Folarin Kehinde

The Republic of Cameroon’s Lagdo Dam’s managers have allowed surplus water to drain from the dam.

Over 100,000 Nigerians have been displaced, 300 have died, and more than 500,000 have been impacted in the past few months due to the recent rainfall in Nigeria and the opening of the dam.

This was revealed by data provided on Monday in Abuja during an emergency technical conference on the flood situation across the nation by the National Emergency Management Agency and the Nigeria Hydrological Services Agency.

“Based on our communication with NIHSA, the Lagdo Dam operators in the Republic of Cameroon, had commenced the release of excess water from the reservoir on September 13, 2022,” the Director-General, NEMA, Mustapha Ahmed, stated while speaking at the meeting,” he said.

He added, “We are aware that the released water cascades down into Nigeria, through River Benue and its tributaries, thereby overwhelming communities that have already been impacted by heavy rainfall.

“The released water complicates the situation further downstream, as Nigeria’s inland reservoirs including Kainji, Jebba and Shiroro, are also expected to overflow between now and October ending.

“According to NIHSA, Kainji and Jebba dams have already started spilling exess water from their reservoirs. This will have serious consequences on frontline states and communities along the courses of rivers Niger and Benue.”

The states most likely to be impacted, according to Ahmed, are Adamawa, Taraba, Benue, Niger, Nasarawa, Kebbi, and Kogi.

Additionally, he noted that some Niger-Delta states, such as Edo, Delta, Anambra, Cross-River, Rivers, and Bayelsa, were likely to witness severe flooding as a result of the region’s above-average rainfall and the combined waters of the Niger and Benue rivers as they flow into the area.

The Chief Whip of the Senate, Orji Uzor Kalu, says it will be difficult for any Igbo to win the presidency without zoning the seat to the South East.

Kalu disclosed this while briefing reporters at the National Assembly Complex in Abuja on Tuesday.

He said the presidency is not a regional issue and could only be won with the support of other geo-political zones.

He, therefore, urged his fellow politicians from the South East eyeing the highest office to wait for another time when major political parties would agree to zone the ticket to the region.

“Presidency is not a regional issue. I asked the political parties to zone the presidency to the South East. When they didn’t do that, and since the presidency is not a regional issue, I had to withdraw.

I have no problem with the Igbo man being president. But we have to do it with other Nigerians. If we don’t do it with other Nigerians, it is not going to work, no matter how popular you are. It’s the president of Nigeria, not the president of Igboland.

“I’m an Igbo man to the core. I’m also a Nigerian to the core. If anyone from the Southeast had been nominated for the presidency, I would have been the one. So, it’s a party business. I have no grudges against anybody who is running”, he said.

The National Association of Nigerian Students, NANS, has criticised the Federal Government for the ongoing seven-month-long strike embarked on by the Academic Staff Union of Universities, ASUU.

NANS said the strike has endangered the fundamental human right of Nigerian students, with regard to access to education.

Comrade Olusesi Tolulope Samson, Lagos NANS chairman, disclosed this on Arise TV morning show on Tuesday while fielding questions on the students’ protest at the Murtala Muhammed International Airport, Lagos, on Monday.

He said that the strike has affected the future of their members, noting that some male students have become mechanics; some learning printing works; while some female students have got pregnant.

“The Federal Government has jeopardised and bastardised the fundamental human right of the Nigerian students. Some came to the protest yesterday with their ID cards, learning mechanics now. Some are learning printing works, while some female students are pregnant,” he said.

He noted that the protest staged at the airport was to alert the international community that something has been going wrong in Nigeria concerning education.

The student leader said their demand was for the universities to be reopened, adding that the students have been keeping their fingers crossed on what would be the outcome of a proposed meeting between the Speaker of the House of Representatives, Femi Gbajabiamila, and the leadership of ASUU.

Queen Elizabeth has been buried at Windsor Castle after her funeral procession went through the streets of London with huge crowds lining the route.

Windsor, where the Queen broadcast to the nation in wartime and spent so much of her time throughout her life, is her final resting place.

The Queen’s coffin was followed by King Charles, the Prince of Wales, the Duke of Sussex, the Duke of York, and Princess Royal during its procession to Wellington Arch.

The route is a three-mile (4.82km), tree-lined avenue leading from Snow Hill – where Henry VIII is said to have awaited news of the execution of his second wife, Anne Boleyn – through Windsor Great Park towards the castle itself.

The route was lined by the armed forces from Westminster Abbey to the top of Constitution Hill at the Commonwealth memorial gates.

Windsor Castle is a royal residence at Windsor in the English county of Berkshire.

It is strongly associated with the English and succeeding British Royal Family, and embodies almost a millennium of architectural history, NAN reports.

By Kenny Folarin, Abuja

The Presidential Candidate, African Action Congress, Omoyele Sowore has said Nigeria being among the Commonwealth nations without visa free entry to other Commonwealth nations is unfounded and useless.

Sowore responding to questions on how to change the narrative of the Nigerian Passport in a monitored interview by LEADING REPORTERS with Classic FM on Monday stated that the Nigerian Passport does not have to change but only have to change the nation to earn respect.

“When the queen died I made a tweet which was controversial to lots of people that nobody should mourn the queen”

“It is not our business to do that, we should be thinking about how to dissolve the Commonwealth of Nations which has 156 countries of which as a Nigerian you cannot travel without a visa.”

“We are the only common people in the Commonwealth, alumni of formerly colonized countries so we are still a subject of the queen.”

“Dissolve the Commonwealth what is it doing for us and if we are not dissolving it and we are going to be part of it, let every nations in the Commonwealth be visa free to Nigerians so that we can go to the Commonwealth and know that it is common”.

Read Also: Obidients Are Offspring of PDP – Sowore

Sowore added that these are foreign policies that Nigerians should push for to be respected among committee of nations rather than being humiliated.

“People must have their dignity back so that they can go anywhere they want without being humiliated because the humiliation for Nigerian is just too much even in places that we don’t deserve it”.

Sowore however identified education, security and energy as area of focus if elected as President in 2023 noted that politicians are underfunding the education sector in order to have control over the citizens and have total power over them.

Explaining, he said “there is a policy of mass miseducation over the years and the people who are miseducating Nigerians through inadequate funding know that they wanted to achieve a citizenry that is easy to manipulate and control”.

“When people are educated they are difficult to mismanage and control so the military started by making sure that education was not adequately funded what is the result today?, 20 million children according to UNICEF are out of school, how do we get them back into the classroom?

“There has to be a policy of mass education and one of the things that I have adopted is virtual education, I want to create virtual classrooms that can be found everywhere such that where schools are not possible, people can learn in a football viewing centre and another thing is that we should also jettison the idea of basic education, it is not going to work for us, the sector should be massively funded too”. He added.