Nelson Ugwuagbo

Lagos State residents on Monday hit the streets to protest against the high level of hardship in the country.

LeadingReporters learnt that the ongoing protest was facilitated by a human rights group identified as the ‘Take It Back Movement’.

The protesters were seen carrying placards with various inscriptions which expressed their grievances, at the Ojuelegba Under Bridge area of the state.

This is coming hours to the planned mass protest scheduled for February 27 and 28 by the Nigerian Labour Congress, NLC.

The Association of Master Bakers and Caterers of Nigeria has announced that it is poised to begin a nationwide strike on Tuesday, February 27.

In a statement on Monday announcing the strike, the National President of AMBCON, Mansur Umar, said unless the Federal Government honours the agreement made with the association in 2020, the strike would commence.

It also called for the temporary suspension of all types of taxation on the bakery industry at the federal, state, and local government levels.

“The Association of Master Bakers and Caterers of Nigeria have critically accessed the state of our business operation, consequently demand the liberalisation of flour and sugar importation, reduction or total removal of import duties on major baking materials such as flour, sugar, butter, yeast, etc as applicable to other commodities as have recently been done by the Federal Government and provision of concessionary forex exchange to flour millers and other stakeholders as well as reduction of tariff on imported wheat and sugar,” it said.

It also called for the setting up of a price control and monitoring committee as allowed by the constitution as amended and other conditions that will enhance the ease of doing business in the country.

The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) has said that the glitch experienced in uploading the scanned images of Polling Unit (PU) result sheets in the February 25, 2023 presidential election was “due to the inherent complexity within the system which was difficult to anticipate and mitigate.”

The commission revealed that while the uploads for the National Assembly election results succeeded because the application identified the respective states and built folder hierarchy for the results organisation process for the elections, attempts to upload the presidential election result sheets, which does not belong to or mapped to any state on the database, failed.

It added that this failure was attributable to the inability of the application to create and build a folder structure to organise the uploaded images of the result sheets of the 2023 presidential election.

This is was disclosed by INEC in a 500-page 2023 Post-Election Report released on Friday.

The report further noted that the first presidential election result sheet was successfully uploaded at 8.55pm on February 25, 2023, after interventions to resolve the error.

The commission, nonetheless, insisted that the glitch in the upload of the presidential election result sheets to INEC Result Viewing portal (iREV) did not affect the credibility of the election, adding that agents of political parties and security agents were given copies of polling unit results after they were announced in public.

Recall that the failure to upload results of the presidential election in real-time had caused major concerns in the course of the election process. While INEC explained that the failure was caused by a technical glitch, the opposition parties rejected the excuse, alleging a foul play in favour of the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC).

However, in the report, which chronicled all activities before, during and after the 2023 general election, INEC stated: “during the troubleshooting process, it was established that there was no issue in uploading the PU result sheets of the Senate and House of Representatives elections through the Election Result Modules.

“However, there was a problem with uploading the presidential election results to the system. Attempts to upload the results were generating internal server errors, which refer to a significant impairment that usually originate from within an application due to problems relating to configuration, permissions, or failure to create or access application resources correctly.

“Further interrogation of the Election Result Modules indicated that the system is encountering an unexpected configuration problem in mapping the presidential election results uploaded into the system to the participating Polling Units.”

The report added that due to the complex, sensitive and critical nature of the systems and the real potential for malicious cyber attacks, the commission immediately put in place several strict security and audit control measures to prevent any unfettered or elevated access to the Result Upload System.

The report added that in the process of resolving the challenge, it was discovered that the backend system of the IReV was able to query and detect the base states for uploading the PU result sheets based on the mapping of all Senatorial District and Federal Constituency elections to the respective 36 States of the Federation and the FCT as established in the database structure deployed within the system.

“In configuring and mapping the election results for the presidential and NASS elections, the Commission created Four Hundred and Seventy (470) election types consisting of one presidential constituency covering the entire country, 109 Senatorial Districts and 360 Federal Constituencies.

Each Senatorial District and Federal Constituency election on the database was mapped to their respective States.

“However, the presidential election result is a single, countrywide constituency and therefore, does not belong to any one State.

Consequently, while the uploads for the NASS elections succeeded as the application was able to identify the respective State and build the folder hierarchy for the results organization process for the election, attempts to upload the presidential election results sheets, which does not belong to or mapped to any State on the database, failed. Instead, it returned a HTTP server error response.

“This failure is attributable to the inability of the application to create and build a folder structure to organize the uploaded images of the result sheets of the presidential election.

“Having identified and established the source of the problem, the Commission quickly created and deployed “Hotfixes” which are software updates for fixing a bug or any vulnerabilities in a system. The deployed hotfixes eventually resolved the HTTP error on the system and the first presidential election result sheet was successfully uploaded at 8.55pm on the 25th of February 2023.

“After the problem with the upload was resolved, the Commission noticed a high volume of uploads on the queue. All results that scanned but could not be uploaded due to the error were queued waiting to be automatically processed. Due to the large volume and high traffic from the queue, the system was running slower, even though it tried to scale up automatically to handle the unanticipated heavy traffic. The density of the traffic that slowed the uploads was one issue.

“Another was that the offline queue requires the BVAS devices to be switched- on and connected to the internet for the upload. However, some of the POs had at the time left their PUs, and the devices had either been switched-off, or were out of internet coverage. Switched-off devices could not connect and upload the results sheets. The Commission had to reach out to the POs of affected areas to switch-on their systems and ensure internet connectivity for the uploads to continue. This accounted for the delay, with some of the results coming in the next day.

“By and large, the glitch experienced in uploading the scanned images of PU presidential election result sheets on 25th February 2023 was due to the inherent complexity within the System, which was difficult to anticipate and mitigate.

“Thereafter, the Commission has made improvements on the IReV and taken additional steps to build more resilience and undertook additional checks to ensure the stability and optimal operation and performance of the IReV portal. Additional quality assurance checks are now done to complement the end-to-end testing of the entire result upload ecosystem before the conduct of any election.

“However, the glitch in the upload of the presidential results sheets to iREV did not affect the credibility of the election. Agents of political parties and security agents were given copies of polling station results after they were announced in public.

“The results were also displayed at polling units for scrutiny by voters. So when they were eventually uploaded, it was easy to compare them with the copies displayed at polling centres and given to party agents and party officials.

“The 2023 General Election produced the most diverse outcome in recent Nigerian electoral history in terms of party representation in executive and legislative elections nationwide. Thus, four (4) political parties produced State Governors, seven (7) secured Senatorial seats, eight (8) won federal constituencies and nine (9) in State seats.

“A granular analysis of the results and performance of the leading parties across the country affirms this diversity. The performance of the four (4) leading political parties – APC, LP, PDP and NNPP – in the presidential election across the 6 geopolitical zones in respect of the required 25% threshold to win a state in a presidential election is shown in Table 9.6 below.

“Clearly, across the zones, the performance of the four (4) leading parties shows the diversity and subtlety in the results, attesting to the integrity of both the process and outcome,” the electoral umpire stated

The immediate past national chairman of the Nigerian Bar Association (NBA), Olumide Akpata, has emerged as the governorship candidate of the Labour Party for the September governorship election in Edo.

Akpata, who was a senior partner and the Head of the Corporate and Commercial Practice Group at Templars law firm in Nigeria until his resignation on 31 August 2023, won the primary election held in Benin City, the state capital, on Friday.

Akpata was declared the winner of the primary having scored the highest number of votes.

In declaring Akpata the winner of the exercise, the election chairman said Akpata scored 316 votes to defeat his co-contestants in a landslide victory.

There was jubilation at the venue immediately Akpata was declared as the winner of the primary.

The Nigeria Customs Service, NCS, will later on Friday, begin the sale of seized bags of rice to the public at the rate of N10,000 per 25kg .

The Comptroller General of the NCS, Mr Adewale Adeniyi, told newsmen in Lagos, on Thursday that buyers have been warned never to resell the seized and auctioned food items.

Adeniyi also warned that customs officers were banned from partaking in the exercise, adding that the rice would come in 25kg, which would be sold for N10,000.

The National Public Relations Officer of the service, Abdullahi Maiwada, had revealed this in a statement on Tuesday.

Giving an update on the criteria, Adeniyi said, eligible persons must provide a Nigerian Identification Number.

“The target groups included artisans, teachers, nurses, religious bodies and other Nigerians within our operational areas. The intention is to reach out directly to members through the organised structures to ensure the maximum impact of this exercise,” Adeniyi added.

He warned against profiteering or exploitation of the initiative.

“It is imperative that beneficiaries of this exercise understand that the items are not to be resold. We take a strong stance against any form of profiteering or exploitation of this initiative. We urge Nigerians to report any incidents of misuse or unauthorised resale of the seized food items.”

He maintained that the NCS was fully committed to transparency and accountability in the process.

“We will not hesitate to take decisive action against any individuals or entities found to be in violation of the terms of this program.”

Senator Monday Okpebholo has been declared winner of the Edo All Progressives Congress, APC, governorship primary election.

Governor Bassey Otu of Cross River who was the Chairman of Edo APC shadow poll, made the declaration after collating the results from the 18 local government areas.

Okpebholo scored 12,433 votes to defeat Dennis Idahosa, who scored 6,541 votes.

The collation and declaration were at Lushville Hotel and Suites, Gapiona Avenue, Government Reservation Area (GRA), Benin.

A businessman, Asue Ighodalo, has been declared the winner of the Peoples Democratic Party governorship primary election, which took place in Benin City in Edo State on Thursday.

Ighodalo defeated about nine other candidates including the Deputy Governor of the state in the election.

He polled a total vote of 577 votes to become the candidate of the PDP in the September 21 governorship election in the state.

The Chairman of the Edo PDP Primary Electoral Committee and Governor Dauda Lawal of Zamfara State declared him as the winner of the exercise.

Details later…

The National Association of Nigeria Nurses and Midwives has directed its members to fully comply with the proposed nationwide protest slated for February 27 and 28 over the cost of living crisis in the country.

The NANNM Secretariat gave the directive in a circular signed by its Deputy General Secretary and Acting Head of Department, Industrial Relations, Otaru Shaibu, on Wednesday.

The NLC had on February 16 declared a two-day protest which would begin after the expiration of the 14-day ultimatum it issued to the Federal Government which will expire on February 22.

The warning was on account of the alleged failure of the government to implement the agreements reached on October 2, 2023 following the removal of the fuel subsidy.

The NLC and Trade Union Congress earlier on February 8 gave a two-week ultimatum to the government to meet their demands ranging from wage increments to improved access to public utilities.

The NANNM in a circular titled, “Re: Mobilisation for the nationwide protest rally,” and dated February 21, 2024, urged its members to comply with the directive to make the protest rally a huge success.

The circular addressed to the National Administration Council members, the National Executive Council members, and NANNM, partly read, “The attention of all members of the NAC and NEC is hereby drawn to the above subject matter. The Nigeria Labour Congress has scheduled a nationwide protest rally and all workers have been directed by the national leadership of the congress to embark on the protest, billed for 27th and 28th February 2024.

“All state councils of the association are hereby enjoined to comply with the directive to make the protest rally a huge success.

“Kindly mobilise our members in line with this directive. The NLC letter conveying this directive is hereby attached for your necessary action.”

Meanwhile, the TUC has backed out of the planned two-day nationwide protest declared by the NLC.

LeadingReporters gathered that The Vice-President of the TUC, Tommy Etim, on Wednesday said that the decision to protest on February 27 and 28 as announced by the NLC was not taken collectively by both unions.

The TUC in a letter dated February 19, 2024, written by its Secretary General, Dr Nuhu Toro, said the NLC unilaterally took the decision on the planned protest.

The Rivers State Police Command said an Inspector was killed by gunmen who ambushed and attacked its men on a stop and search duty at the Eliozu Flyover in Obio/Akpo Local Government Area of the state on Wednesday night.

The spokesperson of the command, Grace Iringe-Koko, disclosed this in a statement issued on Thursday and sent to newsmen.

Iringe-Koko said the gunmen who were spotted in a carton-colored Sienna bus with fully tinted glasses drove in from the Rumuodumaya axis, near Port Harcourt where they launched the offensive which claimed the officer’s life.

She, however, said the team rose to the occasion and returned fire and neutralise one of the miscreants who wore masks, but that other gang members escaped by the whisker.

The statement reads, “We are deeply saddened to announce a heinous incident that occurred on 21st February 2024, involving an attack on policemen attached to Operation Sting of the Rivers State Police Command.

“At approximately 2145hrs, while conducting routine stop-and-search at Eliozu flyover, the officers were ambushed by unidentified hoodlums operating in a carton-colored Sienna bus, with fully tinted glasses.

“The registration number of the vehicle remains unknown at this time.

“The assailants drove in from the Rumuodumaya axis, and opened fire on the police team, resulting in the tragic loss of one Inspector who valiantly gave his life in the line of duty.

“Undeterred, the police team responded with bravery, engaging the attackers and managing to neutralise one of them with a mask on his face, while the others managed to escape, potentially sustaining gunshot wounds.

“The command has launched a thorough investigation into this despicable act and has already identified the group responsible.

“Rest assured, we will relentlessly pursue these criminals and bring them to justice. No amount of intimidation will hinder our officers’ unwavering commitment to safeguarding the lives and property of the citizens.”

While noting that such acts of aggression against security forces detrimentally impact the safety and security of our entire society, she stressed that the command remains resolute in its duty to maintain peace and protect the well-being of the populace.

“The Commissioner of Police, Olatunji Disu, reiterates unequivocally that those who perpetrate violence against policemen or any citizen will face the full weight of the law.

“We urge all law-abiding citizens to continue with their daily activities without panic, as we are determined to uphold our mandate of preserving lives and property in the face of such challenges.

“We extend our deepest condolences to the family and colleagues of the fallen inspector, and we assure them that his sacrifice will not be in vain. Our resolve to serve and protect remains unwavering as we stand together against those who seek to disrupt the peace and harmony of our society.”

Last year, a former Divisional Police Officer of Ahoada Division, Bako Angbashim, was ambushed and killed by a cult gang.

Since the death of the cop, the command has been on his trail, with constant land and air bombardments in the various hideouts of the Iceland cult leader, even as some of his lieutenants were gunned down previously.

However, on Monday, Grace Iringe-Koko,  said intelligence reports revealed that the wanted cult kingpin was killed in a recent joint security raid in the Idu-Ekpeye community, Ahiada East LGA.

The Federal government has halted cooking gas exportation in a bid to lower the price of the commodity in the country.

Minister of State, Petroleum Resources, Ekperikpe Ekpo, broke the news to reporters at the ‘Internal Stakeholders’ Workshop’ in Abuja.

The theme of the workshop is ‘Harnessing Nigeria’s Proven Gas Reserves for Economic Growth and Development’.

He said the country will no longer, for the time being export Liquefied Petroleum Gas (LPG), commonly referred to as cooking gas, in a bid to alleviate the scarcity and steep price surge within the country.

“We are interacting with critical stakeholders to ensure that there is no exportation of LPG.

“All LPG produced within the country will have to be domesticated. And when this is done, the volume will increase and of course, the price will automatically crash.

“I am in contact with the regulation, NMDPRA, we hold meetings almost on daily basis, and the producers such as Mobil, Chevron, and Shell. So there is that hope that things will turn around. We don’t need to make noise about it,” the minister said.