Justice Stephen Dalyop Pam of the Federal High Court in Port Harcourt, Rivers State on Monday refused an application by the Federal Inland Revenue Service (FIRS), seeking to stop the Rivers state government from collecting Value Added Tax (VAT). The Federal Inland Revenue Service filed the application in mid-August against the judgment of the same court which had on August 9 ruled that the Rivers State Government, and not the Federal Inland Revenue Service, is entitled to collect Value Added Tax and Personal Income Tax in Rivers State’s territory. The judgment was delivered in a suit filed by the Attorney…
Author: Abdallah el-Kurebe
Islamism remains a “first order” security threat and the West should prepare for potential use of biological weapons by extremist groups, former British prime minister Tony Blair said on Monday. Blair said this while speaking at the RUSI security think tank to mark the twentieth anniversary of September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States. The Taliban swept to power in Afghanistan last month as the United States withdrew its troops after a 20-year war. Britain fears the group’s return and the vacuum left by the West’s chaotic withdrawal would allow militants from al Qaeda and Islamic State to gain…
President of the Senate, Ahmad Lawan has said that poor standard of education is contributing to the worsening insecurity in the country. Lawan stated this at the eighth matriculation of post-graduate students of National Institute for Legislative Studies (NILDS)/University of Benin for the 2020/2021 academic session, on Monday in Abuja. The programmes being offered by the institute include: Master degrees in Legislative Studies, Legislative Drafting and Parliamentary Administration, among others. Lawan, who was represented by Sen. Degi Biobarakuma (APC-Bayelsa), listed some of the consequences of the problems facing education sector to include: insecurity, rising criminality, anti-social behaviour and high number…
Bone marrow transplants are harrowing. Agnieszka Czechowicz is working to make them safer. By Elizabeth Preston In 2017, Agnieszka Czechowicz watched a four-year-old girl sleeping soundly in a California hospital room. As an experimental drug entered the girl’s vein, all eyes in the room were on the child and the monitors attached to her. Doctors hoped the drug would sneak into the girl’s bones and, with no other harm to her body, wipe out her blood-forming stem cells, clearing the way for a bone marrow transplant that could save her life. Czechowicz felt the moment’s significance in a unique way.…
They once told a king about the existence of a rampaging tiger in his kingdom. He did nothing about it. Each time the carnivorous element devoured any of his subjects, the king would simply mourn, “oh, the trouble has gone.” One after the other, his subjects became depleted and those remaining started taking extra care. Then one day, the tiger visited the palace and made a meal of the heir apparent to the throne. The king, in utter bewilderment, exclaimed “now, trouble has come”. He subsequently mobilised the marksmen among his hunters to hunt down the tiger. But alas, the…
One month from now, Nigeria’s last batch of states created in 1996 to bring the total to 36, would turn 25 years old. The last batch of six states – Ebonyi, Bayelsa, Nasarawa, Zamfara, Gombe and Ekiti – was created by the military head of state, General Sani Abacha, on October 1, 1996. Post-Abacha, agitation for more states has continued, which is hardly surprising for a country with over 300 ethnic nationalities, where diversity has been disastrously mismanaged in recent times. Till date, no civilian government has created any state and that trend seems set to continue. The exception was…
The Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) and the Nigerian government have strongly condemned the coup d’état that took place in the Republic of Guinea Conakry on Sunday. President Nana Akufo-Addo of Ghana and Nigeria’s Minister of Foreign Affairs, Geoffrey Onyeama, condemned the action in separate statements on Sunday. They described the action as a clear violation of the ECOWAS Protocol on Democracy and Good Governance, demanding for the immediate return to constitutional order. Akufo-Addo, who is also the Chair of the Authority of ECOWAS Heads of State and Government, said ECOWAS demands the immediate and unconditional release of…
Northern Nigeria, the region with the highest turnover of political and military leaders is profusely bleeding and desperately needing a savior. The region is educationally bleeding, economically emaciating, and demographically expanding in geometric proportion. There is a looming dangerous situation in the region akin to sitting on a keg of gunpowder. Save for the empty promises on how to address the situation thereby creating false hopes, there is apparent silence from all quarters. As evils are being machinated in the region, the leaders with some of us as their followers seemed to be muted and prefer to play ostrich either…
I wrote the following on March 1, 2021. With what is happening, I find it still relevant, hence repeating it today. I had intended to continue with the topic, ‘Nigeria and Presidential Democracy: Any Better Alternative? (3)’ but I had to suspend it; it is more of a proposal for the future. I had to look at what was immediate. Boko Haram (translated to mean Western education is a sin) advocates are threatening to overwhelm the North and impose their creed on a docile, perhaps Janus-faced, like people. Since kidnapping for ransom became a fad on the Abuja-Kaduna road and…
The Equities market of the Nigerian Exchange (NGX) Limited has been ranked as the best investment asset class to hedge against inflation from August 2020 to August 2021. The Financial Derivatives Company (FDC) disclosed in the inflation vs investment return data released for August, on Sunday, in Lagos. Among the four asset classes tracked by the FDC, the Nigerian equity emerged the best hedge against inflation on a year-on-year (y-o-y) basis. The data also showed that NGX topped the list as it recorded y-o-y return of 54.85 per cent against inflation rate of 17.38 per cent. According to it, the…