Plateau State Governor, Simon Lalong   To promote national unity, peace, and stability in Nigeria, Plateau State Governor, Simon Lalong, said that he had to lead northern Governors on the platform of the All Progressives Congress (APC), to support a power shift to the Southern part of the country.   He also said that the move was made in the spirit of fairness, equity, and justice which according to him, the late Premier of the Northern Region, Sir Ahmadu Bello advocated.   Lalong, who is the Chairman of the Northern Governors Forum stated this on Saturday at the 9th Annual Sir Ahmadu Bello Memorial Lecture on Leadership and Good Governance held in Lafia, Nasarawa State capital.   The Plateau State Governor added that the late Premier lived a life of accommodation, tolerance, justice, and fairness, adding that his legacies have endured long after his demise and continue to inspire leadership in the region and coun...

  NYSC DG, Brigadier General YD Ahmed addressing some Corps members Nigeria’s foremost compulsory national duty call, National Youth Service Corps (NYSC), turned 50 years after its creation in 1973.   The Corps was established soon after the country’s civil war by the military federal government to foster national unity, tolerance, understanding, and peaceful coexistence. Its creation was also to heal the wound created by the civil war which lasted approximately three years.   The Director General of the Corps, Brigadier General YD Ahmed while addressing members at the NYSC Cross River State Orientation Camp in Obubra and at Ebonyi State Orientation Camp in Afikpo, advised participants to make use of the opportunities of the service year to contribute to the unity and socio-economic development of Nigeria.   He commended the previous batches of Corps Members since 1973 till date, for their selfless services through the improvement of education, h...

  Birth registration protects children from abuse and exploitation seeing that children without birth certificates are susceptible to child labor, child trafficking, and forced marriage, according to the United Nations Children Fund (UNICEF).   Dr Tushar Rane, UNICEF’s Bauchi Chief of Field Office, UNICEF said this during the opening of a three-day operational Plans for Birth Registration, 2023 Orientation, and Planning Meeting for massive scale-up in Bauchi State held at the Jamil Hotel, Bauchi.   He explained that obtaining a birth certificate, confirms the identity, nationality, and age of the child, adding that it is important in Bauchi State of Nigeria, as it is in any other state.   "For Legal identity, Birth registration is the first step towards establishing legal identity. Without a birth certificate, a child may face difficulties in accessing basic services such as education and healthcare, as well as in exercising their rights as a citizen. ...

CEO groomDemYoung Foundation Teaching Human Rights To School Children groomDemYoung Foundation, a non-governmental initiative recently launched a Human Rights campaign to primary schools in New Karu local government area in Nasarawa State. Founder and Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of groomDemYoung, Benneth Joshua Kingsley, at the launch of the campaign said, "It is necessary to teach these youngsters the basics of Human Rights in order to prepare them for the larger realities of a bigger world. We're convinced that when these children become abreast of their rights and the rights of others, and how to identify, project and protect these rights, the world would be a better place; and democracy would be better off by it". Kingsley also revealed that the Foundation which was established in 2022 was born out of the desire for a new Nigeria free of police brutality and other forms of human rights abuses. He recalled the dangers posed by human rights abuses, adding that with th...

                 Elder Statesman, Chief Edwin Clark (      https://muckrack.com/kingsley-benneth/articles  ) Chief Edwin Clark, leader of the Pan-Ni­ger Delta Forum (PANDEF), has called for the arrest of the Minister of Informa­tion and Culture, Lai Mohammed, over his comment about the Labour Party’s (LP) presidential candidate, Peter Obi. The elder statesman said the minis­ter should be prosecuted for spreading what he termed fake news and propa­ganda against Obi. Lai Mohammed had on April 5 in Washington DC said both Obi and his running mate, Datti Baba-Ahmed, made comments over the outcome of the Feb­ruary 25 presidential election that was tantamount to treason. Baba-Ahmed had in a recent interview asked the Chief Jus­tice of Nigeria not to swear in the President-elect on May 29, adding that democracy in Nigeria will end should the inauguration hold. Chief Edwin Clark accused Mohammed of causing...

                                  Peter Obi ( https://muckrack.com/kingsley-benneth/articles ) The presidential candidate of the Labour Party (LP), Peter Obi, on Thursday through the Head of the Obi-Datti Media, Diran Onifade, dismissed ru­mours surrounding his ordeal with immigration officials in Heathrow Airport, London, saying that contrary to reports the British government is yet to apologize to him. He stressed that he was yet to receive any letter of apology from the British government over his airport harassment in the UK. Daily Independent  reported that Obi was detained in London on April 7 over alleged imper­sonation. However, on Thursday re­ports started circulating in a sec­tion of the media that the British authorities have apologised. But in a swift reaction to the development, the Head, Obi-Dat­ti Media, said, “We have been re­ceiving enqui...

    Labour Party  Presidential Candidate,  Peter Obi ( https://muckrack.com/kingsley-benneth/articles )   The Federal Government has been ac­cused of complicity in the detention of Labour Party’s (LP) presidential can­didate, Peter Obi, on April 7, at Heath­row Airport in the United Kingdom. The government, it was alleged, dispatched the Minister of Informa­tion and Culture, Lai Mohammed, to Europe to malign the former Anambra State gover­nor, over alleged treason. ­ The Labour Party, last week, alleged that Obi was singled out from a queue and detained for hours by UK immigration of­ficers over alleged imperson­ation. Sunny Anyanwu, a lawyer, told  Daily Independent  that the detention was politically moti­vated, noting that “Peter Obi has been living in the UK and he is a British citizen. “Of course, the UK has his data, even to his finger print and blood group. So, there’s no way that they can accuse somebody like that who is not jus...

              Abayomi Arabambi ( https://muckrack.com/kingsley-benneth/articles ) The Labour Party’s (LP) National Executive Council (NEC) on Tuesday sacked its former National Publicity Secretary, Arabambi Abayomi, and upheld the suspension of six other National Working Committee (NWC) members for anti-party activities in what political analysts see as house cleansing. At the meeting, which was attend­ed by the presidential candidate of the party, Peter Obi, and representa­tives from the Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC), Trade Union Congress (TUC), LP state chairmen, federal legislators-elect and INEC, those suspended include Lamidi Apapa, Salem Lawal, Favour Reuben, Gbenga Daramola, Samuel Akingbade and Mohammed Akali. ­ It also considered the report of a disciplinary committee which recommended the sus­pension of the former National Youth Leader, Anslem Eragbe. Following this, it suspended him indefinitely and recom­mended Eragbe to the nex...

                    Yabagi Sani https://muckrack.com/kingsley-benneth/articles Yabagi Sani, Chairman, Inter-Party Advisory Coun­cil (IPAC), has warned that the end has not been heard about the 2023 presidential and governorship elections.   The visibly disappointed IPAC chairman also warned that the country’s democra­cy is standing “only by the will of god”.   Yabagi criticised the In­dependent National Elec­toral Commission’s (INEC) conduct of the 2023 presi­dential election, insisting that “it was the most flawed in the history of elections in the country”.   While presenting the cer­tificate of return to the ADP gubernatorial candidate for Kogi state on Thursday in Abuja, the IPAC leader lam­basted the electoral commis­sion’s refusal to use the Bi­modal Voters Accreditation System (BVAS) to transmit presidential election results from polling units to its server in real-time.   Insisting...

  BENNETH JOSHUA KINGSLEY Peace has been a fundamental requirement for society's stability, development, and continuity at every stage in history. It is unarguable that this component is needed if commerce, sports, marriages, and bilateral or even unilateral engagements must take place anywhere, or at any time. This accounts for why governments at any tier hope, and practically undertake endeavors to promote peaceful coexistence among community members. In fact, modern systems for managing communities of people (whether democracy, monarchy, or any other system which the people agree to be their modus operandi for social interaction), hinge their successes on the operationalization of this all-important element- Peace. But it is everybody's responsibility, not only to embrace but to ensure that it comes through in its pure, sincere, and fair state. Peace is indeed an illusion where insincerity, injustice, and unfair treatment of component units in society are allowed to thrive. ...

                    A Nigerian Soldier On Counter-Insurgency Effort BENNETH JOSHUA KINGSLEY Modern militarized conflicts are open cheques that draw inspiration from faucets of ideas. They're no longer a one-street shop where operators, be they state actors or otherwise, focus on just one approach to achieving their aims. By this, it is implied that conflicts like Terrorism require not only military-combat-centric solutions to deal with. They also call for intelligence gathering where citizens play pivotal roles as discreet intelligence agents. It is worthy of note that throughout history the world has been plagued by insurgencies. Though the underlying causes of each new insurgency have been different, they are all similar in certain areas.  It is also worthy of note that insurgencies are flexible and to defeat them the counterinsurgency must be equally flexible if not more flexible.  This flexibility is where intelli...