The negotiations between the Federal Government and the nation’s labour movement on minimum wage took a dramatic turn yesterday in Abuja as the labour delegation walked out of the Office of the Secretary to the Government of the Federation (SGF) and never returned.

NATIONAL President of the Christian Association of Nigeria, CAN, Pastor Ayo Oritsejafor yesterday picked holes in a statement credited to the Sultan of Sokoto and president general of Jamatul Nasril Islam JNI, Alhaji Muhammad Sa’ad Abubukar, saying it falls short of expectations.

FOLLOWING criticisms that trailed his proposal to forward a bill to the National Assembly for a single term tenure for the president and governors, President Goodluck Jonathan, yesterday, declared that the idea was not his but all the political parties except the Action Congress of Nigeria.

The Presidency yesterday confirmed Vanguard’s report last Monday on a proposed constitutional amendment to restrict the Presidential and gubernatorial tenure to a single six-year term. Vanguard had also reported that President Jonathan and the incumbent governors will not benefit from the proposed single tenure.

A chieftain of the Peoples Democratic Party in Oyo State, Senator Lekan Balogun at the Commission of Enquiry investigating the bloody clashes between two factions of the National Union of Road Transport Workers, NURTW, yesterday, alleged that the immediate past administration of Adebayo Alao-Akala supplied ammunition and money to a faction of the union.

President Goodluck Jonathan and incumbent governors will not benefit from the proposed constitutional amendment to restrict the Presidential and gubernatorial tenure to a single six year term. This is in contrast to the failed third term amendment proposal conceived during the Olusegun Obasanjo administration.

The move to elongate the tenure of the president and governors from the current four years to six but limited to one term as against the present two via a constitution amendment may be a titanic battle between Nigerians in favour and those against.

EMOTIONS were bound to be high on the minimum wage. What most did not foresee was the subterfuge that politicians will bring into it. They gave workers minimum wage with maximum wedge to ensure it never works.

ANOTHER bomb suspected to have been planted and targeted at the patrol vehicle of the Joint Task Force by members of the deadly sect, Boko Haram, in Gwage IV ward of Maiduguri Metropolis, Borno state exploded on Thursday evening.

NOBEL Laureate, Prof. Wole Soyinka, has challenged President Goodluck Jonathan, to use the Freedom of Information, FoI Act to unravel the intrigues surrounding the hospitalisation of late President Umoru Musa Yar ‘Adua in Saudi Arabia and how he was brought back to the country under mysterious circumstances.

Confusion has crept into the camp of the Islamic sect, Boko Haram which has unleashed a reign of terror in the northern part of the country for several months as the sect has split into two factions. One faction, the Yusufiyya Islamic Movement, YIM, has vowed to expose the other faceless group, which it described as evil group.

Leaders of the nation’s labour movement, midnight, called off the three day warning strike they earlier declared to protest the reluctance of the Federal and state governments to pay the new minimum wage.

United Bank for Africa Plc yesterday said it has restructured its operation into a Holding company, comprising three financial companies, namely UBA Plc, UBA Capital Holdings and UBA Africa Holdings as subsidiaries.

THERE is every indication that the three-day warning strike organized by labour will begin tomorrow as the meeting between the Federal Government and labour yesterday, ended in a deadlock.

Despite last Saturday’s acceptance by Governors of the 36 states that they will pay the new minimum wage, labour insisted yesterday that it is proceeding with the three-day warning strike scheduled to begin on Wednesday as it gives further conditions to call off the strike.