The 8th Senate of the country is just in it's 2nd year and it has received a record number of petitions.
According to the Senate President, Bukola Saraki,
'We've had over 339 petitions and so far we've been able to treat about 76 of them so we still have a few more to clear. To give you an idea, the 6th senate received only 6 petitions while the 7th senate received 87 petitions'.
Last Saturday, OAP Toolz and her husband Tunde Demuren revealed that they are expecting their first child together. However, before the announcement, she was hesitant to show her baby bump and had in fact tried to hide it.
Taking to her Instagram moments ago, Tolu said that BankyW was the one who encouraged her to announce the good news during his introduction ceremony with Adesua Etomi.
"So on Saturday morning I was trying to figure out how to hide my bump with L'osban when @bankywellington says 'Why not just announce it today?...you can just post a pic of both of you saying #TreeADem. I'm like during your intro, won't that be much?
Anyhow much later I walk into the venue and 2 people looked me up and down and said congratulations - operation hide-the-bump failed. So long story short, we quickly decided to take a pic and announce things our way.
President Muhammadu Buhari has approved an additional N35 billion to the Niger Delta Amnesty Programme for the sustenance of the new understanding between the Federal Government and the oil-producing communities of the region.
A statement from the office of Vice-President Yemi Osinbajo reads
"Currently the Amnesty Office has now paid up all ex-militants backlog of their stipends up to the end of 2016. The release of the additional funds is coming after presidential level interactive engagements in the Niger Delta, where the Buhari administration has enunciated a New Vision for the oil-producing areas based on the presentation made by the Pan Niger Delta Forum, PANDEF, to the President when he received leaders and stakeholders from the region last November.
Subsequently, the President asked his deputy, Vice President Yemi Osinbajo, SAN, to embark on a tour of the region that saw him visiting several oil-producing States in the country. Besides the monthly payment of about N65, 000 to N66,000 to the ex-militants, the funds would also go to the provision of reintegration activities under the Amnesty Programme including payment of tuition fees for beneficiaries from Niger Delta who are in post-secondary institutions at home and abroad, payment of in-training & hazard allowances and vocational training costs'.
WHAT TO DO WHEN YOU GET YOUR CALL UP LETTER..
Avoid unnecessary mistakes,
I would want to give you some tips on how to
Package yourself to the Orientation camp..
1. All You Need to Print Your call up letter is the
email you used in Registering at the NYSC portal
and your Password..
2. Print the Original copy, (twice) make
photocopies as much as possible.. (MAKE
Photocopies of All your documents because it's
expensive in camps)
3. Rearrange Your documents.. What you need to
take with you are : CALLUP LETTER, GREEN CARD,
STATEMENT OF RESULT,OR ORIGINAL CERTIFICATE,
PASSPORT, ID CARD,JAMB REGISTRATION
NUMBER, please make sure ur statement of result
carries your school stamp..
4. Put all these documents in a water resistant file
and seal properly.. DO NOT LAMINATE YOUR
GREEN CARD OR CALLUP LETTER..
5. Pack few stuffs please.. Don't give yourself
unnecessary stress .. Basic things to pack should
be...... YOUR WHITES,WHITE SHORT,WHITE TENNIS
SHOES, POUCH,TORCHLIGHT, MOSQUITO NET,ONE
OR TWO CASUAL WEARS,SOAP,ANTI-MALARIA
DRUGS,BED SPREAD,DETERGENT, CREAM,POWER
BANK,CASH AND ATM CARD,SOCKS,ETC..
You don't need much loads..cos after camp..you
are given 3 weeks terminal leave from your
PPA..which you are go home and get set for your
primary assignment..
6. Find people you are posted to same state, state
create a WhatsApp group and talk about when to
leave and how to go.. If anyone suits your
schedule you both can meet up at the Bustop and
move.. That is why this group is created.. Once
you get your callup letter.. Indicate the state You
are posted to here and meetup with people of
same state..
7 PLEASE check your date of deployment very well
to avoid mistakes.. Stream 2 thinking they are
stream 1.
8. Safety, a lot of Corp members have gone due to
road accident and the likes..you really don't have
to blame NYSC.. out transportation system is
messed up.. Look carefully at the bus you are to
travel with and know the kind of driver that is
going to drive you and MOST ESPECIALLY PRAY TO
SAFE JOURNEY..
DROP YOUR QUESTIONS.. thank you.
Two sisters, Aniema, 10 and 13-year-old Mary, who were accused of witchcraft have narrated their ordeal and their near death experience in the hands of their uncles in Akpabuyo Local Government of Cross River State.
The children were branded witches after their stepsister, one Adiaha Akpan said she had a dream where Mary and Aniema came to take her child away and wanted to kill her.
The CrossRiverWatch tracked the children to
Asanting village in Ikono local government area of Akwa Ibom State, where their father relocated them after their near death experience in the hands of persons they referred to as “Uncles”.
"That faithful day I was taken to Church and accused of being a witch. Uncle Victor asked that I confess that I am a witch or else when we get back to the house he will beat me up and use nails to pierce my body, but I told him that I was not a witch". Mary narrates.
She further stated that, "The next day Adiaha Akpan (who is their step sister) said she had a dream where I and Aniema my sister came to take her child away and that I wanted to kill her. She told Uncle Victor about the dream and he came and took us to the bush and started flogging us”.
Aniema added that, “When they went away I managed to untie myself and ran away but a broken bottle pierced my feet but I kept on running. The uncle caught up with me and continued with the flogging using big sticks and I was crying. They took me from one house to the other and some people joined them to flog me.”
According to them all manner of cruel methods were used on them to get them to confess to being witches, “they burned a nylon bag and let the flames fall on our skin to make us confess”, said Mary and confirmed by Aniema.
The children might have been murdered if not for the timely intervention of Okon Edet Bassey, their guardian, who is a staff of the Cross River State Local Government Service Commision.
Upon hearing of the incident, Bassey quickly called home and warned the torturers that if anything happened to the children, they won’t go scot free.
"I wasn’t around so I didn’t know where they were tied up. But when the information got to me, I sent a message across to them and reported the incident to some Army men who were there. When they heard about my moves they rushed and untied the children. As they brought the children back home, I quarreled with them and I was highly angry with them. "I promised them that they would not go scot free. The next day, Basic Right Council Initiative (BRCI), a not-for-profit organization based in Calabar with interest in safeguarding the rights of children was screening a movie, “The Fake Prophet” which focuses on witch craft branding and the role of fake clergymen in the propagation of the act.
“I took the children to the event. I narrated the story to them and they interviewed the children, they took their photographs, they even took the children to a nearby clinic for first-aid”, he narrated.
Bassey took the BRCI team to Divine Zion of God Church where the Pastor had accused the children of being witches, on their visit the Pastor wasn’t around but the BRCI team reported the issue to the police, but in a twist of event, “after the Pastor of the Church learned that some persons came and took pictures of his Church he went to IKot-Nakanda and brought police to arrest me on Sunday morning."
On his part, the Legal Counsel to BRCI, Barrister James Ibor while reacting to the case said the war against incidents like this has been on but that “We have been finding it difficult getting Government to understand the effect of child abuse, especially witchcraft branding and stigmatization which is borne out of the superstitious belief in witches and wizards.
“Our investigation has revealed that it is difficult for Pentecostal Churches to exist in Nigeria without promoting the belief in witches and wizard. That is what actually promotes their trade. Unfortunately, that which gives them money is destroying our society. It’s destroying our children. The children we call the future for tomorrow”,
Ibor stated.
Concluding, he said the Police sometimes have been complacent in some of these cases, citing the situation in Akpabuyo where they arrested Mr. Bassey instead of the Pastor who had accused the children of being witches.
Source: CrossRiverWatch
Veteran actress, Joke Silva, has voiced her opinion on the increasing rate of celebrity divorces in recent times and gave insight as to why that is so. The actress, who has been married to her actor husband for over three decades, revealed that divorce is not more prevalent among celebrities than it is with couples in other professions who are not so popular.
According to her, celebrities seem to be more hit by divorce only because they are in the public eye therefore whatever happens to them is made public. Read what she wrote after the cut...
“It is because the younger generation are very popular because of social media, and so, whatever happens to them becomes news; forgetting that there are as many divorces, there as many separations in other professions such as medical, financial, legal among others. Name any profession; there are so many separations in those as well,” she told New Telegraph.
The mother-of-two fingered social media as the major challenge facing celebrity marriages and advised celebrities to learn how to manage what they put out for others to see, that way they can still keep the important parts of their lives private and secure.
“There are a lot of challenges that are being faced by artistes of this particular generation; and one of those challenges is the social media, which almost doesn’t allow you your life. People of my age, when we were getting all the attention, and we were feeling like we were the best thing, things were different. You need all the attention anyway. For your work to sell, you need that popularity. It goes with the job, so you need that popularity. But after a while, you also get to learn that it can be a double edge sword. So, it is about managing it, appreciating the audience for appreciating your work, but also giving yourself that limit to what aspect of you they can experience.
“In this age of reality shows where nothing seems to be off limit, the new skill that the entertainer has to learn is how much do you give your audience? More so, because you don’t want to be false; like used to happen in the early years of Hollywood where they would create this incredible image, and then it was almost impossible for the performer to live under that image; and a lot of them used to use all kinds of medications just to fit a particular image that was being built around them. Now, we are in the age of social media, so it is learning how to cope with social media, to do the work that social media does, which is to get your work out there, to get your face out there. But then limit that too so that you do have a life; so that you can have some modicum of emotional privacy. Those are the challenges that I know that the younger generation face.''
