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•Youths attack electricity workers in Port Harcourt The nation’s electricity generation, yesterday, crashed further to 1075 Mega Watts, an indication that electricity consumers would experience more frequent power outages. The generation statistics obtained by The Guardian yesterday showed that the generation level assumed a dwindling trend from 2,903MW recorded last week Thursday. It dropped to 1624MW on Sunday and further to 1075MW yesterday. However, the daily operational report of the Transmission Company of Nigeria (TCN) issued at the weekend showed that many of the power plants are currently affected by gas shortage, water management and transmission problems. No fewer than 16 thermal plants were affected lack of gas supply, as the Niger Delta militants continued to attack gas facilities in the region.Among the thermal plants that have suffered from sabotage attacks were Olorunshogo NIPP which lost 480MW; Omotosho (228MW); Geregu (435MW); ...

Justice Saka Oyejide Falola of the Osun High Court on June 3, ruled that Muslim female students should be allowed to wear the hijab in all public schools in the state. According to him, it is part of their fundamental rights as enshrined in the 1999 Constitution as amended. The Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN), in an emergency meeting following the ruling, threatened to direct Christian students in the state, to wear their choir robes and other religious garments to school in compliance with the judgment. They made good their threat as some students reportedly went to school dressed in choir robes and other garments depicting their distinct religious affiliations. As a result, JOSEPH ONYEKWERE, BRIDGET CHIEDU ONOCHIE AND GODWIN DUNIA sought the views of some senior lawyers on the development. While some agree with the judgment, others say no. Former Attorney General of the Federation and Minister of Justice, Chief Akin Olujimi (SAN), expressed the need to isolat...

Aliko Dangote Nigerian billionaire Aliko Dangote, Africa’s richest person, fell 25 places on the Bloomberg Billionaires Index on Monday as the naira tumbled on its first day of trading without a peg to the U.S. dollar. Dangote’s fortune fell $3.7 billion, knocking him to No. 71 on the Bloomberg ranking, down from No. 46 on Friday. The majority of Dangote’s $12.7 billion fortune is derived from a 91 percent stake in Dangote Cement Plc, which shed 2 percent in trading Monday. The Central Bank of Nigeria began auctioning dollars to limit the currency’s decline. The bank had been using capital controls to stem an outflow of dollars after the naira crashed in February 2015 when oil prices slumped. Dangote’s slide came as equity markets worldwide surged on hopes that British voters would choose to remain in the European Union. The upswing lifted the collective net worth of the 400 billionaires on the index by $44 billion to $3.99 trillion. Amancio Or...

FILES) This picture uploaded on the official Facebook page of the Egyptian military spokesperson on May 21, 2016 and taken from an undisclosed location reportedly shows some debris that the search teams found in the sea after the EgyptAir Airbus A320 crashed in the Mediterranean. Pieces of the cabin from the missing EgyptAir plane which crashed into the Mediterranean last month have been found, Egyptian investigators said on June 15, 2016. The pieces of fuselage were found at “several sites”, the Egyptian board of inquiry, said in a statement. The Airbus A320 which had been en route from Paris to Cairo disappeared on May 19, with the loss of all 66 people on board. / AFP PHOTO / Egyptian military spokesperson’s facebook page / HO Pieces of the cabin from the missing EgyptAir plane which crashed into the Mediterranean last month have been found, Egyptian investigators said Wednesday. A French vessel taking part in the search discovered pieces of fuselage at “several si...

• Nigeria’s crude business revenue drops by more than half to $39b in 2015 • Earns $10b between January and May The United States (U.S.) Energy Information Administration (EIA) has projected that members of the Organisation of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) net oil export revenues could fall from the $404 billion it earned in 2015 to about $341 billion in 2016. The EIA, which made this disclosure in OPEC revenues fact sheet released yesterday, stated that the cartel’s revenue declined by 46 per cent from the $753 billion earned in 2014 to $404 billion, mainly as a result of a precipitous fall in average yearly crude oil prices during the year. OPEC’s oil export income per person is back to where it was when prices crashed at the end of the 1990s. According to the agency, these net export earnings include Iran, unlike in previous reports. Specifically, Nigeria’s oil export revenue declined from the $78 billion it earned in 2014 to $39 billi...

  Britain’s first baby with three parents could be born next year after scientists declared the controversial In Vitro Fertilisation (IVF) technique safe for use in women. PHOTO CREDIT: google.com/search • Britain’s first three-parent baby could be born within one year • Human cells could be made from scratch in ten years Scientists have made giant strides in the quest to have a ‘perfect’/designer baby, create organs for transplant and developing immunity to viruses such as Ebola and Zika. A designer baby is a baby that is the result of genetic screening or genetic modification. Embryos may be screened prior to implantation, or possibly gene therapy techniques could be used to create desired traits in a child. Scientists, last week, a study published in Science, announced a landmark plan to recreate entire human cells from scratch within the next ten years. The enormously complex project involves synthesising all six billion ‘letters’ of th...

CBN governor • Apex bank promises to clear letters of credit • 41 banned items remain inadmissible • Reserve covers five months’ imports As the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) yesterday began the implementation of the flexible foreign exchange (forex) management in the country, it assured stakeholders that the new policy would deepen the market. The flexible foreign exchange (forex) management basically means the adoption of a market-driven exchange rate policy of the naira against other currencies. The new policy, CBN Governor Godwin Emefiele said, would be a single window market. He reassured holders of all backlog of mature letters of credits ( LCs) that they would be cleared immediately while primary dealers operators expected to be the major link between the apex bank and the market are expected to possess a minimum paid-up capital of $10 million. Emefiele gave the assurance yesterday in Abuja while unfolding the framework of the much-anticipated new forex r...

 Youths hand over keys to BOT chair, pro-Sheriff group retake office It was tension as well as drama yesterday as opposing groups of protesting youths struggled to retain control of the national secretariat of the Peoples Democratic Party(PDP) in Abuja. The first group opposed to Ali Modu Sheriff’s chairmanship of the party had besieged the secretariat in the morning, trapping former national secretary, Wale Oladipo, and the national auditor, Adewole Adeyanju, who had entered a few minutes before. The youths physically took control of the secretariat and secured the gates with new keys which they handed over to the Chairman Board of Trustees of the party Senator Walid Jibrin‎. But the pendulum was later to swing the other way later in the evening after Jibrin and the youths had gone when another group of youths who support Sheriff came to the secretariat with hammers and other tools, broke the secretariat gate sealed by Makarfi’s supporters and gained entry. It...

Ogoniland President Muhammadu Buhari will tomorrow, Thursday, June 2, 2016 in Bodo, Rivers State, officially perform the flag-off of the clean-up project of Ogoniland and other impacted communities in the oil-rich Niger Delta region. Minister of Environment, Amina Mohammed who made the disclosure to The Guardian during a brief, said: “This will be one of government’s major programmes for the areas contaminated and polluted by oil spillage in the region. “UNEP’s report has estimated that it could take up to 30 years for the rehabilitation of Ogoniland and its people to their full potential and it would require continuous funding of the project by development partners. “UNEP’s scientific assessment is focused on Ogoniland, a kingdom which covers close to 1,000 square kilometres in Rivers State, southern Nigeria. Ogoniland, situated in the Niger Delta region, is the third largest mangrove ecosystem in the world.” She further said: “The project would engage youths and...

A BTS • IHS power towers with 30m litres of diesel monthly Although most of the telecommunications operators in Nigeria have outsourced their Base Transceiver Stations (BTS) to Independent Tower companies in Nigeria, information has revealed that siting a tower usually cost about $40 million. Currently, available data from the industry showed that there are about 31,000 telecommunications BTS in Nigeria. MTN in 2014 outsourced about 9,151 towers to IHS Holding, at a transaction cost estimated to be at about $1.8 billion. Etisalat, which has about 4000 towers spread across the country, also outsourced majority of them to IHS. Speaking to journalists in Lagos, Executive Vice Chairman and Group Chief Executive Officer, IHS Towers, Issam Darwish, disclosed that building a base station will cost an operator an average of N40 million. “Tower business is a highly capital-intensive one, as it cost an operator average of N40 million to build a base station and in a very difficult p...

• Ex-VP says Buhari yet to learn from the past on farmers, herdsmen clash • Leader wants NNPC sold to end N’Delta crisis Former Vice President and chieftain of the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC), Atiku Abubakar, yesterday called for the restructuring of the country. At a public presentation of a book entitled We Are All Biafrans by Chido Onumah in Abuja, Atiku said his call was based on ongoing allegations of marginalisation by some Nigerians. According to Atiku, the structure of the country is heavily defective as it does not provide the enabling environment for growth and progress among the 36 component states of the federation. The former vice president who spoke against the backdrop of renewed agitations by militants in the oil-rich Niger Delta and the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB) recalled how Nigeria once operated a federal system at independence that allowed the regions to retain their autonomy, raise and retain revenues, promote development, and conduct ...

About least two-dozen people including several children have been killed in northern Syria in the latest apparent attack by forces loyal to the Bashar al-Assad regime on medical facilities in opposition-held areas, United Nations officials and activists have said. The bombing of the national hospital and its surroundings in Idlib city, a provincial capital wrested from Assad-regime control last year, was only the latest incident in an unforgiving and systematic aerial campaign against medical personnel and facilities that has gone unpunished despite its intensification over the last year and a half. “There is no use to all of this. The bombing of hospitals will continue and cannot be stopped - that much is clear,” said Zedoun al-Zoabi, the head of the Union of Syrian Medical Relief Organisations, which operates a number of hospitals in northern Syria. “We have lost hope, and all we can do is build hospitals underground because there is no international decision to prevent the bo...

Oil production drops to 20-year low Despite recording significant decrease in the level of gas being flared per day, the U.S State Energy Information Administration (EIA) said that Nigeria remained one of the top five gas flaring countries in the world. Besides, oil output has fallen to a 20-year low in the continent’s assessed economic super power, as militants renewed attacks on oil facilities in the Niger Delta. EIA pointed out that although Nigeria flares a significant portion of its gross natural gas production, the amount being thrown up has reduced by more than 50 per cent over the past decade. It disclosed that the country now ranks as the fifth-largest natural gas flaring country, down from the second position it held in 2011. EIA said that a number of recently developed and upcoming natural gas projects that are focused on monetising previously flared natural gas are already in place. According to EIA, a significant amount of Nigeria’s gross natural gas produ...