The House of Representatives has endorsed the 42.5 mpa cement grade as the minimum in the Nigerian market. The House thereby bars the 32.5 grade which the Standards Organisation of Nigeria (SON) had allowed to be produced and sold but limited to plastering jobs only. Following from the House Committee’s surveys and analysis, the 32.5 grade poses greater danger to largely uninformed Nigerians than the 42.5 grade.

Not many people have been shot in the head and lived to tell their stories. But for young Pakistani girl, Malala Yousafzai, her close shave with death when Taliban terrorists shot her in the head has catapulted her from an unknown rural girl to international status, earning her a spot to address the United Nations, UN, General Assembly

As I took the oath of office as governor, most of the critical initial steps my government took were aimed at building this cardinal imperative upon which our policy thrust as government will be delivered. Accordingly, prime among this was the issue of insecurity, which made it impossible to live and do business in Bayelsa. By deliberate and determined deployment of legislation and policy, backed by decisive and clear-headed leadership, mobilizing the security asset of our country and the citizenry, our state within the short period of two years has now become one of the safest places to live and do business in the country

Dr Walton Liverpool is the Executive Secretary, Bayelsa State Universal Basic Education Board.
In this interview with Jimitota Onoyume, he speaks on why Governor Seriake Dickson ordered that the primary school attended by President Goodluck Jonathan in Otuoke, Bayelsa State be rebuilt. He dismisses the allegation by some members of his board that he operates as a sole administrator.

The Sudanese Ambassador to Nigeria, Dr Tagelsir Mahgoub Ali, speaks on the difficulties being faced by his home country to extradite the man suspected to be behind the bombing of Nyanya, near Abuja, the FCT, who fled to Sudan, to Nigeria.

It is no longer news that the United States government is strongly committed in efforts to strengthening Nigeria’s democratic institutions, and electoral processes.

This, clearly explains the country’s extensive involvement in ensuring that the upcoming Ekiti and Osun states elections in the next few months are conducted credibly and peacefully.

In all my years of reading articles written by some of the very finest in this noble profession called journalism, two articles are stuck in my brain like the hair planted on the scarf of the head.

The first of these TWO articles….WHY I WILL NOT FORGIVE MY TEACHER, was written many years back by Dare Babarinsa of the then Newswatch. I still remember it as if it were yesterday, cramped in the popular Lagos Danfo bus on my way from work, shuttling between Oyingbo through Orile and finally to Okokomaiko where I shared a two-room apartment with my cousin. I had started reading the article out of boredom, little did I know that it would hold a lifetime influence on my literary reasoning.

Rape and sexual assault against women in Nigeria have become issues in dare need of global intervention. Although there has been concerted efforts towards protecting the rights of the girl child as well as women in their homes and society at large, there is still much to be done, to put an end to it.

BELGIUM may rank as one of the countries that do not subject Nigerians to cumbersome visa processing, both in Abuja and Lagos. This is in sharp contrast to what many intending travellers go through in the hands of embassy officials as well as touts while trying to obtain visas to developed nations.

AS the presence of Nigerian immigrants continue to grow in the People’s Republic of China, many Nigerians have begun to demonstrate utmost displeasure towards the country’s public display of cultural barriers. Their major concern has been that the cultural barriers have in many diverse ways, contributed in dampening business relations between them and the Chinese.

During the anti-SAP riot, after the demonstration in Jos, students in the University of Calabar also demonstrated. We were demonstrating outside the main campus when the police started shooting. And there was a female student, Nnenna, behind me. She was shot. She fell. I started wondering. I was taller than she was. How come she got shot standing behind me? How did the bullet pass me to hit her? I carried her with all the blood and everything

Following the death of the Emir of Kano and the selection of the former Central Bank of Nigeria, CBN, Governor, Sanusi Lamido Sanusi, trouble descended on the ancient
Kingdom like a plague, forcing the new emir to operate from the Government House while security agents take over the palace.
But the state Governor, Rabiu Musa Kwankwaso, in this interview defends the choice of the new emir, saying it was not influenced by any political consideration and accuses the Presidency and the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, of instigating the violence to bring down his government. The governor also serves notice that his life is in danger and that Nigerians should know who to hold responsible if he is killed.

Sanusi Lamido Sanusi’s name can simply be substituted with controversy. His many controversies during his days as the Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) made him a popular name in Nigeria and abroad. A thorough bred intellectual, he never hid his ambition to become the Emir of Kano. Those close to him attested to the fact that becoming the emir was the last thing left for him to achieve.

Certain ailments that defy western drugs are believed to respond to African herbs and roots.

All is not well with Edo State Police Command and the family of Edeghonghon Aziegbe (a.k.a Eddy) of Ekpoma. Edeghonghon graduated from the Department of Geography, Ambrose Alli University, Ekpoma, and deployed to Asaba, Delta State for his National Youth Service Corps (NYSC) before meeting his untimely death in Ekpoma, last month. Edeghonghon was shot dead by some persons yet to be identified a day to his 30th birthday after he went out with friends for a drink.