The acting Inspector-General of Police, IGP Ibrahim Idris, on Monday appointed DCP Don Awunah as the new Force Public Relations Officer (PRO).
Mr Awunah is to replace ACP Olabisi Kolawole who was the Police’s spokesperson from August 2015 to June, 2016.
“Until his new assignment, DCP Don Awunah, who is a seasoned and thoroughbred officer, was the Deputy Commissioner of Police in charge of Homicide Section of Force Criminal Investigation and Intelligence Department (FCIID) Abuja.
“He holds B.A degree in Philosophy from the University of Lagos and M.A in International Relations and Strategic Studies from Benue State University, Makurdi. He is a Fellow of Institute of Security Studies (fsi), Fellow of Institute of Corporate Administration, and Member, Nigerian Institute of Public Relations (NIPR),” a statement by the Police said.
The outgoing PRO urged the media and the public to extend maximum cooperation to the new Spokesman.
On his part, Mr Awunah promised to work to increase the tempo of good relationship between the Police and the public in line with the policy thrust of the Nigeria Police Force.
He could be reached on phone through 09059202456 and email via “[email protected]”.
The Deputy Vice Chancellor of University of Lagos, Professor Oluwatoyin Ogundipe, has blamed human activities for the water hyacinth at the Ogun River.
He said this while leading a team of researchers from the University for a Field Work.
“Because of human activity going on there is on the increase, you have animals and other things they are working on being dumped in the river.
“You also have construction work going on here and the people throw some of the bamboo inside the river and because of that you have that blocking the pathway which the river is supposed to flow and pass the foot of the bridge.
“With that we have the accumulation of water hyacinth which has formed a mat on the river”, he said
The field work, he says, is to throw light into the phenomenon that led to the accumulation of water hyacinth around the base of the Berger Bridge.
Professor Ogundipe who blamed it on human activities, called for a close watch of what goes on around that area.
The Ogun River flows under the Kara Bridge around Ojodu Berger area of Lagos.
A part of the popular Ogun River suddenly went dry on June 18, 2016.
Unidentified green plants are seen on the river while the water body has given way
The management of the University of Lagos (UNILAG) has ordered that all academic activities on the campus be suspended until the situation on the campus improves.
According to a statement released on Friday, the decision was made at a meeting of the University Senate held on Thursday.
“The Senate of the University of Lagos at an emergency meeting on Thursday, April 7, 2016 considered the situation on campus occasioned by the ongoing agitation of the student body over poor electricity and water supply in the community, and the difficulty faced by a large number of students living off campus to attend classes as a result of the fuel crisis.
“Senate noted that the problem of poor municipal services is a national issue that governments at both State and Federal levels are addressing,” the statement read.
UNILAG authorities ordered in the statement that students living on the campus should vacate their halls of residence, adding that no student should remain in the halls of residence after 10:00AM on Friday.
“All academic activities on campus are hereby suspended with immediate effect. The university is therefore closed with immediate effect.”
The management said that a decision to re-open for normal academic activities would be taken as soon as ‘municipal services improve’.
The House of Representatives on Wednesday honoured 29 year-old Ayodele Dada, who graduated with a cumulative grade point average of 5.0 from the University of Lagos.
He received a standing ovation from the House during plenary in honour of his rare academic feat.
In an unprecedented gesture, the House suspended its rules to invite Mr Dada into its hallowed chamber to honour him and commend his remarkable achievement, a tradition usually reserved for visiting presidents and parliamentarians.
Some of the lawmakers said young Dada’s success story, in the face of the challenges in the education sector, is compelling and an inspiration to the Nigerian youth and the country in general.
A member of the the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Adetokunbo Pearse, has recommended that Nigeria should invent structures that will fight corruption proficiently rather than going after individuals.
While assessing the corruption fight on Sunrise Daily on Thursday, the senior lecturer in the Department of English, University of Lagos, said that ”Nigeria needs structures that are deterrent.
“What we need to do is to restructure, find structures that can actually fight corruption, not go after individuals. For instance, the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) is a structure in place, there are others that are fighting corruption.
“What we need now, we know that EFCC can do its job and is having problems (everybody is saying this is abusing people’s civil rights) because of the way they are going about it,” he said.
Adopt Better Ways
The PDP member condemned the alleged arms fund diversion but maintained that the Federal Government could have adopted better techniques to achieve its aim.
“Any fair minded Nigerian would applaud the effort to curb corruption and secondly, when you hear that money that should have been spent on the military is being used to fund elections is very disturbing. The way the President is going about it, I think, is very faulty and we need to comment on that so that maybe we can adopt better ways and achieve much more.
“The President seems obsessed with this fight of corruption to the detriment of development in other areas. Bad as what Colonel Sambo Dasuki has done and much as this money ($2.1 billion) appears, it will not cripple the Nigerian economy of six trillion Naira. Let us put that in perspective so that we do not spend so much time talking about one thing as if that is going to solve all our problems,” he said.
Change The Laws And Abide By The Law
Mr Pearse was also of the opinion that the war against corruption cannot be won without legislation, adding that the laws should be changed to prevent looting of the nation’s resources.
“When the Director of IMF came, one of the suggestions she made is what I have always advocated and that is that we cannot fight corruption or do anything without legislation. Without proper structures, it is a waste of time because I tell you, after Dasuki, there will be more and more.
“We need to change the laws and abide by the law. I am talking about before people get to the position where they can begin to loot, there must be ways to screen them out,” he said.
The academic maintained that Nigeria should concentrate on developing systems to fight corruption and let the systems work themselves, stressing that some other political office holders ought not to be in such positions.
“There are a lot of people in the National Assembly, there are a lot of people who are governors and there are people who have even become presidents as well who have no right to be in public services because they have a criminal background. They have a shady background and yet we are not addressing these issues, we are talking about fighting one person or two.
He also said Nigeria should be focused on developing systems that will work instead of headlining Dasuki everyday in the media.
The International Table Tennis Federation (ITTF) has listed two Nigerian umpires for the 2016 Olympic and Paralympic games in Brazil.
Nigeria’s John Peters and Cecilia Arinye will join 47 other umpires listed by the world table tennis ruling body for the tournament.
Peters, who is among the longest serving umpires in Africa, will officiate at the Olympic Games while Arinye, who is the Director of Sports, University of Lagos will be in action at the Paralympic Games.
Aside Nigeria, Algeria and Egypt are the only countries in the continent that will have umpires at the games, as listed by ITTF.
The Nigerian government has frowned at the spate of electrical accidents and electrocutions which it puts at the door step of the Electricity Distribution Companies (DISCOS).
Speaking to Channels Television on Saturday on the outcome of the Federal Government’s investigative panel on the death of Miss Juliana Oluchi Anekwe, a 300 hundred level student of the University of Lagos, the Chief Electrical Inspector of the Federation, Mr Peter Ewesor, said the use of low quality undersized aluminium conductor was a major cause of the incident.
Giving details of what could have caused the incident that led to Miss Anekwe’s death, he said that the 11kv feeder line which passed through the university was in a state of almost total disrepair, with so many joints.
“After the investigation of the student’s death, we have issued instructions to the respective DISCOS that were concerned, that they should ensure they repair and revamp this particular network and that they should use the experience as a guide to all other 11kv network or 33kv network to ensure that what happened here is prevented elsewhere,” Mr Ewesor stressed.
He further stated that recommendations had been Made to all DISCOS on equipment specifications and that sanctions would follow in the case of non- compliance.
The Federal Government has quashed the new admission policy adopted by the Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB).
The examination body had implemented a policy with which students seeking admission into various Nigerian universities with excessive candidates for the Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examinations (UTME) are redistributed to other universities with lower number of candidates.
The Presidency’s decision was disclosed by the Permanent Secretary of the Ministry of Education, Mr MacJohn Nwaobiala, after a meeting with President Muhammadu Buhari on the ministry’s activities and challenges at the Presidential Villa in Abuja, Nigeria’s capital.
Professor Ojerinde said that the new policy was to save the time and energy of the students and reduce the number of students who fail to get admission into tertiary institutions yearly.
He said that all schools, including the University of Lagos (UNILAG) had their standards depending on the number of candidates applying into their institutions.
JAMB Registrar further stressed that although, JAMB had set its procedures by setting the cut-off mark at 180, “it does not mean all 180 scorers would be called for the Post-UTME” also called post-JAMB examinations in the schools.
However, the President of the Association of Tutorial School Operators, Oludotun Sodunke, had accused JAMB of not carrying the stakeholders along in their decision-making, but Professor Ojerinde debunked the claim.
Professor Frank Okafor stresses the need for the government to balance the act of finding what is appropriate in the nation’s power need.
The possibility of achieving 10,000 megawatts of electricity in Nigeria in four years is possible if the government would draw up a plan and show the will to pursue the plan, an Expert in power control engineering has said.
In an interview with Channels Television on Wednesday, a Professor with the University of Lagos, Frank Okafor, said that the government’s promise of increasing the power supply to Nigeria would require a combination of all forms of renewable energy.
Professor Okafor, however, said that Nigeria had not put in place the infrastructure needed to ensure that the renewable energy would work.
He urged the government to put forward a plan of how they intend to achieve the proposed 40,000 megawatts in eight years, as promised in their campaigns.
“As much as renewable energy is the way to go, Nigeria has not gotten to the threshold.
“We still need to attract and empower certain industries. Apart from given incentives, the government should concentrate in giving us the power that we need to power our industries.
“It is a good dream and it is possible, but whether there is a plan or infrastructure in place to get that done, as we speak I will be constrained to say; ‘that is not so’.
“It takes two things – good planning and the will to pursue the plan,” Professor Okafor said.
On the challenges that could be faced in the use of solar energy, he stressed that the cost of providing batteries that could sustain high megawatts of power in periods where there is no sun was high.
He said: “There are new entrances that are into solar energy provision. But what they are doing is to generate 100 megawatts of electricity in the afternoon and during the night there is no power. Some 100 megawatts should come from somewhere to sustain the light at night”.
Professor Okafor also emphasised the need for proper evaluation of companies coming for licences in any sector to ensure that they were capable of providing the services they claim they could provide.
Persistent crises in Nigeria’s institutions of higher learning may have affected the country’s position in the recent rankings of Africa’s top universities.
An online rating of Africa’s top 50 universities on 2015 University Web Rankings Africa, shows the highest ranking Nigerian university to be University of Lagos in 20th place.
Others are the Obafemi Awolowo University of Ile-ife in 23rd position, University of Ibadan in 38th, University of Ilorin 41st and Covenant University in 43rd place.
The list is dominated by universities from South Africa and Egypt.
The South Africans led the list with the top five universities while Egypt followed from 6th to ninth.
University of Dar es Salaam Tanzania in tenth breaks the sequence while South Africa and Egypt’s dominance continues from 11 to 15th.
Morocco’s Universite Mohammed V – Agdal is 16th while West African neighbours Burkina Faso and Kenya also place higher than Nigeria in 18th and 19th place respectively.
Nigeria’s universities calender has often been disrupted by frequent industrial actions.
Major stakeholders also accuse government of starving the institutions of funds resulting in the declining.
Below is the list of top 100 universities in Africa (2015).
1 University of Cape: Town South Africa 2 University of Pretoria: South Africa 3 Universiteit Stellenbosch: South Africa 4 University of the Witwatersrand: South Africa 5 University of South Africa: South Africa 6 The American University in Cairo: Egypt 7 Cairo University: Egypt 8 Mansoura University: Egypt 9 Alexandria University: Egypt 10 University of Dar es Salaam: Tanzania 11 University of KwaZulu-Natal: South Africa 12 Rhodes University: South Africa 13 Ain Shams University: Egypt 14 Assiut University: Egypt 15 University of the Western Cape: South Africa 16 Université Mohammed V – Agdal: Morocco 17 University of Johannesburg: South Africa 18 Université de Ouagadougou: Burkina Faso 19 University of Nairobi: Kenya 20 University of Lagos: Nigeria 21 Makerere University: Uganda 22 Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University: South Africa 23 Obafemi Awolowo University: Nigeria 24 University of Ghana: Ghana 25 Universidade Eduardo Mondlane: Mozambique 26 Misurata University: Libya 27 The German University in Cairo: Egypt 28 North-West University: South Africa 29 Benha University: Egypt 30 Zagazig University: Egypt 31 Université de la Reunion: Reunion 32 University of Botswana: Botswana 33 Al Akhawayn University: Morocco 34 University of Namibia: Namibia 35 Université Abou Bekr Belkaid Tlemcen: Algeria 36 Université Cheikh Anta Diop: Senegal 37 University of Khartoum: Sudan 38 University of Ibadan: Nigeria 39 Helwan University: Egypt 40 Sudan University of Science and Technology: Sudan 41 University of Ilorin: Nigeria 42 Université Mentouri de Constantine: Algeria 43 Covenant University: Nigeria 44 Université Mouloud Maameri de Tizi Ouzou: Algeria 45 University of Swaziland: Swaziland 46 Université de Batna: Algeria 47 Université d’Alger: Algeria 48 University of Zimbabwe: Zimbabwe 49 Université Mohammed V – Souissi: Morocco 50 South Valley University: Egypt 51 Tanta University: Egypt 52 Moi University: Kenya 53 Université Kasdi Merbah de Ouargla: Algeria 54 Université Abdelmalek Essadi: Morocco 55 Minoufiya University: Egypt 56 Université Cadi Ayyad: Morocco 57 Federal University of Technology, Minna: Nigeria 58 Minia University: Egypt 59 University of Zambia: Zambia 60 Université d’Oran: Algeria 61 Addis Ababa University: Ethiopia 62 Université Djillali Liabes: Algeria 63 Université Abdelhamid Ibn Badis Mostaganem: Algeria 64 Al-Azhar University: Egypt 65 Kenyatta University: Kenya 66 Université Hassan II – Casablanca: Morocco 67 Suez Canal University: Egypt 68 Kafr el-Sheikh University: Egypt 69 Universiteit van die Vrystaat: South Africa 70 Cape Peninsula University of Technology: South Africa 71 Université M’hamed Bouguerra de Boumerdes: Algeria 72 Université Ibn Tofail: Morocco 73 Université Hassan II Mohammedia – Casablanca: Morocco 74 University of Nigeria: Nigeria 75 Université d’Antananarivo: Madagascar 76 University of Malawi: Malawi 77 Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology: Ghana 78 Universidade de Cabo Verde: Cape Verde 79 Polytechnic of Namibia: Namibia 80 Tshwane University of Technology: South Africa 81 University of Benin: Nigeria 82 Université des Sciences et de la Technologie Houari Boumediène: Algeria 83 Mbarara University of Science & Technology: Uganda 84 Strathmore University: Kenya 85 University of Port Harcourt: Nigeria 86 Ahmadu Bello University: Nigeria 87 Al Jabal Al Gharbi University: Libya 88 University of Agriculture, Abeokuta: Nigeria 89 Université Mohamed Khider de Biskra: Algeria 90 University of Shendi: Sudan 91 University of Mauritius: Mauritius 92 Durban University of Technology: South Africa 93 Université de Tunis El Manar: Tunisia 94 Université de la Manouba: Tunisia 95 Landmark University: Nigeria 96 Fayoum University: Egypt 97 Jomo Kenyatta University of Agriculture and Technology: Kenya 98 Vaal University of Technology: South Africa 99 Université Ferhat Abbas Sétif: Algeria 100 Université Hassiba Ben Bouali de Chlef: Algeria
A Senior Lecturer in the faculty of law at the University of Lagos (Unilag) and the Author, Nigeria Electricity Law and Regulation, has accused the state governments of being responsible for the current state of power in Nigeria.
Mr Yemi Oke, said during a daily breakfast show, Sunrise Daily on Channels Television on Tuesday, that power is a concurrent issue and not an exclusive item according to the constitution.
He said that the constitution states that a state has the authority to generate, transmit and distribute power in areas not covered by the national grid, and to set up regulatory bodies to manage electricity within the state.
“The regulatory environment is somehow skewed in favour of the Federal Government, which should not be,” Mr Oke said.
He further pointed that electricity can be generated according to the climatic and environmental situation, noting that Lagos State could generate power from biomass due to its dump sites.
The lecturer also noted that areas with very hot climate could generate power from solar, while areas where there are wind turbines such as Jos could generate wind power in order to ensure energy grabbing and decentralisation.
On electricity privatisation, Mr Oke warned that privatising a sector and changing its law simultaneously would drive away the investors.
He stressed that electricity tariff cannot be increased without the consent of the consumers, noting that there are structured methodologies involved in the process.
On the issue of metering, Mr Oke was of the view that this would give close to accurate estimation of both residential and commercial consumption, although it would reduce the nation’s consumption pattern as consumers would effectively control their consumption.
Experts have continued to task individuals and organisations to play active roles in safeguarding the environment from total degradation.
The Deputy Vice Chancellor of University of Lagos, Professor Oluwatoyin Ogundipe, has blamed human activities for the water hyacinth at the Ogun River.
The management of the University of Lagos (UNILAG) has ordered that all academic activities on the campus be suspended until the situation on the campus improves.
The House of Representatives on Wednesday honoured 29 year-old Ayodele Dada, who graduated with a cumulative grade point average of 5.0 from the University of Lagos.
A member of the the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Adetokunbo Pearse, has recommended that Nigeria should invent structures that will fight corruption proficiently rather than going after individuals.
A Senior Lecturer in the faculty of law at the University of Lagos (Unilag) and the Author, Nigeria Electricity Law and Regulation, has accused the state governments of being responsible for the current state of power in Nigeria.