The Lagos State Traffic Management Authority (LASTMA) has announced the closure of Marina road from Apongbon Bridge due to the ongoing Blue Line Rail Project.

The General Manager, LASTMA, Mr Bolaji Oreagba, disclosed this in a statement on Sunday in Lagos entiled: “Traffic advisory from LASTMA.”

Oreagba suggested alternative routes for motorists as the project would commence on Nov. 22.

A Civil Society Organisation, the Anti-Corruption Network has said that 60 per cent of corruption issues in Nigeria are built and legalised in the nation’s budgetary system.

The group alleged that the proposed 2022 budget for the presidency and other agencies were laced with fake items running into billions aimed at defrauding the citizens.

Speaking in Abuja, the Executive Secretary of ACN, and former Chairman, Senate Committee on Federal Capital Territory, Dino Melaye maintained that budget fraud is the real foundation of all corrupt practices in the country.

President Muhammadu Buhari had in October presented a budget of N16.39 trillion for the year 2022 to the Joint Session of the National Assembly.

Melaye described as most unfortunate that the nation’s collective wealth had been consistently looted under the guise of budget padding, which he said now calls for serious scrutiny.

One year after the discovery of over one billion barrels of crude oil in the North, the Federal Government and the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation Limited are yet to come clean on the true state of activities in the nation’s inland basins.

The Minister of State for Petroleum Resources, Timipre Sylva, last year said about one billion barrels of crude oil have been discovered in the North East, adding that there was the need for more exploration to be undertaken.

Seen by many as President Muhammadu Buhari’s pet project, which he started over 40 years ago, Sylva’s announcement followed an earlier statement by the NNPC in the third quarter of 2019, which stated that crude oil, gas and condensates were discovered in the Kolmani River region at a border community between Bauchi and Gombe states.

That announcement was made eight months after Buhari flagged off exploration activities at the Kolmani River II Well, on the Upper Benue Trough, Gongola Basin, in the North East.

But stakeholders who spoke with correspondents, yesterday, expressed concerns over the secrecy surrounding the exploration in the North as the NNPC, which had pledged to be transparent and accountable, and currently partnering the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (EITI) is yet to publish its spending on the activities.

The Nigeria Union of Workers (NUR) has suspended its three-day warning strike following resolutions made by concerned authority.

NUR in a communiqué of resolutions jointly signed by President General, Senior Staff Association (SSA), Nigerian Railway Corporation, Aliyu Mainasara, President of NUR, Innocent Ajiji and Director Admin/Human Resources, Nigerian Railway Corporation (NRC), Dr. Monsurat Omotayo made the resolution after meetings with the NRC Board in Abuja and with the Federal Ministry of Transport (FMOT), NRC management, and the leadership of NUR and SSA in Lagos.

They resolved that a committee be set up with immediate effect on the review of the standard condition of service with timeline lasting to the 31st day of January 2022. It was agreed that the personal data on deceased workers be collected for processing for immediate payment as every worker is already covered by the group life assurance scheme.

President Muhammadu Buhari says the unconditional release of Nnamdi Kanu, leader of the outlawed Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB), currently standing trial, runs contrary to the doctrine of separation of powers between the Executive and Judiciary.

Mr Femi Adesina, the President’s spokesman in a statement on Friday in Abuja, said the president stated this when he received a group under the aegis of Highly Respected Igbo Greats, led by First Republic parliamentarian and Minister of Aviation, Chief Mbazulike Amaechi, at State House, Abuja,

While stressing his policy of non-interference with the Judiciary, President Buhari said when Kanu jumped bail, got arrested and was brought back to the country, “I said the best thing was to subject him to the system.

Three days after a leaked report of the Lagos State #EndSARS judicial panel went viral, which indicted the nation’s security forces of opening fire on the assembly of unarmed protesters and killing some citizens, President Muhammadu Buhari, yesterday broke his silence when he told the visiting United States Secretary of State, Antony Blinken, that his government would allow the system to exhaust itself, and will, therefore, wait for pronouncements from state governments, which set up panels to probe police brutality in the country.

The Special Adviser to the President on Media and Publicity, Femi Adesina, disclosed this in a statement, after President Buhari received Blinken at the State House, Abuja.

Up till last month during the one year commemoration of the #EndSARS protest, the Federal Government had insistently denied that unarmed protesters were killed at the tollgate on October 20, 2020, with the Minister of Information, Mr. Lai Mohammed, describing the incident as a “massacre without bodies.”