These are the stories you should be monitoring today.

The Minister of Mines and Steel Development, Kayode Fayemi, while boasting that the All Progressives Congress (APC) will use all government powers to win the Ekiti elections, has also vowed to jail the governor of Ekiti, Ayodele Fayose, if re-elected.

He spoke during the declaration of intent to contest for Ekiti governorship seat on the platform of the .

Fayose, he stated, will be made to account for the gross mismanagement of the state’s resources and allocation in the last four years.

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The Co-ordinator, Bring Back our Girls (BBOG) Lagos State Chapter, Aisha Oyebode, wants Nigerians to stand up in prayers for those children still in the captivity of terrorists.

She made the call on Friday night at the Interfaith Vigil of the fourth Anniversary of the abduction of Chibok school girls, at Falomo Roundabout, Lagos.

She urged Nigerians not to sit back to watch Nigerian children dehumanised.

This comes after Ahmad Salkida, a journalist known to have access to the leadership of Boko Haram, says only 15 of the yet to be released 113 Chibok schoolgirls are alive.

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The presidency has said that the information contained in a thread of tweets by a journalist, Ahmed Salkida, about Chibok girls is not known to the officials of the administration.

The government, responding to press inquiries, said the information provided by Salkida was not known to it.

The government also said no such information was provided either by the captors of the Chibok girls or the international intercessors who are working with it.

According to Premium Times, Presidential spokeperson, Garba Shehu said Salkida was also not involved, on behalf of the Nigerian government, in the processes leading to the release of the over 100 Chibok girls that have returned to their families, so far.

Shehu said the journalist was equally not involved in the current processes to secure the release of those still held in captivity.

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A Rivers High Court has granted the national chairman of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Uche Secondus, leave to issue a writ of summons to Information Minister, Lai Mohammed, and the Federal Government.

This was revealed through a statement issued by Ike Abonyi, special adviser on media to the National Chairman, PDP.

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The Catholic Bishop of Sokoto Diocese, Bishop Matthew Kukah has said the people from Northern Nigeria will still come out in 2019 to vote President Muhammadu Buhari. 

This was in an interview with Punch.

His words: “Indeed, the Buhari project presents us with an interesting view. The average northerner has become far more impoverished under Buhari than he was under (former President Goodluck) Jonathan. But they will still vote for Buhari because they see him as the only one who can help bring their derelict elite to order. It is a strange appeal but that is it. They believe their corrupt elite are above the law. They were seduced with Sharia because they believed it was going to help them punish their own elite, who they see as being above the law of Nigeria. These are the issues.”

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And… stories from around the world.

US President Donald Trump has warned Syria‘s government the US is “locked and loaded” to strike again if it carries out new chemical attacks.

The warning came after the US, UK and France struck three Syrian sites in response to a suspected deadly chemical attack in the town of Douma a week ago.

Syria denies any chemical use and says that attack was fabricated by rebels.

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Large crowds gathered in South Africa for the funeral of the anti-apartheid campaigner Winnie Madikizela-Mandela.

Thousands of mourners crowded into a stadium in Soweto, near Johannesburg, where the campaigner was given a high-level send-off before her burial in Johannesburg.

Her casket was draped in the national flag, and South African President Cyril Ramaphosa delivered the eulogy.

The former wife of Nelson Mandela died earlier this month at the age of 81.

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Tens of thousands of people have demonstrated in Budapest against the re-elected right-wing government of Hungary‘s Prime Minister Viktor Orban.

Opponents of Orban flooded the capital on Saturday to protest at what they say is an unfair electoral system.

A similar number of people attended a pro-Orban demonstration last month.

The protests come just six days after the governing Fidesz party won two-thirds of the parliamentary seats with half of the national vote.

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Robert Mueller has evidence that Donald Trump’s personal lawyer Michael Cohen traveled to Prague in 2016, refuting Cohen’s claim that he never visited the Czech capital and bolstering the Christopher Steele intelligence dossier that first described the trip, McClatchy reported on Friday.

Investigators for Mueller, the special counsel in the Russia probe, have evidence Cohen entered the Czech Republic through Germany in late summer 2016, McClatchy reported, citing two unnamed sources.

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Moscow on Saturday accused the chemical weapons watchdog of manipulating the results of its investigation into the poisoning of a former Russian spy, saying his samples had traces of a nerve agent used by the west.

The Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons has said it confirmed “the findings of the United Kingdom relating to the identity of the toxic chemical” without naming the substance involved.

On Saturday, Russia’s foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, claimed the UN-linked Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) had sent the Skripals’ biomedical samples to Swiss experts who found they contained traces of the nerve agent BZ, used by the west.