Several families were on Wednesday displaced following a fire incident at Umuajiji Isieke Ibeku off Health Centre Road by Egwu Ibeku hall in Umuahia.
Though the cause of the fire is unknown, all tenants at the 8 bedroom apartment were displaced even as property worth several thousands of Naira were destroyed.
The fire started at about 12:30pm and was put under control by the assistance of neighbours at about 2pm.
Men of Abia State Fire Service had arrived the venue of the incident at about 3pm an hour after it was put out.
The remains of late gospel singer, Osinachi Nwachukwu, will be buried on Saturday, June 25, 2022, in Abia State.
ABN TV confirmed this on an obituary poster of the late singer on Wednesday.
Osinachi, who sang the popular song ‘Ekwueme’, died on April 8, 2022.
frequent domestic violence by her husband, Peter Nwachukwu, who is currently on trial.
According to the obituary, a night of worship will hold in Abuja on Thursday, June 23 while a Night of Prayer will hold in Isochi, Umunochi in Abia state on June 24.
She will be interred in her father’s compound on Saturday, June 25.
The National Chairman of the All Progressive Congress, APC, Adamu Abdullahi, on Wednesday, met with the party’s senators.
Adamu arrived at the National Assembly complex some minutes past 2 pm and moved to the office of the Senate President, Ahmed Lawan, for a brief meeting before the general meeting. قانون البوكر
Earlier, Lawan while reading the letter signed by the Senate Deputy Majority leader, Ajayi Borofice, had announced that the meeting will take place by 2 pm at the premises.
ABN TV learnt that the number of APC senators has dropped to 62 after consistent defection from the party’s lawmakers especially those who were unable to secure return tickets to the chamber.
Two senators from Bauchi and Imo States had during the plenary resigned their membership of the All Progressives Congress and Peoples Democratic Party respectively.
The lawmakers are Senator Dauda Jika representing Bauchi Central and elected on the platform of the APC; and Senator Ezenwa Francis Onyewuchi representing Imo East Senatorial District, who was elected on the platform of the PDP.
Both Senators in separate letters addressed to Lawan, conveyed their decision to resign their membership of the APC and PDP, to join the Labour Party and New Nigeria Peoples Party respectively.
The APC lawmaker, Dauda Jika, in his letter said, “I hereby wish to notify you of my defection from the All Progressives Congress to the New Nigeria Peoples Party whose ideals are in line with my political aspirations. افضل موقع العاب اون لاين ”
Onyewuchi, on his part, said, “I wish to inform Mr. President and a distinguished Senators of my defection from the Peoples Democratic Party to the Labour Party.
“This is after due consultation with my family, constituents and supporters. This will enable me to participate fully in the movement for a new Nigeria.”
Wednesday’s defection brings the number of APC Senators to 66, with members of the minority parties standing at 43.
The minority parties in the Senate are presently five in number as at Wednesday, June 22nd, 2022.
They are the PDP, Young People’s Party, All Progressives Grand Alliance, New Nigeria Peoples Party, and Labour Party.
But briefing journalist after the closed-door meeting, Adamu said that the party was worried about the wave of the defection among the APC senators.
While expressing concerns, Adamu noted that though it (defection) was a usual occurrence during election period, it was normal for the party and its leaders to worry over the loss of any member.
He said, “The meeting with the senators was most fruitful. The issue of defection is an unfortunate development when it happens but this is a season where there is all sort of behaviours in the political space and ours is not an exception. لعب روليت
“In every election year, this kind of thing gives cause for stakeholders to sneeze and Nigeria is not an exception so is the APC, not an exception. I don’t care about what is happening in other parties, my focus is on the APC. But we all know that the occurrence is not only happening in the APC, it’s happening across other political parties too. And because we are the ruling party, our problems are exaggerated before the public.”
Adamu said he doesn’t know if the problem of defection would persist in the party but he has met with his colleagues at the National Assembly and he believes the issue is surmountable.
He added, “There is no responsible leader that would not be worried when he loses one member not to talk of two. At the moment we are faced with the stark reality of our problems. I have committed my colleagues at the National Assembly to face the problem squarely and see the problem as solvable.
“We are in politics, I don’t know what would happen tomorrow, nobody does.”
Twenty-two more senators of the governing All Progressives Congress (APC) are planning to defect to the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), a former Minister of Aviation and chieftain of the APC, Femi Fani-Kayode has said.
He stated that the planned defection is because the senators were denied the party’s ticket to contest the 2023 elections.
Expressing worry over the mass defections in the party, Fani-Kayode in a tweet on Wednesday said something must be done to prevent it.
“22 APC Senators are threatening to decamp to PDP because they have been denied the tickets to return to the Senate. This is serious & something must be done to prevent it. Many are concerned & we urge our able Nat. Chairman & Nat. Sec. to reach them. We cannot afford to lose them,” he wrote.
Early today, ABN TV had reported how seven senators dumped APC for other opposition parties.
Members of the Senate who defected from the APC are Ibrahim Shekarau (Kano), Yahaya Abdullahi (Kebbi) Adamu Aliero (Kebbi), Dauda Jika (Bauchi), Ahmad Babba Kaita (Katsina), Lawal Yahaya Gumau (Bauchi), and Francis Alimikhena (Edo).
Briefing reporters after a closed-door meeting with APC senators, the party’s National Chairman, Abdullahi Adamu, said it was unfortunate that the lawmakers left the party.
He, however, said the defections were expected due to the electioneering season when the country usually witnesses all manner of things.
Former national chairman of All Progressives Grand Alliance, APGA, and the senatorial candidate of the Labour Party, LP, for Anambra Central for the 2023 election, Senator Victor Umeh has commended LP for giving Igbo the credible platform to produce the next president of Nigeria through Peter Obi, the former governor of Anambra State.
Addressing journalists at the Nigeria Union of Journalists, NUJ, state headquarters in Awka, Umeh observed that if not for the LP, Igbo people would have been watching the buildup to the 2023 presidential election from the sidelines, in spite of their contributions towards the development of the major political parties.
Expressing how delighted he is working on the LP presidential project, Umeh said: “When this opportunity came, I saw it as a way to work for Nigeria. One should not keep quiet when his people are forgotten. If nothing is done now, we will leave this unfortunate and hopeless situation in Nigeria with our children.
“My joy is that Nigerians have chosen Peter Obi as their candidate for the presidential election. Nigerians from all shades of opinion are clamouring for Obi and that is a wonderful development.
“Those who are championing the Obi presidency have even taken over the project from him. In fact, to say that it is the youths that have taken over the project is to trivialize it as it is not only youths that want Obi to be president. People of all age groups also want him because he is a hot brand.
”Anybody who is not taking the matter serious is making a big mistake considering the momentum it is gathering everyday.
”Since I joined him in this project, I have been contributing my quota to ensure that Nigerians get the kind of president they are yearning for.
“What is happening in Nigeria is divine and it is not based on human arrangement.
“What is driving him are his messages on economy, resource, and human management which are what Nigeria requires at this time”.
Umeh also said that his desire to return to the red chambers is to give a credible voice to the 10th senate, arguing that it is not for beginners who would be overwhelmed by the caliber of people there.
The Coalition for Peter Obi (CPO), has written Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), cautioning that no fewer than 16 million Nigerians risk being disenfranchised if the commission doesn’t expand voters registration infrastructure.
It also demanded the expansion of voter registration and validation infrastructure to serve the teeming numbers of people willing to register.
The group, which is funded by independent professionals and intellectuals in a letter dated June 16, which was signed by its Chairman, Marcel Ngogbehei, observed that no matter the number of years of extension of the voters registration and validation if the infrastructure is not expanded it will amount to a total waste of the nation’s time and resources.
It added that it makes more sense to employ 50,000 workers for three months with massive numbers of voter registration machines than to employ 5,000 workers for one year with a few machines.
The coalition noted that INEC was expected to capture at least 20 million additional Nigerians in this exercise, adding that the electoral body has barely completed four million applications as of March 2022, according to information available on its website.
The group also observed that most citizens in the North have already been captured, saying the Middle Belt and southern parts of the country may be denied their the opportunity of performing their civic duty.
The letter reads, “The Coalition for Peter Obi (CPO), a self-funded group of independent professionals and intellectuals hereby call on the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) to immediately expand its infrastructure for conducting voter registration and verification exercise across the country and particularly redeploy same to areas of high demand.
“From statistical analysis, the Nigerian population is estimated at 216 million as at June 2022 according to data from the World Bank, with a median age of 18.1 years. That means half of the population of Nigeria or 108 million are above 18 years and eligible to vote. INEC’s current voters register estimates Nigeria’s voting population at 84 million, so INEC is expected to capture at least 20 million additional Nigerian voters in this exercise, but the electoral body has completed barely 4 million applications as at March 2022 from information available on its website. This means that a whopping 16 million Nigerians are likely to be disenfranchised.
This is not good for our democracy.
“This call has become necessary to ensure that 16 million Nigerian citizens are not disenfranchised in the forthcoming general elections.
“As part of our voter education exercise around the country in June 2022, our field volunteers have observed a clear lack of capacity on the part of INEC to service the voting population, especially in high-demand areas owing to inadequate infrastructure including limited numbers of registration machines resulting to a slow pace of registration in many centers. We expected that the past 3 weeks of continuous surge would have been enough for INEC to immediately restrategise, expand and redeploy resources to the areas of high demand.
“As a Coalition of several groups made up of diverse Nigerians from all works of life and from every part of the country including the diaspora, we are committed to support INEC to ensure that it carries out its statutory function as an electoral management body (EMB) to conduct free, fair and credible elections for sustainable democracy in Nigeria.
“In view of the present troubling circumstances, we recommend that INEC urgently embark on expansion of its voter registration and validation infrastructure to serve the teeming numbers of Nigerians who wish to exercise their patriotic and civic duties of voting in the forthcoming general elections.
“It has therefore become very obvious that no matter the number of years of extension of the current exercise, it will be a total waste of the nations manpower if the infrastructure is not immediately expanded to cover areas of high demand – which currently is the South. This makes sense because INEC’s data shows that most citizens in the North have been captured. Many Nigerians from the Middle and Southern parts of the country will at the end of the day be denied their universal adult suffrage.
“Failure to do this will create an impression that INEC has deliberately put machineries in place to disenfranchise a segment of the country thereby manipulating the outcome of the 2023 elections.
“We will be available to provide non interfering support to INEC to see that every Nigerian who presents himself or herself for registration is duly registered in a seamless manner as stipulated on the INEC website.”
Human Rights Writers Association of Nigeria, HURIWA, has said that some people in the corridors of power in the President Muhammadu Buhari government want to destabilise the South East by the continued detention of leader of the Indigenous People of Biafra, IPOB, Nnamdi Kanu.
HURIWA also berated Buhari for jailing an 80-year-old lady that Nnamdi Kanu reportedly takes as his mother for embarking on solitary protest.
HURIWA noted it is over a year now that Kanu has been kept in detention without conclusive trial.
HURIWA’s National Coordinator, Comrade Emmanuel Onwubiko, in a statement, sought the release of the IPOB leader on political grounds.
According to him, the incarceration of Kanu in the custody of the Department of State Services, DSS, without trial is strange to rule of law.
The rights group said there is nowhere in the world where the executive acts as the supervisors of both the judicial and legislative arms of government except in hard-core dictatorships like in North Korea, China, Saudi Arabia and Iran.
The group said that not even the dictator in Syria could treat his citizen like the dehumanising situation that Kanu has been made to live through just for exercising his constitutionally and legally guaranteed right to seek self determination.
HURIWA is “therefore praying President Buhari to grant pardon to Kanu and thousands of his supporters jailed in different detention centres including the 80 years old lady that Nnamdi Kanu reportedly takes as his Mother who was jailed for embarking on solidarity outing at the last court’s hearing in the delayed legal process involving Nnamdi Kanu.”
Recall that Kanu was literally kidnapped from Kenya by the Buhari government as said by the Attorney General of Federation and the Minister of Justice, Abubakar Malami, at a press conference in Abuja in June 2021.
“Ever since, Kanu has been subjected to dehumanising situation in the custody of the secret police in Abuja while his case with Justice Binta Nyako of a Federal High Court in Abuja has been adjourned for about 10 times just to prolong his stay in his jailer’s net.
“It took the Court nearly a year to order the DSS to let Nnamdi Kanu watch Liverpool fc last two matches in the immediate past season- a privilege that even house CHIHUAHUA enjoys in an unrestrained manner.
“The same judge has denied Kanu bail several times even though his health has depreciated significantly over the last 12 months under the horrible condition he was subjected to in DSS custody whilst the Buhari government has defiantly refused all pleas and entreaties even by foremost Igbo elders who tried to explore political solution to the matter,” it said.
“Kanu’s supporters have also been brutalized by overzealous security agents in recent times whilst journalists covering his court case have been assaulted at various times.”
Abia State Commissioner for Health, Dr Joe Osuji appeared before the State House of Assembly on Wednesday to offer explanations on why the Abia State University College Of Medicine lost its accreditation.
Dr Joe Osuji
The Assembly had summoned him following the news that National Universities Commission, NUC withdrew its accreditation from the college
At the plenary on Wednesday, the Commissioner while explaining to members of the Assembly on what led to the withdrawal of accreditation said NUC officials came on a supervision tour of the institution and they were conducted round the facility but when they got to the medical school, the gate was under lock and key because the workers were on strike.
The Commissioner said the school lost accreditation because the medical school was not opened for the team.
At this point, Rt Hon Chikwendu Kalu, asked the Commissioner to explain in details to the House why the school lost its accreditation and what could be done to remedy the situation.
Rt Hon Chikwendu Kalu
Hon Kelechi Onuzuruike, Member representing Umuahia North State Constituency also asked the Commissioner why the workers of Hospital Management Board are owed backlog of salaries and if there was any functional General Hospital in the State, and the way forward.
Hon Kelechi Onuzuruike
Dr Osuji told the House that he wasn’t duly informed the day the team came on the visit, he emphasised that the attitude of the workers in various General Hospitals in the state has made the hospitals to perform below expectations.
When asked what happened to the revenue being generated by the Hospital Management Board, the Commissioner said he was not fully aware of the revenue generated by the Board because the constituted Boards of the hospitals made it difficult for his ministry to access their financial activities.
He also said in some cases, the institutions remit little or nothing to the state coffers at the end of each month.
The Speaker, Rt Hon Chinedum Enyinnaya Orji however expressed dissatisfaction with this response, saying it was a very huge blunder.
The Commissioner was discharged to re-appear on a later date.
The frontline contestant of the 2023 gubernatorial election in Abia state and the governorship candidate of the Action Peoples Party (APP) in the state, Hon. Mascot Uzor Kalu has congratulated Chief Henry Ikechukwu Ikoh on his ministerial appointment.
In a congratulatory message made available to our newsroom, the former Abia Chief of Staff, Hon. Mascot described Chief Ikechukwu’s appointment as a well-deserved one.
Parts of the congratulatory message reads, “I am not surprised that the President has found your personality and credentials worthy for ministerial appointment. You have waited for it patiently just like I did before I moved on to my new party, Action Peoples Party (APP), and I know you will bring your wealth of experience to pilot the affairs of any ministry assigned to you. Indeed, it is a well-deserved one.”
Chief Henry Ikechukwu Ikoh, a former Commissioner in Abia state, was on June 21, 2022, alongside six others, nominated by President Buhari as Ministers Designates. Their appointment is, therefore, subject to Senate’s screening and confirmation.
Former Deputy Senate President, Ike Ekweremadu, has said the South-East will not vote for the Presidential Candidate of Labour Party, Peter Obi, in the 2023 elections.
Obi, who was one of the PDP Presidential aspirants, had defected to Labour Party before the PDP Primaries won by former Vice-President Atiku Abubakar.
Despite being from the same region with Obi, Ekweremadu said the South East can not take the risk of voting for Labour Party in the 2023 presidential election.
Although Ekweremadu spoke shortly after Governor Ifeanyi Okowa of Delta State was announced as Atiku’s running mate, the video is currently trending on social media.
It is unclear the media outfit that Ekweremadu spoke with but a female voice was heard in the video posted on YouTube.
“I assure you that South East will vote for the People Democratic Party (PDP). I can guarantee that. No doubt Peter Obi is our son, but you need to be dynamic. You need to ask yourself, can peter win the presidential election? Can the East afford to throw away their votes? Can we afford to be sentimental in matters that concern our people, our children, and our future ? No”
“We do not intend to do a thing which we will regret in future. So, why we believe that Peter is ably qualified, we believe that the future of our people lies with PDP. So we need to make that decision as the leaders. I am going to sit with our people and explain to them.”
“Okowa, of course is one of us, so there is no difference between Okowa and Peter in terms of protecting the interest of the South. So we will go and give the people of the South East that opportunity.”
Abia State governorship aspirant on the platform of the All Progressives Congress (APC), Chief Mascot Uzor Kalu, has expressed concern over what he described...
