Author: Emmanuel Obe

The Governor of Bayelsa State, Senator Douye Diri, has sworn in 14 new commissioners, newly-elected chairmen of the eight local government councils, their vice chairmen as well as the chairman of the Bayelsa State Board of Internal Revenue, Daniel Iniekezimene. The re-appointed cabinet members, who served in the governor’s first term and retained their portfolios, include Biriyai Dambo SAN (Attorney-General and Commissioner for Justice), Moses Teibowei (Works and Infrastructure), Maxwell Ebibai (Finance), Dr. Gentle Emelah (Education), Daniel Igali (Sports Development) and Preye Brodricks (Special Duties, Bayelsa East). Others who returned but were re-deployed are Dr Ebieri Jones, who was assigned…

The Coalition for a Cleaned Niger Delta (CCND) has called on President Bola Tinubu to issue an executive order creating a Niger Delta Environmental Project (NDEP) to commence a health and environmental audit as well as a cleanup of the Niger Delta region. The coalition, which is made up of eminent environmental rights activists, said in a press statement that the proposed project should be devoid of the pitfalls of the ongoing Ogoni Cleanup being executed by HYPREP. The press statement was signed by Nnimmo Bassey, Executive Director, Health of Mother Earth Foundation (HOMEF) and Otive Igbuzor, Founding Executive Director,…

Friday night’s fire in front of Indorama Fertilizer Company gate at the Eleme axis of the East-West Rd near Port Harcourt, which claimed an unspecified number of lives and completely burnt over 120 vehicles has continued to draw anger and grief from people. The fire occurred at about 8.30pm when a stream of fuel that leaked from a petrol tanker in front of Indorama’s main gate on the road, got ignited by a spark and exploded into a conflagration. A truck conveying fertiliser from Indorama complex to Onne Port had collided with the petrol tanker and caused a hole from…

Nigerians yearning for pump fuel price reduction will have to still wait because the promise by the Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited (NNPCL) that production of petroleum products at the Port Harcourt Refinery would begin in the second quarter of this year is not realistic. National Point investigations reveal that a lot of work still needs to be done to get the old refinery, which has achieved mechanical completion, working again. A reliable source in the project disclosed that the earliest the old refinery can roll out products will be in the third quarter of 2024 because of the nature…

Mr. Isaac Kamalu, the former Rivers State commissioner for Finance, and Prof Zacchaeus Adangor, on Wednesday, April 24, 2024, resigned their membership of the Rivers State Executive Council after the governor reassigned them to new portfolios. The resignation of the two former commissioners came a few days after the governor, Sir Siminalayi Fubara, disclosed that the internally generated revenue of the state had risen sharply from N12 billion monthly to N27 billion. A few days after this disclosure, the governor authorised the reassignment of Kamalu from the Finance ministry to the ministry of Employment Generation, and Adangor from the ministry…

Friday night’s fire in front of Indorama gate at the Eleme axis of the East-West Rd near Port Harcourt, which claimed an unspecified number of lives and completely burnt 69 vehicles has continued to draw anger and grief from people. The fire occurred at about 8.30pm when a stream of of fuel that leaked from a petrol tanker in front of Indorama’s main gate on the road got ignited by a spark and exploded into a conflagration. A truck conveying fertiliser from Indorama complex to Onne Port had collided with the petrol tanker and caused a hole from which the…

…Fubara urges navy to be firm against oil thieves The Nigerian Navy has formally relocated its training command headquarters to Rivers State. The new headquarters, located at the former Nne Kurubo Model Secondary School, Ejamah, Ebubu in Eleme Local Government Area, was inaugurated on Friday by Governor Siminalayi Fubara. Fubara said at inauguration that the partnership between the state and the navy has been yielding fruitful results. The compound of Nne Kurubo Model Secondary School was donated to the navy by the immediate past administration of Chief Nyesom Wike after the navy requested to use the school as its training…

The Public Interest Lawyering Initiative for West Africa (PILIWA), an international nongovernmental organization devoted to fighting for the rights of indigent people, has endowed a human desk at the Port Harcourt Branch of the Nigerian Bar Association (NBA). At the formal presentation of the instruments, the Nigeria Country Director of PILIWA, Mr. Chima Williams, said PILIWA’s partnership with the NBA was to stand in the gap for people whose are too weak to seek redress for wrongs done them. He said, “Our job is to use our calling to defend ourselves, defend the defenceless and defend our environment. We fight…

The contractor handling the reconstruction of the Eleme axis of the East West-West road, Reynolds Construction Company Limited (RCC) has returned to site barely a week after the Minister of Works, Senator David Umahi, ordered suspension of work on the project. RCC returned to site just as Rivers State Governor, Mr. Siminalayi Fubara, promised that the state government was working hard to complete rehabilitation of the old Port Harcourt – Bori road to provide alternative to the traffic that use the East-West road. The governor, who also inspected work on the new 6.5-kilometre Woji-Aleto-Alesa road, said the state government was…

The University of Port Harcourt has made tree planting a cardinal objective to contribute to the international campaign to fight global warming. At a special ceremony just before its 34th convocation ceremonies, the best graduating student f the university, Osisi Upadhi Solomon, assisted by the Vice-Chancellor, Prof. Owunari Georgewill, planted a tree at the university’s new convocation arena. Solomon had a 4.91 cumulative grade point aggregate. At the convocation, which held between 23rd and 24th of February, the university conferred degrees on a total of 13,816 students. Giving a breakdown of the awards, the vice-chancellor said 477 of the graduands…