NKIRUKA NNOROM writes that the Lekki Port, expected to be operational in 2016, will change the face of maritime business in Nigeria and improve economic fortune of the nation

Publisher of Vanguard newspaper, Mr. Sam Amuka, yesterday, reaffirmed his organisation’s commitment to fight child sex abuse in the country, even as Mrs. Kuburat Okoya, wife of industrialist, Razaq Okoya, said the trend had become a silent epidemic.

Two out of three women in Nigeria are subject to domestic violence in their homes. Domestic violence affects all social groups and can consist of physical, sexual and psychological abuse. In this interview, human right activist, Dr. Joe Odumakin explains that although men can also be affected by domestic violence, but in most cases women are always at the receiving end of domestic violence.

The wave of domestic violence in all its forms sweeping across our country is disturbing and a source of serious concern to many people. Personal safety within family framework can no longer be taken for granted. Most victims of domestic violence are left to suffer in vain, sometimes killed, seriously injured or permanently disabled.

Not many know that relationship or marriage is meant to bring out the better person in a spouse. But, the reverse is the case in our society today as many people especially married women suffer different kinds of domestic violence.

The popular saying that ‘it takes two to tangle’ is indeed true, but when the tangle becomes so unpleasant and repeatedly carried out on the weaker party; then it is time to end the music or to start another tune.

No fewer than two states governors and a minister have been suspended from the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) in what many believe is the ruling party’s baring of its fangs.

In this interview, the Japanese Ambassador to Nigeria, Ryuichi Shoji, speaks on the just concluded Tokyo International Conference for African Development (TICAD), but, more importantly, the need and urgency of the African development and mobilizing international partnership, serving as a forum to strategise African development policies.

Osun State governor,Ogbeni Rauf Aregbesola, on Monday, recorded another first with the launch of the much awaited innovative e-learning device tagged Opon Imo, tablet of knowledge, amidst showers of praises for the ingenuity of the Aregbesola-led administration as the state government is expected to save N8.4 billion from the purchase of text books for senior secondary public schools in the state.

Across the nation’s states, there is a class of children who neither feel good nor happy. Their outlook paints a vivid picture of their state of helplessness.

Now that the annual Children’s Day celebration has come and gone,the question of what happens to the average Nigerian child after that one day jamboree still lingers in the hearts of concerned parents and education stakeholders.

Going by a report of the United Nations Children Fund, Nigeria is among the 24 countries with a good number of undernourished children in the world.

What I am saying is that for the sake of your children and my children, we must tackle this radicalisation of the Islamic faith, because if you think that the radicalisation process has not started in the South, then you are joking.

In this concluding part of the Vanguard conference hall, discussants insist that now is the time to tackle the radicalisation process that is festering in the country.

MODERATOR: Some people have argued that the proposed amnesty for the insurgents is a double edged sword, yet the likes of Sultan Abubakar Sa’ad, a former military man and intelligence officer, believes that the best option to the Boko Haram crisis, a group that does not believe in dialogue or diplomacy outside its own world view. So where does this leave us?

The orgy of violence in the old Kanem Borno empire had become a threat to sovereignty of Nigerian state, and direct challenge to the authority and power of the Federal Government, as the insurgents had vowed to topple the democratic order by the use of force, to enthrone a theocratic state, based on Sharia’s jurisprudence.