Port Harcourt – Governor Siminalayi Fubara will from Wednesday, December 10, 2025, begin the commissioning and flag-off of 10 major completed projects spread across six local government areas of Rivers State.
The projects, located in Ahoada East, Ahoada West, Ogba/Egbema/Ndoni, Ikwerre, Emohua, Obio/Akpor, and Port Harcourt City LGAs, mark the resumption of the administration’s aggressive infrastructure drive after the recent political impasse.
Speaking through the Secretary to the State Government, Dr. Benibo Anabraba, on Monday, Governor Fubara described the projects as part of his administration’s fulfilment of its social contract with the people, stressing that delivering democratic dividends remains the cornerstone of his governance.
“We pledged to place the welfare of Rivers people first, and we have remained focused on providing critical infrastructure, maintaining peace, and driving socio-economic growth,” the Governor said.
He expressed profound gratitude to President Bola Ahmed Tinubu for his “timely and fatherly intervention” that ensured the restoration of democratic governance in the state, enabling the administration to resume and complete pending projects.
Projects to be commissioned include:
– Extension of Ahoada–Omoku dual carriageway
– Egbeda–Omerelu link road
– Ikwerre Road–Igwuruta–Airport Road
– RIVTAF Housing Estate and Anniversary Celebration
The Ipo Community–Airport Road bypass will also be flagged off during the two-week programme running until December 23, 2025.
Governor Fubara reassured citizens of his administration’s unwavering commitment to inclusive development and security across the state, urging residents to sustain the prevailing peace.
Operatives of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission on Monday descended on the upscale Maitama residence of former Petroleum Minister and Bayelsa APC leader, Chief Timipre Sylva, sealed the property, and spray-painted the walls in bold red with the words “EFCC — KEEP OFF”.
No court warrant. No prior notice. No invitation letter. Nothing.
In a blistering statement titled “A Grave Breach of Decency”, Sylva’s media aide, Chief Julius Bokoru, branded the raid “an act of terror against a vindictive assault on a family home and a dangerous abuse of state power.”
“What we witnessed today was not law enforcement; it was intimidation theatre,” Bokoru fumed. “They stormed the premises like armed robbers, defaced the walls like common vandals, and turned a family residence into a crime scene — all without a shred of legal process.”
He revealed that Sylva’s children, relatives, and domestic staff have been virtually under house arrest for weeks, unable to travel freely, and now find themselves trapped inside a house publicly branded like the property of a fugitive.
“Where are his children supposed to go?” Bokoru asked. “How long must innocent family members live in this climate of fear because of political witch-hunting?”
The aide insisted that Chief Sylva has always cooperated with investigators whenever properly invited, adding that Monday’s operation “bore all the hallmarks of local political rivalry masquerading as federal action.”
He pointedly distanced President Bola Tinubu from the incident: “We are convinced Mr. President is not aware of, nor would he endorse, this kind of Gestapo tactic. This is the handiwork of overzealous elements weaponising federal institutions for partisan vendetta.”
Bokoru warned that turning the EFCC into a tool of political intimidation “weakens our democracy and erodes public trust in every institution.”
As of press time, the EFCC had not issued any official statement explaining the action or confirming whether it was backed by a court order.
But in the leafy streets of Maitama, one thing is clear tonight: the red paint is still dripping on Sylva’s walls, and the battle lines between the former minister and his accusers just got a lot uglier.
The Peoples Democratic Party is pulling itself together with remarkable speed.
Less than one month after the bitterly contested Ibadan National Convention, PDP power blocs have launched a full-scale unity offensive in Abuja, throwing their weight behind the new National Working Committee led by Chairman Kabiru Tanimu Turaki, SAN.
In what party insiders are calling a “political pilgrimage of reconciliation,” every major organ of the PDP is storming the capital this week to pledge loyalty and map strategy for the 2026–2027 election cycle.
The solidarity train starts rolling on Wednesday, 10 December when Turaki’s NWC hosts all 36 state chairmen, FCT chairman, House of Representatives caucus members and national ex-officio members. At the same meeting, the committee will formally hand the Certificate of Return to Ekiti governorship candidate Dr. Oluwole Oluyede ahead of the June 2026 election.
The reconciliation marathon continues on 16 December with former PDP governors, former ministers and past NWC members, followed by the Senate caucus on 17 December for what sources describe as “deep strategic talks.”
A senior party official told NewsFocus: “This is not just courtesy visits. It is a deliberate show of unity. Everyone has seen what disunity cost us in 2023. Nobody wants a repeat.”
In a separate move to clear internal hurdles, the Turaki-led NWC has constituted a 25-member Osun State Governorship Appeal Panel chaired by the National Chairman himself. The panel will sit on Thursday, 11 December 2025, at Bauchi Governors Lodge, Asokoro, to hear grievances arising from the recent Osun 2026 primaries.
With former Deputy National Chairman Amb. Taofeek Arapaja as secretary and a broad geographical spread of members, the panel has been directed to strictly follow the PDP Constitution (2025 as amended) and the Electoral Act 2022.
Party sources say the swift formation of the appeal panel and the packed unity schedule are deliberate signals: the new leadership is ready to heal wounds, enforce discipline, and position PDP as a credible alternative once again.
One former governor attending next week’s session summed it up: “We either hang together now, or we hang separately in 2027.”
For the first time in years, the PDP looks like it is choosing the first option.
The Nigerian Upstream Petroleum Regulatory Commission (NUPRC) has firmly rejected allegations that it is sitting on the Frontier Exploration Fund, describing the claims as “mischief” from faceless sources.
In a detailed statement issued Monday, NUPRC’s Head of Media, Eniola Akinkuotu, disclosed that the Commission has already approved and released a total of **$185,123,333** and **N14.9 billion** to the Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited (NNPC) for frontier basin exploration.
“The Frontier Exploration Fund is not domiciled with NUPRC. It is held in a dedicated account with the Central Bank of Nigeria,” the statement clarified. “Our role is purely to evaluate NNPC’s submitted work programme and certify activities before funds are released.”
To ensure transparency, NUPRC engaged global auditors PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) to independently verify NNPC’s claims before final approvals.
Breakdown of releases so far:
– N14.9 billion (earlier tranche)
– $45 million (earlier tranche)
– $140 million – approved and released on **27 November 2025**
“There is currently no outstanding amount awaiting approval,” NUPRC insisted. “All certified contracts have been paid. We cannot approve payment for contracts that have not been awarded.”
The Commission also dismissed reports of an alleged investigation by the Minister of State for Petroleum Resources, Senator Heineken Lokpobiri, noting that the minister had already debunked such claims in a statement dated 17 November 2025.
“It is pure mischief for anyone to keep referencing a letter the supposed author has publicly disowned,” the statement added.
NUPRC challenged anyone with contrary evidence to approach NNPC directly instead of peddling falsehoods aimed at tarnishing the regulator’s image.
The Frontier Exploration Fund, established under the Petroleum Industry Act, is exclusively for NNPC’s search for oil in Nigeria’s frontier basins including the Chad Basin, Gongola, Anambra, Sokoto, Bida, and Benue Trough.
With the latest rebuttal, the NUPRC says it has put the controversy to rest — and dared doubters to produce facts.
It was an evening of raw emotion at Government House, Minna, on Monday as Niger State Governor Mohammed Umar Bago fought back tears while receiving 100 terrified but unharmed pupils rescued from the Papiri schools mass abduction.
The children — some as young as six — were part of the over 300 students and staff of St. Mary’s Catholic Private Primary and Secondary School in Papiri, Agwara LGA, seized by heavily armed bandits on 21 November 2025.
With the latest batch, 150 victims have now been freed — 50 had returned days earlier — leaving scores still in captivity inside dense forests.
Wing Commander Abdullahi Idi Hong, representing National Security Adviser Mallam Nuhu Ribadu, formally handed the children over to the governor.
“Every security agency in this country has been working day and night since the attack,” Commander Hong told the crowded banquet hall. He promised new national policies to protect schoolchildren and prevent a repeat of the outrage that drew global condemnation.
Governor Bago, voice breaking, thanked President Bola Tinubu and the NSA for their swift intervention.
“Today is fundamental in redefining the history of Niger State. I am emotionally broken looking at the ages and sizes of these children,” he said, staring at the rows of tiny uniforms.
“Never again should this happen in our state.”
He immediately ordered medical teams to examine every child before reuniting them with their families and vowed that the remaining captives “will be brought back very soon.”
The governor called for nationwide prayers and revealed ongoing collaboration with the Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN), UNICEF and other partners to secure every last victim.
Inside the hall, the atmosphere was electric. Parents, clergy and well-wishers wept openly as the children — some clinging to each other, others wide-eyed and silent — walked in under heavy security.
One mother collapsed in sobs when she spotted her daughter; another father lifted his rescued son high, shouting “Thank You, Jesus!”
Outside Government House, hundreds more gathered, singing and waving white handkerchiefs in celebration.
Yet the joy is incomplete. Dozens of children and staff — including the school principal — remain with the bandits.
Governor Bago has one message tonight: “We will not rest until every single one comes home.”
Dr. Comfort Asokoro-Ogaji, Executive Director of Women in Mining Africa (WiM-Africa), has delivered a powerful message to thousands of female miners and entrepreneurs across the continent: destructive rivalry is killing progress — only collaboration can unlock the real wealth lying beneath Africa’s soil.
Speaking at the close of a week-long hybrid summit for women in Sierra Leone’s mining sector, Dr. Asokoro-Ogaji declared:
“Competition that tears us down must end today. Collaboration is the true alternative. When women fight each other, we divide our strength and delay our destiny. When we work together, we create unstoppable power that lifts the entire sector and the continent.”
Her statement, released to journalists on Monday, went further: the future of Africa’s multi-billion-dollar mining industry now hinges on women forming strategic alliances — cooperatives, joint ventures, shared equipment pools, and unified advocacy platforms — instead of scrambling over the same limited space.
In the artisanal and small-scale mining (ASM) sector — where millions of women dig daily with bare hands and borrowed tools — she insisted that functional cooperatives, collective safety protocols, and shared processing centres are the fastest route from poverty to prosperity.
“Imagine women no longer working alone in dangerous pits, but pooling money for one excavator, one crusher, one secure transport system. That is how we move from subsistence to scale,” she said.
Dr. Asokoro-Ogaji threw her full weight behind replication of WiM-Africa’s proven programmes, urging every national and community women-in-mining group to adopt the organisation’s NextGen leadership training, fellowships, and governance templates.
“We don’t want to own the space — we want to flood it with capable women leaders,” she stressed, adding that the next ten years must produce a new generation of young female CEOs, policymakers, and innovators driving ESG standards, beneficiation, and Africa-owned mineral value chains.
She also called for deliberate alignment with the African Union’s Agenda 2063, demanding that women-led enterprises, global sourcing companies, and continental bodies sit at the same table to ensure Africa stops exporting raw ore and starts exporting finished products — with women at the forefront.
Reaffirming WiM-Africa’s roadmap, she revealed the organisation is already rolling out its ambitious 2025–2030 Action Plan focused on cooperative development, access to finance, safety, and local processing.
“Unity is not a slogan — it is the strategy that will finally make Africa’s mineral wealth work for African women,” Dr. Asokoro-Ogaji concluded.
From Sierra Leone to South Africa, the message is spreading fast: the era of every woman for herself is over. The era of every woman lifting every woman has begun.
Ten days after gunmen kidnapped the Ojibara of Bayagan-Ile, Alhaji Kamilu Salami, in broad daylight on his farm, the Bayagan-Ile community in Ifelodun Local Government Area of Kwara State has accused the Nigeria Police of abandoning them to their fate.
In a strongly worded statement issued Sunday evening and made available to journalists, community spokesperson Alhaji Rafiu Ayinla Lawal said the monarch remains in captivity inside thick forests and pleaded for urgent intervention from the Kwara State Government and security agencies.
“His Royal Highness was abducted by armed bandits on 29 November 2025. Since then, the entire community has been living in fear, tension and emotional distress,” Lawal said.
He expressed particular frustration at the continued silence of the police.
“Despite repeated efforts by the royal family and the community to obtain information and support investigations, the Nigeria Police Force has neither visited the community nor issued any official statement or update on the incident. This silence has only deepened our anxiety,” he added.
The statement stressed that, up to this moment, only the royal family and the community have been “running around” to secure the monarch’s release.
“We therefore humbly and passionately appeal to the Kwara State Government, the Inspector-General of Police and all relevant security agencies to come to our aid. The community alone cannot bear this burden,” Lawal pleaded.
He urged the authorities to intensify rescue efforts, provide regular updates to the family and take decisive action to bring the Ojibara home safely.
Early reports last week had claimed the monarch and six other captives escaped during a vigilante raid on the bandits’ camp. However, the community has now clarified that those reports were premature and that Alhaji Salami remains in the hands of his abductors.
Kwara State Police Public Relations Officer, DSP Toun Ejire-Adams, had yet to respond to enquiries at the time of filing this report.
As the tenth night falls without their traditional ruler, residents of Bayagan-Ile say they can only pray—and wait—for the intervention they desperately need.
The knives are out in the People’s Democratic Party as FCT Minister Nyesom Wike unleashed a blistering takedown on Bauchi Governor Bala Mohammed, branding him a “shame” to the party and predicting his swift exit amid a factional bloodbath that’s tearing the opposition apart.
Speaking at a fiery meeting of his PDP faction in Abuja on Sunday, December 7, 2025, Wike didn’t hold back. “Bala Mohammed should be ashamed,” he thundered, pointing to the governor’s failed tenure as PDP Governors’ Forum chairman, during which several big names defected to the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC).
“You lost governors left and right under your watch,” Wike sneered, contrasting it with his own Rivers State days when the party swelled with new blood. “When I was governor, more people—including governors—came into the PDP. But under Bala? It’s a graveyard.”
The barbs flew thicker as Wike turned on the rival bloc led by Bala and Oyo’s Seyi Makinde—both already “expelled” by Wike’s camp last week for alleged anti-party antics. “They’re on their way out of the PDP,” Wike declared, dismissing their recent Ibadan convention as a “parallel farce” that flouted court orders and party rules.
“I joined the PDP in 1998. Bala slunk in after the 2010 doctrine of necessity. Makinde jumped ship from the SDP,” Wike scoffed. “We won’t let those we welcomed kill the party they met thriving. They met us here—and now they want to push us out? No chance. They’re the ones packing their bags.”
The gathering—packed with Wike loyalists like Acting National Chairman Abdulrahman Mohammed, National Secretary Samuel Anyanwu, and BoT heavyweights including ex-governors Okezie Ikpeazu and Samuel Ortom—doubled down on the purge. They reaffirmed the expulsion of 18 “impostors,” including Bala, Makinde, Zamfara’s Dauda Lawal, and ex-chair Umar Damagum, vowing a caretaker committee takeover by Tuesday to “save the PDP from collapse.”
Bala’s camp fired back earlier, accusing Wike of “gangsterism and illegalism” and insisting their leadership is INEC-recognized.<grok:render card_id=”6b4033″ card_type=”citation_card” type=”render_inline_citation”>
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</grok:render> But with the party secretariat a no-man’s-land of rival claims—complete with police standoffs and heated clashes—analysts see a death spiral ahead of 2027.
“This isn’t a crisis; it’s a coup within a coup,” one PDP insider lamented. “Wike’s playing hardball from his APC perch, but if he guts the opposition, who does he fight?”
For now, the PDP’s founding vow—”Power to the people”—rings hollow. As Wike wrapped up: “We must not allow the PDP to die.” Too late? The party’s bleeding governors, credibility, and any shot at unity. In Nigerian politics, shame might be the least of their worries.
Nigeria is sleepwalking into a public health disaster as life-saving contraceptives vanish from clinics nationwide, leaving millions of women with no choice but brutal back-street abortions or unwanted pregnancies.
The stark warning came yesterday from the Africa Health Budget Network (AHBN) at the 9th Annual Conference of the Association of Nigerian Health Journalists (ANHeJ) in Abuja.
“Nigeria risks an overwhelmed health system, skyrocketing unsafe abortions, deeper child poverty and a flood of unintended pregnancies if we don’t act now,” declared Dr Aminu Magashi, AHBN Coordinator, through his representative Ms Amina Haladu Mohammed.
The crisis is simple but deadly: pills, injectables, implants and condoms bought with donor and government money are piling up in warehouses or stuck in transit, never reaching the rural clinics where ordinary women need them most.
From Lagos ports to the last-mile primary health centre, the supply chain is broken. Logistics funding has dried up, trucks don’t move, state warehouses sit half-empty, and local government stores are often the weakest link of all.
The result? Empty shelves, desperate women, and a ticking time bomb.
“These stock-outs will push more girls and women into the hands of quacks. We will see more maternal deaths, more abandoned children, more poverty,” the AHBN presentation warned.
With Nigeria already struggling to feed its 230 million people, the failure to let women plan their families threatens to erase any hope of a demographic dividend and turn the country’s youthful population from asset to catastrophe.
AHBN called on the federal government to release promised funds immediately, fix the logistics nightmare, and make the entire supply chain transparent.
They also threw down the gauntlet to journalists: “Use investigative reporting to follow the money and the missing pills. Hold leaders accountable so these commodities reach the woman in the village, because her life, her dreams and Nigeria’s future depend on it.”
As one delegate whispered after the session: “If we can’t get a packet of condoms to a health centre, how do we plan to run Africa’s biggest economy?”
In the blistering heat of Mauritania’s border camps, where the sand stretches endlessly like a sea of forgotten hopes, Malian refugees huddle in threadbare tents, their voices trembling as they recount a nightmare that defies comprehension. “White men” in military gear—masked, relentless, speaking a guttural tongue—have swept through villages like a plague, leaving behind charred homes, severed heads, and bodies carved open for organs. This is the harrowing testimony emerging from the Sahel’s deadliest front, where Russia’s rebranded Wagner successors, the Africa Corps, stand accused of war crimes that echo the brutality of their predecessors, but with the Kremlin’s official stamp.
The Associated Press broke the story on December 7, 2025, after gaining rare access to these remote refugee outposts. Over 30 survivors, many from the nomadic Fulani and Tuareg communities, described a scorched-earth campaign against al-Qaeda and Islamic State affiliates that has devoured innocents in its path. “It’s a scorched earth policy,” whispered one village chief, his eyes hollow from flight. “The soldiers speak to no one. Anyone they see, they shoot. No questions, no warning. People don’t even know why they are being killed.”
The atrocities paint a picture of calculated savagery. Refugees shared grainy videos of villages reduced to ash, marketplaces gutted by flames. Two women, their faces etched with grief, recounted discovering loved ones’ corpses with livers and kidneys surgically excised—echoing earlier AP reports on Wagner’s grisly trade in harvested organs, often sold on black markets or flaunted in neo-Nazi Telegram channels laced with racist taunts.
Beheadings are routine, they say: men dragged from homes, executed on suspicion of jihadist ties, their heads paraded as warnings. Rapes target the vulnerable—girls as young as 12, mothers fleeing with infants—leaving families shattered and communities too terrified to report.
Mougaloa’s story chills the air in her makeshift shelter. Three months ago, masked “white men” gunned down her 20-year-old son after Malian soldiers interrogated him about militants. “They called him ‘pes’—dog in their language,” she said, her voice cracking. In October, they returned for her daughter, Fatma, 18, who vanished into the night. “We were so scared. We are hoping she will get here at some point.” Fatma’s fate remains unknown, one of dozens abducted in sweeps that blend Malian junta forces with the Africa Corps.
In Kurmare village last month, another Fatma watched as looters stripped homes of jewelry and livestock. Her son lay shot dead in his shop; her daughter succumbed to seizures during the desperate dash to Mauritania. “They took everything—our lives, our dignity,” she told NewsFocus, clutching a faded photo of the girl who never made it.
This is no rogue operation. The Africa Corps, formed after Wagner founder Yevgeny Prigozhin’s fatal 2023 plane crash following his mutiny against Vladimir Putin, operates under Russia’s Defense Ministry—making Moscow directly liable under international law.
Analysts estimate 2,000 fighters, many ex-Wagner veterans, patrolling Mali’s lawless north. “Only the name was changed,” one local told the AP. “The clothes, the vehicles, the people stayed the same. The methods stayed the same, and even became worse.”
The Sahel’s jihadist inferno has claimed thousands, fueling coups in Mali (2021), Burkina Faso, and Niger. These juntas ditched Western allies like France and the UN’s MINUSMA—pulled in 2023 amid scandals—and pivoted to Russia, inviting mercenaries to battle JNIM (al-Qaeda’s arm) and ISGS.
Russia’s Foreign Ministry confirmed the Corps’ presence “at the request of Malian authorities,” touting it as anti-terror aid: ground escorts, rescues, security for gold mines that fund the Kremlin’s war chest.
But on the ground, it’s terror.
Civilian deaths linked to Russians fell from 911 in 2024 to 447 this year, per the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project. Yet Heni Nsaibia, a conflict analyst, warns the true toll is higher: “People are more scared to report.”
UN expert Eduardo Gonzalez Cueva’s pleas for access to Mali’s junta—twice denied this year—highlight the impunity. The country quit the International Criminal Court in 2025, shielding perpetrators as the ICC probes crimes since 2012.
Social media amplifies the outrage. On X, posts from Ukrainian journalists and African activists decry the “war crimes,” with one viral thread sharing refugee videos: “Russia’s shadow empire grows darker in Africa.”
BBC reports from November echo the AP, detailing a shopkeeper’s ordeal: tortured, forced to watch beheadings, threatened with dismemberment.
“They dunked my head in water until I almost suffocated… then beheaded two men in front of me,” he recalled.
Legal voices demand action. Lindsay Freeman of UC Berkeley’s Human Rights Center insists: “Any war crimes… are attributable to the Russian government.”
As refugees like Moyme—whose daughter still clenches her fist in trauma—wait in limbo, the question hangs heavy: Will the world hold Putin accountable, or will the Sahel’s blood-soaked sands swallow another chapter of unchecked horror?
For these families, hope flickers faintly. “We fled for survival,” one elder said, gazing toward Mali’s hazy horizon. “But home feels like a grave.”
