An Abuja Magistrates’ Court, yesterday, ordered that one Buhari Ahmadu, 21, of no fixed address be remanded in prison for alleged criminal trespass.

ABIA State government, yesterday, openly put the Minister of Niger Delta Affairs, Chief Goddsday Orubebe, on the defensive, by accusing him of neglecting the state and treating it as not part of the region. The government made its position known when Orubebe led a delegation of senior staff of his Ministry, including the Minister of State, to Government House, Umuahia.

SOUTH African Court, yesterday, sentenced former leader of the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta, MEND, Mr. Henry Okah, to 24 years imprisonment, having been found guilty on 13-count charge of terrorism. The charges related to two car bombs in Abuja, in which 12 people were killed and 36 injured on October 1, 2010, on the anniversary of Nigeria’s independence, and another two explosions in Warri, earlier in March, 2010.

Arsons, bombings, killings, prison breaks, kidnappings have become routine; hardly a day passes without killings in parts of the country. Damaturu, Gombe, Maiduguri, Mubi, Potiskum, Yola, have held headlines for bombings. The incidents spread to Abuja, Kaduna, Kano, Katsina, Kogi, Niger, Sokoto States, joining the perennial killings in Plateau State. The most embarrassing of the incidents remain the bombing of the nation’s 50th independence anniversary in Abuja and the targeting of elite military and other security offices.

Chief of Naval Staff, CNS, Vice Admiral Dele Ezeoba, yesterday, warned the officers and men of the Nigerian Navy against complicity in crude oil theft in the Niger Delta, saying anyone caught will have himself to blame.

Tragedy struck,Monday, at Odogunyan area of Ikorodu, Lagos, when a factory worker with African Steel Mill was electrocuted after the company allegedly denied him access to its toilet facilities.

A major effort in peacemaking by the PDP ends with the exposure of internal dissensions traced to the style and schemes of its national chairman. It was celebrated as the boldest peace shooting initiative ever in the history of the fractious Peoples Democratic Party, PDP. Central to the plan was a tour of the six geopolitical zones by the National Chairman, Alhaji Bamanga Tukur and members of the National Working Committee, NWC to build bridges across the divides in the party.

KADUNA—AGENTS of top politicians, who are uncomfortable with Governor Rotimi Amaechi’s leadership of the Nigerian Governors’ Forum, NGF, are behind the campaign posters purportedly announcing the presidential ambition of Governor Sule Lamido of Jigawa State and his Rivers State counterpart, Amaechi, it emerged yesterday.

THE Federal Government, yesterday, said that the on-going National Integrated Power Project, NIPP, being executed in Ihovbor, Edo State, with a view to boosting power supply in the Niger Delta region, will be completed in April this year.

…Ndigbo to decide this week …
AS the death toll in last Monday’s bomb blasts at a bus park in Kano rises to 80, President of the Igbo Youth Movement, IYM, Evangelist Elliot Uko, has urged Igbo youths to remain calm and await the decision of Igbo leaders this week. In a chat with reporters, Uko holds northern leaders and politicians responsible for the Boko Haram insurgency, saying that sponsors of the sect have murdered sleep. Excerpts: