they come up with that kind of amount, I don’t think we will appreciate it. In the private sector, even artisans are not taking one hundred thousand a month. Whatever we accept, we will look at what is the income, what are they collecting, and what is available to the government because if the government is collecting one trillion naira, we cannot ask them to pay two trillion naira.

“We are responsible people, but the same government should know that people are suffering, they will have to agree with us that there is a crisis, that something needs to be done to create wealth, that something needs to be done for Nigeria to be a producing country and not a consuming nation.
“Something needs to be done to reduce the cost of governance. We are supposed to be partners in governance, after all, we are the labourers.”

Asked to give a reason why labour may not accept one hundred thousand, he said, “If we see that hundred thousand is affordable, if we see that they can afford more, we will reject it. They have to tell us why they cannot pay N615,000. The onus is on them to tell us why, then we will sit down and say okay you don’t have the money, but we will also know why you don’t have the money because Nigeria is a country that is naturally endowed but something is wrong. How do you make sure you get the money so that when we come again in two years, you won’t tell us the same story?

“What are you doing to create wealth, how are you going to partner with us to create wealth instead of being wasteful, how are you going to partner with us to reduce the cost of governance? 
“If a father comes home and says the only money he has is one thousand naira and you know that the father is not wasting the money, you will manage but if it is when the father comes and he is eating food bought from the fast food joint and it cost N10,000 and he gives one thousand naira to the entire family to go and look for food and cook for themselves, he may be beaten up, the family may refuse it.
“The letter they wrote to us, they said that both parties should shift ground, which means they will shift ground and they are expecting us to shift ground, but the question is, what ground are they shifting, are they going to shift ground by two naira or two thousand naira to make it N50,000 or are they going to shift ground by N62,000 to make it N100,000 or by N150,000 or N200,000 to make it N300,000 plus.
“The point here is, this thing we are doing is not rocket science, the government should sit down and calculate how much it will cost, what is a befitting wage for an average Nigerian? They should break down what they are giving us because even in salaries, you break everything down. So, when you break it down, they will tell us whether they are going to put one thousand naira per month for transport and two thousand naira per month for food.

“That N48,000 they are offering, they should have broken it down. So if there are certain things they don’t want to make provision for, for instance, health, if they say if any worker is sick, the person should go and die or they don’t want to make provision for food, let them just put standard things.
“The problem here is that you asked someone to tighten his belt, you said there is no money but you removed subsidy. Since they removed the subsidy, FAAC has been collecting almost three times what they were collecting before the subsidy. That money you are collecting, what are you doing with it?
“You now said you want to build a coastal highway, when the existing roads to the same location are not passable. You are budgeting trillions of naira, you want to build Lagos-Sokoto brand new highway, you want to put billions of naira for hajj subsidy, you bought 200 vehicles for Customs and this is somebody that is complaining that the naira is having issues, but you now want to spend hundreds of billions of naira to import Toyota cars for Customs, why can’t you buy made-in Nigeria vehicles?

“This whole thing doesn’t make any meaning, we don’t even understand it. They are behaving as if they have money, but they don’t know what to do with it like General Yakubu Gowon said in the 70s. You bought 200 Toyota Jeeps for Customs, which means you do have the money, but you don’t know what to do with it. But one thing you don’t want to do with the money is to feed Nigerians, feed your workers, and make your workers comfortable.

“And as you can see, they are not even giving anybody hope. There is no programme for agriculture, the government is not declaring an emergency on power, food security, and transportation.
“So what we are expecting is that, if they tell us they cannot pay N615,000, they should tell us why they cannot pay, this is negotiation. If we have told them to pay N615,000, we expect the government to calculate how many workers that are expected to receive this minimum wage.

“We did our research, you now say each state has this workforce, this is what they are now getting as revenue, forget the fact that some of them are not doing anything to increase their IGR. Whatever they are getting now from the money coming from the federal revenue account, the federal government should say, this is the number of workers that we have, this is how much that you are asking, and at the end of the day, this is how much we are expected to spend as salary and this is how much we have.
“So, NLC please look at it, we don’t want to spend this percent on salary, we will then sit down and ask, if you don’t want to spend it on salary, you want to spend it by importing vehicles for Customs, when you have locally manufactured vehicles that won’t cost capital flight.”

He, however, said that if the government comes out with something” relevant “, the organised labour will shift ground as asked.
“We must discuss with them that the figure presented is realistic and based on facts and statistics as the organised labour has done,” he said.

He said, “For the provision of food for one person, we put N500, but there is a survey carried out by the National Bureau for Statistics covering all parts of the country. NBS is the custodian of statistics and it came out that in today’s Nigeria, the average you can spend for a meal is N900.
“But we went low, we took the minimum. Their average is N900, but we took the minimum of N500, that is you cannot go below N500. So you can see how realistic we are. So we will insist that the government breaks down every item; food, hospital, accommodation, transportation etc.
“We don’t want anyone to come and say that the NLC and the TUC presented arbitrary figures.”

Reigning Miss USA Noelia Voigt has stepped down from her title, attributing her resignation to mental health considerations.

Ms. Voigt, who claimed the crown in the annual competition last September, expressed that her decision was based on what she felt was best for her mental well-being.

“Never compromise your physical and mental wellbeing,” she wrote on Instagram. “Our health is our wealth.”

The Miss USA organisation said it supported her decision and would announce a successor.
The 24-year-old Venezuelan-American, of Utah, said that hoped to “continue to inspire others” as she started “a new chapter” in life.

“Prioritise your mental health, advocate for yourself and others by using your voice and never be afraid of what the future holds, even if it feels uncertain,” she said.
She expressed her gratitude for her seven months as Miss USA, which she said gave her a “platform … to make a difference” as well as realise a “lifelong dream” and meeting “people all over the world.”
Miss USA expressed gratitude to Ms. Voigt and emphasized on Instagram that “the well-being of our titleholders is a top priority.”

The organization announced that it is currently evaluating plans for transferring duties to a successor.
Savannah Gankiewicz from Hawaii was the runner-up to Ms. Voigt in the competition last year.

The Ilorin Zonal Command of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, EFCC on Monday, May 6, 2024, re-arraigned an Ilorin based Businessman, Chukudubeem Ezenwa on a five-count charge bordering on cybercrime, retention of proceeds of crime and fraud to the tune of $10,000USD.
Ezenwa, Managing Director of Chukudubem Apple Tech Limited was arraigned alongside Adeleke Damilola before Justice Evelyn Anyadike of the Federal High Court sitting in Ilorin.
The two defendants were first arraigned on September 23, 2021 before Justice Muhammed Sani of the same court. But the trial could not be concluded before the redeployment of the former trial judge to another division. Hence, the case had to be reassigned to another judge prompting the case to start de novo.

Count one of the charge reads: “That you, ADELEKE DAMILOLA, CHUKWUDUBEM EZENWA between August and November 2020 in Ilorin, within the jurisdiction of this Honourable Court, with intent to defraud, did conspire amongst yourselves to obtain USD 10,000.00 (Ten Thousand Dollars) from a credit card which does not belong to you through the use a cash App software device and thereby committed an offence contrary to Section 27 (b) read with 33(2)(b) of the Cybercrime (Prohibition, Prevention Act) 2015 and punishable under same Section of the Act’’

The defendants pleaded not guilty to the charge.
Upon their pleas, counsel to the EFCC, Innocent Mbachie sought the leave of the court to open the trial by calling the first prosecution witness PW1, Olamide Sadiq, to substantiate the case against the defendant, which the court obliged.

Sadiq,  a Chief Superintendent of the EFCC while being led in evidence narrated the circumstances that led to the arrest of the defendants.
In his evidence-in-chief, he said: “My Lord, the Commission received a petition from a concerned citizen of Offa in Kwara State. The petitioner specifically complained of the activities of some suspected internet fraudsters operating in three communities around Offa. The Commission swung into action and in the process, Damilola was arrested alongside twenty others.”

He added that further findings led to the arrest of Chukwudubem Ezenwa
The witness stated further that three different brands of phones and a Toyota Camry Car were recovered from Damilola. According to him, checks and analysis of the phones revealed the complicity of the second defendant (Damilola) in the fraudulent activities.

“In the course of interrogation, Damilola confessed to us that the first defendant (Ezenwa) introduced a cash app application to him which he used to make illegal withdrawal of the sum of $8,500 (Eight Thousand, Five Hundred United States Dollars) on his behalf”, he said.

Testifying further, the PW1 told the court that Damilola paid the sum of N3million into a Zenith Bank account belonging to Ezenwa from the proceeds of the unlawful activities, upon which he was rewarded with N600,000.00 (Six Hundred Thousand Naira Only), as his share.

On the strength of the confessional statements of the second defendant, Sadiq said that the Commission swung into action and got Ezenwa arrested. He said that upon interrogation, Ezenwa confessed to the crime. He added that the defendant admitted in his confessional statement that his activities were illegal and promised that he would be willing to return all that he had benefited from the proceeds of crime”
The witness disclosed to the court that, between May to September 2020, more than N350 million was received by the defendant, which he could not justify.

Attempts by the prosecution to tender in evidence the extra-judicial statements and fraudulent documents printed from the defendants’ devices were however objected to by counsel to the first and second defendants,  Ochinachi Odom and Tochi Ekwedike who alleged that their clients were coerced and made to write the statements under duress, intimidation and harassment.
Thereafter, Justice Anyadike adjourned till Tuesday, May 7, 2024, for trial-within-trial to determine the voluntariness of the statements.

Vice-President Kashim Shettima who was scheduled to represent President Bola Tinubu at a Summit in Dallas, Texas has aborted the trip following a technical fault with his aircraft.
Shettima was to represent the President at the 2024 US-Africa Business Summit organised by the Corporate Council on Africa.

Mr Stanley Nkwocha, the Senior Special Assistant to the President on Media and Communications, Office of The Vice-President, disclosed this in a statement on Monday in Abuja.
Nkwocha said the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Amb. Yusuf Maitama Tuggar will represent the President at the Summit, as Shettima could not be able to make the trip.

He stressed that the technical fault forced the Vice President to make a detour on the advice of the Presidential Air Fleet.
According to Nkwocha, the Vice President will carry on with other national duties.

He stated that the high-profile summit, taking place at the Kay Bailey Hutchison Convention Center, would bring together political and business leaders from across Africa, the United States, and other regions.

Nkwocha added that the summit would feature high-level dialogues, networking sessions, and plenary.
He said that the African leaders expected at the summit include, the President, of the Republic of Liberia; Joseph Boakai, President, of the Republic of Malawi; Lazarus Chakwera and the President, of the Republic of Angola, Joao Lourenço.

Nkwocha said other African leaders that would grace the summit are the President, of the Republic of Botswana, Mokgweetsi E. K. Masisi, the President of, the Republic of Cabo Verde, José Maria Neves, and the Deputy Prime Minister, of the Kingdom of Lesotho, Nthomeng Majara.
He said that the US-Africa Business Summit is expected to foster economic cooperation and explore investment opportunities between the United States and African countries.

A 19-year-old kidnapper identified as Mohammed Abdullahi from Gujba local government area in Yobe State is currently in police custody. He is accused of kidnapping his 11-year-old neighbour for a ransom of ₦600,000, administering a lethal substance that resulted in the victim’s death, and subsequently burying him.

The Commissioner of Police in Yobe state, CP Ahmed Garba, paraded the suspect alongside 17 others at the Command’s headquarters in Damaturu, expressing concern over the reemerging criminal activities in the state.

He said, “Mohammed Abdullahi, a 19-year-old suspect from Buniyadi, abducted the son of their neighbour’s 11-year-old and later demanded a ransom of 600,000 naira. When the parents of the victim could not meet his demand, he later bought drugs and administered them to the victim to sleep and the victim later died.

“The suspect later buried the corpse in their house while his parents were away and was later apprehended by the police.”
Another suspect, identified as Sani Musa, aged 22 years, stabbed his victim, known as Sheba Simon, with a knife and snatched her cell phone. He was also trailed, arrested and paraded by the police.
Speaking with journalists, the suspect, Sani Musa, admitted to committing the crime, saying his intention was not to kill her but to collect the cell phone.

Other suspects, also paraded by the police were transformer vandals at the Pompomari community of the state capital and house burglars among other crimes, ranging from rape and armed robbery.
Items recovered include 3 AK47 rifles and live ammunition.

The CP, while expressing worry over the insecurity, urged the Yobe State government to provide empowerment and skills for the teaming youths in the state, to keep them busy instead of roaming the streets, taking drugs and causing mayhem in communities.

A military court in the Democratic Republic of Congo’s war-torn east, on Friday, handed a death sentence to eight soldiers, including five officers, for desertion and cowardice when fighting M23 rebels, AFP reports.

AFP said that prosecutors had sought the death penalty against 11 soldiers on trial in the same case, but the Goma court acquitted three of them, ruling that the charges against those soldiers were “not established”.

The troops were fighting against the mostly Tutsi M23 (March 23 movement) rebels, who took up arms again in late 2021, seizing large swathes of North Kivu province.

“They never fled from the enemy nor abandoned their position — on the contrary,” said Alexis Olenga, a lawyer for one of the five officers facing charges.

Olenga said the soldiers were based at Lushangi-Cafe, a federal army position close to the strategic town of Sake, 20 kilometres (12 miles) down the road from North Kivu’s capital Goma.
These were the first capital punishment sentences since authorities decided on March 13 to lift a suspension on executions that had been enforced since 2003.

The failure of the army and its auxiliaries to halt the advance of the M23 rebels has raised suspicion that the security forces had been infiltrated.

Several military personnel as well as members of parliament, senators and business leaders have been arrested and accused of “complicity with the enemy”.

For the last 20 years, death sentences have been handed down in the DRC, especially in cases involving the military or armed groups, but have systematically been commuted to life in prison.
Human rights groups and the Catholic Church have called on the government to abolish capital punishment for any crime.

A journalist with Abubakar Rimi Television (ARTV), Naziru Ya’u, has been hit by a stray bullet inside the Kano State Government House.

Ya’u, who is a correspondent attached to the Kano Government House, was said to have been rushed to the clinic where he was treated and discharged by medical experts in the facility.
As gathered on Saturday, the reporter was said to have been hit by the bullet inside the government house at about 6.30 pm yesterday.

The incident occurred amidst the observance of World Press Freedom Day set aside by the United Nations, on May 3rd annually.
In an interview, after he was discharged, Ya’u narrated that while inside the government house, he suddenly discovered that his body had been forcefully pierced.
He added that the next discovery after the sudden change in body temperature was blood oozing out from the part where the bullet pieced him.

The victim lamented that hours after the incident, the origin of the stray bullet was still unknown and could not ascertain if the security personnel inside the Kano Government House had commenced an investigation to unravel the perpetrator.
A medical personnel at the clinic was said to have told the victim that the injury could have been severe if the bullet removed was shot at close range.

Following the incident, police personnel stationed at the Government House have initiated a thorough investigation to uncover the circumstances leading to this alarming event.
As of the time of compiling this report, there is no official statement from the Kano Government House regarding the shooting.

However, the silence on the matter has prompted a wave of speculation and unease among the press community, highlighting the perils faced by journalists even in supposed places of safety.
Efforts made to contact the Spokesman to the governor, Sanusi Tofa, for the state government’s reaction to the development proved abortive as calls made to his telephone line did not go through.