Saraki swears in Ohuabunwa

SENATE President Bukola Saraki,Wednesday,swore in Senator Mao Ohuabunwu,as senator representing Abia North Senatorial zone.
Ohuabunwa’s swearing in was sequel to his victory in the March 12 re-run election for the Abia North Senatorial district, where he contested on the platform of the Peoples Democratic Party,PDP, against former Abia State governor, Orji Uzor Kalu of the Progressives Peoples Alliance, PPA, and others.

He ran in the re-run poll, after the March 28 National Assembly election where the Independent National Electoral Commission,INEC, declared him winner, but was later annulled by the Appeal Court.
The Senate President, while performing the rite,congratulated him for his victory at the re-run poll, just as he urged him to settle down to provide quality legislation not only to the people of his constituency but also Nigeria in general.

​ We played against a team with best strikers, says Wenger after Barca’s 5 -1 defeat

Neymar, Lionel Messi and Luis Suarez were all on target as Barcelona piled more pressure on under-fire Arsenal boss Arsene Wenger by easing into the Champions League quarter-finals 5-1 on aggregate with a 3-1 win at the Camp Nou on Wednesday.

Neymar’s early strike appeared to erase any forlorn hopes of an Arsenal comeback, but the visitors were handed a lifeline when Mohamed Elneny drilled into the top corner just after half-time.

Suarez put the tie beyond Wenger’s men in emphatic fashion with a stunning volley 25 minutes from time before Messi’s cheeky chipped finish rounded off the scoring late on.

“I don’t know with what I hit the ball, but the most important thing is it went in,” said Suarez.

“It was the moment in which they were attacking us. After they scored they grew in confidence, but we got back in front and back in control of the game.”

A ninth consecutive victory stretches Barca’s unbeaten run in all competitions to 38 games and seals their place in Friday’s quarter-final draw for the ninth consecutive season.

By contrast, one win in eight games has decimated Arsenal’s hopes of silverware this season as they exit the competition at the last 16 stage for the sixth consecutive season days after relinquishing their two-year hold on the FA Cup.

“I have to say we played against a team with the best strikers I’ve seen,” said Wenger.

“The three are exceptional and from nothing they can create a chance.

“We have to admire art and they have two or three players that transform normal life into art.”

After a bright start from Arsenal, Barca’s front three soon came to life and David Ospina made a brilliant save from Messi after the Argentine had perfectly controlled Neymar’s floated pass over the Arsenal defence.

Jeremy Mathieu headed over a gilt-edged chance from the resulting corner.

Neymar wasn’t so forgiving moments later when he was played in by Suarez and coolly slotted past Ospina for his 26th goal of the season.

Yet, Arsenal should have been at least level by the break as Barca struggled to handle the visitors pace on the break without the suspended Gerard Pique.

Alexis Sanchez missed a glorious chance to net on his return to the Camp Nou when he glanced a header wide from Hector Bellerin’s cross.

Danny Welbeck then sliced well wide when clean through on goal, whilst Alex Iwobi appealed in vein for a penalty after clipping his own ankles inside the box.

Arsenal’s pressure was finally rewarded six minutes into the second-half when Elneny rifled his first goal for the club into the top corner from Sanchez’s layoff.

Conceding a goal sparked Barca back into life as Ospina got down well to his left to parry Messi’s low drive.

Welbeck had another chance to put Arsenal right back in the tie when he pounced on a poor header from Mathieu, but saw his shot blocked by Javier Mascherano’s brilliant last-ditch tackle.

Barca’s nerves were settled in spectacular fashion by Suarez as the Uruguayan contorted his body to acrobatically volley home Dani Alves’s cross.

Arsenal continued to create chances as Welbeck drilled a shot against the bar from a narrow angle.

Marc-Andre ter Stegen then produced a brilliant double save to turn away Sanchez’s free-kick and Olivier Giroud’s follow-up effort.

However, Messi again demonstrated the difference in quality between the sides in front of goal when he dinked home two minutes from time to take he, Neymar and Suarez’s combined tally for the season to 106.

Peterside urges support for APC, faults Wike for violence

2015 Governorship candidate of the APC in Rivers State, Dr. Dakuku Peterside, has expressed confidence in his party winning this weekend’s legislative elections upon what he claimed was the neutral role of the security and electoral agencies.

Speaking in a chat with Vanguard, Peterside also flayed the recent spate of violence which he described as barbaric, horrendous and inhuman.

His words, “Some politicians in Rivers state believe they must get power at all cost and that is the root cause of the insecurity in Rivers state today. People are slaughtered, beheaded, burnt, clubbed to death daily in the state and nobody is saying anything about it. The state government has gone to sleep when it comes to security as if it is not part of their responsibility”.

He went further, “The situation in Rivers today is tragic, terrible, horrendous, frightening, simply inhuman. This is not who we are in Rivers state. 24 persons were killed in one night at Omoku, 4 persons killed in Obibi Etche in one day, somebody burnt alive in Buguma, another person buried alive in Gokana, someone clubbed to death in Opobo and so on and so forth. What a gory tale fit for primitive societies. It is not only worrisome but it diminishes our humanness”.

Speaking on the military presence in some parts of the state, he said their presence is justifiable and urged the military to act within rules of engagement.

He said, “Military presence in the state is more than justifiable and the story line being peddled in some quarters that the military are killing people is not true. What you have been hearing are stories by some selfish politicians who want the Nigerian military out of the area to enable their own army to continue to hold sway to the detriment of the ordinary people”.

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WAEC plans additional diet of WASSCE

The West African Examinations Council (WAEC) says it is planning to introduce an additional diet of the West African Senior School Certificate Examination (WASSCE) for private candidates.

The Registrar of Council, Dr Iyi Uwadiae, said this on the occasion of the 64th WAEC Day celebration on Wednesday in Lagos.

The day was usually set aside yearly by member countries to commemorate the establishment of the council by staff and friends of the council.

He, however, did not state when the additional diet of the examination would begin.

The council was established on March 16, 1952.

According to Uwadiae, the introduction of the additional diet will give prospective candidates access to the examination all year round.

He said that capacity building and tools acquisition for staff would be geared toward optimising performance and minimising the council’s dependence on outsiders for certain high security operations.

The registrar also said that the various ICT-based initiatives aimed at combating examination malpractices, more effectively and efficiently, would be replicated across the sub-region.

“The council has continued to celebrate excellence, reward hard work and acknowledge outstanding contributions to the development of education in the sub-region.

“In the face of daunting challenges in 2015, the council took bold steps to improve on its service delivery in all the member countries.

“The change of nomenclatures for the two diets of the council’s international examination, WASSCE for School Candidates and WASSCE for Private Candidates, has eliminated the conflict that existed between the name and the actual timing of each diet.

“The conflict existed when the diets were still known as May/June WASSCE and November/December WASSCE respectively,’’ he said.

Uwadiae also spoke about irregularities which were reported during in the council’s examinations in all the member countries in 2015.

NAN reports that WAEC is jointly owned by the five English-speaking West African Countries of Nigeria, Ghana, Sierra Leone, Liberia and Gambia.

In his address, the Head of the National Office, Mr Olu Adenipekun, said that the council had enjoyed the support and cooperation of governments of its member countries and other stakeholders in the education sector.

He said that it was the collective responsibilities and obligation of the stakeholders to ensure that WAEC remained a cutting-edge organisation for which it had been reputed.

Adenipekun urged the staff to continue to uphold the core values of excellence, professionalism, transparency and integrity.

NAN reports that the two executive officers of the council were both represented by the Head of Test Administration, Mrs Frances Iweha-Onukwu.

Trump warns of ‘riots’ if denied White House nomination

Donald Trump warned Wednesday of riots if he is denied the Republican presidential nomination, after adding to his growing pile of primary wins but losing in the key state of Ohio.

Trump and Democrat Hillary Clinton emerged from the “Titanic Tuesday” contests in five states as their party’s clear frontrunners, but the billionaire real estate mogul’s failure to sweep the races means he may fall short of the delegates needed to win the Republican nomination outright.
After the most divisive US campaign in nearly half a century, one that has shattered all rules of decorum and aroused an angry electorate, it remains unclear whether Trump can unite his party in time for the Republican convention in Cleveland in July.

Top Republican powerbrokers are still maneuvering to derail Trump, seen as an outsider who hijacked the party primaries, and are looking to a so-called brokered convention — which can occur if no candidate wins a majority of delegates by June — as their likely last chance.
But that extraordinary scenario — in which the party would seek to override the outcome of the primaries and unite around an alternative candidate — is a long shot few in the party seem to have the stomach for.

“If Trump has hundreds more delegates than the runner-up it will be exceedingly difficult to deny him the nomination. In fact, to do so would be to guarantee a meltdown of historic proportions in Cleveland,” said Sabato’s Crystal Ball, a newsletter by a group of US political scientists.

By far the more probable outcome is for the candidate with the most votes — in all likelihood Trump — to be voted in as the White House nominee following a round of deal-making in the run-up to the convention.

– Natural healing or riots –

Tuesday’s primaries leave Trump with 640 delegates, against 405 for his closest rival, Texas Senator Cruz and 138 for Ohio Governor John Kasich, according to a CNN count.

He needs 1,237 to win the nomination — difficult but not impossible.

In an interview with CNN, Trump said he believed there would be “a natural healing process” but if he arrives at the convention 100 delegates short, “I don’t think you can say we don’t get it automatically.”

“I think you would have riots,” he said.

The billionaire’s candidacy has drawn a following of millions, of many whom have never voted before because they don’t believe in the system, he said.

“If you disenfranchise those people and say, I’m sorry, you’re 100 votes short, even though the next one is 500 votes short, I think you would see problems like you’ve never seen before.

“I think bad things would happen. I really do. I wouldn’t lead it, but I think bad things would happen,” he said.

Trump won at least three of Tuesday’s primaries, including the biggest prize of the night, winner-take-all Florida and its 99 delegates.

Missouri remained too close to call Wednesday, but Kasich easily won his home state, another winner-take-all contest with 66 delegates.

“Donald Trump could have generated unstoppable momentum had he won both Ohio and Florida,” said Sabato’s Crystal Ball. “But now it’s clear to everyone that this will go right through June 7, the end of the Republican primary season.”

With the departure of Florida Senator Marco Rubio — blown out of the race after a humiliating defeat in his home state — Trump’s competition has narrowed to Cruz and Kasich.

Of the two, only Cruz has a mathematical possibility of winning the nomination, but he would have to do extraordinarily well in all the remaining contests.

– Path clears for Clinton –

Clinton, meanwhile, came out of the latest set of primaries with a much clearer path to the Democratic nomination, defeating rival Bernie Sanders in Florida, Ohio, Illinois and North Carolina. Clinton was narrowly ahead in Missouri but that race was still too close to call.

Those victories, adding to previous wins, brings Clinton’s total of delegates — including previously pledged “superdelegates” — to more than 1,500, against less than 800 for Sanders. The 2,383 delegates needed for the Democratic nomination was in sight for her.

Clinton’s head of communications Jennifer Palmieri said it was unlikely that Sanders could overcome their delegate lead.

“We think it would be very difficult, if not impossible for him to overtake her at this point,” she told CNN.

Sanders congratulated Clinton, but added that with more than half the delegates “yet to be chosen and a calendar that favors us… we remain confident that our campaign is on a path to win the nomination.”

But Clinton was already shifting focus to the general election, turning her fire on Trump.

“When we hear a candidate for president call for rounding up 12 million immigrants, banning all Muslims from entering the United States — when he embraces torture, that doesn’t make him strong. It makes him wrong,” she told supporters at a victory rally.

A buoyant Trump, meanwhile, congratulated Clinton as he celebrated his victories at a sumptuous golf club he owns in Florida, urging his supporters to help “bring our party together.”

“We’re going to win, win, win and we’re not stopping,” he said

Woman saved from selling baby for N30, 000

At the recently concluded Chris Okafor World Outreach Ministries crusade in Calabar, Dr. Chris Okafor called out a rather bizarre case during his prophecy session, saying that there was a woman at the crusade ground who had been offered N30, 000 each for two of her lovely children. The woman, he said, was making plans to actually sell her children to raise money for business.

Before he was done dishing out the woman’s details
prophetically as he is fond of doing, the woman ran out from the crowd and affirmed everything he had said. Seeing her case was beyond prayers, the man of God after praying for her, asked how much she needed for business and she retorted “N30,000”. He then smiled and asked if it was okay to give her hundred thousand naira N100, 000. She was literally dumfounded. And indeed, right there and then, she got her own rather “financial deliverance” of N100, 000. Apart from this, Okafor had through his Chris Okafor Humanity Foundation been providing financial assistance to widows and artisans, who daily come to him. Speaking at the event, Okafor said: “For me, giving is living. You know sometimes, people criticize me for raising too much offering, saying that I love money a lot. And I don’t blame people who say that, because they don’t know any better. I am often driven by my incredible passion to help the downtrodden in our society and aggressively advance the work of God. That’s why I don’t force people to give. It is not mandatory. ‘’You do it only if you feel like it. I believe that there is a lot of blessing attached to giving when you give into a ministry that puts that money to good use. And we do. I personally don’t need any of that money. Time without number I have told my congregation that I had never dipped a finger into our church money for whatever reason and never will.’’ The Calabar and Bonny Island crusades which drew literally tens of thousands of worshipers from far and near, did not end without miraculous healings of all sorts and prophecies that left the crowd stricken with celestial awe. Similar events are scheduled to hold in Kano, Umuoba Aboegbu Anam in Anambra State, Abeokuta, Uyo, Italy, Spain and Germany in March and April.

Speeding van crushes pregnant woman, 4 children, okada rider

A pregnant woman, her four children and a commercial motorcyclist were crushed by a Hilux pick-up van along old Oleh-Ozoro Road, Oleh, Isoko South Local Government Area, Delta State.

The woman, who sold electrical appliances, sources said, had boarded a motorcycle with the children after close of sales for the day, when the incident occurred.

A source, who sought anonymity, said the driver of the pick-up was going home with N200,000, being part payment of proceeds from the sale of his family’s piece of land, when he rammed into the victims.

The source said deliberations on how the part payment of the land, sold for N400,000, should be shared had resulted in a dispute among members of the family, during which one of them snatched the money and drove off in the Hilux pick-up.

The source said three of the family members went after him in a Toyota Camry car. It was in the course of the chase that he lost control and hit the motorcycle, which was headed in the same direction.

He said the victims died on the spot and the vehicle dragged them along the road for a while before stopping.

According to him, the car somersaulted several times, but no casualty was recorded. He added that the bodies of the deceased had been deposited in the mortuary of a nearby hospital, while the Hilux driver is still at large.

P-Square’s split: Whose new single is better Peter or Paul?

It’s no secret that Africa’s most popular duo, (P-Square), Peter and Paul Okoye have gone their separate ways. At the moment the most pressing thought in the minds of fans and music lovers is who among the two talented brothers will rock the Nigeria entertainment industry better.

Yesterday, Peter Okoye announced his new management team and equally released his solo single ‘Look into my eyes‘ under the new stage name ‘Mr P‘.

On the other side, Paul Okoye, the other half of the group, released his own solo debut titled, “ Call heaven”. In his song, Paul who now preferred to be called ‘Rudeboy’ lamented death of their parents and how it has affected the unity of ‘P-Square’.

Alleged N190m fraud: EFCC docks ex-HoS, Oronsaye on fresh 2-count charge

The Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, EFCC,  yesterday, docked former Head of Service of the Federation, HoS, Mr. Stephen Oronsaye, before an Abuja High Court sitting in Maitama.

Orosanye was arraigned before Justice Olasumbo Goodluck on a a two-count charge bordering on alleged N190 million fraud.

The former HoS was alleged to have abused his position as Chairman of the Presidential Committee on the Financial Action Task Force by fraudulently obtaining N190 million, which the anti-graft agency insisted was part of N240 million grant the committee received from the Central Bank of Nigeria, CBN.

EFCC alleged that the fund was paid into an Access Bank account operated by Oronsaye without the knowledge of other members of the committee.

The defendant was said to have invested the money for his personal gains.

Meanwhile, Orosanye pleaded not guilty to the charge, even as the EFCC, through its lawyer, Mr. O. Uket, applied for his remand in prison custody, pending trial.

“My lord, we shall be asking for a date to commence the trial. In the interim, however, we apply that the defendant be remanded in prison custody,” Uket submitted.

His application infuriated the defence counsel, Mr. Joe Agi, SAN, who led three other Senior Advocates of Nigeria that entered appearance for the defendant.

Agi drew the attention of the court to the fact that the Chief Justice of Nigeria, CJN, had on Monday, directed that criminal cases must be heard on a day-to-day basis, starting from the day of arraignment.

He, therefore, urged the court to compel the EFCC to immediately open its case against his client.

In a short ruling, Justice Goodluck upheld the submission of the defence counsel and ordered the prosecution to produce its witnesses immediately.

Apparently not prepared for the sudden turn of events, EFCC lawyer, Uket, begged the court for a stand down to enable him to go and fish for some of the proposed witnesses, an application that was accordingly granted.

Falae, SDP deny receiving N100m from CBN

Akure—THE Social Democratic Party, SDP, yesterday denied that N100million was transferred to the company account of its Chairman, Chief Olu Falae, from the Central Bank/ Joint Trust Dimension Nigeria Limited.

This was contained in a statement issued in Akure by the state Publicity Secretary of the Party Remi Olayiwola.

According to the statement; “The party and it’s national Chairman never had any business dealing or transaction whatsoever with either the CBN or the Joint trust Dimension Limited.

“ We wish to inform the general public that it is the same amount sent by the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, to the SDP as a result of their inter-party agreement that is now being re-presented to the public through another dubious channel in order to portray Chief Falae and the SDP in bad light.

“It is falsehood. It has failed in the past and it will fail again no matter how many times our detractors attempt to smear our name obviously for political reasons.

The party noted that “ On many occasions in the recent past , chief Falae had reiterated that the sum of N100m was transferred by the PDP through its former Chairman, Board of Trustee, chief Tony Anenih to the SDP through him as the National Chairman of his own party.

“ Chief Tony Anenih in his own statement has confirmed this transaction which was based on a written inter party agreement which existed between the two parties before the last Presidential election.

“It is also a statement of fact that the national secretariat of the SDP has confirmed through a widely publicized Press Conference that the N100m was received in full by the party haaving remitted to the party account by Chief Olu Falae.”

“ We strongly believe that this new story is yet another attempt aimed at further embarrassing Chief Falae and especially the SDP which the initiators now perceived to be towering in the Politics of Nigeria .

“ The EFCC at one point said that the N100million was from Dasuki, a lie which has now been effectively debunked.

“ Now they are claiming that the money was from a company known as Joint Trust Dimension Nigeria Limited, an entity totally unknown to Chief Falae and the SDP.

The EFCC had alleged in the reports that an alleged N100 million was traced to the account of Chief Falae while N840million was traced to the account of Chief Fani Kayode and some members of the PDP ahead of the last presidential polls.

Chief Falae, according to the anti graft agency received the money through his company- Marreco Limited, where he is the Chairman and paid it into the company’s United Bank of Africa Plc account.