Ike Ekweremadu was Chief of Staff when Sullivan Chime was a special adviser. When Ekweremadu became Secretary to the State Government Chime became a commissioner. That there was a secret rivalry between both men is only something that is now beginning to unfold before friends and acquaintances of the two men who incidentally are from the same Enugu West Senatorial District.

The violence that erupted last Sunday in Port Harcourt, Rivers State following the shooting of Senator Magnus Abe, spread to his constituency in the Ogoni part of the state, yesterday morning. His kinsmen took to the streets, damaging vehicles and disrupting traffic. Senator Abe, was on Sunday, wounded by alleged rubber bullet the state government said was fired by members of the Nigeria Police, who had gone to disperse supporters of Governor Rotimi Amaechi in Obio/Akpor Local Government Area of the state from holding a rally.

An appeals court has upheld the conviction of a Nigerian man who pleaded guilty to trying to blow up a Detroit-bound airliner with a bomb in his underwear.

A FEDERAL High Court sitting in Abuja, yesterday, gave the Federal Government, seven days to arraign in court, Dr. Mohammed Nazeef Yunus, a lecturer at the Kogi State University, Ayingba, and five others arrested by the Department of State Service, DSS, following their alleged involvement with the Boko Haram sect.

The one percent first line charge deduction from revenue allocated to the 36 states to fund the Nigeria Police, with a view to reforming and repositioning the Force, will commence this month.
Making the disclosure yesterday in Abuja, Minister of Police Affairs, Navy Captain Caleb Olubolade (rtd), explained that the introduction of the one percent revenue allocation would go a long way to assist in funding the Police Reform Programme, by providing more logistics, equipment, welfare and training, among others.

AHEAD of the National Executive Meeting of the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, where the fate of the embattled chairman of the party, Alhaji Bamanga Tukur, may be decided, one of the lawyers to the party, Mr. Ajibola Oluyede has written to President Goodluck Jonathan reminding him the position of the court on the purported plan to remove Tukur.

WORRIED over its gradual loss of grip at the National Assembly, the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, yesterday, asked a Federal High Court in Abuja to restrain the Speaker of the House of Representatives, Mr. Aminu Tambuwal and 52 other lawmakers from altering or changing the leadership of the House.

GOVERNOR Chibuike Amaechi-led Nigeria Governors’ Forum, NGF, will meet tomorrow, in Abuja to deliberate on some salient issues, with challenges of paucity of funds to states, report on Federation Account Allocation Committee, FAAC, Excess Crude Account, ECA, and feedback from letter to President Goodluck Jonathan, topping the agenda.

The interim leadership of All Progressives Congress, APC, in Bayelsa State, has disowned loyalists of the former governor, Chief Timipre Sylva and members of the defunct Karu Baraje-led new Peoples Democratic Party, nPDP, over claims that they control the party and its new structure in the state.

The Court of Appeal sitting in Port Harcourt, Rivers State, has dismissed the suit by former governor of Bayalsa State, Chief Timipre Sylva, in which he had sought to unseat Governor Seriake Dickson, for lack of jurisdiction to entertain the matter.

President of the Nigeria Football Association (NFA), Aminu Maigari, on Monday expressed confidence that the Super Eagles would “shake the world” at the 2014 World Cup in Brazil.

I HAVE never voted in a Nigerian election. I have only ever voted once, but it was in Britain and not in Nigeria. As a Commonwealth student in England in the 1970s, I was allowed to vote for the re-election of Harold Wilson’s Labour party. However, I am seriously thinking of casting my vote, for whatever it is worth, in Nigeria’s forthcoming elections in 2015. There is only one reason for this. I am determined that a “Northerner” must not be the next president of the Federal Republic of Nigeria.

Nigeria and Mozambique will both be in search of maximum points when they meet in their 2014 African Nations Championship Group A encounter at the Cape Town Stadium today.

A NEW global report on polio has shown that Nigeria has made considerable progress toward polio eradication in the last 18 months.