National Youth Service Corps (NYSC ) Members in Nigeria have been advised to be law-abiding and be of good conduct throughout the service year.
The Director-General of the NYSC, Brigadier General Shuaibu Ibrahim gave this advice during his visit to the Permanent Orientation in Anambra State, South-East Nigeria.
Ibrahim, who sensitized the Corps Members on the four Cardinal Programmes of the NYSC, urged them to always obey the NYSC Bye-Laws and the rules and regulations of their places of primary assignments as well as serve as role models that would leave good legacies after service.
“Please take advantage of the Orientation Course to promote unity and teamwork, and ensure that the spirit of NYSC lives in you forever,” the DG said.
He advised them to study the felt needs of their host communities and initiate laudable projects that would add value to the lives of the residents.
Ibrahim, however pointed out that Corps Members are not expected to use their personal money to execute projects, but rather reach out to people within the community for mobilization of resources.
The Director-General further enjoined them to take advantage of the Skill Acquisition and Entrepreneurship Development programme of the Scheme that was initiated to empower them for self-employment.
“Identify your talent, drive your vision with passion and commitment and the sky will be your limit,“ the Director-General said.
He said NYSC Management had partnered financial institutions like the Central Bank of Nigeria, Bank of Industry, Heritage Bank and Access Bank among others, towards supporting Corps Members with loans to finance their businesses.
He also said efforts are in top gear for the establishment of NYSC Trust Fund, which would, among other benefits, make funds available to Corps Members for actualization of their business dreams.
The DG appealed to the Corps Members to avoid the wrong usage of Social Media, adding that they should deploy it for the promotion of national unity and integration.
He warned them against unauthorized journeys, while also maintaining that only State Coordinators, and not Corps Employers, could grant them permission to travel within the country.
The Joint Admission and Matriculation Board (JAMB), has said it will continue its practice of remitting the operating surpluses, maintaining that it is constitutional.
The board disclosed this on Monday in a statement signed by its Head, Public Affairs, Dr. Fabian Benjamin.
“In line with existing government’s directive which was reiterated recently by the Director of Budget Office, the Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board would continue its practice of remitting the constitutionally-mandated proportion of its operational surpluses.
”This is a known fact that all underutilized funds by Ministries, Departments and Agencies, MDAs, should be returned to the public treasury.
“The board and public-spirited Nigerians are at a loss as to the reason for the various campaigns of calumny being mounted by some individuals who feel that these remittances should not be made,” he said.
“It might interest these arm chair critics that a direct fallout of the remittances was the decision of the Federal Government to reduce the cost of the purchase of the e-pin from N5000 to N3500, the cheapest globally.
“it is a truism in policy making that, certain trends should be observed over a period of time before policy pronouncements are made. Hence, the decision to reduce the price of application documents was contingent upon the observation that even if the price were to be slashed, the Board would be able to conduct its examination unhindered.
“In addition, it might also interest the public to know that never in the history of tertiary institutions in Nigeria have the institutions benefited from the Board’s operations as they now do. For instance, a huge chunk of these surpluses are ploughed back to the tertiary institutions through the National Tertiary Admissions Performance Merit Award and other platforms.”
The Board maintains that the cost of obtaining the Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination( UTME) or the Direct Entry (DE) e-pin today is the lowest globally.
“However, the present management of the Board is determined to continue on the path of giving value for money even as it continues to seek ways of further pruning down the cost of conducting the Board’s flagship examination.
“In essence, once these innovative measures which have led to these surpluses are institutionalised, the Board would further look at how to further enhance the registration process to benefit the candidates and the general public the more.
Michael Emenalo has emerged as the leading candidate for a Director of Football role at Newcastle United.
The new Saudi-backed ownership is looking to transform the club’s structure on the footballing side of the business, and is looking into creating the position.
Ajax’s Marc Overmars had also been heavily linked with the role, as had Frank McParland, who had previously worked with Liverpool and Rangers.
However, according to the Telegraph, it is the former Chelsea chief who now looks the favourite to take up the vacancy.
Emenalo built a stellar reputation within the game during his time at Chelsea, and harnessed the club’s ability to create youth academy products to great success.
He was also responsible for bringing in the likes of Kevin De Bruyne and Romelu Luakaku while at Stamford Bridge.
Newcastle confirmed the appointment of Eddie Howe as their new head coach on Monday afternoon, with the former Bournemouth manager signing a contract until 2024.
And according to the same outlet, it is understood that Emenalo is a fan of Howe’s approach and practices.
Emenalo’s last role in football came at Monaco in Ligue 1, although it was not the easiest of periods.
Arriving after the club had secured the title in 2017, he lasted two years during a period that saw the principality outfit sell a number of key assets, including Kylian Mbappe, to PSG.
FILE PHOTO: Santiago Nieto, head of Mexico's financial crimes unit, attends a news conference at the National Palace in Mexico City, Mexico December 27, 2019. REUTERS/Henry Romero
The head of Mexico’s Financial Intelligence Unit (UIF), the agency in charge of cracking down on money-laundering operations, has resigned following a scandal related to his wedding in Guatemala.
Santiago Nieto, long seen as a trusted ally of President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador in his campaign to root out corruption, stepped down from the position on Monday.
That came after Guatemalan authorities seized $35,000 in cash from a private jet carrying influential guests to Nieto’s wedding to Carla Humphrey, a counsellor with Mexico’s National Electoral Institute (INE), in the city of Antigua.
Wedding guest Juan Francisco Ealy Ortiz, the president of the prominent Mexican newspaper El Universal, had been carrying the cash. A column in the newspaper on Monday said the money was for medical treatment and had been properly declared to Mexican officials.
Nevertheless the optics of the situation – private planes, lavish foreign weddings and bags of cash – had done their damage, Lopez Obrador said upon accepting the resignation.
“It is a scandalous matter, even when it is a private event … public matters in Mexico are increasingly public and more is known about private matters,” Lopez Obrador said.
The president was elected in 2018 on a campaign focused on cracking down on corruption in the country but has been criticized for focusing more on his public image than adequately addressing the myriad issues facing the country.
Since taking office, Lopez Obrador has cultivated a persona of obsessive austerity, often flying commercial, trying to sell the presidential jet, and refusing to live in the palatial former presidential residence.
Paola Felix, the secretary of tourism for Mexico City, also found herself caught up in the wedding drama.
She too resigned from her post following media reports that she was detained at a Guatemalan airport, reportedly on her way to the wedding, for trying to illegally carry a large amount of cash into the country. She has denied wrongdoing.
Longtime progressive politician Pablo Gomez is set to take over Nieto’s role.
A picture taken on November 8, 2021 shows migrants at the Belarusian-Polish border. - Poland on November 8 said hundreds of migrants in Belarus were descending on its border aiming to force their way into the EU member in what NATO slammed as a deliberate tactic by Minsk. (Photo by Leonid Shcheglov / BELTA / AFP) / Belarus OUT
Hundreds of migrants and refugees are camped out in near freezing temperatures in Belarus after Polish security forces blocked people attempting to cross the border, with officials in Warsaw warning of a possible “armed” escalation in the coming days.
Poland has for months accused Belarus of trying to spark a major confrontation by encouraging migrants and refugees from the Middle East and Africa to cross into Central Europe and the wider European Union in revenge for Western sanctions on longtime President Alexander Lukashenko’s government.
On Monday, the situation escalated as hundreds of people headed towards the Polish border near Kuznica village. Some tried to breach a barbed wire fence using spades and other tools.
Poland deployed additional soldiers, border guards and police, preventing refugees and migrants forcing their way across the frontier.
Polish President Andrzej Duda on Tuesday accused Lukashenko’s government of “attacking” the border and the EU “in an unparalleled manner”.
“We currently have a camp of migrants who are blocked from the Belarusian side. There are about 1,000 people there, mostly young men. These are aggressive actions that we must repel, fulfilling our obligations as a member of the European Union,” he told reporters in Warsaw.
Two weeks after the Federal Government promised to pay N22.1 billon Earned Academic Allowances to workers in federal universities, the pledge has not been fulfilled.
This is just as the staff unions in the university system are poised to meet later this week to decide on the next line of action.
The unions are the Academic Staff Union of Universities, ASUU; Senior Staff Association of Nigerian Universities, SSANU; Non-Academic Staff Union of Educational and Allied Institutions, NASU, and National Association of Academic Technologists, NAAT.
National President of ASUU, Prof. Emmanuel Osodeke, confirmed that the union was yet to receive any money from the government.
“The promised has not been fulfilled. We are going to meet later in the week to appraise the situation,” he said.
On the issue raised by other unions regarding the sharing formula for the money, Osodeke noted that his union had no grouse with any other union and that any union not satisfied with whatever it is given should know the appropriate quarters to approach.
On his part, National President of SSANU, Comrade Mohammed Ibrahim, also confirmed that no money had been paid to them by the government.
He said: “The money should not be paid to the unions. The various universities know who their workers are.
“We are also insisting that the sharing formula is unacceptable to us.
“We also want the result of the forensic audit done in all the universities after the second tranche of the allowance paid is made public. We know what we are saying, ASUU members were overpaid.”
Ibrahim also said the Joint Action Committee, JAC, set up by SSANU and NASU to pursue their cause, would meet later in the week to assess the situation.
Recall that the sharing template by which ASUU is getting 75 percent of the allowance and the three other unions raking the remaining has caused a lot of disaffection between the staff unions.
This development is so far cause another round of industrial unrest in the nation’s ivory towers.
Captain Ahmed Musa and 20 other invited players were at the Super Eagles’ first training session in the city of Tangier on Tuesday as countdown began for Saturday’s FIFA World Cup Qatar 2022 African qualifying encounter against the Lone Star of Liberia at the city’s main venue.
The Super Eagles had a gym session at the hotel in the morning and were scheduled to train in the evening at the Grand Stade de Tanger (also known as Stade Ibn Batouta), a 45,000 –capacity facility that was opened in April 2011 but which will, sadly, be empty when Nigeria and Liberia tackle each other for three precious points on Saturday. ‘Hosts’ Liberia have made no move to get the Confederation of African Football to approve crowd attendance at the Day 5 game.
As at lunchtime on Tuesday, only forwards Victor Osimhen and Odion Jude Ighalo, as well as newly –drafted goalkeeper John Noble, were being expected in the camp.
Nine-pointer Nigeria need all three points from the encounter with the Lone Star in order to stay in contention to star in the knockout phase of the World Cup qualifiers, set for March 2022. Only the group winners will proceed to the knockout phase that will be a home-and-away exercise to produce Africa’s five flagbearers in Qatar.
Cape Verde’s Blue Sharks, who hosts Central African Republic in Mindelo on Saturday, have seven points and will be hoping the Super Eagles stumble in North Africa.
However, the Super Eagles have scaled the hurdle in their last three major qualifying campaigns with matches to spare, and are confident they could reach the knockout round before the final day of the qualifiers by beating Liberia, and hoping Cape Verde are unhinged on home soil by the Beasts.
Nigeria reached the 2018 FIFA World Cup finals with a match to spare; a feat repeated in the qualifying series for the 2019 AFCON. For the 2021 AFCON in Cameroon, the Super Eagles qualified with two matches to spare.
Meanwhile, the delegation of Liberia’s Lone Star also arrived in Tangier on Monday, and included three goalkeepers, seven defenders, seven midfielders and five forwards.
The Lone Star, bottom of Group C of the African series with three points, have a very remote chance of qualifying even though they play their final two matches at ‘home’ in Tangier, which is the venue they opted for as home ground after CAF ruled that there is no venue in the whole of Liberia fit and proper to host international matches.
Nigeria, the Lone Star’s opponents on Saturday and group leaders, already have nine points (the maximum that the Lone Star can amass in this campaign, if they win their last two matches). But the Super Eagles have a home game against second –placed Cape Verde in Lagos on Tuesday next week.
After the session with the three –time African champions, the Lone Star will remain in Tangier for their final game of the campaign, against the Wild Beasts of Central African Republic, also on Tuesday next week.
Cape Verde’s Blue Sharks, with seven points, are at home to the Beasts on the island of Mindelo, hoping to garner another three points that could make the final Group C encounter with Nigeria in Lagos a cliff-hanger.
EAGLES FOR LONE STAR & BLUE SHARKS
Goalkeepers: John Noble (Enyimba FC); Daniel Akpeyi (Kaizer Chiefs, South Africa); Maduka Okoye (Sparta Rotterdam, The Netherlands)
A Sudanese court has ordered the country’s main telecoms companies to restore internet access more than two weeks after it was cut following a coup by military leaders.
The Sudanese military, led by General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, seized power on October 25, dissolving the transitional administration and arresting dozens of government officials and politicians.
Since then, online access has largely been blocked and phone lines have also been intermittently disrupted. While some Sudanese users have managed to find a connection, the blackout has made it difficult for most people to communicate, particularly with those outside the country.
The day after the coup, army General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan blamed online media for “instigating sedition” but also promised that “the internet services will gradually return”.
On Tuesday, a judge ordered Zain, MTN and local provider Sudani to restore internet service immediately, according to lawyer Abdelazim Hassan, who raised a complaint on behalf of the Sudanese Consumer Protection Society.
Hundreds of people who oppose vaccine mandates rallied in a downtown Los Angeles park on Monday.
The “March for Freedom” at Grand Park in downtown Los Angeles was organized by Firefighters4Freedom, a firefighter group that claims vaccine mandates are unconstitutional.
Demonstrators included firefighters, law enforcement and community members – many of whom could lose their jobs if they don’t get fully vaccinated by the city’s Dec. 18 deadline.
Protesters told the station that they’re against vaccine mandates.
“We shouldn’t be forced to take this vaccine,” a protester told the station, adding that her husband and some of his co-workers were willing to lose their job rather than get the vaccine.
Los Angeles firefighter Scott Tomlin also said that he is also willing to lose his job over the mandate because he’s “not prepared to lose my life over it.”
The National Commission for Refugees, Migrants and Internally Displaced Persons says the number of Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) in Nigeria has increased by one million in the last one year.
The Federal Commissioner of the commission, Imaan Ibrahim made this known while addressing members of the House of Representatives Committee on IDP during the year 2022 budget defence on Monday.
She said that because of increasing number of IDPs in the country, the commission’s 2022 budget was designed to address the needs of the concerned persons.
Ibrahim said that the sum of N4.89 billion was approved for the commission of which N705. 45 million is for recurrent expenditures and the sum of N3.38 billion was for capital expenditures.
The federal commissioner said as at November, the sum of N8.51 billion was released to the commission for capital and overhead expenditures.
She said that in the 2022 budget, the sum of N5.74 billion was earmarked for the operations of the commission in the coming year.
According to her, the sum of N1.18 billion is for recurrent expenditures while N4.55 billion is for capital expenditure.
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