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UN Resident Coordinator Leads March Against Violence Against Women in Abuja
UN Resident Coordinator Leads March Against Violence Against Women in Abuja
By: Michael Mike
The United Nations Resident Coordinator, Mohammed Fall on Saturday led some prominent women activists in a march on major streets of Nigerian capital city of Abuja to demand for the end of violence against women.
The march was part of activities marking the 16 Days of Activism against Gender Based Violence (GBV) celebrated worldwide.
During the march which was organized in Abuja by the UN Women in conjunction with Women at Risk International Foundation (WARIF), Medicaid Cancer Foundation, the UN Resident Coordinator alongside the women carried placards demanding for an end to violence against women and spoke against what they termed crime not only against women but humanity.
Addressing the media after the long walk, Mr. Fall said there was urgent need for an end in violence against women, girls and boys, insisting that everyone needs to be involved in the campaign as it affects the entire human race.
He lamented that the statistics of violence against women is still very much alarming and showed that it needed to be approached with all round strategies that would make people to know its harm and get offenders no hiding place.
Fall said there is still much told be done by government, law enforcement agencies and leaders in all sectors to build awareness against violence against women and to expose it for what it is: crime against humanity.
Speaking on the need to put an end to the crime, the former First Lady of Kebbi State and Founder of Medicaid Cancer Foundation, Dr Zainab Bagudu said with the law against violence against women in place, there is still need to fight on until the society shows it does not tolerate violence against women.
She said after the law, “then the next step becomes the implementation and general awareness, the mindset of the average, person from our environment, is that they don’t even understand what constitutes abuse. So we need to educate them, to make them aware, and most importantly, to combine the facilities that they need if abuse should take place, we focus on women and young adolescent girls, but boys are also victims of abuse, and they can turn out to be perpetrators once they have been abused.”
She said “there is continuous need
to organize educational classes in schools and different places, so that we can educate our boys and they can prompt be supportive.”
She noted that there is need for much more efforts at ending the violence against women, insisting that: “Well, it’s (campaign) never enough. We’re a very large country. The population is high, so we know the challenges that we have and different conflicting priorities. So it’s important that we don’t get tired, and one of the advocacies that we do, to call on government to provide more resources, and donor partners, to help us. The task can be quite big, and the police can sometimes not be as responsive as we would like them to be, due to other reasons, but we hope that they will be more acute to the trauma that this causes to women, children and some men when it happens, and that’s why we keep on advocating so it’s not enough. We need to have more. We need to have more action. We need to have more understanding. There are also programmes that focus on educating our security forces so that they really understand how they should be reacting. Every police station should have a desk against gender based violence and women should have the confidence, or abused victims should have the confidence to approach these desks, make their point without fear of stigmatization.”
On her part, the Mandate Secretary of the Federal Capital Territory, Dr. Adedayo Benjamins-Laniyi, said the campaign was on in all parts of the Federal Capital Territory to drive the message to the grassroots.
She noted that: “We need to keep aggregating and scaling like what is happening today. We need to have more of this advocacy. We need to have more of the intentionality of collaborations between governments and private, public individuals, people who are able to invest and engage not just the interest, but in terms of the action and bringing interventions from messaging to the place of invested empowerment, of the mindsets of cultural traditional practices.”
Project Manager of WARIF, Adeola Potts-Johnson, on her part, said the campaign has been a success so far for it has grown from just being held in a city to many important cities of Nigeria and prominent cities across the globe.
She said WARIF would continue to push the bar until violence against women becomes history.
UN Resident Coordinator Leads March Against Violence Against Women in Abuja
All Hands Must Be On Deck To Boost Nigeria’s Business Environment, Says VP Shettima
- Urges states, MDAs, others to work towards actualizing President Tinubu’s reforms at PEBEC Gala and Awards Night
By: Our Reporter
The Vice President, Senator Kashim Shettima, has implored state governments, ministries, departments and agencies (MDAs) of the federal government, the organised private sector, and other stakeholders to do more in advancing the business environment in Nigeria.
He acknowledged the successes recorded this year, describing them “as the triumph of collaboration over silos,” even as he said when the 36 states of the federation, MDAs, development partners and other critical sectors commit to working together across the board, it becomes a big win for Nigeria.
Senator Shettima gave the charge on Tuesday in Abuja during the PEBEC Gala and Awards Night organized by the Presidential Enabling Business Environment Council (PEBEC) to celebrate exceptional public service delivery, reform excellence, and collaborative efforts toward improving Nigeria’s business environment.
He said, “The end of this night does not signal the end of your pursuit of excellence because excellence is a culture, not an event. It lives only where it is nurtured. And so, in the new year, let us do even more to advance the reform agenda for Nigeria’s business environment.
“Let us build a nation where efficiency is normal, where transparency is routine, and where excellence is the governing creed of public service.”
The Vice President underscored the importance of working as a team, noting that while every organisation reflects the kind of people working within, the people cannot “achieve excellence in a vacuum.”
According to VP Shettima, excellence is cultivated – “the result of choices, of discipline, of a refusal to settle for the bare minimum,” adding that it is not something that is inherited.
He observed that it is for this reason that the Gala and Awards Night was organised “to honour the belief that public service can and must be synonymous with excellence.”
Reminding stakeholders that the ball is in their court to make a difference, the VP said, “His Excellency President Bola Ahmed Tinubu has laid the critical foundation for the reforms required to reset our economy, and the success of this depends on the awardees we celebrate tonight.
“Your dedication and excellence embody the spirit of this administration’s Renewed Hope Agenda. You represent the very best of our public sector, and your work is the foundation upon which our nation’s prosperity is built.”
Senator Shettima described the Gala and Awards Night as “a celebration of public servants across Nigeria who have refused to accept mediocrity as our national ceiling,” by working hard to actualize the ongoing reforms undertaken by the Tinubu administration.
“The Presidential Enabling Business Environment Council, PEBEC, has spent the last couple of years championing reforms that speak to the soul of our economic aspirations—reforms that make it easier to do business, that restore investor confidence, that ensure our institutions work at the speed of national ambition.
“And tonight, we salute the men and women driving this mission forward, those who have placed the national interest above their comfort zones,” he said.
Acknowledging that there had been interagency collaboration on reforms that rapidly improve the nation’s business environment, the Vice President cited the establishment of the Ports and Customs Efficiency Committee (PCEC), which he said is “already bearing significant fruit through joint inspection procedures at” the ports.
Earlier, the Deputy Chief of Staff to the President (Office of the Vice President), Senator Ibrahim Hadejia, said under the leadership of Vice President Shettima, PEBEC has continued to deliver reforms that is incrementally impacting businesses in different sectors across the country.
He, however, reminded stakeholders that the task of transforming Nigeria’s business environment is far from over, as every improvement celebrated at the 2025 awards will be the foundation upon which more lasting reform initiatives will be built.
On her part, the Director-General of PEBEC, Princess Zahrah Audu, outlined some of the achievements recorded by the agency in the past year through deliberate and result-oriented collaboration to transform operations across MDAs, noting that reform is embedded and remains a critical component of PEBEC’s service delivery.
She added that the scope of PEBEC’s achievements under the current dispensation reflects the depth of partnership established and nurtured by management with critical stakeholders across the country over the past months.
The highpoint of the occasion was the unveiling of the 2025 Business Facilitation Act (BFA) Compliance Report and the Subnational Ease of Doing Business Report, as well as the presentation of various categories of awards, including access to justice; legislative trailblazer; leadership of action and business advocacy and partnership, among others.
Also present at the event were the Deputy Governor of Benue State, Dr Sam Ode; Deputy Governor of Enugu State, Mr Ifeanyi Ossai; Chairman of NDLEA, Brig. Gen. Mohammed Buba Marwa; Executive Secretary of the Nigerian Shippers Council, Mr Pius Akutah; Executive Vice Chairman of Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC), Dr Aminu Maida; Managing Director of the Nigerian Ports Authority, Dr Abubakar Dantsoho, other heads of agencies and parastatals; members of the diplomatic corps, and captains of industry, among others.
All Hands Must Be On Deck To Boost Nigeria’s Business Environment, Says VP Shettima
PRESIDENT TINUBU NOMINATES GENERAL CHRISTOPHER MUSA AS THE NEW MINISTER OF DEFENCE
By: Our Reporter
President Bola Ahmed Tinubu has nominated General Christopher Gwabin Musa as the new Minister of Defence.
In a letter to Senate President Godswill Akpabio, President Tinubu conveyed General Musa’s nomination as the successor to Alhaji Mohammed Badaru Abubakar, who resigned on Monday.
General Musa, 58, on December 25, is a distinguished soldier who served as Chief of Defence Staff from 2023 until October 2025. He won the Colin Powell Award for Soldiering in 2012.
Born in Sokoto in 1967, General Musa received his primary and secondary education there before attending the College of Advanced Studies in Zaria. He graduated in 1986 and enrolled at the Nigerian Defence Academy the same year, earning a Bachelor of Science degree upon graduation in 1991.
General Musa was commissioned into the Nigerian Army as a Second Lieutenant in 1991 and has since had a distinguished career. His appointments include General Staff Officer 1, Training/Operations at HQ 81 Division; Commanding Officer, 73 Battalion; Assistant Director, Operational Requirements, Department of Army Policy and Plans; and Infantry Representative/Member, Training Team, HQ Nigerian Army Armour Corps.
In 2019, he served as Deputy Chief of Staff, Training/Operations, Headquarters Infantry Centre and Corps; Commander, Sector 3, Operation Lafiya Dole; and Commander, Sector 3 Multinational Joint Task Force in the Lake Chad Region.
In 2021, General Musa was appointed Theatre Commander, Operation Hadin Kai. He later became Commander of the Nigerian Army Infantry Corps before being appointed Chief of Defence Staff by President Tinubu in 2023.
In the letter to the Senate, President Tinubu expressed confidence in General Musa’s ability to lead the Ministry of Defence and further strengthen Nigeria’s security architecture.
End
Finally, DSS Arraigns Sowore on alleged Cybercrime Offences
By: Our Reporter
Judge bars him from inciting public, undermining national security
The Department of State Services (DSS) on Tuesday arraigned a politician and online publisher, Omoyele Sowore, before a Federal High Court in Abuja, for alleged cybercrimes, with the court barring him from further making statements that are detrimental to the peace and security of the country.
Justice Mohammed Umar, in a ruling, threatened to revoke the bail granted Sowore’ should he ever make such statements. The arraignment came after two previous attempts, with the politician’s lawyer introducing what the DSS lawyer, Akinolu Kehinde SAN, called legal obstacles.
On Tuesday, however, Justice Umar held that since there was evidence that Sowore was a presidential candidate in the country before and having also earlier been granted bail by the court, with his international passport still being held by the court, he was entitled to be granted bail on self-recognition.
The ruling was on a bail application argued by his lawyer, Marshall Abubakar, shortly after Sowore was arraigned on a five-count charge, in which he is accused of defaming President Bola Tinubu by referring to him as a criminal in his posts on X and Facebook.
When the charge, being prosecuted by the Department of State Services (DSS), was read to him, Sowore pleaded not guilty.
In the charge, Sowore, the presidential candidate of the African Action Congress (AAC) in the 2019 and 2023 elections, is accused of contravening the provisions of the the Cybercrimes (Prohibition, Prevention, etc) Amendment Act, 2024 and the Criminal Code Act by calling President Bola Tinubu a criminal
The two other defendants listed in the charge, marked: FHC/ABJ/CR/484/2025 are X Incorp (formerly Twitter) and Meta (Facebook) Incorp.
Details shortly.
Finally, DSS Arraigns Sowore on alleged Cybercrime Offences
All Hands Must Be On Deck To Boost Nigeria’s Business Environment, Says VP Shettima
PRESIDENT TINUBU NOMINATES GENERAL CHRISTOPHER MUSA AS THE NEW MINISTER OF DEFENCE
Finally, DSS Arraigns Sowore on alleged Cybercrime Offences
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