Two Nigerian scientists have cautioned the Federal government against mass COVID-19 vaccination plan; this is as the country prepares to receive its first consignment of COVID-19 vaccines. The Minister of Health, Dr Osagie Ehanire, in December 2020 revealed that the Federal government had planned to acquire vaccines worth N400 billion, a sum which worth of vaccines, he said, would cover 70 per cent of over Nigeria’s 200 million population. Nigeria had 88,587 confirmed cases of COVID-19 and 1,294 deaths as of Saturday. It was against this backdrop that the scientists called for caution in separate interviews in Ibadan on Saturday.…
Author: Editor
The Nigerian Air Force (NAF) on Saturday conducted a special search and rescue training for some of its personnel, to deepen their competence during combat operations. At the training exercise code named “Taimako Yazo”, which was conducted on the Kaduna-Abuja expressway, the Chief of Air Staff (CAS), Air Marshal Sadiq Abubakar, in his address, said personnel readiness was key to the success of any military operations. Abubakar recalled that in 2019 the NAF had conducted several counter-terrorism exercises in Kaduna, Kano, Niger and Osun. He said this was in a bid to further develop the capacity of its Special Operations…
Nigerian government has approved a replacement policy for subscribers whose Subscribers Identification Module (SIM) may have been lost, stolen, misplaced or damaged. Dr. Ikechukwu Adinde, Director, Public Affairs, Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC), and Mr Kayode Adegoke of the National Identity Management Commission (NIMC), jointly made this known in a statement on Saturday in Abuja. Adinde explained that the policy was part of the government’s efforts to reduce the burden on subscribers and simplify the exercise so as to enable telecommunications services to the public. He said that the Ministerial Task Force, under the Chairmanship of the Minister of Communications and…
Air Task Force of Operation Lafiya Dole has destroyed a new Boko Haram settlement at Mana Waji in Borno, killing scores of the terrorists in massive air interdiction missions on Friday. The Coordinator, Defence Media Operations, Maj.-Gen. John Enenche, in a statement on Saturday, said the air interdiction missions were conducted after series of surveillance revealed the settlement. He said that the series of aerial surveillance missions revealed that the new settlement was being used to store their weapons and logistics items and as well as plan and stage attacks. Enenche said the air strikes were executed employing a force…
The Police Command in Zamfara state has foiled an attack by bandits in Shinkafi local government area of the state and rescued a kidnapped victim. This is contained in a statement issued in Gusau on Saturday by the Public Relations Officer of the command, SP Muhammad Shehu. According to Shehu, “on January 2, at about 4:30 a.m, the command received a distress call that armed bandits in large numbers came to the outskirts of Shinkafi town with the intention to kidnap innocent members of the community”. “The combined team of PMF/CTU attached to the “Operation Puff Adder” responded quickly and…
By Nana Musa For decades, pension and other social benefit matters have received significant attention in many countries. A lot of reforms and decisions are being taken to address the challenges associated with the existing pensions leading to changes in the ways pension assets and benefits were managed and distributed to the target groups, especially retirees and ‘senior citizens’. In Nigeria, it has been a staggered history of pension since 1951, through the public sector pension scheme, the establishment of National Provident Fund (NPF) of 1961, the Pension Decrees nos.102 and 103 of 1979 and the National Social Insurance Trust…
Chironomids, a group of aquatic insects closely related to mosquitoes, act as natural reservoirs of disease-causing cholera bacteria and can forewarn against possible outbreaks of the diarrhoeal disease, a new study suggests. Cholera— caused by the ingestion of food and water contaminated with Vibrio cholerae — infects an estimated 1.3 to four million people around the world annually, resulting to as much as 143,000 deaths. Cholera is endemic in 50 countries, mostly in Africa and south and South-East Asia. According to WHO, of the many serogroups of V. cholerae, only two, O1 and O139, cause outbreaks. Israeli researchers Meir Broza and Malka Halpern had reported earlier that chironomids harbour V. cholerae. But the new study, published…
The Muslim Rights Concern, MURIC, has called on the Federal government, to address the grievances of Nigerian Muslims. In its New Year message signed by the group’s director, Professor Ishaq Akintola on Saturday, the group linked such grievances with deradicalisation and traced religious violence to the denial of Islamic fundamental human rights. “Nigerians celebrated the first day of the Gregorian calendar yesterday, 1st January, 2021. Thus we heralded the new year and bid farewell to year 2020 which many people around the world would wish had never come. It was a year of trauma particularly with the advent of COVID-19…
The Coalition of Northern Groups (CNG), has joined the Nigerian civil rights community in condemning the arrest and detention of Sahara Reporters publisher, Omoyele Sowore by the Nigeria police on New Year eve. The condemnation is contained in a statement by the Spokesperson of the group, Abdulazeez Suleiman on Saturday. “CNG views the arrest of Sowore along with four of his friends during a candlelight procession to usher in the New Year in Abuja as another sign of brutal encroachments on people’s fundamental rights that is becoming the hallmark of this administration. “We remind government and its agencies that the…
The Nigeria Centre for Disease Control, NCDC, has said it will continue to support states to strengthen their health security capacity in 2021. The Director-General of NCDC, Dr. Chikwe Ihekweazu, made the disclosure on Friday in Abuja in an interview. Ihekweazu noted that though the COVID-19 pandemic might have disrupted some plans, the agency had not relented in its effort to strengthen health security at the subnational level. The plan to strengthen the capacity of the state was initiated at the meeting of the National Council for Health at Asaba in 2019 tagged “Strengthening States for Health Security”. The NCDC…