The Jigawa State House of Assembly has approved a N58 billion supplementary budget for the 2025 fiscal year. The approval followed the adoption of a report presented by the House Committee on Appropriation during plenary on Thursday. Chairman of the committee, Ibrahim Hamza-Adamu, explained that the supplementary budget was necessitated by expected additional revenues accruing to the state from the federation account. “The 2025 Appropriation Law appropriated the sum of N698.3 billion for recurrent and capital expenditure. With the additional N58 billion supplementary budget, the total appropriation for the year will now be N756.3 billion,” he said. Hamza-Adamu also urged…
Author: Editor
A diesel-laden tanker has fallen and caught fire along the Ugwu-Onyeama axis of the Enugu-Onitsha Expressway, the Federal Road Safety Corps (FRSC) has confirmed. The FRSC Sector Commander in Enugu State, Mr. Franklin Agbakoba, disclosed this in a statement issued to newsmen on Thursday in Enugu. Agbakoba said the incident occurred at about 6:16 p.m., prompting FRSC personnel to advise and divert traffic on the expressway. He urged motorists and pedestrians to use the Ngwo Community Road, popularly known as “Ngwo Snake Road,” as an alternative route in and out of Enugu metropolis. He explained that the crash involved only…
The Jigawa State Primary Healthcare Development Agency (JSPHCDA) has distributed Information, Education and Communication (IEC) materials to support the smooth conduct of the upcoming Measles-Rubella (MR) vaccination campaign. The State Health Educator, Sani Yusuf-Kachi, disclosed this on Thursday while handing over the items to officials from the 27 local government areas. He explained that the materials would boost social mobilisation and encourage parents to participate in the exercise, scheduled for October 4 to 13. According to him, the MR vaccination targets children aged nine months to 14 years, while children aged 0–5 years will also benefit from other integrated health…
Nigeria has secured a landmark deal to cut the cost of the twice-yearly HIV prevention injection, lenacapavir, from 28,000 dollars to just 40 dollars per person. The Director-General of the National Agency for the Control of AIDS (NACA), Dr. Temitope Ilori, announced the breakthrough on the sidelines of the 80th United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) in New York. Ilori described the deal as “a milestone” in the fight against HIV, noting that the injection—up to 100 per cent effective—will now be more accessible to millions at risk in Nigeria and beyond. The agreement, achieved through collaboration with UNITAID, the Clinton…
The Federal Airports Authority of Nigeria (FAAN) has introduced a cashless payment system across its airports, starting with Murtala Muhammed International Airport, Lagos, and Nnamdi Azikiwe International Airport, Abuja. The initiative, tagged Operation Go Cashless, was launched in partnership with Paystack and will take effect from September 29, 2025. Under the new policy, all payments at FAAN’s revenue points—including access gates, car parks, and VIP and protocol lounges—will be made through contactless transactions, phasing out cash collections at these facilities. According to FAAN, the move is aimed at improving efficiency, ensuring transparency in revenue collection, and aligning Nigeria’s airports with…
This week, I am in Accra attending an ECOWAS consultative meeting in line with the organisation’s concern that it is facing an existential crisis and that a year-long grassroots consultation process be organised to prepare a pact for the future of a re-energised body able to pursue its regional integration project and repair cracks to its democracy consolidation normative framework. This followed the coups in Chad, Mali, Burkina Faso, Niger and Guinea, and the rise of the Alliance of Sahelian States which posed in a very direct manner the existential crisis for ECOWAS as an organisation and its democratic model.…
Plan International, in collaboration with the Sokoto State Ministry for Basic and Secondary Education and the Ministry for Religious Affairs, has commenced the distribution of sanitary and educational supplies to 40 formal and informal schools in Sokoto State. Speaking at the launch of the initiative held at the State Drugs and Medical Supplies Management Agency, Sokoto, Aspire Project Manager of Plan International, Murtala Bello, explained that it is part of the Aspire Project being implemented in Bauchi and Sokoto States. According to him, the intervention demonstrates the organization’s commitment to supporting the education sector and reducing the number of out-of-school…
Alibaba on Wednesday announced what it called a “milestone collaboration” with US chip giant Nvidia. The partnership will speed up Alibaba’s work on humanoid robots using artificial intelligence. The news came as Alibaba’s shares rose by more than nine percent in Hong Kong after Chief Executive Eddie Wu revealed plans to increase spending on artificial intelligence. China and the United States are currently locked in a tough competition over advanced technology. Nvidia, based in California, is a global leader in AI chips and a key player in the race for dominance in semiconductors. However, Washington has restricted Nvidia from exporting…
Scientists announced on Wednesday that they have developed a new AI model that can predict medical diagnoses years before they happen. The system is built on the same kind of technology that powers chatbots like ChatGPT. The AI, named Delphi-2M, can forecast the likelihood of more than 1,000 diseases by analyzing a patient’s medical history. The research team from the UK, Denmark, Germany, and Switzerland published their findings in the journal Nature. To build the model, researchers used data from the UK Biobank, a massive biomedical database with information on about half a million people. Delphi-2M is based on “transformer”…
A new HIV prevention drug will soon be made available at a much lower cost in over 100 low-income countries. This move is expected to give millions of people access to the breakthrough treatment and could bring the world closer to ending the HIV/AIDS epidemic. The drug, called Lenacapavir, is given by injection. It was set to be rolled out at the end of this year at a cost of about $28,000 (£20,000) per person each year. However, Wednesday’s announcement revealed that the price will be reduced to just $40 per year — which is only 0.1% of the original…