Anambra State Government has warned health officials against selling the newly-introduced rotavirus vaccines, insisting they were free of charge.

The Executive Secretary, Anambra State Primary Health Care Development Agency (ANPHCDA), Dr. Chioma Ezenyimulu, gave the warning at a stakeholders’ meeting organised by the agency, in collaboration with the Ministry of Health and partners.

She said the vaccines provided by the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), World Health Organisation (WHO) and other partners were to be freely given at health facilities,  warning that anyone caught making merchandise of them would be punished.

Ezenyimulu said: “We don’t want to hear that any local government collected one naira, for this will be another national scandal. Nobody should pay a dime to get the vaccine. If you’re forced to do so, please call this number: 08064036537.

“We’re still battling with COVID-19 vaccination rumours that one or two local governments are collecting money and they all denied it. Let it not repeat itself in this exercise.”

She said the vaccine was being introduced for the first time into the national programme for immunisation, with November 29 slated as the campaign launch date in the state.

Ezenyimulu urged the media, civil society organisations, traditional and religious leaders, social mobilisation officers and health educators in the 21 local governments to take ownership of the project by giving it the wide publicity it deserved.

UNICEF consultant Mac-Fisi Kenneth said the body was collaborating with the state to ensure children were not only protected from the preventable diseases, but that those diseases were also eliminated from the state.

A civil rights activist, Prince Chris Azor, described the initiative as a booster for the state.

He called on other stakeholders to ensure its adequate publicity, urging parents and caregivers to take advantage of the free vaccine to ensure their children were vaccinated.

The state Health Educator, Uju Onwuegbuzina, sought personal and environmental hygiene, good nutrition, including exclusive breastfeeding in the first six months of a child’s life, handwashing with soap and water, to stay safe from the virus.

The President and Chairman of Tompolo Foundation, High Chief Government Ekpemupolo aka Tompolo, has donated relief items worth N150 million to flood victims in Bayelsa, Delta and Rivers states.

He said the gesture was part of efforts to alleviate the suffering of the victims.

The materials include 2,400 bags or rice, 100 bags of beans, 200 bags of garri, 5,000 tubers of yam, 200 kegs of palm oil, 600 kegs of groundnut oil and 2,000 cartons of noodles.

Handing over the items to representatives of the impacted areas in Warri, Delta State, yesterday, the Executive Secretary of the foundation, Dr. Paul Bebenimibo, said the foundation had been in the business of rendering assistance to the “less privileged” since the previous flood in 2012.

He said: “We bring good tidings from the president and chairman of Tompolo Foundation. It’s no longer news that our country was greeted with massive flood and the impact was overwhelming. People have been in disarray in Bayelsa, Rivers and Delta states.

“Tompolo Foundation is established to cater for the less privileged. We have been in this mission for about 10 years. Specifically, sometime in 2012, a similar flood occurred and the foundation provided palliatives for the people. This year, we have come again to do our bit.

“I want to inform you that the president and chairman of Tompolo Foundation has approved a palliative worth N150million to distribute to the good people of Bayelsa, Rivers and Delta states.

“That was why I earlier recognised the people that are representing these states. We are here to hand over the items to the beneficiaries so that they can move them to their destinations and distribute them to the affected people.”

Bebenimibo listed the local governments to benefit from the palliatives to include Ahoada West and East in Rivers State; Burutu, Bomadi, Patani local governments, as well as impacted communities across Isoko, Urhobo and Ndokwa nations in Delta State; and seven affected councils in Bayelsa State.

He said Bayelsa, as one of the highly impacted states, would get 600 bags of rice.

Representative of Bayelsa State and the member representing Constituency IV, Southern Ijaw Local Government, Chief MacDonald Igbadiwei, thanked the foundation for assisting the victims.

He urged other well-meaning Nigerians to emulate the kind gesture.

Others who received the items on behalf of the victims in Delta State are the chairmen of Bomadi, Burutu and Patani councils; 1st Vice President of Isoko Development Union Worldwide, Crown Prince Desmond Ogbaudu (Isoko nation); Executive Director, Social Services, Delta State Oil Producing Areas Development Commission (DESOPADEC), Achudume Sunday (Ndokwa nation) and the Commissioner representing Urhobo Ethnic Nationality, DESOPADEC, Olorogun Vincent Oyibode.

People of Ogwugwu/Umueze Oba community in Idemili South Local Government Area of Anambra State have protested alleged encroachment on their ancestral lands and demolition of about 70 houses by land grabbers aided by suspected armed thugs.

The protesters carried placards with varying inscriptions as: “Save our soul, our land is not for sale”, “Save our land from land grabbers”, “Land grabbers are demolishing our homes”, “Stop selling our land to land agents”, among others.

Addressing newsmen, Chairman of the community, Barr. Chuba Oranusi recalled that the community ceded a portion of the land to the state government, during former Governor Chinwoke Mbadinuju era, who gave it to a certain land development firm for construction of market.

He added that it was then agreed that the firm would not go beyond the boundary given to it by the community even as a paltry compensation of N72 million out N144million they agreed to pay was paid.

He said, “They never came back to commmence work on the project until now they came with bulldozers, pall loaders, military, police, armed thugs, among others, and commenced encroachment on our land and demolishing any building within reach, exceeding the portion given to them.

“For four days now they have continued the encroachment and demolition of structures, including destruction of our wives’ farmlands and economic trees. Some of us have forcefully abandoned our ancestral land/homes and fled for our lives.

“What you see here are touts, people who use government apparatus to acquire community land. But we will not allow them, let them just develop the portion we gave to them, we are not interested in the compensation.

“What they do is as they demolish, they call buyers and sell at N10million, N5million, as the case may be, for a plot. So many were beaten up when they approached them to know what was amiss.

“We urge Governor Charles Chukwuma Soludo to come to our rescue as we have been rendered homeless and the encroachment is still ongoing. They are not even developing the market they claimed they wanted to build.

“The destruction is unquantifiable as it was a land where we buried our grandfathers. We were born in this land and have lived here since Adam.”

Also speaking, Youth leader, Uchenna Obiegbu, said the community had been gripped with fear of uncertainty as their houses have been demolished and more are being demolished.

“We can never be alive and see land grabbers and greedy land speculators confiscate our fatherland. I have just been withholding our youths to avoid bloodshed but that has a limit,” he said.

When contacted, spokesman of the construction firm, Mr. Mike Egbule, dismissed the allegations, saying the firm never went beyond the portion given to it.

“It was rather the people of the community that encroached on our land. What we’re doing is to recover those land they encroached upon. We have the land’s master plan and team of surveyors were with us to ensure we recover our own land,” he explained.

Security agencies in the Southeast have been tasked to be well prepared for possibilities of violence ahead of the 2023 general elections in the region.

A non-governmental organisation, CLEEN Foundation, made the call at the capacity building workshop the organisation organised for divisional police officers in the Southeast geopolitical zone on election security management in Nigeria, held in Enugu.

Executive Director of Cleen Foundation, Gad Peter, also advised security agencies in the region to embark on pre-election security mapping to curtail violence during the electioneering campaigns and elections proper.

He noted that Nigeria was experiencing a complex security crisis and skirmishes across the country that warrant pre-election security mapping ahead of the 2023 elections.

Peter who was represented by the Programme Manager, Chigozirim Okoro, said, “For instance, strengthening the capacity of police personnel and institutions in specific strategic areas bothering around public order and human rights has become fundamental.

“Citizens’ perception of the political class using security institutions as a tool of manipulation, repression, and oppression before, during, and after elections has primarily informed the ongoing capacity building of police officers across the six geo-political zones in the country.

“To this end, an honest, professional, and people-centered policing approach is crucial to ensuring that elections are legitimate and credible.

“Meanwhile, adequate security remains a critical factor determining the success or otherwise of any electoral process. The police is key to the provision of election security,” Peter said.

In a paper he presented at the programme, a retired Assistant Inspector General of Police (IGP), Austin Iwar, called on divisional police officers and those going to be involved in the 2023 election to remain neutral and impartial as they would be accountable for their actions and inactions.

The Catholic Bishop of Nnewi Diocese in Anambra State, Most Rev Jonas Benson Okoye, says, the church engaged security operatives to secure the property of the church and not to intimidate priests.

Speaking with reporters Saturday at Catholic Church premises in Nnewi, the Director of Communications in the diocese, Rev Fr Onwudiwe Martin, said the parishioners were falsely, accusing the bishop and his clerics.

He disclosed that some thugs went to two of the churches in Ihiala diocese in the cause of the crisis and made away with the blessed sacrament, describing it as sacrilege.

The churches according to Onwudiwe, were St Christopher Catholic Church Ihiala and All Saints Parish Oraifite, which he said, happened on November 11 and 14 respectively..

The Catholic Bishop and the Holy Ghost Priests had been at loggerheads following the bishop’s directive that they should vacate the premises they had occupied for many years.

The decision did not go well with the parishioners who challenged the Bishop on his decision which had led to an unending crisis in the diocese.

However, Onwudiwe and the former Director of Communications in the diocese, Fr Hygenius Aghaulo, said the security men sent to the Ihiala diocese were there to protect the church property, especially, the sacrament.

The priests made it clear that the decision to bring in security operatives was sanctioned by the governor of the State, Prof Chukwuma Soludo.

They said the Catholic Church would embark on reparation prayers Sunday.

According to them, “The Bishop gave others that the security men should not touch the priests at all. That is why the thugs mobbed up to go and counter them which made the State security men run away from them.

“The truth is that any sincere priest on ground church premises who feels insecure alerts the bishop first and not the thugs,” they said.

The Delta state governorship candidate of the All Progressive Grand Alliance, APGA, Chief Great Ovedje Ogboru has said that if the Bimodal Voters’ Accreditation System, BVAS was used in 2015 and 2019 general elections, Delta state Peoples Democratic Party, PDP would have lost all her elections.

He assured Deltans that there is no room for riggers in the 2023 general elections, saying that every vote will now count through the aid of the Bimodal Voters’ Accreditation System newly introduced in the 2022 electoral act, urging to go and collect their PVC to change the narratives in Delta state.

Ogboru who made this statement in Oleh, Isoko South local government area of Delta state, during the flag off and unveiling of the campaign team of the House of Representatives candidate of APGA, Hon. Silas Buowe for Isoko federal constituency, said the BVAS is a tool for protecting your franchise and ensuring that votes count.

He said, “If we had had the BVAS in place in 2015 or 2019, PDP would have lost her all her elections in Delta State. So we are hopeful that all APGA candidates will win all their elections across the state with the new 2022 electoral act.”