An angry crowd has set a truck ablaze following an accident that led to the death of two persons in Ogun State. The incident occurred along the Ibeshe Road in Yewa North Local Government Area of the state on Saturday. Sources said the truck had veered off its lane and faced an oncoming motorcycle before it crushed both the rider and the passenger to death. The spokesman for the Ogun State Traffic Compliance and Enforcement Corps (TRACE), Babatunde Akinbiyi, also confirmed the incident to Channels Television on Saturday in Abeokuta, the state capital. He noted that an angry mob descended on the truck and set it ablaze while the driver of the vehicle took to his heels. “It took the intervention of the police and officers of the Nigeria Security and Civil Defence Corps (NSCDC) to calm the angry mob,” said Akinbiyi, adding that “The case is being handled by the Dangote Plant Police Post.” He disclosed that the body of one of the victims was deposited at the morgue of the General Hospital in Ilaro while the other victim has been buried by the family members. The TRACE spokesman condoled with the families of the victims over the loss and warned motorists, especially truck drivers against reckless and dangerous driving. He stressed that this was important to reduce avoidable crashes and deaths on all roads in the state.

Pressure Mali To Return To Civilian Rule, Buhari Tells ECOWAS Leaders Channels Television Updated June 19, 2021 President Muhammadu Buhari attends the 59th Ordinary session of the Authority of Heads of State and Government of ECOWAS in Accra, Ghana on June 19, 2021. President Muhammadu Buhari on Saturday called on West African leaders to exert pressure on the military leadership in Mali to ensure that the transition process in the country is not aborted. He made the call in his statement delivered at the 59th Ordinary session of the Authority of Heads of State and Government of ECOWAS in Accra, Ghana. The Nigerian leader spoke on the situation in Mali which was recently suspended from the regional bloc due to a military coup. “At this Summit today, we are expected to review a number of important reports dealing with various issues of concerns to our organisation and people. In doing so, we must take realistic and practical decisions which will positively impact our citizens,” he was quoted as saying in a statement by his spokesman, Garba Shehu. President Buhari added, “Some of those decisions, necessarily will have to do with evolving political and security situations in our sub-region as well as evaluate the health of our organisation with the hope of repositioning to serve our people and sub-region better. “While democracy continues to develop in our sub-region, recent events in Mali are sad reminders that vigilance remains a crucial imperative to protect people’s aspirations to freely choose the form of government they want. “Pressures are needed to ensure that the transition process in Mali, which is halfway to its conclusion, is not aborted. “A further slide in Mali could prove catastrophic to the Sub-region, considering that about half of that country is unfortunately under the grip of terrorists.” The Nigerian leader, therefore, appealed to the military leadership in Mali to understand the critical state of their country, which he described as being ‘clearly under siege’. Noting that the principal responsibility of the military must be to protect and guarantee the sovereignty of the West African country, the President cautioned them not to perpetuate acts that would facilitate the destabilisation and destruction of Mali. “I urge our organization to remain engaged with all stakeholders in Mali through our astute Mediator, former President Goodluck Jonathan, who, I congratulate warmly, for his untiring efforts thus far. “I encourage him to sustain these efforts to ensure that the transition is completed as scheduled,” he said. On Libya, President Buhari faulted the recent United Nations Resolution to expel all foreign fighters in Libya, without first ensuring that they were disarmed. He lamented that while the decision was aimed at bringing about sustenance of peace in Libya, non-collaboration with regional stakeholders has created newer threats to peace, security and stability in the region. The President warned that this could lead to lack of coordinated management of huge humanitarian crisis across the Sahel, North, Central and West Africa, including the Lake Chad region. He said, “It is imperative that ECOWAS leaders, at this Summit, decide how the UN-Sub-regional organisations partnerships should be reviewed to address the dangers that this UN Resolution poses to the region.” The statement by the Nigerian leader at the Summit also addressed other pertinent issues of concern in the organisation, including the ongoing institutional reforms in ECOWAS. Declaring Nigeria’s unequivocal support to the reforms process, he said he looked forward to an ECOWAS that would be ‘fit for purpose’, delivering services to the satisfaction of the community citizens. He commended the President of the Commission and his team, the Ad-hoc Ministerial Committee on Institutional Reforms as well as the Council of Ministers for the excellent report presented to the Authority of Heads of State. In his capacity as the ECOWAS champion on the fight against COVID-19, President Buhari also drew attention to the need for more citizens in the region to be vaccinated, stressing the need for adherence to other non-pharmaceutical interventions. He said the West African region was in the grip of a third wave, warning against complacency in national and regional initiatives to address the pandemic. President Buhari reaffirmed Nigeria’s commitment to the noble objectives of the organisation, saying, “I encourage us to take bolder steps towards ensuring that the organisation fulfils the aspirations of its founding fathers, which include a truly integrated sub-region, economically, politically, socio-culturally united and secured to permit its sustainable development and growth.”

The Aare Onakakanfo of Yorubaland, Gani Adams, says the people of the South-West geopolitical zone are against the Federal Government’s move to recover grazing routes for herders to graze their cattle in the country. According to him, the government of the President, Major General Muhammadu Buhari (retd.), will be “creating an unnecessary tension” in the region if it goes ahead with the move. Adams, who spoke in a chat with The PUNCH on Saturday, also alleged that the Federal Government is driving the country to a point of anarchy through its unpopular policies and actions. The PUNCH had reported that the President in a recent television interview supported open grazing and directed the Attorney General of the Federation and Minister of Justice, Abubakar Malami (SAN), to produce a gazette which delineated grazing routes in all parts of the country in the First Republic. Some human rights activists including Femi Falana (SAN), subsequently kicked against the move, saying grazing routes existed only in Northern Nigeria and not in the southern part of the country. Although some of the routes are believed to have been encroached upon due to human activities, The PUNCH found out that the government had embarked on a process of identifying monuments along the routes in order to get them back as locations for cattle grazing. Officials of the Federal Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development also said that the routes’ recovery would go on despite stiff oppositions to it. Speaking with The PUNCH on Saturday, Adams said grazing routes “cannot work because the entire Southern Nigeria has spoken and we are against open grazing; the governors in the region have banned it already and lawmakers have started enacting laws in their state assemblies to ban it. “The Federal Government should recognise that we have three tiers of government and should not create an impression that every law is in the hands of the Federal Government. The issue of open grazing should be a state law and a local government law because it is about the security of the state. “Open grazing has been constituting security threats and has caused a lot of deaths of citizens and this is giving Nigeria a very bad image before the international community. The Federal Government should go against anything which threatens lives and property of Nigerians. If it encourages anything that will create insecurity, then, those in government have hidden agenda towards Southerners.” “The Federal Government is driving the country to the point of anarchy and political instability by confronting the southern governors on the ban of open grazing. Open grazing is an insecurity of the highest order in the country. “I don’t know why the President is bringing up an old law that was not even reflected in the 1999 Constitution. It is impossible for him to bring it up now. We will take a necessary position if that happens,” he added.

The ministerial leader of the World Zionist Union in the Southeast, Prophet Godfrey Gbujie, has called on the Igbo people to forgive the recent remark of ‘dot in circle’ made by President Muhammadu Buhari in a recent TV interview. Daily Trust gathered that the Igbo people are disturbed by the President’s description of Southeast zone as ‘a dot in a circle’ while explaining that the Igbo are scattered everywhere in Nigeria with their businesses and properties located everywhere. But, in a statement issued in Enugu weekend, Prophet Gbujie appealed to the Igbo people to forgive the president and understand that everything happening in the country currently is an act of God. He said: “I feel irresistibly persuaded to passionately appeal to the much aggrieved Ndigbo to more Christianly understand, appreciate the plight of and forgive His Excellency, our spiritually overwhelmed President Muhammadu Buhari’s unpresidential verbal declaration of June 10, 2021, where he referred to Southeast as ‘a dot-in-the circle’. “This ministerial appeal is motivated by my appreciable insight into and understanding of the mysteries of the long-prophesied and graphically unfolding ‘plan of divine intervention in Nigeria’s affairs’ as they incorporate and affect his (Buhari’s) personality, presidential and governmental roles which he can neither fully understand, alter nor fail to execute”. Describing President Buhari as a “very nice, decent and nationalistic gentleman”, Gbujie, however, explained that Buhari’s presidential characters and policies were dictated and controlled by the powers beyond him. “Therefore, let us understand and appreciate the spiritual and socio-political plight, disabilities and helplessness of His Excellency, President Muhammadu Buhari – most of whose erroneous presidential policies, actions and utterances are complaints to the revealed plan of God. “Let us stop blaming him for the negativities because he is only a mere human vessel of service to god and cannot wriggle himself out of the mysterious spiritual web in which he helplessly finds himself. “Rather, I appeal for both private and collective spiritual intercession to God for divine mercy and grace to enable him to successfully finish his own part and role in the divinely scripted and unfolding national socio-political tragicomedy.”

Governor Okezie Ikpeazu of Abia State has declared his willingness to engage with the leader of the proscribed Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB), Nnamdi Kanu, for peace to reign. He said he would speak with Kanu, not on the basis of IPOB, but as Citizen Nnamdi Kanu, who happens to be an Abian. “I am the governor of Abia State and he is a citizen of Abia State,” he said. “I have nothing personal against him and I don’t think he has anything personal against me. All of us are saying the same thing, that there is injustice, marginalization, but our point of divergence is the approach. “If one is taking up arms Against the Nigerian Nation, what capacity does the person have to conclude it? Because I, as an individual, I am not a suicide Candidate. I saw a bit of the civil war and I don’t want to get people on a boat that is sailing to nowhere. “Kanu is entitled to his opinion, views and approach, but I am also saying to him, that as a young boy who went to Maiduguri at the age of 16, the boundaries of the South East and Northern Nigeria is not in Umuahia or Ubakala Police Station, neither is it in Bende or Ohafia. We cannot afford to allow our territory be used as a battle field when the home of our opponents is thousands of mile away from our home. If properties are going to be destroyed during the battle, they will still be our property which we shall suffer to replace at the end of the whole exercise. “Fighting in one’s kitchen is one of the indices that defines lack of appreciation of the first rule of self-preservation, because after the fight, with which pot and plates, are you going use to eat? “If you have a perceived enemy and you embark on such a voyage and your son kills you, your enemy will just attend your funeral and save his gunpowder for another enemy. I think there is need for good reason to prevail, so that we can sit down and talk about it. If there are things you want us to vocalize about the way things are going in this country, raise the tune a little bit, I think there are people who are willing to say that and do that. For me, I think we need to change a few things in this country and I think we need to be smart about the way we change it. There is somebody who said that those who resort to violence have exhausted the capacity of their intelligence to resolve the matter. I don’t think we have exhausted the capacity of our intelligence to resolve the matter. Violence cannot be the First option.”