Category: South West

Ondo State Government yesterday signed a partnership agreement with a non-governmental organisation, the Gender Mobile Initiative (GMI), to end gender-based violence and sexual assault in the state-owned tertiary institutions.

GMI Executive Director Ms Omowunmi Ogunrotimi, speaking in Akure after the ceremony, praised the Governor Oluwarotimi Akeredolu administration for having the political will to tackle sexual assault on campuses.

She said the partnership would enable the government to adopt its model, while technical support would be provided for the state.

Ogunrotimi said the move hoped to strengthen the institutions’ internal mechanism with innovative policy design, to foster accountability and access to justice.

She said: “Before now, we have been interacting with individual institution, but this partnership shows that Ondo State is demonstrating a political will to own the process in a way that they will be the ones to drive it, mandate these state- owned institutions of higher learning to actually adopt this model.

“We will provide the technical support for them to develop their policy. We will provide the technical support for them to develop their policy, to build their capacity to be able to respond to sexual harassment.”

Special Adviser to Ondo State Governor on Gender Mrs. Olamide Falana said the initiative was to ensure prevention of gender-based violence.

She said there were still gaps to be fixed in the fight against sexual assault despite the signing of the Violence Against Persons Prohibition Act into law.

An association, the Osogbo Progressives Union (OPU), has raised the alarm that disgruntled indigenes have sold 364 lock-up shops out of the 400 belonging to the community, to individuals.

The National President, Kamorudeen Makinde, who addressed reporters yesterday at the Osogbo City Hall, ahead of the union’s general meeting, said the executives of the association were elected on December 28, 2021, but some disgruntled indigenes were frustrating the development of the community.

He said: “We have 400 lock-up shops built by the community, but it is unfortunate that some disgruntled members of the union, who lost the election last year, conspired and sold off 364 shops and other property to individuals. This is unfortunate. They have sold the fortune of our children.”

Makinde said the disgruntled indigenes had begun sinister moves to frustrate the meeting of the union slated for tomorrow by causing violence.

”The recent legal step taken by the executives, which exposed how some individuals sold the property of the town, is making the affected indigenes to regroup to frustrate the planned meeting, which will further energise the association in its determination to ensure that the looted property of the Osogbo Progressive Union are recovered and unprecedented development achieved for Osogbo,” he said.

Makinde urged Osogbo indigenes to remain calm and law-abiding, saying anybody caught truncating peace would face the wrath of the law.

Ado-Ekiti indigenes and property owners at the demolished Ijoka Quarters yesterday protested the demolition of property worth N82.6 million by the Ekiti State Government, for the building of a bus terminal.

The protesters said it was unfair for the government to demolish their property over four years ago without compensating them. They described the act as “wicked.”

The placard-carrying protesters visited the bus terminal construction site and the palace of Ewi of Ado-Ekiti, Oba Adeyemo Adejugbe, to express their grievances.

Addressing reporters during the protest, spokesman for the landlords Mr. Afolabi Ogunsakin lamented Governor Kayode Fayemi’s alleged nonchalant posture to pay their compensations, after being evicted at short notice.

He said: “Our dear ancestral home was demolished in 2016 by the government without consideration for hardship and negative effects we have experienced.

“Negotiations regarding payment of compensations to members have been fruitless. After several appeals, it became clear that the government was not ready to pay us our entitlements. It is also clear that delay in payment of our entitlements is deliberate.

But the Commissioner for Housing and Urban Development, Mr. Diran Adesua, said the government was not insensitive over the matter.

He praised the landlords for their patience, saying the government would accede to their requests in due course.

“We want to commend the landlords for not being violent. We will begin the process for the payment of their compensations next Tuesday. The government feels their pains and we are assuring them that we will accede to their requests,” Adesua said.

“The community wants to state categorically that henceforth, step will be taken to disturb workers on site. We are ready to damn the consequences until the government pays us our entitlements.”

The head of the family, Chief Laisi Opokiti, lamented how they were being allegedly deceived by the government. He said: “Tombs where our forefathers were buried were destroyed during the demolition. We know that their spirits will fight.

“Four years, four months and two days after demolition, the government has not paid us a kobo. Governor Fayemi said he has approved money, but we are yet to be compensated. We appeal that they give us our entitlements.”

A former Deputy Editor of The Nation, Michael Adebayo Oguntimehin, is dead.

Oguntimehin died on April 21 in Lagos. He was 69.

He was at The Nation between July 2006 and February 2008 before joining The Compass Newspapers as its pioneer editor.

Oguntimehin retired as Deputy Editor-in-Chief of The Compass in 2010.

Before that, he was a pioneer employee of the defunct The Comet Newspaper before it metamorphosed to The Nation.

He was also at The Guardian Newspapers Limited where he served as editor of The Guardian Express.

Born at Igbooye, an agrarian community near Epe, Lagos State, on February 26, 1953, Oguntimehin was an alumnus of the University of Lagos where he graduated with  Second Class Upper Division in Mass Communication.

He was a member of several professional bodies, including an Associate at the Nigerian Institute of Public Relations and a member of the Nigerian Union of Journalists (NUJ).

The Oluwo of Iwo, Oba Abdulrosheed Akanbi, has crowned his newly-wedded wife, Firdauz Akanbi, as the queen of the ancient town.

Oba Akanbi married his heartthrob from the dynasty of Ado Bayero in Kano State on March 19 this year  at the home of Madakin Kano, Yola Quarters, Kano.

Like the ex-lover of the 55-year-old monarch, Chanel Chin, Oluwo crowned Firdauz and reiterated his commitment in loving the new queen like his progenitor, Oduduwa.

In a photo made available to The Nation yesterday, the royal couple wore deep blue Yoruba attire with beads on their neck and wrist.

In a short text by Oluwo that accompanied the photos, he wrote: “Every queen deserves a crown! My great progenitor Oduduwa taught me to love my queen by crowning her. That was why Olokun, the wife of Oduduwa, was crowned! King Telu loves Queen Firdauz and he crowned her!”

The European Union proposed its toughest sanctions yet against Russia yesterday, including a phased oil embargo, as Kyiv said Moscow was intensifying an offensive in eastern Ukraine and close Russian ally Belarus announced large-scale army drills.

Nearly 10 weeks into a war that has killed thousands of people, uprooted millions and flattened Ukrainian cities, Russia was intensifying its assault, Ukraine’s defence ministry said, with nearly 50 air strikes carried out on Tuesday alone.

Russia also stepped up strikes on targets in western Ukraine, saying it was disrupting Western arms deliveries.

A new convoy of buses began evacuating more civilians from the ravaged southeastern port city of Mariupol, which has seen the heaviest fighting of the war so far and where Moscow said remaining Ukrainian forces remained tightly blockaded.

Piling pressure on Russia’s already battered $1.8 trillion economy, the European Commission proposed phasing out imports of Russian crude oil within six months and refined products by the end of this year, sending the price of Brent up 4% to more than $109 a barrel.

“(President Vladimir) Putin must pay a price, a high price, for his brutal aggression,” Commission chief Ursula von der Leyen told applauding EU lawmakers in Strasbourg. read more

The plan, if agreed by EU governments, would be a watershed for the world’s largest trading bloc, which remains dependent on Russian energy and must find alternative supplies.

With the Czech Republic, Bulgaria, Hungary and Slovakia all seeking more time to adapt, there was no immediate deal, an official familiar with the talks said. EU envoys were expected to move closer to agreement when they meet again today.

Brussels has also proposed freezing the assets of Patriarch Kirill, head of the Russian Orthodox Church, adding him to a draft blacklist of hundreds of individuals accused of supporting the war, a diplomat said.

The EU has yet to target Russian natural gas, used to heat homes and generate electricity across the bloc and harder to replace than Russian crude.

The Kremlin said Russia was weighing various responses to the EU plans, adding that the sanctions would increase costs for European citizens.

On the war front, Russian Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu renewed a warning that Moscow would seek to hit shipments of weapons into Ukraine by the United States and its NATO allies.

The Russian defence ministry said its forces disabled six railway stations used to supply Western arms to Ukraine’s soldiers in the east. It said they also hit 40 military targets including four depots storing ammunition and artillery.

The authority of Synagogue Church of All Nation (SCOAN) has said there was no fire around the tomb of its founder, Pastor Temitope Balogun (TB) Joshua.

It said: “The minor fire outbreak, which was recorded on April 27, occurred at the church prayer resort at Agodo-Egbe, a different church site, which is over two kilometres away from the Ikotun-Egbe site of the main church where the tomb of the late Prophet TB Joshua is sited.”

The clarification was contained in a statement issued yesterday titled: “No Fire Incident At All Around the Tomb of TB Joshua”. It was signed by the Legal Officer of the church, James Akhigbe.

The church said it was “shocked, disappointed and embarrassed” that in spite of the statement promptly issued by the church and made available to media houses on the incident, a supposedly reputable media house would still go ahead to write about a non-existent fire near the tomb of Prophet T. B. Joshua.”

It regretted that the supposed media house had “abandoned all the known ethics of responsible journalism, the sacred journalistic principles of truthfulness and accuracy and descended with reckless abandon to the abyss of sensationalism and junk journalism when it reported, falsely, that the fire outbreak had gutted part of the late prophet’s tomb.

“Quite unfortunately enough, many other smaller media houses fed from this false reportage and thereby got the public largely misinformed.”

The statement said there was a distance of over two kilometres between the Agodo prayer resort where the minor fire incident was recorded at one of the general purpose stores and the Ikotun-Egbe headquarters premises of the church where the tomb was located.”

“It is too far apart to give room for any form of confusion or mix-up by any careful, genuine and honest reporter who is out to for the truth,” the statement said.

The church assured the public that regardless of how much the agents of darkness might strive; it stood on the promises of God that light would always prevail.

To prevent a recurrence, the church said it had instructed that necessary legal steps be taken “to protect the public from this manner of deliberate misinformation in future.”

Seventy-eight aspirants are to contest in the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) primary election for the Ondo State House of Assembly.

It is scheduled to hold on Saturday.

In the 2019 general election, PDP won two seats in Ondo Assembly.

Spokesman for the Ondo PDP, Kennedy Peretei, said the party would provide a level playing field for the aspirants.

He said there were talks at various constituencies on the possibility of stepping down by some aspirants.

Peretei said Ondo PDP hoped to field candidates that would ensure victory across the 24 constituencies in the state.