The Governor of Niger State, Abubakar Sani Bello, has presented 29 operational Hilux pick-up vans to local government chairmen and vigilante groups to checkmate crimes and unrest in some troubled areas of the state.
While making the presentation at the state’s Government House in Minna, Northern Nigeria, Governor Bello expressed concern at the increasing rate of security challenges faced by his people, especially the rural dwellers, noting that the provision of the operational vehicles to the groups and some local government councils was to enable them effectively secured their areas.
Governor Bello who identified the vigilante groups as critical stakeholders in the face of recent security challenge in the state, especially at the rural areas, urged them to work closely with security agencies. He added that the recent security challenges was not only alien to the people but unacceptable to his administration and warned criminally minded people to relocate from the state.
Spokesperson to the governor, Jibrin Baba Ndace, said aside from the regular supports to security agencies to ensure the state is a safe place; Governor Bello reassured the people of the state of his resolve to adequately provide logistics to para-military agencies in a bid to take the battle to the door steps of criminally minded individuals in the state.
“We are committed to making Niger State safer. It has become necessary to assist the vigilante groups and security agencies in the state with operational vehicles so that they can move around and provide a safer state for us”.
The governor however commended the efforts of security agencies in the state and charged them to re-double their efforts at ridden the state of criminals. He also charged the beneficiaries to maintain and make judicious use of the vehicles.
Earlier, Commissioner for Local Government and Chieftaincy Affairs, Haliru Zakari Jikantoro said government provided the vehicles to facilitate the movement of council officials and members of vigilante groups to enable the effective delivery of their duties.
16 Hilux pick-up vans were given to vigilante groups, while 13 were given to Local Government Chairmen.
Wife of Nigeria’s President, Mrs. Aisha Muhammadu Buhari, has returned from the UK, where she went to visit her husband, President Muhammadu Buhari, who went for a medical follow up abroad.
On arrival to the country on Tuesday morning, Mrs. Buhari conveyed the appreciation of the President to Nigerians over their constant prayers and said he will soon be with them as he is recuperating fast.
She also stated in a statement issued by her Director of Information, Suleiman Haruna that the President also thanked the acting President, Prof. Yemi Osinbajo for his loyalty and called on Nigerians to continue to support the acting President in his effort to actualize the mandate of the All Progressives’ Congress (APC).
The first lady however called on Nigerians to continue to be strong in the face of challenges and to support the Federal Government in implementing the agenda for which they were elected.
Mrs. Buhari traveled the UK last week to spend some time with the President.
President Buhari left Nigeria since May 7th for a medical follow up in the UK.
Kaduna (Nigeria) — Kaduna State Government, in northern Nigeria, says women in the state who want to space their births will start receiving free services from July to help them achieve their plans.
Currently women who go to public health facilities in the state are charged between N200 – N300 for consumables like cotton, bleach, hand gloves and detergent among others for child spacing services.
Executive Secretary of Kaduna State Primary Healthcare Development Agency, Dr Hadiza Balarabe told Journalists at a meeting in Zaria, that the free service was meant to reduce the number of pregnant women dying in Kaduna State by 25%.
A research has shown that countries which increased the number of women accessing child spacing services have reduced their maternal mortality figures by almost 35%.
Nigerian Government and UNFPA have been supplying commodities like condoms, injectables and implants for women free of charge, but clients have to buy syringes and other items needed for the administration of the service on them. This has created barrier and have discouraged many women from accessing the services.
To address the gap, the government of Kaduna State in its 2017 appropriation introduced a budget line and allocated N100 million to procure consumables, so as to eliminate the barrier and ensure provision of free services to women in the state.
Balarabe said her agency had already forwarded a proposal to the sister agency in charge of the procurement of the commodities to ensure the release of the N100m, and for the ‘totally free’ commodities, consumable and services to commence in July.
“We are the custodian of child spacing activities in the state, we have written a proposal so that we can get the funds to be able to provide the consumables.
“We also understand that for family planning to be truly free, as we want it to be, we need to increase our Contraceptive Prevalence Rate (CPR), we have to provide not only the consumables but also the commodities.
“We are not just working but we are running to get these consumables and commodities across to all the service delivery points,” she said.
Balarabe called for strong collaboration and relationship among donor agencies working in the state to ensure coordination, and that the state is guided properly in the discharge of its mandate to citizens.
According to a Federal Government document, Kaduna State need to increase the number of married women spacing their births from the current level of about 22% to above 46%, for the state to experience a meaningful reduction in maternal death.
This target is also meant to help Nigeria achieve its overall goal of raising the number of women spacing birth from the current 15% to 36% by next year.
Speaking in the same vein, Dr. Duste Musa Gimba of the Department of Health Planning, Research and Statistics, the life of women is of priority to the government hence the investment in child birth spacing commodity and consumables.
“One of the key ways of achieving that is actually an off-take improvement of contraceptive prevalent rate (CPR), that is the rate at which married women embrace and take-up child spacing.
“So, it is actually the priority of the state Ministry of Health to improve on our child spacing policy, hence the need to develop a holistic cost work plan to encourage women to accept it,” he said.
For a child spacing advocacy organisation like Family Health Advocates in Nigeria Initiative (FHANI), the creation of the Child Spacing budget line will help Kaduna significantly in meeting its target of 46%.
Chairman of FHANI, Malam Shehu Usman Muhammad said, “As far as I am concern this target is realistic, because there are lot of women practicing child spacing at home without being documented.
“I think the current trend is to catch all of them to be able to document the true means of doing that and to help those that are doing traditional method because of its side effects.”
Muhammad said, FHANI has been working with religious and community leaders to ensure spacing of their children and that they are seeing results.
He said majority of the people in the community are willing to switch over from the traditional method to the modern method of spacing, they are only held back by charges at the health facilities.
“There is need to catch it up and replace it with modern one. Of course, it is realistic as long as everybody makes a commitment into it,” he said.
The meeting was organised by Palladium in partnership with Pathfinder International to support the child spacing efforts of Kaduna State Government
Ignorance is not an option – the environment is the “stage” for every “performance”, every entity is important to it if the world would remain an ecosystem – a self-supporting system. In the wake of recent global happenings, one cannot but think of what would become of our world in the next two or three decades. Would we have to fashion oxygen sieves on our noses before having assess to clean air? Or simulate artificial gardens only the rich would be able to afford? Maybe “air-conditioner wears” from Asia would have gained so many acceptances that the cooling effect of trees would no longer be important? One could go on with imaginative fantasies that would only prove one thing – Ignorance.
Yesterday, 5th of June, 2017 marks the celebration of the world environment day – the biggest annual event for environmental action with the theme “Connecting with nature”. The theme which aims to appreciate ideas from the commonplace is one that poses a mind-puzzling question to everyone – How am I connecting with the environment? Maybe this would be a better rendering – If the environment could talk, what would she say of me? While we may again feign ignorance of our environmental misappropriation, it would be a quantum leap in the right direction if we acknowledge our negligence.
A few days ago, the “Donald Trump administration” pulled out of the Paris Agreement which aims to strengthen the global response to the threat of climate change, strengthen the ability of countries to deal with the impacts of climate change by keeping a global temperature rise in this century well below 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels and to pursue efforts to limit the temperature increase even further to 1.5 degrees Celsius. As much as it would have been honourable to pay deaf ears to President Trump’s usual “knee-jack decisions”, it is disturbing to know that such decision was made by the president of the world’s second largest emitter of carbon claiming that the agreement is not in the best interest of America – Obviously, for Trump, its business as usual.
Speaking on the theme of the world environmental day, Mr Momoh Kayode, an agricultural entrepreneur and a postgraduate student of University of Ibadan commented, “We have to adopt better ways of handling the environment by putting up green initiatives that would at least mitigate the effect of climate change”. “The struggle to curb climate change is not a myth and the best way we can connect with nature at this crucial time is to sensitive ourselves on the best use of the environment” he added.
And so before the question “how am I connecting with nature?” is hastily answered, a few things are necessary. We should endeavour to carry out our fundamental obligation as global citizens. For developing nations, environmental hygiene such as cleaning sewage pathways, making blocked drainages flow, disposing refuse properly and tree-planting volunteering should be attended to.
For developed nations, a strong solidarity should be maintained towards environmental course, even against all odds. Then should we make attempts to raise up our camera and snap; a selfie in a beautiful garden, picnic in a nature park, a child feeding his pet frog, a politician planting a tree, a tourist skydiving connect with nature in every beautiful way our minds can think of. After all, the world belongs to us all. Happy World Environment Day Celebration!
Written by Ogunjobi Oluwamuyiwa Felix from Port Harcourt , Nigeria, Editing by Adebote ‘Seyifunmi
What if I told you that 80% of Nigerian youths lack a basic environmental education? What if I told you that 70% of young people around the world do not care about the environment they live in? Yes!
Now, before you begin a ‘I-want-to-proof-it’ research, know that the truth, the bitter truth won’t be found in data logged on some computers or books stacked in libraries. The clear confirmations that we are far from Nature stare at our faces: the gully erosion that swept a whole community last week, the daily depletion of the ozone layer and her cancerous effect, the air pollution that annually chokes millions of children to death around the world, the mindless exploitation of wildlife, and the list is endless. Indeed, we are disconnected from Nature!
Today, how many parents will have their kids tend a garden, prune a flower, plant a tree, go fishing in a local river, climb mountains, engage in environmental education or even at the least, take a long evening walk across the field? How many?Growing up I relished the moments we (children) spent in groups; gathering fruits, breaking dried nut, cutting grasses, catching grasshoppers, building mud houses with our foot, playing hide-and-seek game in banana plantations, dancing in the rain, ‘cooking’ with sand, used cans, green leafs, clay and pieces of rocks. That was what my generation enjoyed, the generation before mine enjoyed even more. Now, what will become of the next generation? How can they be made to connect with Nature?
This time and age, we rather would turn on the Wi-Fi for them to ‘go live’ during a politician’s tree planting ceremony, we would rather encourage them to create a Whatsapp group with the name – SaveTheEarth, we would rather jump on the hashtag #WorldEnvironmentDay, and what have you. Great but not effective, there are better ways we can connect young people with Nature.
So much lies on the shoulders of people who understand what is at stake. Pro-environmental agencies and organizations in countries around the world would do the next generation a whole lot of good, if they can team up to toe the line of groups like America’s EarthCorps International Corps Program, 21st Century Conservation Service Corps, and others support programs that creatively, patiently and effectively engage young people in environmental restoration activities that practically ‘connects’ them with Nature.
Environmental impact – positive or negative is not limited by boundaries. If you will help connect a young child with nature today and I do same right here, we can hope that it becomes a lifestyle for them, a culture that grows and sticks with the next generation – that alone is a great achievement.
As we encourage ‘young’ people to connect with nature by participating in public readings, open mics, street walks, social media campaigns and other 21st century approaches that seek to promote the environment; we should often remind them that the effort to connect with Nature is beyond chats, tweets and talks.
We must strive to become more environmentally conscious; we must put into practice everything we can, gradually, till it becomes a habit to connect with Nature. This will be realistic if we begin with the youths.
Written by Adebote ‘Seyifunmi from Abuja, Nigeria and Reporting By Alli Abiola.
The Executive Director of the United Nations Population Fund, UNFPA, Babatunde Osotimehin, passed on while watching television alone in his home in New York on Sunday.
Mr. Osotimehin, a former Nigerian health minister and also former head of Nigeria’s AIDS agency, NACA, was one of the most senior Nigerians within the United Nations system, who had been on his second term as a UN Under-Secretary-General and Executive Director of UNFPA.
Premiums Times reported that, a family member of the late professor of medicine, who was around about the time of Osotimehin’s death in his New York home, mentioned meeting the UN bureaucrat unresponsive before the TV set he had been watching on his return from church on Sunday. It was only after he had tried communicating with him in vain, and had also sought to nudge him awake to no response, that it dawned on him that the former minister had passed on.
The 68-year-old is suspected to have died of cardiac arrest, even though this is yet to be confirmed.
The family members spoken to said the funeral rites of the late professor would be announced at a later date. Before he became health minister, Mr. Osotimehin was the Director General of the National Agency for Control of AIDS and was also a former Provost of the College of Medicine at the University of Ibadan.
He became the Executive Director of UNFPA on November 19, 2010 to serve a four-year term and was re-appointed on August 21, 2014.
Born on February 6, 1949, Mr. Osotimehin attended Igbobi College between 1966 and 1971.
After his medical studies at the University of Ibadan, he received a doctorate in medicine from the University of Birmingham, United Kingdom, in 1979.
Mr. Osotimehin, throughout his professional career, had consistently advanced the cause of youth and gender, within the context of reproductive health and rights.
Oyeleye Lateefah Abiola, One of the 87 students sponsored by the Osun state government to study Medicine at the National University of Kharkiv, Ukraine, has emerged the best overall in her class for 2017 topping the class with a percentage score of 95.6%.
Miss Abiola, with Matriculation Number 258184358, is set to graduate on June 30, 2017 after the completion of her studies in a graduating class that has a total of 564 students.
A statement from the Bureau of Communication and Strategy in the Office of the Governor, signed by its Director, Semiu Okanlawon, explained that the Deputy Governor of the state, Grace Titi Laoye-Tomori, is expected to lead a delegation from the state to attend the graduation ceremony at the end of the month.
Mr. Okanlawon further explained that Miss Abiola was among other 98 students who secured admission to study Medicine at the state-owned Osun State University, had their study dreams terminated after the National Universities Commission (NUC) scrapped their course owing to the non-availability of a teaching hospital.
“This was a source of concern to the Governor, Ogbeni Rauf Aregbesola. This unfortunate development compelled the governor to seek for options to rescue the students from abrupt truncation of their dreams to become medical doctors,” he said.
“In the course of looking for solutions, the National University of Kharkiv, Ukraine came into focus. By 2012, arrangements were concluded to send the students to Ukraine where they resumed their studies,” Mr. Okanlawon stated.
The statement recalled that 98 students who were stranded were originally planned for but 87 of them eventually made it to Ukraine because parents of the other remaining students had secured other options for their children.
The statement quoted Governor Aregbesola as expressing joy and excitement that “one of our students Miss Oyeleye Lateefah Abiola emerged overall best in Ukraine University final examinations.”
The statement added that the feat recorded by Miss Abiola is one of the several indicators that the Aregbesola government in Osun has created a landmark in the area of education that cannot be overlooked.
The statement recalled that the government, convinced of the sanctity of its decision then, had ignored criticisms from certain quarters which condemned the decision by the state government to send the students to Ukraine.
Executive Director of Kaduna State Primary Healthcare Development Agency, Dr. Hadiza Balarabe has expressed appreciation to Civil Society Organisations working in the state for their role in pushing child spacing agenda forward and ensuring that quality services are delivered at health facilities.
Balarabe was addressing a meeting of Family Planning Advocacy Stakeholders in Kaduna on galvanising efforts towards releasing state budgeted funds for family planning commodities and consumables.
Represented by the State Reproductive Health Coordinator, Cecelia Markus, The Executive Director expressed the hope that the “meeting will strategise and galvanise efforts at strengthening all advocacy efforts on release of FP budget line for effective result in Kaduna state.”
While recognising effort by various stakeholders at different levels, Mrs. Balarabe said, “You may recall NURHI 2 made a wonderful presentation to His Excellency at the State Executive Council meeting on the need to allocate fund for FP services in Kaduna State. I am happy to inform you today that all your efforts at various levels, making advocacy to State and Local Government, Traditional and Religious leader, have yielded result, we are today celebrating the success.
“I must confess that now FP services in the State is taking a new positive direction. I must commend all those that contributed to this success. I know is a labour of many years and the final knock on the nail was by NURHI1 and NURHI 2. NURHI deserves our appreciation and commendations.”
Earlier, Chairman of FHANI, Mal. Shehu Usman Mohammed, praised Governor Nasir El-Rufai for the creation of the Child Spacing budget line in the 2017 appropriation.
“FHANI appreciates the State Governor, Mal Nasir Ahmed El Rufa’i for allocating N100 million in this year’s budget for the procurement of Child Spacing commodities and consumables. We request for prompt release of the funds, so that women will access services at zero kobo,”
He also congratulated the state for ensuring the effective take-off of the Primary Healthcare Under One Roof, through the establishment of Kaduna State Primary Healthcare Development Agency (SPHCDA).
The chairman called on Civil Society Organisations in Kaduna to work at pulling their advocacy efforts together for greater impact.
“Now that Child Spacing Unit is appropriately situated in the SPHCDA and we are all set to move our CPR forward, I am calling on all CSOs to work together towards speaking with one voice and ensure our voice matters in the state decision making. With all hands on deck, I am sure we will achieve our set targets,” he said.
In a remark, Commissioner for Women Affairs and Social Development, Hafsat Baba enjoined civil society organisation to continue fighting for women issues, as well as support policies aimed at making the lives of women better.
“We appreciate your effort at fighting for the cause of women. All these efforts are aimed at making the lives of women better.
“On behalf of the women of Kaduna state I want to say thanks to you all,” she said.
The FP Advocacy Stakeholders meeting was funded by Pathfinder International, a global organisation working towards promoting sexual rights in Nigeria and 20 other countries.
Pathfinder International is supporting FHANI to advocate for timely release of the N100 million budgeted by Kaduna State Government to enhance child spacing services in 2017.
Pathfinder is also supporting FHANI to advocate for domestication of Task-Shifting policy, a programme meant to empower Community Health Environmental Workers to carry out certain maternal health services in hospitals.
