Author: Emmanuel Obe

Reynolds Construction Company Limited (RCC), the contractor reconstructing the Eleme axis of the East – West road has not resumed work more than one week after the Minister of Works, Dave Umahi ordered it back to site. While on a visit to Rivers State recently, the Minister of Works had given RCC a seven-day ultimatum to remobilize on site almost one month after the contractor suspended work on the project. But by last Wednesday, there was no sign of men and materials of the company at any point of the project sites from Eleme Junction on the Port Harcourt -…

Local government elections in Rivers State will now take place on October 5, 2024, according to the Chairman of Rivers State Independent Electoral Commission, retired Justice Adolphus Enebeli. Enebeli announced the new date at a special stakeholders’ meeting the commission called at its office in Port Harcourt to discuss he the elections. At the meeting, the Chairman of the Inter-party Advisory Committee, Sensei Solsuema Osaro presented the list of authentic party chairman and secretaries in the state. The tenure of the last local government chairmen and councilors elapsed on June 17th, 2024. But they were not replaced with elected officials…

Ex-Niger Delta agitators under the Presidential Amnesty Programme, PAP, have appealed to the Federal government to increase their monthly allowance from N65,000 a month to N150,000. The agitators made the appeal in Warri, Delta State when the administrator of the programme, Dennis Otuaro, met with them. They lamented the financial difficulties they were going through and said the current N65,000 stipend had become too meagre to meet their basic needs. Gilbert Isobe, an ex-agitator from Bayelsa said, “When we started receiving the N65,000 in 2009, the money was sufficient, but after 15 years, it cannot take care of anything now.…

Managing Director of the Niger Delta Development Commission, NDDC, Dr Samuel Ogbuku, says that the Commission will leverage technology to upgrade all its operations in the quest to transform the Niger Delta Region. Ogbuku, who spoke during a three-day Capacity Building and Retreat for the staff of the NDDC Directorate of Finance and Supply in Yenagoa, Bayelsa State, stressed the need to deploy technology as it continued to reposition the Commission for greater effectiveness and better service delivery. The NDDC Chief Executive Officer also underscored the importance of strong internal mechanisms to check overbearing external influences in the Commission’s operations…

Eze Chike Wodo, the Paramount Ruler of Apara Clan has been appointed the new Chairman of Rivers State Council of Traditional Rulers to replace Eze Ohna Sergeant Awuse, who had not been absent from his post for a while. The Governor of Rivers State, Mr. Siminalayi Fubara, who announced the appointment, said that the sacked Chairman of the Rivers State Council of Chiefs, Ohna Sergeant Awuse, did not place his photograph and that of the deputy governor, Prof. Ngozi Odu, on the 2024 calendar of the council of chiefs. The governor further disclosed that Awuse was inactive and rendered the…

Mrs. Seledi Thompson-Wakama has been appointed the new Director of Corporate Affairs of the Niger Delta Development Commission, NDDC. According to a press statement by the outgoing director of corporate affairs, Dr. Pius Ughakpoteni, Mrs. Thompson-Wakama’s appointment took effect from June 26th, 2024. She joined NDDC in 2004 as Corporate Affairs Manager and rose through the ranks to become a director, according to Ughakpoteni. Educated at the University of Port Harcourt, Mandelson School of Business and Management and Harvard Business School, Mrs. Thompson-Wakama, she has held key roles at prestigious organizations such as the NDDC, British American Insurance Limited, and…

Akugbene Community in Bomadi Local Government Area of Delta State will soon begin to enjoy electricity supply through solar energy facilitated by Everlink Telesat Network Ltd The company has already built a mini-grid site from where generated electricity will be stored and supplied to the community. Akugbene is a riverine community on the bank of the Forcados River. Access to the community is mainly by water. The Site Supervisor of Everlink, Mr. Donald Ogbalor, who spoke to National Point at the site, said the project was a private arrangement with the community. He said the grid will supply the whole…

There was confusion in Port Harcourt the Rivers State capital on Thursday when the Court of Appeal reversed the judgment of a Rivers State High Court that nullified the membership of the 27 members of the House of Assembly that defected from the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) to the All Progressives Congress (APC) last December. The Court of Appeal sitting in Abuja held that the Rivers State High Court that delivered the judgment had no jurisdiction as it was only the Federal High Court that had the Constitutional jurisdiction to determine whether a member of the House of Assembly had…

The last two-day strike embarked on by organized labour in Nigeria cost the economy about N148 billion, according to Dr. Joseph Obele, a former Chairman of the Independent Petroleum Marketers Association of Nigeria (IPMAN. Obele, who is also a lecturer at Ignatius Ajuru University of Education, Port Harcourt, said the total loss of revenue was up to N500 billion for the two days in all the sectors of the economy. However he said that the strike was inevitable given the prevailing state of affairs in the country, where the minimum wage is just N30,000 a month and where substantial size…

Some stakeholders have raised concern over the stoppage of work on the Eleme axis of the East-West road in Rivers State. The flurry of activities that was noticed on the road since November last year when the contractors, RCC Limited mobilized to site suddenly began to slow down after the fire disaster in April on the Indorama section of the road that claimed many lives and burnt more than 100 vehicles. Investigation by National Point showed that work on all the sites of the project completely ground to a halt by Monday June 4, when workers at the Refinery Junction…