The House of Representatives has asked the UK government and parliament to intervene in the sentencing of Ike Ekweremadu and his wife, Beatrice.
The lawmakers want the UK court to “temper justice and mercy” in the sentencing of the lawmaker.
The legislators also asked the federal government to take diplomatic steps to “intervene” in the trial of the lawmaker.
The resolution was passed at the plenary session on Tuesday following the adoption of a motion of urgent public importance sponsored by Toby Okechukwu, a lawmaker from Enugu.
Following the adoption of the motion, the lawmakers asked the clerk of the lower legislative chamber to “convey” their resolutions in writing to British Embassy, UK government and the parliament.
Ekweremadu is due to be sentenced on May 5 at the Central Criminal Court, Old Bailey in the UK.
A former Minister of Defense, Lt. Gen. Theophilus Danjuma has donated a 500-capacity female hostel in the name of his wife, Daisy Danjuma, to the University of Benin.
The Governor of Edo State, Godwin Obaseki, while Inaugurating the story building at the Ugbowo campus of the institution said that the donation is another testament to Danjumas’ philanthropy and desire to always uplift the downtrodden.
The governor said that Danjuma was one of the few individuals that made huge amounts of donations to the state during the civil-19 debacle three years ago.
He said the state government had assisted the school in the area of road construction in its community.
He urged other individuals and private organizations to continue to support tertiary institutions with infrastructure to improve teaching and learning.
Senator Daisy Danjuma, whom the edifice was named after, expressed delight with the project.
She urged students who would be accommodated at the hostel to maintain the facility.
She said maintenance is one of the challenges of infrastructure development in the country, thereby appealing to the students to ensure the hostel was taken care of, also urging them to engage in activities that would make the school a model for others.
The Vice Chancellor of the university, Prof. Lilian Salami commended the gesture of the donor towards addressing the shortage of hostel accommodation for students in the school.
Salami said the aim of the management is to have 80 per cent of its students on campus and can only achieve that with the kind gesture of good-spirited individuals like Danjuma.
She also served in the House of Representatives as a member representing Ikorodu Federal Constituency in Lagos from 2003 to 2015.
Dabiri-Erewa served as the chairman, House Committee on Diaspora Affairs at the House of Representatives.
In a separate letter to the Senate, the President also request confirmation of the appointment of six federal commissioners of the Revenue Mobilisation Allocation and Fiscal Commission to fill the existing vacancies in the states.
The nominees are Ayogu Eze, Peter Okpara, Hauwa Aliyu, Rajiya Ayuba, Kolawole Adebola and Ismailia Agaka.
The Nigerians in diaspora commission, NIDCOM, has released a press statement in response to allegations of ethnic bias against citizens from the southeast of the country.
The statement titled “Re: South East Coalition accusation of ethnic bias on boarding of citizens stranded in Sudan: a wicked lie” read,
“It has come to the attention of the Nigerians in Diaspora Commission (NIDCOM) of a fabricated lie from the pit of hell that the Chairman/ CEO, Hon. (Dr) Abike Dabiri- Erewa, prevented some Nigerians, especially of the South East extraction from boarding buses hired by the Federal Government to evacuate stranded Nigerians from the war-torn Khartoum in Sudan.
The ridiculous allegation which was first published by one Chukwujekwu Ilozue of the Daily Independent Newspapers on May 1, 2023, and syndicated by This Day Newspapers, Nigerian Tribune online and other online media, is the height of rascality and mischief.
The said group never bothered to cross-check the sponsored false story on Hon. Abike Dabiri-Erewa or get her own side of the story before spreading the falsehood all over the media in the spirit of fairness, balancing and objectivity.
The allegation by the faceless group, a Coalition of South East Youth Leaders, (COSEYL), signed by one Hon Goodluck Ibem against the indefatigable Abike Dabiri -Erewa who was busy coordinating the two-day conference of Global African Diaspora Symposium (GADS), with 64 countries in attendance in Abuja, is most wicked, divisive and a ridiculous fabrication.
Reports from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs staff on the ground in Khartoum indicated that when the boarding of buses began, the situation was so chaotic that some people (including Non-Nigerians) jumped in violently, some with daggers, through the windows. To bring sanity and to abide by the instruction of the Minister of Foreign Affairs that priority should be given to women, children and students, the officials started calling them in according to states in alphabetical order, beginning with Abia State.
Reports from Sudan indicate that all who converged at the prescribed locations were to be picked up, and have all been moved in 40 buses either towards Port Sudan or towards Egyptian borders.
However, if some arrived after the stipulated time or did not show up at the point of pick up, they can’t blame it on anyone.
NIDCOM is focused, working with other relevant agencies, on the safe return of stranded Nigerians and will not be distracted by nonsensical, illogical, irresponsible, rascal and unfounded comments meant to distract from the success, safe and secure return of Nigerians from Khartoum, Sudan.
The message was signed by Abdur-Rahman Balogun, the Head of Media, Public Relations and Protocols Unit NIDCOM.
The pope, the man, most of mainstream America and Europe, look to as a representative of Christianity as denounced what he describes and identity colonization.
Pope Francis, during a trip to Hungary, while addressing civil authorities and members of the diplomatic corps said “this is the baneful path taken by those forms of “ideological colonization” that would cancel differences, as in the case of the so-called gender theory, or that would place before the reality of life reductive concepts of freedom, for example by vaunting as progress a senseless “right to abortion”, which is always a tragic defeat.”
He called it a nefarious path culminating in tragic defeat, saying “How much better it would be to build a Europe centered on the human person and on its peoples, with effective policies for natality and the family like those pursued attentively in Hungary.”
Pope Francis’s words came amid escalating EU actions against Hungary over homosexuality and transgenderism.
The Hungarian constitution (2011) recognizes marriage as the union of a man and a woman, and the Hungarian government has taken steps to protect children from transgender ideology.
Oddly, the Vatican press and several other media outlets omitted the speech in their report of events
When it comes to artificial intelligence, one name rings true, and it’s 75-year-old Geoffrey Hinton, who says he now regrets having devoted his career to AI.
Hinton, a pioneer in the development of artificial intelligence (AI), left his job at Google, where he worked for more than a decade, to be able to talk more freely about the dangers posed by the new technology.
Hinton, in an interview with the New York Times, said that he now regrets having devoted his career to this field but that he consoles himself with the normal excuse:” If I hadn’t done it, somebody else would have”.
In 2012, Hinton and two of his graduate students at the University of Toronto, Ilya Sutskever and Alex Krishevsky, built a neural network that could analyse thousands of photos and teach itself to identify common objects, such as flowers, dogs and cars.
Google quickly jumped in to buy the company he and his two students had created for $44 million (€40.18 million). The move anticipated the great potential of a technology that has since led to the creation of AI chatbots like ChatGPT and Google’s Bard.
Sutskever, Hinton’s student, even went on to become chief scientist at OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT.
Hinton’s resignation and warning come after more than 1,000 technology leaders and researchers signed an open letter in March calling for a six-month moratorium on the development of new AI systems, saying the technologies pose “profound risks to society and humanity”.
In Hinton’s view, work in this field should be halted until it is well understood whether it will be possible to control AI.
“It is hard to see how you can prevent the bad actors from using it for bad things,” Hinton said in the interview, where he warns about the excessive speed at which advances are being made.
“Look at what it was like five years ago and what it’s like now, Take the difference and propel it forward. That’s scary,”
In the short term, Hinton fears that the Internet will be flooded with fake texts, photos and videos and that citizens may not be able to distinguish what is true.
The Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board, JAMB, has said it would reschedule candidates who failed to write the ongoing Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination, UTME.
In a statement yesterday, the board announced that all candidates who could not sit the 2023 UTME within their scheduled time, due to no fault of theirs, would be rescheduled to take the examination on Saturday, May 6, 2023.
The statement released by its spokesperson, Fabian Benjamin says “Candidates under these categories are principally those who were verified at their centres but could not sit the examination; those who could not be biometrically verified, and those with mismatched data,”
“On the first day of the 2023 UTME, a number of candidates in some centres could not sit the examination as well as in some centres in subsequent days due to diverse reasons. Though a reasonable number of them have been rescheduled and have taken the examination, some are yet to take their examination.
“As part of the decisions reached at the end of an emergency management meeting held on Sunday, April 30, 2023, the Board has fixed Saturday, May 6, 2023, for all categories of candidates who have not sat for their examination, as listed below, to take their examination.”
Meanwhile, JAMB has said results of candidates who had so far taken the examination would be released today, Tuesday, May 2,2023.
It, however, said candidates who sat for the examination but had challenges without being aware of such would not see their results but notification for rescheduled examination.
The examination body asked all candidates who sat for the examination to check their results on or before Thursday, May 8,2023. “The Board would be releasing the results of candidates who have taken the examination so far on Tuesday, May 2, 2023. The Board had delayed the release to ensure that all necessary screenings are concluded, besides ensuring that the mean and standard deviation are reasonably obtained before releasing these results.”
The defender who was voted Man-of-the-Match said attention to detail paved the way to victory over Zambia
Golden Eaglet’s defender Yahaya Lawali has declared he and his teammates are fully motivated going into Wednesday’s second Group B game against Morocco at the ongoing U17 Africa Cup of Nations in Algeria.
Though many were expecting a comprehensive victory from the Eaglets, Lawali while speaking on Cafonline.com said the hard-earned 1-0 win over Zambia will serve as a motivation to do more against table-toppers Morocco.
“It was a really tough game because Zambia are a good side. The little details gave us a win… We scored when it mattered most and we defended well. It has given us motivation for the next game,” Lawal who was voted Man-of-the-Match noted.
Just like the Golden Eaglets, the Young Atlas Lions also got off their campaign to a winning start; beating South Africa 2-0.
That result gives the North Africans a slight advantage ahead of Wednesday’s tie against Nigeria.
For Lawali, while he is happy to have been named Man-of-the-Match against Zambia, he has credited his teammates and coaches for his performance while also promising to do even better in the next match.
“I am really delighted and this means a lot to me. Being named man of the match in the first game for the team is a massive encouragement,” Lawal said.
He added; “This is not my trophy though. It belongs to the team; the coaches, the staff and my teammates. We all worked hard for this.”
Lawali, who turns 17 in June, plays for Mahanaim FC in Nigeria.
Conquered Zambia
Meanwhile, the coach of the Zambia U17s, Ian Bakala, has refused to blame his players despite their 1-0 defeat to the Golden Eaglets on Sunday.
Bakala said he saw a lot of positives from the match despite the defeat and has praised his players for putting up a good fight.
“It is painful to lose a game like this, but it was a tough game. Credit to Nigeria for the win because they used their chance. When you are coming to the first game of the tournament, anything is possible,” Bakala told CAFonline.
Nigeria is one of the countries that would feature in both the Mixed Team Championship and Mixed Doubles Championship at next year’s Youth Winter Olympic Games.
As the countdown to the Gangwon 2024 Youth Olympic Games continues, the qualification for the prestigious curling competition has been finalised.
The World Curling Federation through an official statement on its website confirmed Nigeria as one of the countries that would feature in both the Mixed Team Championship and Mixed Doubles Championship at next year’s Youth Winter Olympic Games.
Hosts Korea, Brazil, and the United States are among the other countries that would also have representation simultaneously in both the Mixed Team Championship and the Mixed Doubles Championship.
The countries that would be battling for honours in Gangwon secured qualification through different routes.
While some earned qualification through points earned at world championships held in Finland, others sealed their places through regional quotas or as the National Olympic Committee with the most points outside these initial criteria.
President of the Nigeria Curling Federation, Daniel Damola, while expressing delight at the official ratification of Nigeria’s qualification, noted that all hands need to be on deck to ensure the country has a memorable outing in Gangwon.
“This is quite historic and we are glad we have been able to qualify as the only team from Africa, now we have to switch our focus to doing respectably well at the Youth Olympic Games,” he said.
Mr Daniel said a lot of funds will be required to give the young lads who would be representing Nigeria the kind of preparation they needed.
“As a federation, we have been doing all these alone but we will need the government, corporate bodies and indeed well-meaning Nigerians to come to our aid as we step up in our preparation for the Youth Olympic Games” he appealed.
The Winter Youth Olympics is billed to take place from 19 Jan 2024 – 1 Feb 2024
Qualified Teams
Mixed Team Championship
The Mixed Team Championship will feature 16 teams from across the globe, with representation from various regions:
Hosts: Korea
Africa: Nigeria
Americas: Brazil, Canada, and the United States
Asia: China and Japan
Europe: Denmark, Germany, Great Britain, Italy, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland, and Türkiye
Oceania: New Zealand
Mixed Doubles Championship
The Mixed Doubles Championship expands the field, featuring 24 teams from around the world:
Hosts: Korea
Africa: Nigeria
Americas: Brazil, Canada, and the United States
Asia: China, Japan, and Kazakhstan
Europe: Austria, Czech Republic, Denmark, Germany, Great Britain, Hungary, Italy, Latvia, Norway, Slovenia, Sweden, Switzerland, Türkiye, and Ukraine
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