l-r: Chief Operating Officer, The Tony Elumelu Foundation(TEF), Mrs Owen Omogiafo; Chief Executive Officer, TEF, Mrs Parminder Vir; and Company Secretary, TEF, Mr. Obong Idiong,
l-r: Chief Operating Officer, The Tony Elumelu Foundation(TEF), Mrs Owen Omogiafo; Chief Executive Officer, TEF, Mrs Parminder Vir; and Company Secretary, TEF, Mr. Obong Idiong,
By Joseph Edegbo
Kaduna (Nigeria)–The 3rd Annual TEF entrepreneurship Forum is scheduled to hold in Lagos from 13–14 October featuring the largest gathering of African entrepreneurs to be hosted by the Foundation.
The two- day forum will be attended by 1,300 African entrepreneurs, business leaders, policy makers from 54 countries to chart towards realizing a New Africa that is self reliant
At a news conference in Lagos, the Foundation said this is the first year the invitation to the Forum is open to non-TEF entrepreneurs and will allow SMEs from across Africa to attend and form networks, share knowledge, connect with investors, link with corporate supply chains and influence policy makers and business leaders in attendance.
“In just 3 years, our 3,000 entrepreneurs have created tens of thousands of jobs and generated considerable wealth. On October 13 and 14, we invite the global entrepreneurship community to Lagos toward the realization of a New Africa, a thriving, self-reliant continent capable of replicating the results we have seen in our ground-breaking programme.”
The two-day event features plenary panels, masterclasses, and sector specific networking opportunities as well as policy-led talks focused on improving the enabling environment for African businesses.
TEF Chief Executive Officer Parminder Vir OBE said, “This is the first year we have opened the Forum up to include not just the 1,000 Tony Elumelu Entrepreneurs from the 2017 cycle of our Programme, but the full pan-African entrepreneurship ecosystem. In doing so, we are allowing disparate SME communities to come together and expand the possibilities for intra-African partnerships. I urge policymakers and investors to join us at the Forum as we empower the next generation of African business titans.”
Speakers at the event include: Wale Ayeni, International Finance Corporation; Stephen Tio Kauma, Afrexim Bank; Andre Hue, African Development Bank; Stephen M. Haykin, USAID Nigeria; Heikke Reugger, European Investment Bank; Abdoulaye Mar Dieye, United Nations Development Programme.
The Foundation’s long-term investment in empowering African entrepreneurs is emblematic of Tony Elumelu’s philosophy of Africapitalism, which positions Africa’s private sector, and most importantly its entrepreneurs, as the catalysts for the social and economic development of the continent.
Image copyrightAFPImage caption Zanu-PF appears split between supporters of Grace Mugabe and Emmerson Mnangagwa
Zimbabwe’s First Lady Grace Mugabe has warned of a possible coup plot amid growing tensions in the fight to succeed her husband.
She says allies of Vice-President Emmerson Mnangagwa are threatening the lives of those who don’t support him to replace President Robert Mugabe, 93.
Mrs Mugabe herself and Mr Mnangagwa are the front-runners and their rivalry has split the governing Zanu-PF.
The row comes after Mr Mnangagwa claimed that he was poisoned in August.
His supporters have suggested that rivals within Zanu-PF were responsible, although Mr Mnangagwa has distanced himself from such claims.
He has told state media that he remains loyal to President Mugabe.
An angry Grace Mugabe departed from a prepared speech at an event in Harare to attack Mr Mnangagwa.
“We are being threatened night and day that if a particular person does not become president we will be killed,” she said.
“We will not bow to that pressure. They say there will be a coup, but no-one will recognise you. The African Union will not recognise you, the SADC [Southern African Development Community] will not.”
Mr Mnangagwa fell ill at a political rally led by President Mugabe in August and had to be airlifted to South Africa for treatment.
His supporters suggested a rival group within Zanu-PF had poisoned him and appeared to blame ice cream from Mrs Mugabe’s dairy firm.
But on Thursday, Mrs Mugabe dismissed the suggestions.
Image copyrightReutersImage caption Grace Mugabe is the second wife of President Robert Mugabe
She said: “Why would my dairy business prepare a single poisoned ice cream cup just for him? Why would I want to kill him? I am the wife of the president. Who is Mnangagwa, who is he? What do I want from him?”
Addressing reporters earlier, Mr Mnangagwa said that while doctors had confirmed that he was poisoned, it was “false and malicious” to suggest that it was at the hands of the first lady.
Analysis: Growing anxiety within Mugabe camp
Shingai Nyoka, BBC News, Harare
The tension between 93-year-old Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe’s possible successors is growing.
And in his characteristic fashion, President Mugabe has stayed out of the factional fights, refusing to take sides – publicly at least.
It is his wife, Grace Mugabe, who has taken the lead in voicing concerns about the vice-president.
Even though she doesn’t officially speak for the president, her candid utterances reflect the anxiety within the first family over the vice-president’s influence.
Mr Mnangagwa, who has worked with President Mugabe for more than 40 years, has been influential in previous election victories. It is inconceivable that President Mugabe would want to sack such a key figure ahead of elections next year.
But as Zimbabweans are seeing, in Zanu-PF politics anything is possible and no position is guaranteed.
Mr Mnangagwa pledged unflinching loyalty to the party and to the president.
Earlier this week, Zimbabwe’s other vice-president, Phelekezela Mphoko, publicly reprimanded Mr Mnangagwa, accusing him of trying to “destabilise” the country.
Mr Mphoko said doctors had confirmed to the president that stale food and not poison was to blame.
He said there was an agenda to “undermine the authority” of the president and fuel tensions within the party.
This story is auto-generated from ‘BBC News’ syndicated feed and has not been edited by Africa Prime News staff.
Governor Ibrahim Dankwambo of Gombe State, northeast Nigeria
By Auwal Mohammed
Gombe (Nigeria) — Gombe State Commissioner for Finance, in northeast Nigeria, Muhammadu Hassan, has asked Ministries, Departments and Agencies to summit their intervention project activities reports, as a condition for getting more funding.
Hassan stated this when the State Committee on Food and Nutrition led by the Permanent Secretary, Ministry of Economic Planning, Stephen Ayuba, who paid him an advocacy visit on behalf of the Committee’s Chairman and Commissioner for the Ministry, Danladi Mohammed Pantami.
Hassan expressed displeasure over what he described as a devastating indices of 41 per cent stunting rate of children in the State.
He stated that the report had annoyed him, as well as the Governor, hence the need for action to be taken immediately.
According to him, “I’m just knowing this for the first time and nobody in his right state of mind would allow such kind of thing to happen, not to us in Gombe. No father would want such in his family”.
He called for a change of attitude in addressing the situation saying, “41 per cent stunted children? It means 41 per cent lost and it could be more, because of inter-generational impact. We are their leaders today; we are supposed to prevent that”.
Faulting the NGO’s and MDA’s, the Commissioner said “I assure you that you see no action because you people have not done your job. If at a time I give you a budget of N120 million, I must have believed that the project is worth N120 million. If you see me reduce that to N30 million, then you have to be convinced that I have not seen results, I have not seen the benefits of retaining N120 million”.
“And if it is after six years that I get to know that we have stunting children in Gombe, then we should do something about it and you shouldn’t blame me but yourselves, those of you doing advocacy,” the Commissioner frowned.
He said on all projects requiring counterpart funding in the State, it is always a tug of war because of scarce resources at the disposal of government at the face of many competing demands.
“That is why your attention will go to what you see and touch on a daily basis, but most of those projects that do not receive Government support in terms of counterpart funding is simply because we do not see the report, we don’t see the benefit of the funding we see in the past, in terms of its benefit to the people we are serving ”.
Earlier, the Permanent Secretary Stephen Ayuba commended the State Government’s effort in addressing malnutrition in the State though statistics of the State still show 41 per cent stunting rate, which is considered very high.
The advocacy, he explained, is for the functioning of the Gombe State Committee to come up with a clearly defined plan that focuses on most effective interventions especially at the LGA and community level for improved women’s nutrition, improved access to micro-nutrients supplements, improve the quality of the food through micronutrients fortifications and change behaviours of family members at critical points during the pregnancy until the child’s second birth day.
Media captionDonald Trump makes cryptic comments about “calm before the storm”
US President Donald Trump is planning to abandon the Iran nuclear deal shortly, according to US media reports.
If he fails to certify the accord, Congress will decide whether to re-impose economic sanctions on Iran. Mr Trump has until 15 October to decide.
Opposition to the deal was a major part of his campaign last year.
Posing for photographers with military leaders on Thursday, he said this was “the calm before the storm” but refused to give further details.
There was speculation his comments might refer to heightened tensions with North Korea, but the New York Times says “people who have been briefed on the matter” believe he means Iran.
Mr Trump was seen at the White House with his wife Melania, as well as military leaders, after Thursday’s meetings but before dinner together. Gesturing at the people around him, he asked the waiting press if they knew “what this represents”.
“Maybe it’s the calm before the storm,” he said.
When reporters pressed him on what storm he was referring to, he would only say: “You’ll find out.”
He had earlier told his top defence officials he expected them to provide “a broad range of military options… at a much faster pace” in future.
What happens next?
US media say the president will announce next Thursday that he will not be certifying the deal on the grounds it does not serve US security interests.
The presidency must certify the deal every 90 days; Mr Trump has already done so twice.
If he rejected it this time, Congress would have 60 days to decide whether to re-impose sanctions on Iran. US media reports suggest they are likely to leave the deal in place.
Speaking in the White House’s Cabinet Room, President Trump said: “The Iranian regime supports terrorism and exports violence and chaos across the Middle East.
“That is why we must put an end to Iran’s continued aggression and nuclear ambitions. You will be hearing about Iran very shortly.”
In reaction, Iranian nuclear chief Ali Akbar Salehi said the deal was not renegotiable, reported Iran’s Press TV.
But he suggested it might be salvageable if the other partners – France, Germany, China, Russia and the UK – remained on board. If not, he said, the deal will “definitely fall apart”.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said he hoped “the final decision reached by the US president will be balanced and will be based on the present-day realities”, reported Interfax news agency.
Will Congress let it stand?
Analysis by the BBC’s Anthony Zurcher
Once again the president appears poised to hand a tough issue over to Congress to deal with.
In July Mr Trump ended an Obama-era programme offering normalised immigration status to undocumented immigrants who entered the US as children – and gave Congress six months to come up with a legislative solution.
They’re still working on that one, sort of, and now Congress has another tricky situation to resolve while the clock is ticking.
There’s plenty of sentiment among Republicans to impose stringent new sanctions on the Iranian regime. The risks, however, of tearing up a multinational deal that international relations experts say has helped keep Iranian nuclear ambitions in check is great.
Image copyrightAFPImage caption Under the terms of the deal, Iran must let investigators access any site they deem suspicious
As with healthcare, another issue the White House has given Congress little guidance on, legislators will have to decide between their at-times overheated campaign promises and more practical concerns.
Given that inertia is on the side of inaction, the Iranian nuclear deal – though weakened by the president’s sabre-rattling – may hold together.
One thing is certain, however. The president’s decision would inject new levels of acrimony into US-Iranian relations and again put a blazing spotlight on congressional politicians who are already anxiously eying their re-election campaigns in 2018.
What is the Iran nuclear deal?
The 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action was designed to prevent Iran developing a nuclear weapon, with the president’s administration having to certify to Congress that Iran is upholding its part of the deal every 90 days.
It lifted some sanctions that stopped Iran from trading on international markets and selling oil.
The lifting of sanctions is dependent on Iran restricting its nuclear programme. It must restrict its uranium stockpile, build no more heavy-water reactors for 15 years, and allow inspectors in to the country.
Mr Trump has repeatedly said Iran has broken the “spirit” of the deal.
In a speech to the UN General Assembly, Mr Trump called the deal, which was brokered while his predecessor Barack Obama was in power, “an embarrassment to the United States”.
Media playback is unsupported on your device
Media captionPresident Trump and Iran’s President Rouhani traded insults at the UN
Note: This story is auto-generated from BBC syndicated feed and has not been edited by AFRICA PRIME NEWS
The PDP, unarguably, Nigeria’s largest registered club for Nigeria’s looters and economic wreckers, are famous all over the world, for their expertise and professional ingenuity.
This is why , in criminal psychology , people who are notorious perverts make inadvertent but confessional statements that align with their own convictions , vested inclinations and wishful idiosyncrasies.
This is the obvious and confessional reasons for the PDP’s unconvincing statements with the above title ,published in the Daily Trust of Friday,6th October,2017, to spite and dent the good image and indisputable reputation of President Muhammad Buhari and his party, the APC.
My candid advise to the PDP masterminds of this infantile act of deliberate blackmail and unimaginatively puerile theory, is that, it is too late in the day, to make President Muhammadu Buhari a fall guy in Nigeria, nay in the word, in a futile attempt to taint his identity, which the Almighty Allah has genetically reinforced with unassailable virtues.
My candid advise to the PDP brand masters is to all go back to God, for true confessions of their past crimes,against Nigeria and forsake their satanic ways, by cleansing their old habits of destructiveness and beckon to President Muhamdu Buhari’s clarion call for positive change and value reorientations in Nigeria.
That is their only way to new life of salvation and renewal of relevance, in PMB’s morally reinforced, not bankrupt driven Nigeria, of PDP’s rueful yesteryears.
Mallam Abdullahi writes from Keffi, Nasarawa State, north-central Nigeria.
US employment fell in September for the first time since 2010 as hurricanes Harvey and Irma took their toll on the jobs market.
The Labor Department said 33,000 jobs were lost amid a record drop in employment in the leisure and hospitality sector.
It blamed the two storms, which struck Texas and Florida in late August and early September, for the slide.
Economists had expected a rise of 90,000 jobs last month.
However, Harvey and Irma did not affect the unemployment rate, which slipped to 4.2% – the lowest since February 2001.
The US Labor Department uses separate surveys to capture payrolls data and the unemployment rate.
Economists said the discrepancy between the two September reports suggests the jobs decline does not indicate a long-term trend.
Gus Faucher, chief economist at PNC Financial Services said: “Although the headline number for September is loss of jobs, the first in seven years, the labour market remains in good shape.”
The strongest job gains last month came in health care and the transportation and warehousing industries.
But employment in the leisure and hospitality sector shrank significantly, while job figures in many other industries, including construction and government, were largely unchanged.
Image copyrightGetty Images
The US has been experiencing one of the longest stretches of job creation in its history, with the economy adding a monthly average of more than 170,000 over the past year.
Economists have said that pace is unsustainable and predicted it would slow. But the wage gains they said should accompany tightening in the labour market have been elusive.
The September report showed that average hourly earnings rose 0.5% from August and have now risen 2.9% over the past 12 months.
ThinkMarkets analyst Naeem Aslam said the earnings figure showed “that job market slack is fading”.
Others said the figure was likely to have been skewed by the unusual hurricane-related job decline in the low-wage food industry.
Rate moves
Even if wage inflation is weaker than the report suggests, economists said they did not see anything in the September report to dissuade the Federal Reserve from raising interest rates before the end of the year, as expected.
Ian Shepherdson of Pantheon Macroeconomics said: “Unemployment is what matters, and this report therefore makes a December rate hike even more likely.”
Revised jobs estimates for July and August showed US employers added 38,000 fewer jobs than previously reported.
But Mr Shepherson said he expects recovery to begin in October, with a bigger rebound in November.
Note: This story is auto-generated from BBC syndicated feed and has not been edited by AFRICA PRIME NEWS
Media caption“It was the scariest moment in my life” – one woman’s experience of the harrowing ordeal
The gunman behind the mass shooting at an open-air festival in Las Vegas had reserved rooms overlooking music venues at other sites, investigators say.
Stephen Paddock is known to have booked a room during the Life is Beautiful festival in Vegas a week before he killed 58 people and injured hundreds.
But it has now emerged the retired accountant may have considered sites in Chicago and Boston.
Investigators are still trying to establish Paddock’s motive.
A man named Stephen Paddock reserved a room at the Blackstone Hotel, in Chicago, at the same time as the Lollapalooza music festival was taking place in the Illinois city.
He never checked in, and a hotel spokesman said they had not confirmed “whether that is the same Stephen Paddock”.
Among the revellers at the August festival were former President Barack Obama’s daughters, Malia and Sasha.
The killing continues
By James Cook, BBC News, Las Vegas
Ask survivors of the Las Vegas massacre about gun control and you may well hear the sound of silence.
The cultures of country music and shooting overlap, and many concert-goers remain strong supporters of the right to bear arms.
“It’s obviously kind of a touchy subject,” singer and performer Krystal Goddard, 35, told me after recounting the horror of her escape from the gig.
“I think that guns are just a symptom of other things going on,” she said, although she added that she did not understand why anyone needed to own an assault rifle.
There is some support among survivors for banning “bump stocks” but there is also a realisation that doing so does not amount to serious gun control.
And all the while the killing continues.
Fifty-nine people died here on Sunday. By Thursday afternoon at least 87 more people had been shot and killed across the US, according to the Gun Violence Archive.
That’s a Las Vegas Massacre every three days.
Image copyrightGetty ImagesImage caption Lollopalooza, pictured in 2016, has taken place in Chicago’s Grant Park since 2003
The booking emerged after Clark County Sheriff Joseph Lombardo revealed Paddock had reserved another apartment in Las Vegas a week before Sunday’s massacre.
The apartment was in the Ogden, a high-rise tower which, at the time, was overlooking another open-air concert, Life is Beautiful, where acts included Muse, Lorde and Chance the Rapper.
Meanwhile, The Boston Globe reports Paddock is known to have carried out internet searches for both Fenway Park and the Boston Center for the Arts, citing an anonymous government official.
Both venues have recently held open air events.
More than 100 investigators are combing through the life of Paddock, who has been described as “disturbed and dangerous”, in order to find clues about why he committed Sunday’s attack.
Media playback is unsupported on your device
Media captionHow the horror unfolded – in two minutes
Sheriff Lombardo said Paddock had been “living a secret life, much of which would never be fully understood”.
Police found the 64-year-old former accountant dead in a room on the 32nd floor of a hotel after he sprayed bullets on concert-goers below, injuring nearly 500.
He apparently turned one of his many guns on himself as police closed in.
Image copyrightBoston 25
In a press conference on Wednesday, Clark County Sheriff Lombardo was asked if he saw evidence that Paddock had planned to escape after the attack.
The sheriff said “yes”. Asked what it was, he said: “I can’t tell you.”
He also revealed investigators had not entirely discounted the possibility the man they had initially described as a “lone wolf” may not have worked alone after all.
“You’ve got to make the assumption he had to have some help at some point,” Sheriff Lombardo said.
“Maybe he’s a super guy, maybe he was working out all this on his own, but it would be hard for me to believe that.”
22:12 Officers reach 31st floor and report gunfire coming from floor above
22:15 Last shots fired into the concert crowd
22:18 Security guard on 32nd floor tells police he has been shot and points them to room
23:20 Swat teams enter gunman’s room. They find ‘one suspect down’
Getty
Note: This story is auto-generated from BBC syndicated feed and has not been edited by AFRICA PRIME NEWS
Image copyrightPaddock familyImage caption Paddock has been described as having “doted on” Ms Danley
“Everyone has three lives,” Colombian author Gabriel Garcia Marquez once posited. “A public life, a private life and a secret life.”
It remains unclear whether a secret life led Stephen Paddock, a 64-year-old wealthy, retired accountant with a penchant for gambling, to open fire on a Las Vegas music festival crowd and kill 58 people and injure 500 others before turning the gun on himself.
Police are continuing to search for clues on what would trigger him to commit the deadliest US shooting in recent history.
“My hunch is there is a secret life here that will eventually be uncovered,” said J Reid Meloy, a forensic psychologist at the University of California at San Diego who researches mass shootings.
Though the suspect appeared to show no red flags about his intentions, Paddock had been quietly stockpiling 33 high-powered weapons – which included assault rifles and explosives – over the past 13 months. He spent decades acquiring guns and ammunition, police said.
Paddock’s family and friends appeared puzzled by the attack, with his girlfriend, Marilou Danley, describing him as “a kind, caring, quiet man”, while his brother, Eric Paddock, told reporters that he was stunned.
But Mr Meloy said there are several warning behaviours that signal whether an individual might be capable of committing such a crime.
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Media captionEric Paddock says he is in total shock after police named his brother, Stephen, as the shooter
One such behaviour pattern Paddock demonstrated is pathway, or engaging in research, planning and preparation for an act of violence.
At least 23 guns – 12 of which were equipped with bump-stocks, or rapid fire devices – were found inside Paddock’s Mandalay Bay hotel room while he also set up cameras both inside and outside the suite.
Paddock also wired $100,000 (£75,400) to his girlfriend while she was in the Philippines and instructed her to buy a house with the cash, removing her from the final stages of his plan.
But Paddock did not appear to show other behavioural patterns typical of perpetrators, Mr Meloy said, including fixation on a person or issue, identification with a previous attacker or as a soldier for a particular cause, or acting out in novel aggression, testing his ability to become violent.
However, that may change as the investigation unfolds, he said.
Adam Lankford, a University of Alabama criminologist and researcher who tracks global mass shootings, said individuals who carry out such crimes tend to have suicidal motives or appear indifferent to life or death, perceive themselves as victims or seek attention and fame.
Image caption Paddock’s girlfriend, Marilou Danley, described him as “a kind, caring, quiet man”
Mr Lankford warned that without explicit statements from Paddock about his reasons for the attack, determining a motive is mostly speculation.
But he pointed out Paddock filed a negligence lawsuit against the owner of The Cosmopolitan resort and casino in Las Vegas in 2012, alleging he “slipped and fell on an obstruction on the floor” that cost him $30,600 in medical expenses. The casino’s owner disputed the claims and the lawsuit was dropped in 2014, court records show.
That could have been an incident of perceived victimisation, Mr Lankford suggested.
Another striking detail from Paddock’s life is his father, who spent years on the FBI’s 10 Most Wanted list as a bank robber and whose criminal career spanned five decades.
Though Paddock did not grow up with his father, the detail could shed light on the gunman’s perception of fame, Mr Lankford said.
“His father became famous for committing crimes,” Mr Lankford continued, “that’s a dangerous lesson for a child.”
Mr Meloy also questioned whether there might have been a heritability of psychopathy in Paddock, passed on from his father.
“I’m not saying he committed this mass murder because of the psychopathy of his father,” Mr Meloy cautioned. “But imagine the degree of callousness, detachment and cruelty that it would take to open fire on that crowd.
“The motivation may be very much embedded in his personality.”
Who is Stephen Paddock?
From 1976 to 1985 worked as a postman, an Internal Revenue Service agent and an auditor for the Defense Contract Audit Agency
Worked for the predecessor company of Lockheed Martin in the 80s
Maintained relations with his younger brother Eric but estranged from older brothers Bruce and Patrick
Grew up in Sun Valley, California, and attended California State University in Northridge
He was married twice and had no children
Sources: US media reports
Mental illness is another trait that often permeates the narrative of a mass shooting, but Jonathan Metzl, a Vanderbilt University professor who studies the history of mental illness, warned that linking it to gun violence is misguided.
While estimates vary, a 2015 analysis of perpetrators who killed or intended to kill four or more people found that 22% of male killers displayed evidence of mental illness.
Less than 5% of US gun-related killings between 2001 and 2010 were committed by people diagnosed with a mental illness, according to the National Center for Health Statistics.
And according to a 2016 database of mass shootings involving four or more victims, just 15% of mass shooting suspects had a psychotic disorder while 11% had paranoid schizophrenia, Northeastern University criminologist James Alan Fox found.
People who suffer mental illness are actually far more likely to be a victim of a violent crime rather than commit the act themselves, Mr Metzl said.
“Linking [mental illness] to mass shootings reinforces the stigma that people with mental illness are ticking time bombs,” he said. “And in turn, it ignores the context of gun culture, gun access and other factors that play a part in a shooting.”
Instead, Mr Metzl explained that the focus should be preventing an individual like Paddock from carrying out a mass shooting rather than retro-actively trying to predict who could.
However, Mr Meloy emphasised that while warning behaviours can help prevent acts of violence, they cannot predict them.
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Media captionHow US mass shootings are getting worse
Note: This story is auto-generated from BBC syndicated feed and has not been edited by AFRICA PRIME NEWS
