Senator Orji Kalu on Monday lamented the scarcity of the naira owing to the currency redesign. He claims his family could not get enough money to cook recently. “You can see the policy is right but I don’t keep money in my house. I am suffering,” he said during his appearance on Channels Television’s election programme The 2023 Verdict “The other day, my house manager told my wife in Abuja that we have no money to cook food. My wife was virtually roaming around and we feed over 250 people every day.” More to follow…

  Pastor Paul Enenche has endorsed the Labour Party (LP) presidential candidate Peter Obi for this weekend’s election, describing him as “the way to go”. “A picture they say is worth a thousand words. This picture was randomly taken by a photographer some time ago but is speaking volumes right now, especially in this season,” the Founder and Senior Pastor of the Dunamis Gospel Centre wrote on his Facebook page Monday evening. “What do you see? What can you hear? Are you in doubt about the way to go? The way of integrity, authenticity, honesty, sincerity, simplicity, humility, capacity, productivity; here is the way to go.”

  Normalcy seems to have been restored in the Sagamu, Sagamu Local Government Area of Ogun State after a violent protest that rocked the town early on Monday over scarcity of fuel and the new naira notes. Banks and business premises were attacked and set ablaze, cars looted and burnt, as shops were forced to remain under lock and key. According to the state Commissioner of Police, Frank Mba, who led his men and soldiers to the scene, 30 suspects have been arrested in connection with the unrest. Residents claim the violence started around 5:30 am while law-abiding citizens were still sleeping. Most affected was Oba Erinwole Road where about seven branches of commercial banks were attacked and ATM machines vandalised and looted, leaving the Sagamu neighbourhood as a shadow of itself. Hoodlums also broke the wall of a bank’s branch in an attempt to gain access into the banking hall and the strong room. It took the intervention of a combined team of the police led by the Commissioner of Police and men of the Nigerian Army to put the violent protests in checks from escalating. In the wake of the violent protest which disrupted the otherwise peaceful town, 30 suspects were said to have been arrested inside one of the banks. Mba warned against violent protests, an action he said would compound the already fragile situation in the country. Though relative normalcy has been restored, men and officers of the command have since been deployed to strategic locations in the area to ensure law and order prevails.

  A 6.4-magnitude earthquake was recorded Monday in Turkey’s southern province of Hatay, the hardest hit by a February 6 tremor which left more than 41,000 dead in the country, the disaster response agency AFAD said. The quake hit the town of Defne at 8:04 pm (1704 GMT) and was strongly felt by AFP teams in Antakya and Adana, 200 kilometres (300 miles) to the north. AFP teams felt the tremor also in Lebanon and Syria. The disaster management agency said on Twitter another 5.8-magnitude tremor followed three minutes later and its epicentre was Samandag district in Hatay. An AFP journalist reported scenes of panic in Antakya, adding that the new tremors raised clouds of dust in the devastated city.   The walls of badly damaged buildings crumbled while several people, apparently injured, called for help. On a street in Antakya, Ali Mazlum, 18, told AFP: “We were with AFAD who were looking for the bodies of our family when the quake hit. “You don’t know what to do… we grabbed each other and right in front of us, the walls started to fall. It felt like the earth was opening up to swallow us up.” Mazlum, who has lived in Antakya for 12 years, was looking for the bodies of his sister and her family as well as his brother-in-law and his family. A few metres away, a digger was clearing a road was covered with rubble after the new quake. Aftershocks “This one just fell,” a rescuer said, referring to a collapsed building. Hatay province is on the Mediterranean Sea and the disaster agency said the sea level could rise by 50 centimetres, warning people to stay away from the coast. Turkish Vice President Fuat Oktay on Twitter urged people to stay away from damaged buildings and to follow officials’ warnings. According to AFAD, more than 6,000 aftershocks have been recorded since the 7.8-magnitude hit Turkey and Syria, leaving millions homeless. Officials said after the February 6 quake that aftershocks would be felt for a year because of the force of the first tremor. AFP correspondents in the city of Aleppo, Syria’s second city, said people flocked to the streets after the new quake. An AFP photographer in the city of Azaz, further north, said that of buildings that had been damaged in the previous quake collapsed. The February 6 earthquake killed 41,156 people in Turkey and 3,688 in Syria, but experts expect the toll to rise as the rubble is cleared and rescue operations come to an end. Eleven provinces were hit by the previous tremors and on Sunday, officials said rescue operations continue only in two: Hatay and Kahramanmaras. The quake two weeks ravaged swathes of southeastern Turkey and northern Syria, damaging more than 118,000 buildings. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Monday promised to build nearly 200,000 new homes within a year that were more sturdy and no more than four-storeys high.

  Rivers State Governor, Nyesom Wike, has reiterated that he will not join the All Progressives Congress, despite its stance on zoning the presidency to the south. The governor, who described the insinuations that he will defect to the APC as speculative, maintained that he remained an unrepentant member of the Peoples Democratic Party. Governor Wike stated these at the 114th quarterly general meeting of the Rivers State Council of Traditional Rulers in Port Harcourt, the state capital on Monday. He informed the council ahead of Saturday’s presidential election that he would be voting for only the candidate that could guarantee the unity of the country. Wike said, “I am not a member of the APC and I will not be. But, they have made me to recognise that they are the heroes of this country. “The governors came out to say look, for the unity of this country, presidency should go to the south. “The governors of the APC said the way the country is, they want the unity of this country and therefore, the presidency should go to the south. “They could have as well said no, it doesn’t matter. As governors, we have the number. We can still say it should remain where it should remain. But they didn’t do that. “They said the way we are seeing this country we want everybody to be together. “Let no one say because I have the population, therefore, you will continue to dominate. In dominating you need peace, without peace you cannot govern.” Speaking on the crisis in the PDP, the governor stated that Rivers State had helped to sustain the party right from the era of former Governor Peter Odili down to his administration. Therefore, he insisted that it was wrong for a section of the country to deny other people the opportunity to participate in presiding over the affairs of the nation. “We are all Nigerians and we want the unity of this country. We want Nigeria to move forward as a united country. “Rivers State has always been in support of one Nigeria and we’ll continue to support one Nigeria. But in doing that, we believe in equity, we believe in justice, we believe in fairness. “As the governor of this state, I will vote for the unity of this country. I will vote for anything that will unite Nigeria. “I will not support anything that will divide Nigeria. And that is what necessitated the principle of live and let’s live. “If only one person continues to live, things will not be good. It’s not about party, it is about Nigeria. I am a member of the Peoples Democratic Party, unrepentant member, who, in fact, built this party when people ran away,” he stated. He explained that the reason why he had been one of the arrowheads of those agitating inclusivity in the PDP was because of his belief in the unity of the country. According to him, a strategic state like Rivers cannot be relegated to play second fiddle in the country. Wike said though he did not encourage traditional rulers’ involvement in politics, he urged them to support the PDP governorship candidate, Sir Siminialayi Fubara, who he formally presented to the council, for the continuity of the developmental strides recorded by his administration since 2015. “In the next few months, I will be former (governor). But former in a big way. My transition will be smooth, there will be no crisis. “Don’t make mistake to go and vote for another person. You want to distort everything we have done, and then our state will go backward. Let’s allow continuity.” The Chairman of the Rivers State Council of Traditional Rulers, His Majesty, King Dandeson Jaja, Jeki V, Amanyanabo of Opobo, thanked the governor for the respect he had accorded the council since his assumption of office.

  A Nigerian street trader at the centre of an alleged organ-harvesting plot involving former Deputy Senate President Ike Ekweremadu has told judges he thought he was going to Britain to work. The young man was allegedly brought to the UK to donate a kidney to the sick daughter of the former Deputy Senate President in exchange for a cash reward. According to the Irish News, the young man, giving evidence at the Old Bailey on Monday, revealed he did not even know why he was being taken to see a doctor. He disclosed he was being “controlled” and told to lie about having a family connection with the Ekweremadus before a consultation at the Royal Free Hospital. In the end, a doctor at the north London hospital concluded he was unsuitable as a donor for 25-year-old Sonia Ekweremadu, the Old Bailey has heard. Ekweremadu, 60; his wife Beatrice, 56; Sonia, 25, and medical “middleman” Obinna Obeta, 50, are charged with conspiring to arrange or facilitate the travel of the young man to Britain with a view to his exploitation. The young man, aged 21 as of the time of the incident, said he thought he was coming to Britain to work. He also told the court how he was born and bred in a village in Nigeria, the oldest of nine children to his carpenter father and mother. He went to a village school until the age of 15 when he left because his parents needed money, the court heard. His uncle took him to live with him in Lagos and gave him work selling phone accessories, he said. After four years, he started his own business selling phone accessories from a wheelbarrow in the market earning N3,000 or N4,000 a day. Prosecutor Hugh Davies KC asked how he came to fly to London from Lagos. The witness, who gave evidence by video link with the assistance of an interpreter, said, “Obinna (Obeta) is the man who brought me here to this country. “He asked me what am I doing and I told him I’m doing business selling phone accessory in Lagos and he start talking about coming to London. “He going to take me to London, stay at his house, and I will work.” The court heard how he travelled to the Nigerian capital Abuja for tests and was taken to have passport pictures taken. He told judges that the first time he saw his passport was when he went for a visa interview and he did not see it again until the day he travelled to the UK. Mr Davies asked, “What did you think you were going to do when you came to London?” He replied, “To work, any type of work that I would get paid.” He said he thought Dr Obeta was helping him because he was “from God.” After travelling to the UK, the man was pictured sharing a meal with Sonia Ekweremadu and smiling into the camera. He disclosed that during the course of the me, those present “only discuss for themselves” and did not ask him any questions Later that week, the victim disclosed that he was taken by Dr Obeta for his consultation at the Royal Free Hospital. He told judges he thought it was for a test before he could start work. Before going inside, they allegedly met Sonia Ekweremadu, a tall Nigerian man who had escorted him on the plane and another woman. He told judges, “They used to discuss by themselves. Obinna would just tell me where to stay. Like they were controlling me. “They said I am going to see the doctor. The doctor is going to ask me question and they will give me the answer.” He was allegedly told to lie that he had been to a “higher institution” school and that he and Sonia Ekweremadu were cousins. He went on, “Obinna told me that if the doctor asks me if they give me money, if they pay me for what I want to do, I should tell the doctor they no pay me. “He give me many answer to give the doctor but everything was not true.” As he entered the hospital, an interpreter told him that what he was doing was “not a small thing,” the court heard. But the witness said, “I don’t understand the woman when she said what they brought me to do was not a small thing because I did not know why they bring me to the hospital.” The Ekweremadus, who have an address in Willesden Green, north west London, and Dr Obeta, from Southwark, south London, deny the charge against them and the Old Bailey trial continues.