The Nation Newspaper

Tag: sentence

  • HIV not death sentence, says LSACA chief

    HIV is no longer a death sentence if the person eats well and routinely takes the prescribed drugs. Chief Executive Officer of the Lagos State AIDS Control Agency (LSACA), Dr. Oluseyi Temowo, has said.

    He spoke at the kick-off of the Health Initiative Programme for rural dwellers in Poka, Eredo Local Council Development Area of Lagos State.

    It was organised by the National Youth Service Corps (NYSC), and supported by the wife of Lagos State Governor Mrs. Bolanle Ambode.

    According to Temowo, it will be a ‘crime’ for anybody to die of HIV/AIDS in the state because the government has put in place various measures to check the spread, treatment and eradication of the disease from the state by year 2030.

    He said with the support given to the agency by Governor Akinwunmi Ambode, a full-scale HIV testing services, to align with the global initiative of 90-90-90,  has begun across the state.

    He explained that by 2020, 90 per cent of the people would have known their HIV status and 90 per cent of those that know their status would be able to access Anti-retroval Treatment (ART), while those accessing ART would have suppressed viral load and would not be able to infect others.

    “Therefore, ‘by 2030 in Lagos, we would have been able to eradicate HIV/AIDS. The agency trucks for on-the-go HIV services are moving to the nooks and crannies of the state to conduct free HIV testing services. This is in addition to the residents being able to access free HIV Counseling and Testing Services across the government hospitals in the state,”he said.

    Thanking the National Youth Service Corps members for the programme, Mrs. Ambode enjoined every resident of Poka and Epe to come out  to access the free medical outreach in the environment.

    Present on the occasion were Alara of Ilora Oba Akanmu Okunola Adesanya; Oba of Noforija, Oba Babatunde Ogunlaja; and Oba of Poka, Oba Aileri.

  • ‘It is not a life sentence’

    ‘It is not a life sentence’

    Mrs Dotun Akande, founder, Patrick Speech and Language Centre explains the mission of the centre, chief of which is to rehabilitate autistic children and set them up for a better life.

    What is St. Patrick School all about?

    Patrick Speech and Language Centre is like a rehabilitation centre for children living with autism. Like I always say, autism is not a life sentence. When they come here, they are not supposed to stay here forever, but get better and move on with their lives.           Why did you set up the school?

    It was my zeal to know more about autism and to encourage parents with these children not to hide them but rather to bring them out to where they can get help. That prompted me to set up Patrick Speech and Language School. Imagine when you start working on a child and his teacher was changed to an overzealous one, the child may react negatively; so they had to change the teacher in order not to lose the child. Sometimes these children need cool-headed teachers around them while for some it is the overzealous teachers that they need to perform excellently well. I did not give up on my son and the success story is that today, he is studying Mathematics in the U.S. It was after he got over it that I decided to set up the school Patrick Speech and Language Centre, to tell other parents with autistic children that there is hope for them, if only they don’t give up. For my son, as soon as he got over it, he was enrolled in a regular school. All this while, he was struggling with English language literature, expression; but anything that has to do with Mathematics and Sciences, he excelled. He also loves music. For other children, the reverse is the case. Many of these children, if given the chance, excel in various fields.

    Your advice to parents with autistic children who are still hiding them

    For parents still ashamed of bringing out their children with this condition, my advice is they should be brought out of hiding. Our children do well when they come out and when they see people talk. Do not hide them at home.    The cost of taking care of these children no doubt is high. At Patrick Speech and Language School, we have over 40 children and a minimum of three students to a teacher. But the end justifies the means.

    Success stories of autistic children

    Many of the students that have come to our centre in the last ten years since we started out have overcome and gone back into mainstream schools. In the school there are two big units which they have to pass through: the Speech Therapy and the Speech Clinic Unit. It is an hourly session with the children, through which you measure their progress. For those in mainstream school, their parents also bring them in for one hour and where they are trained; and there have been very big improvement. Sometimes it is difficult to monitor the progress of some of these children because as soon as the child starts to talk, the parents just yank them off to mainstream schools. But sometimes, it does not work that way. They need that support to a certain level before you take them away.

    Is there any way government can intervene in the rehabilitation of these children?

    The only solution is that government must intervene. If they are ready to pay for 20 indigent families with autistic children in a year and monitor their progress, then these families will go back to the community and speak for them. Even at Patrick School, we support some indigent families free of charge.

  • Cambodia sentences Facebook user for comments

    A Cambodian Court has sentenced a university student to 18 months in prison for calling for a colour revolution on Facebook in 2015.

    Kong Raya, 25, was convicted of incitement by Phnom Penh’s Municipal Court on Tuesday, local media reported.

    Kol Preap, Executive Director of Transparency International Cambodia, said the sentence was a clear message to Facebook users, who numbered over 5 million, or 34 per cent of the population in 2015, according to USAID.

    “This particular case of Kong Raya could generate concern among Facebook users on their possible consequences for expressing political opinions or personal views on controversial issues, especially from now leading up to the elections in 2017 and 2018,” he said on Wednesday.

    The term colour revolution is usually used to describe non-violent democracy movements in former Soviet republics in the early 2000s.

    Online discussion of such movements has led to political crackdowns in countries like China.

    Kong Raya had asked his friends on Facebook in August 2015 if they would dare to make a color revolution with me,” according to the Cambodia Daily.

    He was arrested two weeks later by police from the Interior Ministry, the newspaper said.

    Prime Minister Hun Sen, who has been in power since 1997 but effectively in control for 30 years, has found that his Cambodian People’s Party is less popular with today’s youth than previous generations.

    Facebook has become a popular forum for political discussion in Cambodia, particularly among young people who are dissatisfied with alleged corruption in the governing party and the opposition.

     

  • Drama as Ekiti trader prostrates in court to escape sentence

    A trader at the New Garage, Ado Ekiti,, Odims Frank,went flat tommy at an Ado Ekiti Customary court  earlier this week,begging for leniency after he was slammed with  contempt of court.

    Frank had  filed a petition at the court against  one Adenike Aarin,but  walked out of

    the court midway into the  proceeding.

    The  court president Joseph Ogunsemi did not take kindly to Frank’s action, and  directed a police officer attached to the court to get the man arrested.

    Back inside the court and told what offence he had committed, Frank  first went

    on his knees before prostrating to plead for leniency.

    “My lord, I am very sorry sir, please have mercy on me, I am very sorry. I will never do that again, I respect this court, kindly pardon me my lord,” he said.

    Mr .Ogunsemi upbraided him for his behaviour,saying: : “Is this the way you behave to your customers? This is a court of law, it is not a marketplace and you must comport yourself well in  court and not do what you like .

    “You are warned for the last time or have you taken ‘kain-kain’ this morning?

    “Don’t repeat that again.Rudeness to a judge is rudeness to all judges and magistrates in Nigeria.

    “If you do that again, that will be counted against you and the consequences will be terrible for you.You are pardoned.”

    Prior to Frank’s drama,counsel to the defendant, Miss E.E. Iseh, had r asked for a new date

    to apply for records of proceedings of the last sitting to enable her cross-examine the petitioner.

    The court president subsequently adjourned the case to August 31 for further hearing.

  • Court martial: Three soldiers appeal death sentence

    Court martial: Three soldiers appeal death sentence

    Three of the 12 soldiers sentenced to death on September 15 by a court martial have challenged the rulling at the Court of Appeal, Abuja.

    The men, Igomu Emmanuel, Stephen Clement and Andrew Ngbede  faulted the trial leading to their conviction and urged the court to quash the decision.

    They raised 11 grounds of appeal in their case filed for them last Thursday by their lawyer, Godwin Obla (SAN).

    The appellants said the charge on which they were tried and convicted “is vague, disjointed, imprecise and incoherent”, adding that they did not understand  it.

    They argued that not only were their names not stated on the charge, it also violated Section 36 (6) of the constitution, which entitled an accused to be informed of the details and nature of the offence for which he was charged.

    The appellants further argued that the General Court Martial erred in law and came to a perverse decision by convicting them in respect of the offence of conspiracy and failed to consider the defence of  alibi, which they raised, but which was not investigated by the court martial.

    “The General Court Martial erred in law and thus occasioned a miscarriage of justice when it disregarded the objection of the defence counsel raised before and at the arraignment of the appellants on the defective nature of the charge brought against them.”

    The soldiers said they were charged and convicted at large under Section 114 of the Armed Forces Act and that the charge did not tie the offence they allegedly committed to any of the subsections of Section 114 of the Armed Forces Act.

    They said Section 114 did not define the offence of criminal conspiracy as an offence known to law.

    The appellants argued that the first count of the charge “is ambiguous, uncertain and defective”, because they were charged under Section 114 of the Armed Forces Act, but punished under Section 97 (1) of the Penal Code Law.

    They also faulted the third count of the charge for being “uncertain and defective” because they were charged under Section 95 of the Armed Forces Act, which provided a punishment of life imprisonment if convicted, but were sentenced to death under Section 106 of the Act.

    The appellants said the General Court Martial based its decision on an equivocal, indirect, negative, uncorroborated and suspicious circumstantial evidence in convicting them.

    They said the General Officer Commanding (GOC) 7 Division, Maj.-Gen. Ahmadu Mohammed, whom they were accused of attempting to murder, was not invited by the prosecution to give evidence on the alleged attempt on his life.

    The appellants also noted that no ballistic evidence was produced to show that it was their shot that hit Maj.-Gen. Mohammed’s car.

    They contended that none of the witnesses identified any of them as the person who shot at the GOC’s vehicle, and that the court martial merely relied on circumstantial evidence, which did not lead conclusively and indisputably that any of their shots was the one, if any, that hit the rear right door of the command’s Sport Utility Vehicle (SUV).

    No date has been fixed for the hearing of the appeal.

     

  • An uncompleted sentence…

    An uncompleted sentence…

    •Dimgba Igwe, wordsmith and ace journalist dies suddenly at 58

    Woe alas, he has become a hanging sentence… a hoary ellipsis, a dangling modifier even. Oh, death would not let him dot his i’s and cross his t’s. How perverse that death would force a full-stop on Dimgba Igwe’s story. Now he has become a low dirge sung in forlorn newsrooms. To term it death is to misname it. Call it the extirpation or extinguishing in the manner of putting out a fire. Or more appropriately, Igwe has been switched off; the bright light of Nigeria’s journalism has been quenched, a roaring torch has been doused even in this age of darkness.

    A long, beautiful sentence has been left hanging, semi-completed and near-meaningless. Dimgba Igwe was felled mid-sentence. He was out jogging at dawn last Saturday when he was knocked down by a hit-and-run driver. Igwe had bestraddled Nigeria’s newspaper industry since he graduated from the Nigerian Institute of Journalism (NIJ) in 1983. He rose rapidly through the National Concord newspaper group from Staff Writer in 1984 to Deputy Editor/Deputy General Manager of Weekend Concord in 1996.

    It was at the effervescent Weekend Concord which he co-midwifed with his long-standing soul mate, Mike Awoyinfa, that he proved his mettle as a journalist’s journalist. The weekend title which was refreshing, flighty and easy-to-read proved an instant success at the period and earned Igwe and Awoyinfa their unique place in Nigeria’s newspapering firmament. With a combination of good writing and quality management which the two friends embodied, the paper was not only a best-selling weekend title, it was also the highest circulating.

    The duo would replicate the Weekend Concord feat in 2002 when they led the team that founded the Nigerian version of the famous UK tabloid, The Sun. The coming of The Sun to the Nigerian newspapering landscape has vastly changed the equation, especially in the soft-sell genre. The title also became a circulation and readership success and has continued to wax stronger till date. Igwe was the founding Deputy Editor-in-Chief as well as the Group Deputy Managing Director until a few years ago when he and his friend, Awoyinfa, had to stand down. He was the Vice Chairman of the Sun Publishing Group up until the time of his demise.

    Born on May 16, 1956 in Igbere, Bende, Local Government Council of Abia State, he co-authored with Awoyinfa, The Art of Feature Writing for Newspapers and Magazines, in 1990 which became recommended text in many journalism schools and departments. His long-standing and twin-like relationship with his seemingly inseparable friend, Awoyinfa is a signpost of the peculiar nature of Igwe for those who never knew him. Theirs’ was a friendship that is rare today and with which they had accomplished many major projects; the one richly complementing the other. They were to present a major book to the public this month from their famous smithery.

    Igwe was not just a great journalist and administrator; he was also a man of immense goodwill and good nature. Everyone who came in contact with him testifies that he is a DHL personality: Diligent, Honest and Law-abiding. He took life very seriously and did all that mattered to make it worthwhile for himself and for all around him. This must explain why he excelled and succeeded as a journalist in today’s Nigeria.  Igwe was so meticulous in life that only a freak accident as happened to him September 6 could have cut short his life; it is sad.

    For one who cared so much about life and health, his country let him down when it mattered most. He was reportedly turned back by two hospitals and he gave up on the way to the third. If only he got first aid in one of the hospitals? In sane societies, there are ambulance services and various emergency responses to accident victims. In sane societies major streets and neighbourhoods have security surveillance. Not here. We may never find Dimgba Igwe’s killer. What a  country!

    Adieu, great man of the pen; we take solace in the fact that you left the world a much better place.