The General Medical Council which licenses and maintains the official register of medical practitioners in the United Kingdom licensed at least 266 Nigerian doctors in June and July 2022.
The implication is that at least three Nigerian doctors were licensed per day in June and July 2022 despite the moves by the Federal Government to stop the exodus of doctors and health workers in the country amidst worsening brain drain of the professionals in the country.
Our correspondent, who has continued to monitor the GMC register, noticed that the number of Nigeria-trained doctors in the UK currently stands at 9,976.
The figure does not include other doctors of Nigerian origin who did not undergo medical training in Nigeria.
Presently, Nigeria has the third highest number of foreign doctors working in the UK after India and Pakistan.
The country however suffers a shortage of doctors.
The Medical and Dental Council of Nigeria noted that Nigeria now has over 100,000 doctors who have registered with the council.
A female pastor has seen meeting a native doctor to give her charms to make her church boom which the native doctor has charged her to pay N500k for the charms.
The cleric who identified herself as Prophetess Amaka Uba, gave the name of her church as “Mountain of Prosper Ministry”.
She asked for a charm that will make her Port Harcourt Church boom more than the branch in Lagos, and also bring in rich active members who will pay her tithes and also do whatever she asks them to do.
Yusuf Ahmed-Baba, the running mate of the presidential candidate of the Labour Party, Peter Obi, has said that both himself and Obi have solutions to end insecurity in Nigeria.
Yusuf, however, failed to say what the plans to end the insecurity were, noting that there was no point talking about the plans as so many politicians had talked and failed.
Yusuf spoke on Monday on Channels Television and also accused the President, Major General Muhammadu Buhari (retd.) of failing to tackle insecurity in the country.
Yusuf said he was ashamed that Buhari failed to secure Nigeria despite all his promises to end insecurity.
The All Progressives Congress Grassroots Governance Group (APC-G3), has advised leaders of the opposition Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), to stop dragging the ruling party into their intractable issues.
Scores of passengers were reportedly abducted, weekend, by kidnappers suspected to be herdsmen, who blocked the Enugu-Port Harcourt highway between Leru junction and Ihube axis.
Gunmen abducted some people in Anambra state and proceeded to throw them off a bridge, leaving them to land on the cemented base of a drainage channel.
The Incident Happened over the weekend in Alor, Idemili South Local Government Area of the State.
The Victims were said to have been abducted along Nnobi—Nnewi Road and taken to Alor where they were thrown from a bridge top along the Obiaja River.
A Video from the scene is going viral online. It shows one of the abductees narrating his experience, while being interviewed by some men of Tiger Squad local vigilante, Alor.
One of the victims, who introduced himself as Benjamin Okafor, said he was driving in his Toyota Camry car to his hometown, Amichi, in Nnewi South Local Government Area, with one other person, before he was abducted at about 9pm.
They Were then thrown out from the top of the bridge after a while.
The Video also shows the second victim lying motionless in the drainage system, with injuries all over his body.
Delta state governor and PDP Vice Presidential candidate, Ifeanyi Okowa, has said that the Presidential Candidate of the Labour Party (LP), Peter Obi, is not good enough to lead Nigeria as he doesn’t have the requisite ‘experience’ to be a President.
Okowa shared this thought during an interview with BBC Pidgin. He said;
“I did not say he won’t have any votes, he will have. But what I’m saying is that he’s not a new candidate. It has not been long since he left PDP. You know he was in APGA before, from APGA he came to PDP. It hasn’t been long since he left (PDP) so he cannot say anything about PDP because that’s where he was before.
“Some of us are still here. At every party, there are good people and bad people. But today’s Nigeria is very troubled and we need the right person. That is why I am appealing to our youths to be wise and vote well, they should not be blinded by the concept of a false change because that is how they raved on Jonathan in 2015.
His (Obi) previous experience is not enough for this one (presidency), it will be hard. His experience is not deep enough. Even as a current governor ruling in a time of crisis, I know how hard it is. I even want to learn under Atiku because he has experience with the federal government.
The thing is not easy. For them to have handled the economy at that time and made it something better, offering hope, creating jobs, and filtering the society, was not easy because it’s a bigger thing. So someone is supposed to learn through that. If you look at Obi’s experience you’ll know it’s small.”he said
A Police Officer attached to the Nasarawa State Police Command, allegedly raped and impregnated his 15-year-old niece.
The Suspect said to be an Inspector with the Special Investigations Bureau of the Nigerian Police (SIB) under the office of the Commissioner of Police, Nasarawa state, was arrested on 18 July, 2022 and is currently detained at the state CID, Lafia, as investigations continue.
The State Chairman of the International Federation of Women Lawyers, Mrs Rabiatu Addra, confirmed the incident during a press briefing in Lafia, on Wednesday, July 27.
According to Mrs Addra, a whistleblower had reported to them that the 15-year-old victim was repeatedly raped by an uncle she was staying with after the death of her father.
She said that on receipt of the whistleblower’s report, FIDA in conjunction with the Sexual and Gender Based Violence Response team (SGBV) facilitated and mobilised the police, which led to the arrest of the suspect.
“Our team with the police took the victim to the hospital and paid for her treatment but unfortunately she lost the six-month-old baby. The state ministry of Justice further paid the bill for a DNA test as part of the ongoing investigation to ascertain the real culprit.” the FIDA chairperson said
The industrial action by members of the Academic Sftaff Union of Universities, ASUU, will continue as members of the National Executive Council, NEC, of the union did not consider the option of suspending the action at its meeting which ended in the early hours of Monday in Abuja.
Checks by Vanguard showed that the national leadership of the union only briefed the meeting on their interactions and submissions made to the Prof. Nimi Briggs Committee set up the Federal Government to renegotiate the 2009 Agreement with the union.
A source said the leadership also told the meeting about the intervention of the Nigeria Labour Congress, NLC, in the matter and the subsequent nationwide solidarity rallies held by the Congress and its affiliates last week.
“Since there is no sign of any serious commitment on the part of the government, there was no need for the NEC to consider suspending the strike.Can anybody say this is what the goverement is offering? They were the ones who set up the Briggs Committee and it made recommendations and the government jettisoned the report.
“The government is not sincere. Let us assume that we are asking too much, which is not even the situation, is it not that the government will come out with its offers and we will deliberate whether to accept or not. We have been saying it that they want to kill the university system just as they did public primary and secondary schools.
“How many Nigerians are now proud to send their children to public primary and secondary schools that we all attended in those days? The national leadership of the union will soon come out with our decisions,” the source said.
Recall that the union has been on strike since February 14 this year and non-teaching staff unions later embarked on their own strike.
Last Tuesday and Wednesday, solidarity rallies were held across the states and in Abuja to press the goverement to accede to the requests of the union and for immediate reopening of the universities.
Aare Ona Kakanfo of Yorubaland Gani Adams has raised the alarm over the presence of terrorists in Osun and Ogun forests.
He urged President Muhammadu Buhari to quickly stop the country’s drift into destruction.
In a statement by his Special Assistant on Media, Kehinde Aderemi, Adams said worsening insecurity would cause further harm to the economy.
He urged Southwest governors to recruit, at least, 150 local security personnel in each local government to complement Amotekun.
“For instance, the information reaching me today (yesterday) is that the terrorists are in-between Osu forest and Ile-Ife in Osun State, fully armed with various ammunition.
“They are also present in the forest between Abeokuta and Ibadan planning to attack us in the Southwest. This is one piece of information that we need to act on to avoid a possible calamity.
“Yoruba aren’t cowards. So, let everybody in the Southwest be vigilant and be watchful in checking this insecurity scourge,” he said.
Adams decried the worsening insecurity across the country.
The statement added: “We now have a situation in which family members are being forced to raise N100 million naira to pay as ransom.
“The money is delivered to these terrorists to buy more weapons and the government is merely watching.
“After every abduction, the President will summon Service Chiefs to a meeting, a statement will be issued and that is the end of it. What we will hear next is another abduction or series of kidnappings.
David Umahi, governor of Ebonyi, has won the All Progressives Congress (APC) primary election rerun for Ebonyi south senatorial district.
Emmanuel Adebayo, leader of APC’s national committee of the primary, declared the governor winner at the end of the exercise which held at Afikpo north LG council headquarters. Adebayo announced that the governor won the contest with 250 votes while Austin, his brother — who had earlier withdrawn from the race — polled 10 votes.
“Mrs Elizabeth Chukwu polled five votes; Mrs Magareth Ibiam got three votes, while Mrs Ann Agom-Eze scored zero votes,” Adebayo said.
“Total number of votes cast were 275; total valid votes were 268, while invalid votes were seven.”
Umahi, in his acceptance speech, commended the committee for conducting a peaceful and credible primary election, noting that the APC has transparency and credibility as its watchwords.
“APC is rooted in Ebonyi and will surely sweep the electoral stakes at the 2023 general elections,” Umahi said.
On July 22, a federal high court in Abakaliki dismissed a suit filed by Umahi asking the court to recognise him as the APC candidate for the senatorial district.
However, the court recognised Agom-Eze, who came second in the May 28 senatorial primary for Ebonyi south, but ordered a re-run of the election within 14 days.
The federal government has gotten a two-week ultimatum from Nigerian Association of Resident Doctors (NARD) on implementation of agreement reached on the welfare of its members.
The ultimatum was issued at the end of NARD’s national executive council meeting in Lafia, Nasarawa state capital, on Saturday July 30.
In the communique signed by Dare Ishaya, NARD president; Suleiman Abiodun, the secretary-general, and Alfa Yusuf, publicity and social secretary, the group stated that failure to comply with its demands within the time frame may lead to “industrial disharmony”
The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), on Saturday, ruled out the possibility of extending the ongoing continuous voter’s registration (CVR) exercise, scheduled to end on July 31, 2022.
INEC National Commissioner in charge of Voter Education and Publicity, Barr. Festus Okoye, disclosed this in Awka, Anambra State, while interacting with some journalists.
He noted that the CVR would be brought to an end in order to enable the commission carry on with their other constitutional responsibilities.
According to Okoye, the commission would at the end of the exercise scrutinise the voters registers to clean up possible incidents of double registration, print permanent voters cards (PVC), display of voters registers across polling units, among others.
He said those who registered or carried out voters transfers between January and June 2022 will get their PVC in October, while those who enrolled in July would receive theirs by November 2022.
He also disclosed that in Anambra State, a total of 276,767 registrants completed their registration processes as at 25th July, 2022.
Okoye commended stakeholders in Anambra State for supporting the commission throughout the period of the exercise.
“We deployed a total of 110 INEC development devices to Anambra. 10 malfunctioned. 6 were repaired by our in house engineers and redeployed back to fields. As you know, the exercise was slowed down at some places in the South East for security purposes. And we devices mitigating measure to fortify it” he said
“In Anambra State, we trained some of our staff to assist in carrying out the exercise. By training some of our staff, we isolated those for transfer, replacement, and others. We trained our staff to assist in rendering the various services. We extracted clear protocol on how to carry out voters transfer.
“Few weeks we isolated places to carry out intervention; we took machines to markets, churches, NUJ, NYSC orientation camp and other places due to large concentration. This helped to mitigate the surging crowd. For complaints over performance of our staff, we developed a compliant desk for people to voice out their complaints. Over 50 complaints were received and treated. We carried intervention at 82 locations,” he stated.
