“Opportunities no longer existed for the majority of the people, and especially young graduates to find meaningful employment in the job market, general hardship, brutal repression of civil and human rights coupled with system that shuns inward investment contributed to the thinking behind the formation of IPOB.”

THESE may not be the best of times for Shehu Sani, the civil rights activist-turned politician who represents Kaduna Central Senatorial District at the National Assembly, under the platform of the All Progressives Congress (APC). After several years of robust human rights activism using his Kaduna-based Civil Rights Congress, Sani contested the 2015 general elections, defeating his closest rival, Senator Mukhtar Aruwa, of the People’s Democratic Party.

Ominous are the signals from a group of stakeholders in Nigerian football to usher in the new year. After the disorder that trailed the elections into the executive committee of the Nigeria Football Federation in 2014 and the resolution of the disputes through the courts and arbitration, the group led by Mr. Chris Giwa, proprietor of Giwa FC of Jos, has been issuing drumbeats of war with threat as conveyed in their several statements to crash in and seize the secretariat of the NFF, ostensibly to recover an nonexistent or, at best, moribund mandate.

With the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) meeting last week in its Vienna headquarters, members emerged with decision put in escrow for cartel leaders to tidy up agreements on production caps. It means every member (rich or poor) is producing as they can pump into the market to sustain their teetering economies. Most OPEC members seem roiled with incongruous market share control mechanisms espoused, with the rift between high cost producers whose economies are being devastated by low crude oil prices and prosperous producers that stand for market share.

My guy gets into trouble a lot and has been in trouble a couple of times with the police but only arrested once and received a reprimand. I started speaking to him in November last year after my ex and I split up after a particularly rough break-up and things progressed from there. He asked me out a few times but I said that I couldn’t. I wanted to but I knew I wasn’t ready to trust anyone again after just coming out of a relationship.

The Umu Ojobo Nwonu family in Imufu Enugu- Ezike, Igboeze North Local Government Area of Enugu State, began their new year with the mourning of the death of wife and six children of Dominic Onu Ojobo in a fire disaster last Wednesday.

“On the following day, my eldest son called to tell me that there were corpses everywhere and he was among the few surviving souls in the place. I encouraged him to keep praying and as we were talking, he informed me that they were approaching him with guns and that he isn’t sure his father will get to speak with him again . Shortly after, the line went off. He was also killed.

“We are not vandals. I have never been to the creeks before. This is the second time I am joining them for such surveillance. It was Semiu that invited me the first time. Semiu works for the CSO. He only contracted us to work for him . He has not even paid us . It was only Semiu that was armed. The rest of us were just with torch-lights”.

Four suspects who were alleged to be members of a gang of robbers who recently broke into a branch of an old generation bank in Ilututu area of Ondo State, have said they were disappointed not finding a dime in the bank’s vault. The suspects, who were rounded up last weekend, by operatives of the Inspector General of Police Special Intelligence Response Team, SIRT, in Ondo State, were said to have broken into the bank with the aid of a security guard, who had worked with bank.

FOR Kaduna state, 2015 started on a bloody note in January and ended with an orgy of violence on December 12, in Zaria, where soldiers in the convoy of the Chief of Army Staff, Lt-Gen. Tukur Buratai, clashed with members of the Islamic Movement of Nigeria, popularly called Shi’ites. The group was reported to be in a procession, carrying out its annual “changing of flags,” ceremony to usher in the Islamic month of Maulud, birth month Prophet Mohammed.

It is too soon for a government that is largely not on its feet, that is not cohesive to think of plunging the country into that indebtedness when in fact we have over N20 trillion, which I think given my expectation of the President, we should have recovered 60 per cent of the stolen wealth of this nation by now. So, we want to know what has been recovered to dispel the rumour that is making the rounds and which is weakening the strengthen, zest and the myth of the Buhari government.

Akwa Ibom State Governor Mr Udom Emmanuel, has appealed to Federal Government to grant concessionary right to foreign investors for participation in the rehabilitation of some roads in the country.

FIERY Catholic Priest and Founder, Adoration Ministries Enugu Nigeria, AMEN, Reverend Fr. Ejike Mbaka,Friday, urged President Muhammadu Buhari to be on his guards, prophesying that alleged beneficiaries of massive corruption perpetrated during ex-President Goodluck Jonathan’s administration would plot to kill him.

English Football League table after Friday’s matches (played, won, drawn, lost, goals for, goals against, points):

Former minister of defence, Theophilus Danjuma, and Africa’s richest man, Aliko Dangote, to lead the presidential committee to rehabilitate infrastructure and resettle internally displaced persons (IDPs) in the north-east.