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  I Started My Political Journey at Jakande’s House – Tinubu A chieftain of the All Progressives Congress, Asiwaju Bola Tinubu, has hailed the late first civilian governor of Lagos State, Alhaji Lateef Jakande. This was at the eight-day Fidau prayer session held for Jakande who served between October 1, 1979, and December 31, 1983. The event was also attended by former Governor of Ogun State, Chief Olusegun Osoba; former Inspector-General of Police, Musliliu Smith; Governor Kayode Fayemi of Ekiti State; Governor Babajide Sanwo-Olu of Lagos State among others. Speaking at the event, Tinubu revealed a bit of a discussion he had with the former governor, pointing out that he started his political career at Jakande’s house. “He said go, we need many like you. Go to the Senate. The rest is history,” the APC chieftain said. He went on to hail the deceased saying even though he’s no more, he’s still existing. “We pray for Nigeria to give us more leaders that are prudent, very honest, give pri

  MFM’s Olukoya Wins Defamation Suit as Court Slams N500m Damages Against Maureen Badejo, Orders Retraction, Apology Justice Abiodun Akinyemi of an Ogun State High Court in Abeokuta has slammed N500 million damages against a United Kingdom-based blogger, Maureen Badejo, for libellous publications against the General Overseer of Mountain of Fire and Miracles Ministries (Worldwide), Dr Daniel Olukoya, and the church. The Court also granted “a perpetual injunction restraining the defendant by herself, her agents, servants, privies or other persons howsoever called or described from further making, publishing and/or disseminating defamatory stories and statements about the claimants or any one of them.” The Judge described the report as the worst case of reckless defamation and evil use of the internet and social media. Badejo, the anchorperson in the Facebook-GIO TV, had published what the Incorporated Trustees of the MFM and Olukoya described as 52 lies. She was said to have reported tha

  The Minister of Interior, Ogbeni Rauf Aregbesola, has assured of his commitment to working for the greater success of the All Progressives Congress (APC) not only in Osun State but also in the entire country. Ogbeni Aregbesola spoke in Ilesa on Saturday, 20 February, 2021 after revalidating his membership of the party in ancient town of Ilesa alongside with his family members: his wife, Alhaja Sherifat; and sons: AbdulKabir and Rauf jnr. His views were contained in a press statement issued by his Special Adviser on Media and Publicity, Sola Fasure. Jubilant residents singing his praises welcomed him as he made his way straight to the registration venue having had to negotiate his way home through a four hour drive from Abuja due to cancellation of his flight because of bad weather. He went straight to the venue of the exercise at his Ward 8 in Ifofin, in Ilesa East Local Government, where to his even greater surprise, a larger crowd had been waiting for him. Speaking on the recent in

  The Bookseller   magazine reported that statistics from official book sales monitor Nielsen BookScan showed an estimated growth of the UK book market in 2020 of 5.2% by volume, equating to a total of 202 million books being sold, which was worth £1.76bn, up 5.5% on 2019. The figure is said to have represented the largest rise in volume for the printed books market since 2007, while the annual value was at its highest since 2009. This comes despite physical book retailers – apart from essential shops like supermarkets – facing prolonged periods of shutdown during 2020, including the national lockdowns from 23 March to 15 June and 5 November to 2 December, plus when subject to regional lockdown or tier system rules. According to  The Bookseller , the best-selling title of 2020 was Charlie Mackesy’s  The Boy, The Mole, The Fox and The Horse . Richard Osman’s  The Thursday Murder Club  was second while cookbook  Pinch of Nom – Everyday Light  was third. Crime thriller  The  Thursday Murd

  …Gladiators try to outdo one another, control party register Ahead of the APC membership registration and revalidation which starts on Tuesday, February 9, political gladiators in the nation’s ruling party are squaring up to again test their relevance. From Kwara to Lagos, Zamfara to Enugu or Rivers, political actors are reportedly scheming to outdo their rivals and take control of the party register when at the conclusion of the exercise. While the party recently reconciled some of its members across the states, the situation in Zamfara remains dicey. Just last week, former Governor Abdulaziz Yari and Sen. Kabir Marafa embraced reconciliation, but reports indicate that some of their supporters are spoiling for a showdown. Also, there have been grumblings by some chieftains of the party who had continued to allege that the current register of party members is centralised in the hands of a national leader of the party, Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu who has sole access to membership data.

  A member of the U.S. House of Representatives, Ron Wright (R-Texas) has died of COVID-19, the first congressman to die from the virus. He died on Sunday after testing positive for COVID-19 late last month. “Congressman Ron Wright passed away peacefully at the age of 67 on Feb. 7, 2021,” Wright’s campaign said in a statement on Monday. “His wife Susan was by his side and he is now in the presence of their Lord and Saviour.”

  BUA Group, one of Africa’s largest conglomerates, says it has paid for 1 million doses of AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccines for Nigeria through the AFREXIM Vaccine program in partnership with CACOVID. According to a statement signed on Monday by the Group Head, Corporate Communications of BUA Group, O’tega Ogra, the vaccines will be distributed free to Nigerians at no cost. He added that the vaccine which should be delivered by next week, adding that it will be the first delivery of Vaccines to Nigeria since the COVID-19 vaccines became available. Speaking on this development, Philanthropist and Founder of BUA, Abdul Samad Rabiu thanked the President of the Afrexim Bank, Dr. Benedict Oramah for making the purchase possible and the Nigerian Central Bank Governor, Godwin Emefiele, for coordinating the process through the CACOVID Private Sector partnership. He said: “BUA decided to secure these 1million vaccines by paying the full amount for the vaccines today because these vaccines became

  S eldom has  a tech giant excoriated another as Apple did Facebook. “What are the consequences of prioritising conspiracy theories and violent incitement simply because of their high rates of engagement?” asked Apple’s boss, Tim Cook, in a speech on January 28th. “A social dilemma”, he thundered, “cannot be allowed to become a social catastrophe.” Facebook was singled out without being named. Last year it complained about its portrayal in “The Social Dilemma”, a hit Netflix documentary. Mr Cook’s warning came in response to Facebook’s own broadsides against Apple’s forthcoming “app-tracking transparency” measure. Soon a pop-up from Apple will start asking users of the latest version of i os , its mobile operating system, if they want named apps such as Facebook to track their digital activity across other companies’ apps and websites. Huge numbers are expected to demur. That is likely to damage Facebook, possibly Google and a wide.

  As the computing conglomerate has grown, so too have the risks that it becomes more like a conventional company. To get a good look at Google, climb a barren hill in front of the online giant’s Silicon Valley headquarters—or rather, both of them. To the right lies the old hq, a clump of low-slung office buildings ringed by dozens of similar boxes. To the left a brand-new corporate centre is rising. From outside it resembles an oversized circus tent, but the inside is still undetermined: pillars, wooden panelling and hardly any walls. The bare-bones structure is meant to provide architectural flexibility. This will come in handy in a post-pandemic world in which offices will look quite different. “We’ll get a chance to reimagine it,” says Sundar Pichai, the boss of both Google and its parent company, Alphabet. And just as the bricks-and-mortar structure is changing, the organisation is in transition, too. When Mr Pichai took over as chief executive of Google in August 2015, after it b

Leaving Covid-19 and other nasties aside, the past year in the UK seems to have been a celebration of everything Black and African. But, despite the massive exposure, Africa’s contribution to the UK is still not properly acknowledged. Is it time for a permanent symbol to be erected? asks   Doorumun Tgreat. 2 020 has been like no other year in my recollection. Do we really wish to be reminded of Covid-19 – which hasn’t gone away and is likely to make the next few years similarly special for the wrong reasons? It was also the year in which Brexit became a fact – a political pestilence to match the medical plague. Yet staggering though those events have been, and will continue to be, the past few months have been unique mainly in forcing the rest of the world to recognise the African presence. Politicians and peoples can no longer hide behind the masks of avoidance. While the past is under scrutiny as never before, the present and, by implication, future demand comment and decision. I hav

  Although Ethiopia’s Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed to all intents and purposes triumphed militarily over his enemies in Tigray, there could still be plenty of trouble ahead, both for Abiy and for Ethiopia. In addition, the spectre of another 1980s-type famine in Tigray is looming. Abiy Ahmed will need to produce exceptional leadership if Ethiopia, as well as the region, is to be properly stabilised. Analysis by Doorumun Tgreat. E thiopia’s Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed recently appeared on national television to announce that not a single civilian had been killed by federal military forces during its offensive into Tigray, Ethiopia’s most northern region. Establishing the facts about what happened during the six weeks of civil conflict is hard. Access to Tigray by the media, UN agencies and NGOs was severely restricted during the fighting. The region was put under a total communications blackout too. But Abiy’s claim is unconscionable given warfare’s nature, that never permits clean score she

European nations need to work more closely with drug firms to increase the pace of coronavirus inoculations, the WHO said on Friday, as Johnson & Johnson pushed for its jab to become the third approved for use in the United States. EU chiefs have engaged in bitter public rows with firms over supply shortages and legal obligations, as a slow vaccine rollout has sparked public anger and plunged the bloc’s leadership into crisis. “We need to join up to speed up vaccinations,” the World Health Organization’s Europe director Hans Kluge told AFP in an interview. In a sign of Europe’s increasing urgency, top EU diplomat Josep Borrell said he hoped Russia’s Sputnik V jab would be approved for use in Europe soon. “It’s good news for the whole of mankind because it means we will have more tools to fight the pandemic,” he said during a visit to Moscow. Experts have warned that vaccines will only control the contagion — which has killed more than two million since emerging in late 2019 — if t

  MacKenzie Scott gives billions of dollars to charities in a record amount of time On a Monday evening in November, Dorri McWhorter, the chief executive of the YWCA Metropolitan Chicago, got a phone call from a representative of billionaire philanthropist MacKenzie Scott. The news was almost too good to be true: Her group would be receiving a $9 million gift. Between the pandemic and the recession, it had been a difficult year for the Chicago YWCA, which runs a rape crisis hotline and provides counseling to women on jobs, mortgages and other issues. Money was tight. McWhorter shed tears of joy on the call. Similar scenes were playing out at charities nationwide. Scott’s team recently sent out hundreds of out-of-the-blue emails to charities, notifying them of an incoming gift. Some of the messages were viewed as possible scams or landed in spam filters. Many of the gifts were the largest the charities had ever received. McWhorter was not the only recipient who cried. Sign up for The Mo