No fewer than 22 military personnel who died in combat in Niger State are being laid to rest at the National Military Cemetery in the Federal Capital Territory, FCT, Abuja.

it would be recall that the Defence Headquarters (DHQ) on August 14, announced the death of at least 36 officers who were killed in battle.

The officers’ helicopter was shot down by some insurgents in the Zungeru area of Niger State.

The troops were deployed to Kundu village in Wushishi Local Government Area after bandits terrorized the area recently.

The minister of the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) Nyesom Wike, has vowed that required funding would be provided to ensure the speedy completion of the Abuja metro rail systems.

Wike made this disclosure while taking a tour of the rail transport systems in Abuja with the FCT minister of state Mariya Mahmood and staff of the FCTA on Wednesday, August 23, 2023.

Wike stressed that the rehabilitation of the rail transport system is a short-term goal of his administration.

“Transport is one of those things that we can do in order to reduce the level of traffic within the city, and we know that we have this metro station here, and it’s not working. Why is it not working? Can we fix it within the short term so that people will say yes, this is now working.

“So, our position is that whatever it is, the company that it has been awarded, we will sit down to say for how long do you think you can complete this and then ask ourselves, do we have the resources to make sure that we don’t come back to explain to members of the public, this is why it was not finished,” he said.

The Court of Appeal sitting in Owerri, Imo State capital, has ruled that Julius Abure to stop parading himself as the substantial National Chairman of the Labour Party.

The court also commanded Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) to recognise and publish the names of all the governorship candidates produced by the Apapa-led National Working Committee in Imo, Bayelsa, and Kogi states.

In it a ruling on Thursday, the court affirmed Lamidi Apapa as the substantial Chair of the party at the national level.

The court struck also out the governorship candidature of Senator Athan Achonu of Imo State, and others belonging to the Abure-led LP faction.

Leadingreporters earlier reported that Apapa said that his suspension as a member of the party was invalid, noting that he remained the ‘legitimate acting chairman.’

As the party faced a leadership crisis, a Court of Appeal sitting in Benin City, Edo State capital, affirmed Abure as the National Chairman of the Labour Party, as was disclosed in a statement issued by the National Publicity Secretary of the party, Obiora Ifoh.

In May, Apapa was reinstated by the court as the acting chairman of the party.Prior to that, a State High Court sitting in Edo dismissed the notice of suspension issued against Abure by some party members at the ward level.

The National Bureau of Statistics has said that 92.6 per cent of employed Nigerians are in informal sector.

Noting that this persons were informally employed in sectors like agriculture, while 89.4 per cent are in other sectors excluding agriculture.

In a survey titled: “Nigeria Labour Force Survey” published on Thursday, August 24, NBS states that Nigeria’s unemployment rate was 5.3 per cent in Q4 2022 and 4.1 per cent in Q1 2023.

NBS noted that the figure indicates a significant drop in the unemployment rate, compared to the 33.3 per cent published by the statistics body as Nigeria’s unemployment rate in 2020.

The drop in unemployment rate is attributed to a rejig of the metric used by the NBS to measure unemployment in the country.

President Bola Tinubu and the Minister of the Federal Capital Territory, Nyesom Wike, on Thursday, has meet behind closed doors at the Presidential Villa, Abuja.

The meeting came on the heels of the building collapse which occurred in the early hours of Thursday, August 24.

Although theagenda of the meeting is not made public but it may not be unconnected with the building collapse in Abuja on Wednesday in which about two persons died and thirty-seven persons wounded.

It was expected that the Minister would brief the President on the unfortunate event and the level of casualty recorded.

Masanawa’s arrest reportedly stemmed from his role as the managing director of Nigerian Security Printing and Minting Company (NSPMC). 

The Department of State Services (DSS) has arrested the Chief Executive Officer of Nigeria Incentive-Based Risk Sharing System for Agricultural Lending (NIRSAL), Abbas Umar Masanawa, for allegedly conspiring with the suspended Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), Godwin Emefiele, to loot printing and minting corporation.

Our reports that sources in the secret police said that Masanawa was taken into custody three weeks ago and had remained in the DSS custody while their investigation continued. 

It was however not immediately clear whether or not the NIRSAL boss had hired lawyers to represent him in the case. 

Masanawa’s arrest reportedly stemmed from his role as the managing director of Nigerian Security Printing and Minting Company (NSPMC). 

Masanawa resigned from NSPMC after it was reported that he wanted to run for governorship election as a member of the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) while still in office as the printing and minting boss.

The NSPMC which is a subsidiary of the CBN is responsible for printing and minting Nigeria’s currency notes, coins and high-level security documents.

A source privy to Masanawa’s arrest was quoted by Peoples Gazette as saying, “He was conspiring with Godwin Emefiele to loot the printing and minting agency,” adding, “We are still tracing billions they stole.”

However, it was not immediately clear why President Bola Tinubu approved Masanawa’s detention without first suspending him from office, especially since his detention for the past three weeks has crippled NIRSAL’s ability to operate. 

Meanwhile, the DSS spokesperson Peter Afunaya reportedly said “No comment,” when asked about Masanawa’s arrest. 

Masanawa’s arrest came after Tinubu appointed an anti-graft expert, Jim Obazee, to uncover fraud at the CBN and other federal agencies.

The Obazee-led team is said to have initiated a probe into all relevant agencies that are said to have connived with the CBN and its sprawling parastatals.

In May 2022, SaharaReporters reported that as NSPMC boss, Masanawa had picked up the N50 million APC governorship nomination and expression of interest forms ahead of the primaries for the 2023 elections.

In addition to printing banknotes and postal orders of Nigeria, NSPMC also prints some electoral materials for the Independent National Electoral Commission.

The company, also referred to as The MINT, was established in 1963 by the Nigerian government in partnership with De La Rue of the UK and is under the Central Bank of Nigeria.

It began full operation in 1965, producing currency notes and coins for the CBN as well as a wide range of security documents for the government, commercial banks, and blue-chip companies, among others.

Earlier in 2022, the Auditor General for the Federation in its 2019 report indicted the mint company under Masanawa for N162 billion in financial infractions.

According to the AuGF, the management of the Nigerian government-owned company could not account for the said amount.

The report said N91.1 billion, which appeared in the consolidated financial statements of the minting company for the year ended 31st December 2018 could not be verified and reconciled with the Assets Register due to the non-existence of a proper Non-Current Asset Inventories Ledger.

It also said that Inventories of Raw Materials amounting to N4,459,141,000.00 and Consumables amounting to N2,364,112,000.00 could also not be verified due to the non-existence of proper Inventory Receipts & Issues ledger.

The report said, “In all, a total of N97,918,703,000.00 reported in the company’s financial statement could not be confirmed. The above anomalies could be attributed to weaknesses in the internal control system at the Nigerian Security Printing and Minting Plc.”

The AuGF report also said the sum of N48,931,124,278.37 was overcharged against the Statement of Financial Performance of the company for the years 2016 and 2019 with no verifiable evidence to justify these expenses as most of the figures contained in the Statement of Financial Performance were different from the balances obtained from the Trial Balance.

The report said that the minting company spent about N14.43 billion on salaries and allowances for its staff between 2016 and 2019 without the approval of the National Salaries, Income and Wages.

It also said that in contravention of the Pension Reform Acts, the company paid salaries to its workers without fully deducting only 5% from the workers as against the minimum 8% as stipulated in the law.

The report added that the company failed to deduct about N432.812 million contributory pension from its workers within the period.