Happy morning! The summary from Nigerian Newspapers for today is as follows:
1. Members of the National Youth Service Corps (NYSC) who are currently serving have been advised not to engage in any electoral fraud during the next general elections. Any corps member found lacking would face legal action, according to NYSC Acting Director-General Mrs. Christy Uba, who issued the warning Wednesday in Abuja.
2. According to Prof. Mahmoud Yakubu, the head of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), the commission will recover from attacks on its infrastructure and hold the elections in 2023. Yakubu stated Monday in Abuja that the commission will move some of the assaulted offices out of risky regions.
3. President Muhammadu Buhari has received heartfelt thanks from Ohanaeze Ndigbo, the apex Igbo sociocultural group, for completing the Second Niger Bridge as promised. Ohanaeze was especially grateful for Buhari’s resolve to finishing the project that the previous administration had started.
4. In the Abarikpo village in the Ahoada East Local Government Area of Rivers State, three Icelander members of a cult, including a gang boss, were killed in a gunfight. According to information obtained, members of the organisation broke into the neighbourhood at around two in the morning on Thursday in pursuit of their unit leader, Bright Ejike, also known as “Borokiri,” who they said had changed the group’s weapons and ammunition for use by employees.
5. The burial of slain BRT passenger Bamise Ayanwola’s remains at the Atan Cemetery in Yaba, Lagos, was a sombre occasion on Friday. After boarding a BRT bus from the Chevron neighbourhood of Lekki to Oshodi on February 26, 2022, the 22-year-old woman was discovered dead on Carter Bridge by the village of Ogogoro in Lagos Island on March 7, 2022.
6. The Imo State Labor Party has lost a second time in two weeks a candidate for the Imo State House of Assembly in the 2023 general elections. This time, Mr. Christopher Elehu, the party’s candidate for the Onuimo Local Government Area, was reportedly assassinated by gunmen on Friday.
7. With just two months until the general elections of 2023, Ifeanyi Okowa, the governor of Delta State and vice presidential candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), has been given the task of leading a new effort at reconciliation with the G-5 governors.
8. People of South-East Asian descent who reside in Finland will convene tomorrow to discuss the ongoing sit-at-home orders in the area and their effects. Those who disobeyed sit-at-home orders were met with violence by a splinter group claiming to be the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB), led by Simon Ekpa.
9. The Nigeria Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (NEITI) has backed the federal government’s plan to form a “Special Investigative Panel on Oil Theft and Losses in Nigeria,” stating that between 2009 and 2020, oil theft cost the nation a staggering $46.16 billion in income. In a statement released yesterday, NEITI characterised the choice as audacious, brave, and prudent.
10. On Friday, December 16, 2022, Nnamdi Azikiwe International Airport in Abuja welcomed 191 Nigerians who had been stuck in India and were being evacuated back to Nigeria by the National Emergency Management Agency, or NEMA. The returnees arrived at Abuja Airport on a chartered aeroplane operated by Ethiopian Airlines. A team lead by NEMA and other pertinent organisations greeted them.
