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Video: Southern Kaduna Woman Began Vomiting Blood After Taking Covid-19 Vaccine

by Leading Reporters
written by Leading Reporters

In a bid to receive her salary, following Kaduna State Government. “No-Vaccine No-Pay” Order, a woman working with Government Hospital in Southern Kaduna, by name Anatu Tanko is currently fighting for her life in a specialist hospital after getting vaccinated with Covid-19 vaccine.

Southern Kaduna Woman Began Vomiting Blood After Taking Covid-19 Vaccine

The woman who works in the account section of a Government General Hospital in Kaduna South recounted how she began to vomit blood from her mouth and nose after getting vaccinated with Covid-19 vaccine in Kaduna South Secretariat where they have been directed to go for vaccination.

She said that her employer has threatened to withdraw her salary and that of other staff if they do not get vaccinated and show their vaccination card.

Watch video

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Africa & World

16yr Old Boys Lured and Killed Their 10yr Old Friend For Money Ritual

by Leading Reporters
written by Leading Reporters

A horror-filled incident has reportedly occured when two boys aged around 16 years, visited and lured out their 10 year old playmate and killed him for money rituals in Kasoe Ghana

Abdul Hameed who shared news of the unfortunate incident said that the victim whose name was not mentioned at the time of this report was studying at home when the other two older friends visited and convinced him to go on a playing spree with them in the spirit of Easter Holidays, not knowing that they have hatched evil plan to kill him for money rituals.

“The ten year old boy was studying and the two 16 year olds lured him to come out and play with them. He obliged not knowing they had another plan. An evil plan. They killed him, cut off his ear for the purpose of money rituals.

“This is not a movie. This happened in Kasoa this Easter Saturday. A father of one of the boys saw them wrap the dead body in a cloth and quickly called the police on them.

I am not shocked, are you?” I’m shocked and shaken!

Leadingreporters learnt that the police has already arrested the culprits who have made confessional statement.

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Opinion

Code of Conduct in the Market-place

by Leading Reporters
written by Leading Reporters
Tonnie Iredia

The Chairman of Nigeria’s Code of Conduct Tribunal CCT, Danladi Umar was for wrong reasons in the news for much of last week. Interestingly, the issue at stake had nothing to do with his assignment of determining the level of adherence of public officers to the official code of conduct required of them.

Instead, the story was about his interaction in a market-place, with one Clement Sargwak, a security guard at the Banex Plaza in Abuja. Umar had gone there in his private capacity as a citizen to transact some business which ended up in a case of assault. Several analysts who have dwelt extensively on the story have placed sufficient focus on blame game, making it superfluous to further engage in a rehash of that line of thought. What is yet to be done, is to enumerate the effects of the story on our nation’s growth and development. This is precisely what this piece seeks to do today in the hope that some useful lessons can be learnt by us all.

The first and perhaps the most important issue which the story throws up is the inability of powerful Nigerians especially policy makers to comprehend and appreciate not just the power of the social media but the role it can play in reforming society. With increasing population and corresponding increases in societal activities, the under-equipped, under-staffed and under-remunerated conventional media can hardly cover a substantial portion of daily events. Much of what happens in the country is thus under-reported. In which case, were it not for the social media, not many would have had the privilege of knowing what transpired at Banex Plaza last week. What this suggests is that contrary to the belief of many highly placed individuals, especially some legislators who have been anxious to make laws against what they see as the evils of the social media, the platform has its own advantages.

For its interactivity, portability, speed of information dissemination and international context, Nigeria certainly needs the social media. Of what use is any medium of communication which covers only segments of a few events that the people may, as a result of many challenges, never get to know about? Yet, ours is a developing society that is in dire need of public enlightenment. Indeed, but for the social media which enabled the instantaneous dissemination of how the entire Banex Plaza incident happened, denials, claims and counter claims would have completely rendered the event incomprehensible. We can only hope therefore, that our leaders will begin to see the need to depart from the desire to kill the social media which in every other nation is employed as a veritable tool for development communication. This underscores this column’s earlier submission that replicating harsh regulations as well as increasing the powers of regulatory bodies can only impede information management, they can neither resolve nor alter the propensity for fake news.

The viewpoint that Nigeria’s current information management framework is probably not far above the stone age level is visibly represented by the press statement issued by the CCT to ‘inform’ Nigerians on the incident through a narration of the version of its boss. The statement left people to wonder about the briefing or induction course designed by the Ministry of Information for press officers assigned to government organizations. At what point are they to speak and what format is devised for the statements they issue about their organizations and their activities? There are two speculations provided by the statement issued by Ibraheem Al-Hassan, the Head of the Press and Public Relations Unit of the CCT. The first is that the press officer is probably not a professional. The second is that in line with what happens in many parts of our country, where everyone thinks that the job of information management is an all-comers’ game, the press officer was told what to write and in fact how to write it, without regards for the absurdity that such statements may convey.

Another interesting dimension of the story is the light which it has thrown on what Governor Bala Mohammed of Bauchi state, rightly decried the other day as ethnic profiling. Attributing the source of conflict to those the Umar side described as ‘Biafran boys’ clearly illuminates the dangers of condemning one ethnic group because of the actions of one or a sub-group of the relevant ethnic category. By resorting to profiling, the story-teller instinctively gave the impression that the disagreement was premeditated; and that the so-called Biafra boys knew the movement of the CCT boss and actually awaited his arrival to unleash an attack on him. If so, how often is such behaviour portrayed in that location and how many Umars have been so attacked to justify the generalisation? The truth in our considered opinion is that the incident was a petty conflict concerning the management of space in the crowded Plaza.

It has however served to remind us of the challenges of maintaining the Master Plan of Abuja. One of the factors which informed the decision to build a new federal capital was the intolerable congestion of Lagos – the old capital city. In the last few years, the fear that the congestion of Lagos can easily be surpassed has become a possibility that Abuja residents are imagining every day. Commercial businesses have sprung up so rapidly beyond what was planned for the spaces available. Banex Plaza and other locations now accommodate far more persons and activities than envisaged. What happened to the CCT chair was an everyday occurrence to virtually anyone visiting the place where traffic control is left in the hands of young persons who have little regard for anyone. In the circumstance, it is likely that Sargwak, the guard may have been annoyingly rude to a big man who thinks his status can be used to alter the established order of human and vehicular movement anywhere, Banex Plaza inclusive. Hence the incident in which one of the parties inflicted injury on the other.

On the issue of law enforcement, the narrative was that the guard who happened to be the injured party was the one arrested by the police and held until a bail was granted. Who reported the matter to the police and how was guilt established to warrant the detention of Sargwak? If no one is surprised at the turn of events, what light does it throw on Nigeria’s type of rule of law? Who was the agent provocateur? Who injured the other? Why was it only the guard and not the two parties that were summoned to the police station to write statements which can assist the police in its investigations? Answers to these questions are likely to confirm that the Banex Plaza incident is a typical true story of daily living in our clime in which there is hardly any room for accountability by the highly placed. To those who are unable to understand our type of democracy, the Banex Plaza incident is a sad reminder that the people who should be sovereign and ministered unto by those elected or appointed to serve them have remained for longer than makes sense, the object rather than the subject of democracy.

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Headlines

Clergymen Are My Targets Because A Gay “Reverend Father “Destroyed My Life — Robbery suspect

by Leading Reporters
written by Leading Reporters

A robbery suspect, named Federick Ugah who is currently under police custody for armed robbery has disclosed that following his experience with a gay Rev. Father who turned him into his sex toy, he has focused on clergymen for attacks and robbery.

Federick Ugah, who is currently cooling his heels in the cells of the Nasarawa State Police Command, for robbing a clergyman of his car, said he had to drop out of the university as a 400 level student of Law after his frustrations at the hands of a Catholic reverend father he served in Kaduna.

Going down memory lane, Ugah recalled that he started life as an orphan, having lost his parents at a tender age. To realise his ambition of becoming a lawyer, he hit on the idea of seeking help from clergymen. He decided that he would serve them as an altar boy so that in return, they would help him to foot his education bills.

He that he had first secured admission at the University of Abuja to study English before he secured another one at the Ahmadu Bello University (ABU) Zaria to study Law. But that was when he met his frustration as the Reverend Father who was sponsoring him in attempted to turn him into his s*x partner.

Ugah said his resistance to the idea he regarded as an immoral act caused the Reverend Father to frustrate him out of the Catholic Church by falsely accusing him of stealing some money belonging to the parish.

“I have vowed to deal with reverend fathers across the country. They are my target and I will continue to rob them of money and snatch their cars. I was in Abuja with them before I moved to Kaduna State when I got admission in ABU. Then one day, the reverend father I was serving demanded to have s*x with me before my sponsorship could be guaranteed.

I was wondering how a reverend father would turn gay. When I refused, he brought up an allegation against me that I stole parish’s money and should be driven away by the parish. He also poisoned the minds of other reverend fathers who intended to help me,” he said.

He stated it was at that moment his journey into the underworld began as he wasn’t able to graduate from university and his dream of becoming a lawyer dashed.

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Africa & World

Australian Researchers Say Dead Bodies Keep Moving For Over A Year After Death

by Leading Reporters
written by Leading Reporters
  • Australian scientists found that bodies kept moving for 17 months after being pronounced dead.
  • Researchers used photography capture technology in 30-minute intervals every day to capture the movement.
  • This study could help better identify time of death.

We’re learning more new things about death everyday. Much has been said and theorized about the great divide between life and the Great Beyond. While everyone and every culture has their own philosophies and unique ideas on the subject, we’re beginning to learn a lot of new scientific facts about the deceased corporeal form.

An Australian scientist has found that human bodies move for more than a year after being pronounced dead. These findings could have implications for fields as diverse as pathology to criminology.

Researcher Alyson Wilson studied and photographed the movements of corpses over a 17 month time frame. She recently told Agence France Presse about the shocking details of her discovery.

Reportedly, she and her team focused a camera for 17 months at the Australian Facility for Taphonomic Experimental Research (AFTER), taking images of a corpse every 30 minutes during the day. For the entire 17 month duration, the corpse continually moved.

“What we found was that the arms were significantly moving, so that arms that started off down beside the body ended up out to the side of the body,” Wilson said.

The researchers mostly expected some kind of movement during the very early stages of decomposition, but Wilson further explained that their continual movement completely surprised the team:

“We think the movements relate to the process of decomposition, as the body mummifies and the ligaments dry out.”

During one of the studies, arms that had been next to the body eventually ended up akimbo on their side.

The team’s subject was one of the bodies stored at the “body farm,” which sits on the outskirts of Sydney. (Wilson took a flight every month to check in on the cadaver.)

Her findings were recently published in the journal, Forensic Science International: Synergy.

Implications of the study

The researchers believe that understanding these after death movements and decomposition rate could help better estimate the time of death. Police for example could benefit from this as they’d be able to give a time frame to missing persons and link that up with an unidentified corpse. According to the team:

“Understanding decomposition rates for a human donor in the Australian environment is important for police, forensic anthropologists, and pathologists for the estimation of PMI to assist with the identification of unknown victims, as well as the investigation of criminal activity.”

While scientists haven’t found any evidence of necromancy. . . the discovery remains a curious new understanding about what happens with the body after we die.

Newscredit: Bigthink

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Opinion

National Assembly should avoid distracting the military

by Leading Reporters
written by Leading Reporters
Tonnie Iredia

Section 89 of the 1999 Constitution, provides that the National Assembly can summon ANY person in Nigeria to give evidence before it over any matter that the Assembly can enact legislation.

Although what the provision on its face value confers on our legislators is huge power, a few knowledgeable persons in the polity have argued that there are people that cannot be summoned by the legislature. One of those cited to have such privilege is President Muhammadu Buhari.

According to Abubakar Malami, Attorney General and Minister of Justice, a plan by the National Assembly to summon the President over security issues was wrong because “the management and control of the security sector is exclusively vested in the President.” Those who didn’t agree with Malami had their points but what much can the legislature do to a President or indeed a state governor who can shun an invitation and get away with it by virtue of their constitutional immunity?

It was also canvassed that in certain cases, the National Assembly could not summon a Minister. A former Minister of Petroleum, Mrs. Diezani Allison Madueke, once told a court that both the Senate and the House of Representatives were required by law to first obtain the President’s consent before they could validly summon her.

To back her claim, she cited Sections 88 and 89 of the Nigerian Constitution 1999, as amended and Section 8 of the Legislatives Houses (Powers and Privileges) Act Cap. L12 Laws of the Federation of Nigeria, 2010. Veteran constitutional lawyer, Itse Sagay had similarly opined that not being a civil servant or a member of any commission, he was outside the group that the legislature could summon.

The cases cited above were however never fully tested to ascertain the true position of the law as Sagay, Madueke and the President did not appear before the legislature. In fact, some other Nigerians successfully shunned summons from the legislature without repercussions.

But beyond legal arguments, it is rational to accord the legislature such powers to enable her gather ample data to make or amend laws; and to expose “corruption, inefficiency or waste in the execution or administration of laws or the disbursement of funds appropriated for it.” If so, what encourages some citizens to think they can ignore our National Assembly? The reasons are many but one of them has to do with the conduct of some of our legislators.

Such law-makers usually depicted much of ego chasing with their summons – a posture which tended to imply that the summons were deployed just to establish the superiority of the legislature over other bodies. Sadly the summons often disrupted organized schedules in other segments of government because the legislators would insist that office holders must put off whatever they were engaged with to personally answer any legislative summons. Who says such summons are more useful to society than the functions they forcibly disrupt?

The more unacceptable aspect of the rather combative summons is that which discountenances the usefulness of delegation of duties. Why would legislators insist that only the chief executive of an organization can appear before them? Is it offensive for a deputy to deputize for his boss who is unable to break-off from a prior commitment? Interestingly, on many occasions, we see principal officers of the National Assembly representing the Senate President or the Speaker of the House of Representatives at functions.

If that is allowable in the legislature, does it mean that the principle of delegation of duties is in order only when employed in the legislature? Of course, that is not true because the principle is permissible worldwide. Thus when applied to the Nigerian Army, it is not out of place for Major General Charles Ofoche, Commandant of the Nigerian Army War College, to represent the Chief of Army Staff, Lt. Gen, Ibrahim Attahiru at a crucial meeting. As a result, the anger expressed on national television the other day by the ad hoc committee auditing arms and ammunition procured by the military only because the Army Chief was represented by Ofoche was unnecessary.

Both the Legislature and the Military are partners in the task of national development- none should derogate from the other. Both have different strategies of doing their jobs and the nature of each ought to be appreciated by the other. While the job of legislators especially in Nigeria is laced with pleasure, that of our armed forces is lined with harsh conditions. That seems to explain why Nigerian legislators have the leisure of functioning as armchair censors.

Last week, they began a 3-week holiday to mark the Easter season while other public officers, are yet to begin their only two days’ break. Our military on the other hand, may find themselves paying the supreme sacrifice on Easter Sunday making even a one-minute break impossible. What this implies is that because the job schedule of the military is exceedingly tasking and markedly different from that of legislators, the latter ought to help the former by ensuring that nothing is done to disrupt their job strategies.

Asking General Attahiru to give priority to a chat with the legislature over and above his tactical schedule of understanding the state of affairs within the first few weeks of assuming duty is to our mind a distraction. This is more so, when the issue agitating the legislators was handled by former military leaders that the same law-makers had just given a clean bill of health through a fast clearance to become ambassadors.

Our premise is that if the relevant committee of the legislature had done an effective oversight through proper monitoring of the arms purchase business, what the nation is looking for now would have been easier to uncover before Attahiru took office. Instead, the immediate past service chiefs that the entire nation including legislators appeared dissatisfied with were hurriedly cleared without being tasked on accountability. Such attitude of ‘wisdom after event’ is to our mind shadow chasing.

At the beginning of the tenure of the current service chiefs, President Buhari gave them a tough order to end insurgency before the rainy season which was some 5 weeks away. The team led by the Chief of Defence Staff; Gen. Leo Irabor offered assurances that they would deliver. Many Nigerians particularly those in the North East were happy with the officers who had previously acquitted themselves creditably in their assignment in the fight to end insurgency.

With such commendable track record, admonishing them at a point when all their attention is focused on routing out the insurgents could be counter-productive. The expectation of the military from the rest of us is not a reproach but the provisioning of non- kinetic strategies that can push the war effort to success.

The National Assembly should therefore seek to boost the morale of our armed forces by mobilizing the entire nation to prioritize the fight against insurgency. It would be a different result, if as it is now, the nation’s political leadership remains more pre-occupied with the politics of 2023 such as organizing defections and compiling membership register by the ruling party and political engineering efforts by the main opposition party to regain power.

We must all learn to avoid distracting the military from the current All-important task of bringing peace back to Nigeria.

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Headlines

2023: PDP to waive nomination fees for 18-35 years of age

by Leading Reporters
written by Leading Reporters

The National Reconciliation and Strategy Committee (NRSC) of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) has recommended the exemption of nomination fees for aspirants who are 35 years and below.

This was confirmed in a letter dated March 25, 2021, signed by the committees’ chairman, former Senate President, Dr. Abubakar Bukola Saraki and addressed to Prince Uche Secondus, the PDP national chairman.

The committee also advised the National Working Committee (NWC) to immediately recommend to its National Executive Committee,
the amendment of the party’s constitution to include that “only persons not less than 18 years old and not more than 35 years can contest for the position of Youth Leader at all levels of the party.

The PDP NRSC explained that the recommendation was a result of the meeting held with the party’s National Youth Leader and other youth leaders across the 36 states of the nation on March 9th, 2021 “in furtherance of its mandate to resolve disputes, reconcile aggrieved members and foster cohesion and unity within the party”.

The committee had noted that the youths presented some requests during the meeting and the demands were deliberated upon by the committee on March 22nd, 2021.

It added that the implication of the recommendation on waiver of the nomination fees for youths means that where the party guidelines for instance demand that a gubernatorial aspirant pay N20 million for nomination form and N1m for Expression of Interest form, any aspirant below the age of 35 years, will get the nomination form at no cost while they only pay the N1m Expression of Interest fee.

The party said the measure is aimed at easing the burden of participation in the political process on the youths and encouraging them to purposefully and positively utilise the new constitutional provisions on the age requirements for political office holders, otherwise called the Not Too Young to Run Bill.

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Headlines

Corrupt Nation: We Reject Transparency Int’l Rating

by Leading Reporters
written by Leading Reporters

The government has described the Transparency International (TI) Corruption Perception Index, which downgraded Nigeria in the rating for 2020, as inaccurate and not a true reflection of the strides made in its fight against corruption.

The agency revealed that the country dropped three places, scoring lower in a number of areas since 2019. The government said the report was filled with discrepancies and inaccurate data. Minister of Information and Culture, Alhaji Lai Mohammed, has said that TI had failed to make use of available data on the government’s various reforms and other preventive steps. He emphasised that the agency has been using incorrect indices to rate Nigeria in the last decade.

As part of the government’s clampdown on corruption, President Muhammadu Buhari suspended the previous Acting Economic and Financial Crimes Commission chief, Ibrahim Magu, in 2020, after allegations that he had diverted funds recovered by the agency into private pockets, charges Magu’s lawyer has denied.  

Buhari appointed Abdulrasheed Bawa as the head of the country’s anti-graft body. Bawa will now take charge of a string of high-profile investigations, including into alleged wrongdoing by P&ID, a gas firm with a U.S.$10 billion arbitration ruling that the government is going to appeal in the UK. The Economic and Financial Crimes Commission was established in 2003 as a law enforcement agency to investigate financial crimes and other corruption cases.

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Africa & World

Joe Biden: ‘When I came to the U.S. Senate 120 years ago’

by Leading Reporters
written by Leading Reporters

Speaking on the future of the filibuster at the first press conference of his presidency, President Joe Biden, 78, said he came to the Senate “120 years ago.”

“With regard to the filibuster, I believe we should go back to the position of the filibuster that existed just when I came to the United State’s Senate 120 years ago.”

Biden became a Senator when he was 29 and served for 36 years.

Many top Democrats have argued that the filibuster is a ‘racist’ practice and have advocated for its demise. Republicans, like Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, however, say that argument is meant “to justify a partisan power grab in the present.”

Biden has made it a priority to fight the filibuster.

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