IN a move likely to reassure Southerners residing in Northern Nigeria of their safety, governors of 19 northern states and traditional rulers of northern extraction, yesterday, vowed to protect the lives and property of Southerners in the North.

Outrage overflowed, yesterday, against the Senate over its rejection of restructuring and renunciation of women’s rights with former Vice President Atiku Abubakar, lamenting that his party, the All Progressives Congress, APC, had betrayed its 2015 election promises.

Proposals for restructuring of the country took a negative turn yesterday after the Senate rejected moves to decongest the Exclusive Legislative List and in favour of the Concurrent List in line with agitation for devolution of powers to the states.

President Muhammadu Buhari has written President Alpha Conde of Guinea, thanking him for the nationwide prayers held, last week, by Guineans for his recovery and good health.

The hope-lifting picture of President Muhammadu Buhari dining with chieftains of the All Progressives Congress, APC, turned into a political storm, yesterday, after the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, described it as a collective insult on Nigerians.

In the first reported encounter with government officials since he went on medical vacation to the United Kingdom last May, President Muhammadu Buhari has laughed away negative insinuations about his health, vowing to return to the country once he gets the all clear from his doctors.

The President will, in the future, appoint his ministers within a time-frame, and the portfolios attached to the nominees, while submitting the list to the Senate for screening and confirmation, if a recommendation by the Joint Committee of the National Assembly on the Review of the 1999 Constitution (as amended) sails through.

The Nigerian Governors Forum, NGF, has constituted a six-man committee of its members to explore funding options for policing the country, with a mandate to also explore prospects for introducing state police in the country.

Pandemonium erupted, yesterday, at Creek Road, Apapa, Lagos, as dozens of articulated truck drivers went on rampage over the death of one of their colleagues and set two bank branches on fire.

Worried by rising kidnap and rape cases across the state, Lagos State Government has introduced measures during this vacation to forestall any possible ugly situation that may arise in public schools.

Officials of the Nigerian Ports Authority, NPA have been summoned to appear before the Senate on Thursday to explain how 282 ships disappeared from Nigerian ports between 2010 and 2016.

—Strong denunciation of the collaboration between the Middle Belt and the South came from the core North, yesterday, with a challenge to advocates of the restructuring of the country to use the National Assembly to push their case.

Nigeria’s political landscape was, yesterday, being reshaped with new permutations and perspectives on the 2019 elections, after the Supreme Court resolved the leadership crisis in the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, in favour of the Senator Ahmed Makarfi-led National Caretaker Committee.

The National Peace Committee, headed by former Head of State, Gen. AbdulSalam Abubakar, has traced the recent spate of ethnic agitations to politicians who failed to deliver on their election promises and what it described as failure of governance in the country.

Igbo apex socio-cultural organisation, Ohanaeze Ndigbo, has disagreed with Igbo youths clamouring for Biafra in retrospect, saying their style was out of tune with the body language of Igbo elders who have seen war and its devastation and would not want anything that would bring another calamity.