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South African fixed-line telecoms operator, Telkom, said on Wednesday it would continue with its plan to lay-off 4,400 staff. This is after a court on Wednesday ordered it to halt job cuts until workers were consulted about the process. “It is a temporary delay. The restructuring must continue,” the firm’s spokeswoman, Jacqui O’Sullivan, said. O’Sullivan said that the company needed to cut 7,800 jobs on total. Telkom, in which the government owns a stake of about 40 per cent, is in the middle of a turnaround plan that aims to bring down costs and better compete with wireless operators, MTN Group and Vodacom. Three labour unions had taken Telkom to court, arguing that workers were being left out of the process. “The court ruling is a huge victory for us, because it gives us an opportunity to participate in the process,” Solidarity Deputy General Secretary Johan Kruger said. “There is a possibility that there will eventually be job lo...

ABUJA , (Reuters) – Nigeria’s President Muhammadu Buhari on Wednesday held his first meeting with campaigners calling for the release of more than 200 schoolgirls abducted by Boko Haram militants in the northeastern town of Chibok last year. The militant Islamist group, whose six-year insurgency has seen thousands killed in Africa’s most populous nation and top oil producer, caused an international outcry when it took the girls from secondary school dormitories in April 2014. Buhari praised members of the Bring Back Our Girls group for their efforts to prevent the missing children being forgotten. “Nobody in Nigeria or outside could have missed your consistency and persistence,” said Buhari during the meeting at his presidential villa in the capital, Abuja. “I think you will agree that the present government takes the issue very seriously,” he said, adding that the military was working with neighbouring countries to ensure a regional task fo...

The All Progressives Congress (APC) on Wednesday in Abuja pledged to address all issues of human rights abuses allegedly perpetrated by the Rivers government. The APC National Chairman, Chief John Odigie-Oyegun, made the pledge when all 23 local government chairmen in Rivers paid a courtesy visit to the party’s national secretariat. The chairmen were at the secretariat to report purported cases of human rights violations, unpaid salaries and monthly allocations to the state and intimidation to their persons by Gov. Nyesom Wike. Odigie-Oyegun assured the grassroots leaders that APC followed due process, adding that the party would not “allow the blood of the innocent to be shed for political reasons. “I want to give you the assurance that yes, things have changed in this nation, and those who are still testing our resolve will discover sooner than later that they are absolutely on the wrong track. “The fact that we are a party of law, a party of order, a par...

Lagos State Governor, Akinwunmi Ambode on Wednesday met with tank farm owners in Apapa on how to resolve the perennial traffic jam in the area, vowing that the state has the capacity to make parties involved play by the rule. He said the State Government will take a second look at the truck park at Orile with a view to expanding it to have the capacity to accommodate 1000 trucks. The governor who spoke at an interactive session held at Lagos House, Ikeja, which also had other stakeholders in the petroleum storage industry in attendance, said the State Government is ready to embark on the project with inputs from the tank owners. “If the tankers must come in every day into Lagos, we must have a location for them but not on the bridge. As immediate solution, I will continue to use my task force to clean up the bridge. And I will also immediately look at the truck park at Orile and expand its capacity from 350 to 1000 trucks. “So for us to be able to accommodate you, you mu...

Senate President, Bukola Saraki met with the Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria, Godwin Emefiele and advised on how he could possibly curb corruption in Nigeria. In a post on Facebook, Saraki said the senate was ready to back some of the recent CBN policies, advising him, to partner Nigeria Customs Services in a bid to save over N30billion. “I believe the recent policies initiated on some selected items, particularly key ones that have to do with items like rice, chicken, palm oil and even in the area of textiles, are policies that we in the Senate will support and believe it is a good step that will help our economy. “I advised him on need to collaborate with Customs to ensure that waivers given to some companies worth over 30 Billion must come back to government coffer so that Nigerians will know he is serious in making policies successful. “Secondly is the issue of smuggling because no matter how good policies are, import substitution, if smuggling can stil...

The Presidency has rubbished claims by the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) that President Muhammadu Buhari’s bailout funds for the state was gotten from savings of former Nigerian President, Goodluck Jonathan. In a statement issued by Femi Adesina, special adviser on media and publicity to Buhari, he noted that Nigeria’s main opposition party’s claim was false, banal and ludicrous. “The Presidency deplores the attempt by the PDP and its agents to create an unnecessary controversy over the well-intentioned effort by President Muhammadu Buhari to give some relief to state governments and long-suffering public sector workers,” the statement said. “We also reject the banal and ludicrous demand by the PDP Spokesman, Olisa Metuh that the PDP Government which was ousted by Nigerians at the last general elections for running the country aground, be given some credit for “saving” the funds that were disbursed as part of the intervention package ap...

There has been considerable interest in Lagos roads in recent times. A number of media houses have focused on the challenges posed by the state of the roads to the commuting public. While we do not seek to join issues with anyone, believing that the interest and focus being served by the publications is to draw government’s attention to the plight of the citizens, we must assure all that government is fully aware of the state of the roads and is poised to address them soon. As a matter of fact, some of the roads mentioned are already under contract and work is being affected by the onset of the rains during which only limited meaningful construction can be undertaken. It is also a fact that Lagos rainy days in the last two years have increased giving only about 5 months of the year for road construction activity. Thus contractors may not be on site working at full pace. Apart from this, it is necessary to state that early stages of construction work are done off-site as pre-cast ...

The United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) has disclosed that about 160,000 Nigerians have fled the north eastern parts of the country seeking refuge in neighbouring Niger, Chad and Cameroon. This was contained in a statement signed by Kori Habib, UNFPA Media Associate in Nigeria as part of activities to mark the 2015 World Population Day scheduled for July 11. The statement indicated that Nigeria would join the rest of the world to commemorate the World Population Day with the theme: “Vulnerable population in emergencies”. According to the statement, the theme of the 2015 world population day is of crucial relevance and timely to Nigeria. “Nigeria has about 1.5 million Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) largely due to communal conflicts and insurgencies in the north eastern part. “The majority of the IDPs are women, children and elderly and 52 per cent of the IDPs are estimated to be children under the age of 18 years,” the statement said. The state...

Mr Ailewon Danlami, the Zonal Coordinator, North Central, National Film and Video Censors Board (NFVCB), said the organisation confiscated 4,182 pornographic movies in Plateau from July 2014 till date. The coordinator made the disclosure when he visited the National Orientation Agency office in Jos on Wednesday. He said the movies were confiscated across the 17 local government areas of the state as part of efforts to enforce compliance with the required standard for movie production and classification. He added that “we confiscated 4,182 pornographic movies worth more than N600,000 to serve as deterrent to defaulters.” Danlami said the visit to NOA was to form formidable partnership for wider outreach on media literacy across the 17 local government areas of Plateau. “The purpose of our visit is to collaborate with NOA, which is present in all the 17 council areas of the state for wider and effective reach in terms of media literacy on movies and movies productio...

President Muhammadu Buhari has ordered immediate intervention in the textile, mining and agro-based industries in a bid to increase employment in Nigeria. On Wednesday in Abuja, he said as part of his plans to reduce unemployment in the country, his administration will give full attention to the rapid revival of ailing and moribund textiles, mining and agro-based industries. At an audience with a delegation of foreign investors, President Buhari declared that the creation of more jobs for Nigeria’s unemployed youth was the key objective of his administration’s economic agenda and will be pursued with the greatest possible dedication. “I still recall with clarity that at some point, the textile industry in Nigeria was employing about 320,000 Nigerians. But today, the same industry employs less than 30,000 people and the factories operate below capacity or they are completely closed. “I have made a promise to Nigerians that jobs will be created as part of effor...