Nigerian Senate is now set to screen and confirm the country’s Service Chiefs, following President Tinubu’s request seeking endorsement of the Parliament.
President Tinubu’s request was contained in a letter addressed to the Senate President, Godswill Akpabio and read on Tuesday before going into other business of the day.
The new Service Chiefs are Maj. Gen. Christopher Musa – Chief of Defence Staff, Maj. Gen. Tahoreed Lagbaja – Chief of Army Staff, Rear Admiral Emmanuel Ogalla – Chief of Naval Staff, Air Vice Marshal Halidu Abubakar – Chief of Air Staff, Kayode Egbetokun – Acting Inspector General of Police and Maj Gen. E. P. A Undiandeye – Chief of Defence Intelligence.
President Tinubu had on Monday, June 19 approved the immediate retirement of all Service Chiefs, the Inspector-General of Police, Advisers, and the Comptroller-General of Customs Service and subsequently appoints new Service Chiefs.
They replaced General Lucky Irabor -Chief of Defence Staff, Lt. Gen. Ibrahim Attahiru -Chief of Army Staff, Rear Admiral Awwal Gambo -Chief of Naval Staff, Air Vice Marshal Isiaka Amao -Chief of Air Staff, Usman Alkali Baba -Inspector General of Police.
The new appointments, according to Tinubu were in compliance with Section 18(1) of the Armed Forces Act. Cap A20 Laws the Federation of Nigeria 2004.
The planned screening and approval of the Service Chiefs by the Senate at Committee of the whole, as explained by Senate President arose from the fact that standing Committees on Defence, Army, Navy and Air Force are yet to be constituted.
He added that the screening will be done expeditiously in line with request made by the President and the need for re-engineering of the nation’s security architecture.
Former Chairman of the Nigerian Human Rights Commission (NHRC), Prof. Chidi Odinkalu, HA Has waded into the issue of corruption in the judiciary.
Whilst speaking to the members of the Press recently, stated unequivocally that judicial independence had been trumped and appointments to the Bench had been politicized.
He recanted that of the 34 original nominees to the Bench, 23 were sons, daughters, mistresses and acquaintances of the top-ranking politicians.
The Human Rights advocate admitted that recent appointments to the Bench were largely influenced by a senior member of the Bench (unnamed), and the appointments were made behind series of close-door meetings and back-door handshakes between the judiciary and the Executive.
He made a satirical allusion to the game of chess, claiming that judicial officers were akin to pawns in the political landscape, and are in high-demand by corrupt politicians. This Executive-Judiciary tag team, he stated sadly, was veering away from the core tenet of democracy: separation of powers, and undermining free and fair elections. He lashed out at the manipulative use of the Judiciary to secure highly coveted electoral positions, making reference to the case of Senator Adamu Bulkachuwa
The veteran lawyer surmised rather painfully, that the judiciary did not realize the enormity of the power vested in them by the Constitution and other relevant legal frameworks. Thus, it has abdicated its core responsibility to dispense justice, choosing rather to fraternize with self-seeking, sleazy and corrupt politicians in thwarting democratic processes.
He argued that this miasma predates contemporary Judicial appointments, and has been lingering on for decades. He made reference to the Babalakin report of 1999, which he dubbed as a must-read for all legal practitioners interested in understanding the history of judicial corruption.
He advised lawyers present to trenchantly argue for prompt and speedy exit from court with the same effervescence as they argue for equal and uninhibited access to court. He presented the recent statistics of judicial decision-making, buttressed by the popular case of Mojekwu v Mojekwu, to show that unnecessary delay tactics have succeeded in robbing the Court of its power to dispense justice. “Afterall, justice delayed is justice denied”, he claimed.
He stridently condemned the Statement made by the Nigerian Bar Association (NBA) President, Y.C. Maikyau SAN, on Thursday, 20 June 2023. In his words, the statement made by the NBA Chairman was a disgrace, as he lacked the locus standi to make such a Statement.
He further derided the Statement as a disgusting cover up to blindside members of the public from the corruption in the Nigerian Judicial Council.
Concluding, he suggested that the office of the Chief Justice of Nigeria should be unbundled. He advocated for the diffusion of the omnibus powers of the CJN, thereby allowing transparency and accountability.
He equally advocated for same to be done with the NJC and the NBA. Finally, he urged for a review of the process employed in judicial appointment and candidly observed that it was inept, and should be made more democratic, like that of Kenya.
President Bola Tinubu has written the Senate, seeking for the screening and subsequent confirmation of the new Chief of Defence Staff and service chiefs.
The request was contained in a letter addressed to the President of the Senate, Senator Godswill Akpabio.
Akpabio who read the letter on Tuesday during Plenary, said that the request was in line with the Act establishing the Armed Forces.
Recall that President Tinubu had, last month, appointed Major General Christopher Musa as the new Chief of Defence Staff (CDS) and Major General bTaoreed Lagbaja as the chief of Army Staff.
Tinubu also appointed Rear Admiral Emmanuel Ogalla as the Chief of Naval Staff and Air Vice Marshal Hassan Abubakar as the Chief of Air Staff and Major General Emmanuel Undiandeye appointed the Chief of Defence Intelligence.
He urged the Red Chamber to consider his request expeditiously.
Akpabio, after reading the letter, referred the request to the Committee of the Whole as there was no Standing Committee on Armed Forces, just as this means that the Service Chiefs would be screened on the floor of the Senate, not at the Committee level.
The world first started to heard about a novel coronavirus or covid-19 in early January 2020, with reports of an alleged new pneumonia like illness spreading across Wuhan, China.
However, the world did not actually know of Covid-19 until February 2020, because it was not until the 11th of that month that the World Health Organisation officially named the novel coronavirus disease as Covid-19.
So with this being the official truth, why does United States Government data show that the U.S. Department of Defense (DOD) awarded a contract on the 12th November 2019 to Labyrinth Global Health INC. for ‘COVID-19 Research’, at least one month before the alleged emergence of the novel coronavirus, and three months before it was officially dubbed Covid-19?
The shocking findings however, do not end there. The contract awarded in November 2019 for ‘COVID-19 Research’ was not only instructed to take place in Ukraine, it was in fact part of a much larger contract for a ‘Biological threat reduction program in Ukraine’.
Perhaps explaining why Labyrinth Global Health has been collaborating with Peter Daszak’s EcoHealth Alliance, and Ernest Wolfe’s Metabiota since its formation in 2017.
The Government of the United States has a website called ‘USA Spending‘, an official open data source of federal spending information. According to the site as of 12th April 2021 the US Government has spent a mind-blowing $3.63 trillion “in response to COVID-19”. But that’s not the only information on Covid that can be found within the site.
Hidden within the ‘Award Search’ are details on a contract awarded by the Department of Defense to a company named ‘Black & Veatch Special Projects Corp‘, which is allegedly “a global engineering, procurement, consulting and construction company specialising in infrastructure development”.
The contact was awarded on September 20th, 2012 and is described as “Professional, Scientific, and Technical Services”. Obviously this is very vague and most likely of little interest to anyone who happens to stumble across it. But there is something contained deep within the details that should be of interest to anyone and everyone.
The ‘Award History’ for the contract contains a tab for ‘Sub-Awards’ detailing the recipients, action date, amount, and very brief description for 115 Sub-Award transactions. Most of the Sub-Awards are extremely mundane for things such as “laboratory equipment for Kyiv”, or “office furniture for Kyiv”.
But there is one Sub-Award that stands out among the rest, and it is was awarded to Labyrinth Global Health INC for “SME Manuscript Documentation and COVID-19 Research”.
An award for Covid-19 research isn’t exactly shocking when the world is allegedly in the grip of a Covid-19 pandemic, but considering the fact the sub-contract was awarded 12th November 2019, at least one month before the alleged emergence of the novel coronavirus, and three months before it was officially dubbed Covid-19, the award for Covid-19 research should come as a shock to everyone.
But the shock doesn’t end there, because the place the contact for Covid-19 research was instructed to take place was Ukraine, as was the entire contract awarded by the DOD to Black & Veatch Special Projects Corp. The contract details found on the ‘USA Spending’ site actually reveal that the specific DOD department that awarded the contact was the Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA). The contract was awarded 20th September 2012, and concluded on 13th October 2020.
Whilst the details are vague, the US Government site also reveals that $21.7 million of the $116.6 million contact was spent on a ‘Biological threat reduction program in Ukraine’.
Why did the Department of Defense pay a company that is allegedly “a global engineering, procurement, consulting and construction company specialising in infrastructure development”, to help implement a “Biological threat reduction program in Ukraine’?
And why did both the DOD and said company then pay Labyrinth Global Health INC to carry out COVID-19 research in Ukraine at least one month before the alleged emergence of the novel coronavirus, and three months before it was officially dubbed Covid-19?
Founded in 2017, Labyrinth Global Health is allegedly a “women-owned small business with deep expertise and a proven track record supporting initiatives for scientific and medical advancement.”
They describe themselves as “a multicultural and international organization with offices in four countries and a team of experts with diverse backgrounds and competencies, including microbiology, virology, global health, emerging infectious disease nursing, medical anthropology, field epidemiology, clinical research, and health information systems.”
One of those offices just happens to be located in Kyiv, Ukraine, which the company dubs “a gateway to Eastern Europe”.
In 2020, the global animation market size was valued at $354.7 billion. New research reveals that the animation market size will hit $642.5 billion by 2030.
This huge growth isn’t surprising considering the fact that animation plays an integral role in television, film, video games and business.
The animation industry in Nigeria is a rapidly growing sector with the potential to become a significant contributor to the country’s economy.
In recent years, there has been an increase in the number of studios producing high-quality animation content for both local and international audiences, one of them being the Magic Capital Studios an Innovation Storytelling Company with its founder Ferdinand Ademife committed to putting Africa on the map of global entertainment.
Watch Koko’s exclusive interview with Ferdinand Ademife a creative entrepreneur, cultural architect and policy enthusiast.
The Threads app launched by Instagram as a rival to Twitter has signed up more than 100 million users in less than five days, data tracking websites said on Monday, smashing the record of AI tool ChatGPT for fastest-growing consumer app.
While ChatGPT took two months to hit the 100 million user mark and video-sharing app TikTok took nine months, Instagram itself took two and a half years to reach that mark after its 2010 launch.
Threads went live on Apple and Android app stores in 100 countries late on Wednesday, though it is not available in Europe because parent company Meta is unsure how to navigate the European Union’s data privacy legislation.
Twitter is thought to have around 200 million regular users but it has suffered repeated technical failures since Elon Musk bought the platform last year and sacked thousands of staff.
Musk, who also serves as the boss of Tesla and SpaceX, has also alienated many users by introducing charges for previously free services and allowing banned right-wing accounts back on the platform.
Several rivals have emerged but most are niche platforms without the capacity to grow at the necessary scale to dethrone Twitter.
Threads is finding it easier because it is linked to Instagram, which has more than one billion regular users.
Online data service Quiver Quantitative reported that the app passed 100 million users at 0700 GMT on Monday.
Other websites using a count of the “badges” received by Instagram users who have downloaded Threads reckoned the mark had passed earlier.
Musk has threatened to sue Meta for stealing trade secrets and intellectual property, claims denied by the company, which also owns Facebook and WhatsApp.
Musk is locked in a rivalry with Meta chief Mark Zuckerberg, with the two men calling each other out for a cage fight recently.
The fashion industry in Nigeria plays an important role in contributing so much to the economy.
With the rise of a new generation of fashion designers using local fabrics such as Tie and Die, Adira Kampala and the like, the industry is valued at billions of dollars.
Watch as the phenomenal Koko meets with Jadesola Rawa, the CEO of Melia By Jade, who uses local fabrics to produce contemporary outfits for today’s women
Less than one month to the expiration of the constitutionally-mandated 60 days, within which the Federal Executive Council (FEC) must be constituted, President Bola Ahmed Tinubu may have settled for Technocrats, Politicians and top career public servants as ministers. Watch the video clip for details
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