Happenings

In 1988, Michael Jackson on his video release of  ”Smooth Criminal” shocked all his fans by a move of more than 45 degrees towards the earth challenging the gravitational force of earth.  Actually, he was successful in doing that with the help of a string in the video. But, It was difficult to apply this idea of string during live performances. So he found an amazing and idealistic solution of this problem with the help of his two friends. He made his shoes cut in V shape. On the dance floor during a live performance, the bolts were hided which gets sticked to the heels of the shoes. With the help of this he used to bent more than 45 degrees without any problem. People couldn’t see the bolts and used to enjoy Jackson’s dance a lot. Michael Jackson named those shoes “Anti Gravity Shoe” and in 1993 the shoe were patent.

Speaker, House of Representatives, Aminu Waziri Tambuwal has said he cannot stop members of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) in the lower legislative chamber of the National Assembly from defecting to other political parties. He made this known at the 11 th Annual Daily Trust Dialogue with the theme, “Incumbency and impunity in politics-safeguarding our democracy beyond 2015” yesterday in Abuja. Various speakers at the dialogue including a former President of the Civil Liberties Organisation, Ms. Ayo Obe; a former Chairman of the Transition Monitoring group, Festus Okoye, and a Senior Fellow at Centre for Democracy, Dr. Jibrin Ibrahim, expressed fears about the rising level of impunity in the country ahead of the 2015 general elections. Tambuwal, who was represented at the event by the deputy spokesperson for the House, Mr. Victor Ogene, said faulting the Speaker for reading the letter by members, who defected from the PDP to the All Progressives Congress, was an “encourag

Members of the dreaded Islamist sect, Boko Haram, have sacked a police station in Banki, a border town with Cameroon, in the troubled Bama Local Government Area of Borno State, after which they took over the town, slitting throats of residents on Wednesday. Though, details of the casualties of the attack were sketchy as at press time on Thursday, the Borno State Commissioner of Police, Lawan Tanko, told journalists that the insurgents killed a policeman and some of his men sustained injuries. “I confirm there was an attack on Banki town by suspected members of the Boko Haram in the early hours of Wednesday. “The police station in the town was partially affected. I lost an officer and some of my men sustained injuries”, Tanko said. It was also gathered that an unspecified number of residents were killed by the sect members, who undertook a door-to-door raid, slitting throats of residents in the siege that took over an hour before fleeing in the earlier hours of Wednesday. This

The Nigeria Governors’ Forum (NGF) led by governor of Rivers State, Rotimi Amaechi on Thursday called on the National Assembly to engage a credible foreign firm to carry out a comprehensive independent forensic audit of the alleged missing $49.8 billion (N8.5 trillion) from the Federation Account. Their call for a probe into the purportedly missing sum, which represents about 76 per cent of the value of crude oil lifting between 2012 and July 2013, according to the Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), Lamido Sanusi Lamido, comes on the backdrop of the inability of the Nigeria National Petroleum Corporation, NNPC, Federal Ministry of Finance, Petroleum Ministry, Federal Inland Revenue Service, FIRS, and CBN to reconcile the books as $10.8 billion is still yet to be properly accounted for. Reading the communiqué of the meeting held in Abuja that ended in the early hours of Thursday, Amaechi note d that declining state revenue being witnessed by the government is not

The House of Representatives on Thursday called on the Minister of Finance, Dr. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, to throw in the towel if she could no longer endure the heat that went with holding a public office. The lower chamber noted that the minister’s response to the 50 questions on the state of the economy was unsatisfactory and portrayed her as a combative public officer, who felt that she was superior to the legislature. The House called on her to quit honourably rather than attempting to engage the legislature with “gutter” tactics. The Deputy Chairman, House Committee on Media and Public Affairs, Mr. Victor Ogene, who reacted on behalf of the Speaker, Aminu Tambuwal, and the entire House in Abuja on Thursday, noted that her “grandstanding” would not derail the resolve of the lawmakers to expose corruption in public service. Part of Ogene’s reaction reads, “In this season of government by letter-writing, the House of Representatives would not allow itself to be entangled in

Who says science and religion don’t work together? The  “Hand of God”  has appeared in a recent photograph taken by one of NASA’s telescopes. The image shows something that literally looks like what one would see in a doctor’s office after getting an X-ray, but since it’s a celestial event, people are calling it the “Hand of God.” This is how it all came to happen. A star exploded and ejected an large cloud of material, which NASA’s Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array, or NuSTAR, captured in high-energy X-rays, shown in blue in the picture. Combining these images with those of NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory, which had imaged the green and red parts earlier using lower-energy X-rays, the result was the “Hand of God.” “NuSTAR’s unique viewpoint, in seeing the highest-energy X-rays, is showing us well-studied objects and regions in a whole new light,” NuSTAR principal investigator Fiona Harrison of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena said in a statement.

A former President of the Court of Appeal, Justice Ayo Salami (rtd), has disclosed that the problem with the nation’s judiciary is the embodiment of dishonourable people as judges. Speaking at the 10th Chief Gani Fawehinmi’s memorial lecture tagged ‘Fawehinmism’, orgainsed by the Ikeja branch of the Nigeria Bar Association (NBA), yesterday, Salami said dishonourable people had found themselves as judges in the judiciary system. “The problem with the Nigerian judiciary is that some dishonourable people who are not fit to be judges get into the stream and then make it to the highest level of the judicial career,” he said. He noted that the problem with the judiciary will remain unresolved and may get worse because Nigerians do not want truth to be told, as he recalled that part of the sins he committed was his ability to resist all temptations to be influenced by anybody in dispensing justice. He said he wished the NBA would have the will and capacity to implement the recomm

Former Vice President of World Bank's Africa division & former Nigerian minister Oby Ezekwesili is seeking to know what happened to the $10billion missing from the NNPC account. She tweeted at the Coordinating Minister for the Economy, Dr. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala a few minutes ago. See more tweets after the cut...

President Goodluck Jonathan has sacked all the service chiefs, who are statutorily the heads of the nation’s military apparatus. This was contained in the Twitter and Facebook posts by the Special Adviser to the President on Media and Publicity, Dr. Reuben Abati, on Thursday. No reason was given for the changes. The post read, “President Goodluck Ebele Jonathan in the exercise of the powers conferred on him by the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria approved the following changes in the nation’s Military High Command: “Air Marshal Alex Badeh takes over from Admiral Ola Sa’ad Ibrahim as Chief of Defence Staff. “Major-General Kenneth Tobiah Minimah takes over from Lt.-General Azubike Ihejirika as Chief of Army Staff. “Rear Admiral Usman Jibrin takes over from Vice Admiral Dele Ezeoba as Chief of Naval Staff; and Air Vice Marshal Adesola Nunayon Amosu takes over from Air Marshal Badeh as Chief of Air Staff. “All the changes are with immediate eff

The Coordinating Minister of the Economy and Minister of Fiance, Dr. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala has responded to the 50 questions handed her by the House of Representatives Committee on Finance. The Minister emailed her “detailed” response to THEWILL alongside a statement. “The document provides, in extensive detail, including tables and graphs, answers to the committee’s well publicized questions… The Minister stressed that, in spite of many challenges which government has acknowledged, the Nigerian economy is showing real and measurable progress in many areas. This can be seen in the fact that more jobs are being created; roads, rail and other infrastructure are being improved; the country is saving for the future and planning better for the present. The Jonathan administration, contrary to the impression given by some critics, is making impact in the areas that, according to credible opinion polls, Nigerians are most passionate about,” the statement said signed by her spokesman said.