The Curious Mind

One thing about Nigerians is that when they truly want the cake and you don't give them, they shout louder Than the loudest mega phone, but once given a slice, they shut up for good. The recent increase in the price of fuel to N151.56 per litre by the federal government has been greeted with reactions among Nigerians who have planned to stage a protest tomorrow at Ojota to drive home their demands.  One inquisitive Nigerian who wanted to know if the aide to president Buhari on social media, Lauretta Onochie will join them in protest tomorrow just as she did when the APC and some Nigerians protested fuel price increase during the administration of President Goodluck Jonathan. This is what she said: “No I will not be Joining you and for good reasons too. Not sure you can understand but I'll try. "If the subsidy was removed in 2012, the savings would have gone into private pockets. "Looted. "Today, Nigerians have a President they trust. The recovered subsidy, would ...

The Minister of Labour and Employment, Dr Chris Ngige, has ridiculed a member of House of Representatives, James Faleke. Ngige who appeared before the Adhoc Committee of the House of Representatives to answer questions over an alleged breach of a presidential directive called Faleke “a small boy” and claimed he was “Tinubu’s mate”. “I am at least seven years older than you. I’m sure. I am the same age as your mentor in Lagos, Asiwaju (Bola Ahmed Tinubu). And I was Governor with him at the same time. He was a Senator, I was a Senator, I am a two-time Minister, he is a two-time Minister.” Ngige fired. Ngige vrs Faleke “But you won these elections very well?” Faleke retorted. But Ngige fired back: “No problem about that. Just like you won your own in Kogi State very well and you are now both the Governor and Deputy Governor. “You are just a small boy in Lagos. Look at this Mushin boy, talking to a Victoria Island boy.” Ngige is alleged to have suspended top management and executive commit...

Saif Gaddafi Saif Gaddafi, the second son of late Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi, is in a secure spot in Libya and will soon address the people in a televised speech, his lawyer said. A Libyan militia said in June 2017 that they had released Mr. Gaddafi’s son, whom they had been holding captive since 2011, when Libya descended into political unrest. “Saif Islam is now in Libya, in security, and will soon make a television appearance to address the Libyans,” the lawyer said. The lawyer confirmed that the son of the late Libyan leader would present his candidacy for the presidential post in the election this year. “The manifesto of Saif Islam is the project of reforms that lead to a dialogue, national reconciliation and the building of a modern state,” the lawyer said. In June 2011, shortly before Saif Islam Gaddafi was captured, the International Criminal Court issued a warrant for his arrest on suspicion of murder and persecution. He did not hold an official position i...

The Amnesty International has blamed the Nigerian Military for the abduction school girls from Government Girls Science and Technical College, Dapchi, in Yobe State. An investigation carried out by the group revealed that the Nigerian Army was alerted about the presence of Boko Haram in Dapchi hours before the abduction of the 110 girls. At least 5 calls were made to security officers alerting them of the presence of Boko Haram fighters, but all were ignored, the investigation revealed. The first call was made to the army command located at Geidam when the insurgents were spotted at Futchimiram heading to Gumsa. The military had reportedly done nothing. Several calls were reportedly made when the insurgents were spotted at Futchimiram around 2 PM, but the army commander said he was aware and was monitoring the situation. When around 3 PM the insurgents arrived at Gumsa, where they stayed until 5 PM, residents of the town called their people in Dapchi informing them the i...

President Buhari of Nigeria President Muhammadu Buhari on Monday said he was ‘surprised’ that the Inspector-General of Police, Ibrahim Idris disobeyed his directives to stay in Benue until the bloodletting between farmers and herdsmen was resolved. Mr. Buhari also said his government was deeply worried about the incessant attacks on Benue’s rural communities and vowed to end the menace “very soon”. The president, in the wake of public outcry that greeted the murder of over 70 persons by suspected herdsmen had instructed the IGP to relocate to the state until the carnage was contained. The police boss had reportedly spent less than 24 hours in the state before leaving; attracting more condemnation from Nigerians even as the presidency failed to reprimand him. Mr. Buhari, who met with farmers, herdsmen, government officials and other stakeholders in Makurdi on Monday as part of his visits to troubled states however, denied insinuations that he was not interested in what was h...

President Wear of Liberia and President Buhari of Nigeria after a meeting at the presidential villa, Abuja President George Weah, on Monday, said Liberia would need at least 6,000 teachers from Nigeria. Weah said this while addressing State House correspondents at the end of a meeting he had with President Muhammadu Buhari at the Presidential Villa, Abuja. He said he was in Nigeria on a mission of gratitude and respect for the roles that Buhari and Nigerians had played in maintaining peace and stability in the West African sub-region and particularly in Liberia. He noted that Nigerian teachers and medical volunteers to Liberia, under the Technical Assistance Corps Agreement with Liberia, had been crucial in boosting human capacity development in Liberia. Weah expressed the hope that the assistance could be considerably increased to address his country’s most pressing socio-economic needs at this time. He added, “More specifically, under the Bilateral Teacher Exchange...

The Coalition for Nigeria, a third-force political group being championed by former President Olusegun Obasanjo, appears to be a major platform that has continued to attract prominent and other members Dr.Obasanjo of the National Assembly, according to the PUNCH. Aggrieved members of the ruling All Progressives Congress and the opposition Peoples Democratic Party in both the Senate and House of Representatives are said to be considering Obasanjo’s platform to achieve their political goals in the 2019 general elections. One of the aggrieved lawmakers, who spoke to one of our correspondents on condition of anonymity for fear of persecution, said it was becoming clear that many of them would be denied electoral tickets by their parties and the option was to consider Obasanjo’s offer. The APC members, according to the source, include serving and former governors and members of the National Assembly. The APC senator from the North confirmed that the ex-President had r...

A month after an Islamist ambush in Niger killed eight U.S. and Nigerien troops, the two sides’ officials still cannot agree on the sequence of events leading to the incident. Four soldiers from each nation were killed when a joint patrol was attacked on Oct. 4 by dozens of militants with machine guns and rocket-propelled grenades. The incident drew attention to the little-known U.S. military presence in Niger at a time when many Americans are weary of U.S. involvement in conflicts abroad and Nigeriens are chafing at the growing presence of foreign troops on their soil. The U.S. has 800 soldiers operating in the largely desert West African nation, more than France, which has 4,000 in the wider Sahel trying to tackle Islamist militancy. The main U.S. base in Africa is in Djibouti, which supports about 4,000 personnel. A Pentagon investigation into the incident, led by a two-star general from U.S. Africa Command, may take weeks. The Pentagon says it has not settled on any...

Indications have emerged showing that the ‘full list’ of all the appointments made by President Muhammadu Buhari since he assumed office on May 29, 2015 as released by the Presidency is inaccurate. The 159-member list contains several errors and omissions as no fewer than 29 names of heads of agencies or parastatals were missing on the list while data provided for another five were incorrect. The presidency had been challenged by a publication by BusinessDay which indicated that 81 of Buhari’s appointments are either from the North-east, North-west or North Central. In apparent response to that report as well as several similar ones, the Special Adviser to the President on Media and Publicity, Femi Adesina, released the list of 159 appointees on Saturday. Below are several omitted names and some wrongly described titles in a list some political observers in the country have described as “a desperate bid to cover Buhari’s lopsided appointments.” 1. FRCN, NTA DGs mi...

Days after the World Health Organization named President Robert Mugabe as a goodwill ambassador, a move that angered and stunned human rights activists, it rescinded the appointment. "I have listened carefully to all who have expressed their concerns, and heard the different issues that they have raised," WHO Director-General Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said. "It is my aim to build a worldwide movement for global health. This movement must work for everyone and include everyone." Tedros said he consulted the Zimbabwean government and concluded it's in the organization's best interests. The public health agency announced the appointment last week,  saying the African leader would focus on noncommunicable diseases  on the continent such as heart attacks and strokes. A public outcry ensued. Angry tweets took aim at Tedros and the public health agency. "The government of Robert Mugabe has brutalized human rights activists, crushed demo...

Former Governor of Anambra state, Mr. Peter Obi, shared money to traders when he led PDP’s campaign for Anambra State Governorship election at the market on October 18. The Governor cheered the traders to vote for his candidate and former Secretary to the State Government, Oseloka Obaze. Oseloka Obaze would be looking to unseat Mr. Obiano as governor. Below are photos of Peter Obi’s at his market campaign:

North Korea has warned it will not be intimidated by Donald Trump’s threats in an “unprecedented” letter sent to other countries. “If Trump thinks that he would bring the DPRK, a nuclear power, to its knees through nuclear war threat, it will be a big miscalculation and an expression of ignorance,” the letter said. “Trump threatened to totally destroy the DPRK … it is an extreme act of threatening to totally destroy the whole world.” The document was published by the Sydney Morning Herald and has been verified by Australia’s foreign ministry. Australia’s prime minister dismissed it as a “rant”, while the country’s foreign minister said it showed diplomatic pressure from the international community was working. It comes amid rising tensions between North Korea and the US, with Kim Jong Un’s regime carrying out a number of ballistic missile and nuclear tests. Mr Trump has threatened to “totally destroy” the country if need be, describing Kim as “rocket man” on a suicide ...

President Jacob Zuma You could recall that he is notorious in this kind of act. Remember the 600 million naira Christmas tree?  T he many cakes and then the money  splash for his birthday celebration? give it up for this man called Rochas Okorocha. 600m christmas tree Rochas cakes

The law firm of Fein & DelValle PLLC has announced that it, “is drafting a criminal indictment against Nigeria’s President Muhammadu Buhari and Chief of Army Staff, Lieutenant General Tukur Yusfu Buratai, for genocide and crimes against humanity under the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court.” The firm said in a statement issued at the weekend in Washington, D.C. USA, that it is pursuing the case, “on behalf of Biafrans who covet justice – the dead, the living, and those yet to be born”. According to the statement signed by renowned Attorney, Mr. Bruce Fein, and his Partner, Mr. W. Bruce DelValle, “Buhari and Buratai are criminally culpable because of their command responsibility over security forces operating under their direction or control and who are terrorising tens of millions of Biafrans specifically because of their Christianity and ethnicity.” The crimes include extrajudicial killings, torture, and sister unspeakable horrors. They are the grisly...

President Robert Mugabe(left) and President Ian Khama (right) The Botswana government on Thursday replied a diplomatic jibe thrown at its president by his Zimbabwean counterpart, Robert Gabriel Mugabe. The 93-year-old leader whiles on an official visit to South Africa mocked the failure of Botswana’s candidate in elections for the African Union Commission chairperson post. Mugabe’s target was not Botswana’s Foreign Minister, Dr. Pelonomi Venson-Moitoi, who lost the vote held in January this year but rather at President Ian Khama, who he blamed squarely for not supporting Venson-Moitoi. “We worked hard. They worked hard, sweated, they sweated, you sweated, we sweated, (but) one man didn’t sweat. He stayed at home and expected that wonders would happen and they didn’t happen. “We were very sorry, everybody just said: ‘Aah, you. We have not seen your President here. He doesn’t attend our meetings and what would happen if we placed our organisation in your hands, in his hand?...

Galadima A chieftain of the All Progressives Congress (APC), Alhaji Buba Galadima has said that if he were to be the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), the ruling party would have been deregistered. He said the party’s handlers had refused to abide by the rules they set. A chieftain of the All Progressives Congress (APC), Alhaji Buba Galadima has said that if he were to be the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), the ruling party would have been deregistered. He said the party’s handlers had refused to abide by the rules they set. Galadima made this comment while speaking with the Hausa Service of the BBC, yesterday, According to Galadima, if he were INEC, he would have seized APC’s certificate of registration because three years after its establishment, the party could not hold a single Board of Trustees (BoT) meeting, and that it had also failed to deliver on any of its promises. He said, “APC does not deserve to be a political party; its...

Egyptians are angry over a government decision to ratify a 36-percent devaluation of mobile phone balance recharge cards. “It’s completely unfair, that’s quite a lot,” a mobile user told Arab News after realizing that she received about 70 percent of the price of the purchased card in charging credit. The decision, ratified by the state-run Telecommunications Regulatory Authority (TRA), came into effect over the weekend. Since then, there have been boycott calls on social media against the telecom companies applying the increase. The increase is not on the price of the recharge cards, but on the delivered value given from the company to the customer. This means a recharge card costing 100 Egyptian pounds ($5.67) will give 70 Egyptian pounds of credit. Justin Dargin, a Middle East expert at the University of Oxford, said the devaluation is part of government attempts to raise revenue and achieve budgetary stability following years of political instability. “The devaluati...