The Big 5: NASS justifies Budget alteration, Defence HQ says Nigeria is not under Islamic State threat and other stories

These are the stories you should be monitoring today:

The National Assembly has reacted to the concerns raised by President Muhammadu Buhari on the alterations made on the 2018 Appropriation Act.

Deputy Senate Leader, Bala Ibn Na’Allah; and the Chief Whip of the House of Representatives, Alhassan Ado-Doguwa, spoke on behalf the legislature in separate interviews with State House correspondents after joining Buhari during the signing of the budget at the Presidential Villa, Abuja, said the federal lawmakers did what they were supposed to do.

Na’Allah noted that the lawmakers were not worried about the concerns raised by the President because their (lawmakers) job was a difficult one, adding that if they allowed the budget to scale through the way it was submitted it to them, they would have been in trouble with those who elected them.

“You have to balance between the six geo political zones. It is the balancing efforts by the National Assembly that led to those observations and happily enough, he himself has said he is coming with a supplementary budget which will be dealt with as quickly as possible. I assure you about that one.”

On his part, Ado-Doguwa said, “Certainly, you wouldn’t expect us to just rubber stamp and just bring it back. We have to do the nitty-gritty of budget consideration.

“Whatever is worth doing is worth doing well and we have done what we think is the right thing to do to deliver on the expectations and the mandate bestowed on us by the people of our constituencies.”


The Defence Headquarters says Nigeria is not under threat from Islamic State militants.

Defence Spokesman Brig. Gen John Agim in a statement issued on Wednesdsy said: “The Defence Headquarters wishes to respond to a report making the round that ISIS has been sending her members to Nigeria to train Boko Haram Terrorists (BHT) members.

“It is pertinent to state categorically that there is no concrete evidence on the ground to back their claim.

“The Armed Forces of Nigeria is aware that there is collaboration between terrorist groups, thus, it is important to note that the activity of one group in a country influences other groups in other countries and because of this knowledge, activities of other terrorist groups usually affect our own military strategy,” it read.


The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) says the Nigerian Immigration Service (NIS) has been deployed to the voters registration centres across the country, as more than 300 non-Nigerians have been apprehended for attempting to register.

Speaking on Wednesday in Abuja at an election stakeholders’ summit organised by the Transition Monitoring Group (TMG), INEC chairman, Prof. Mahmood Yakubu disclosed that an estimated nine million Nigerians has been added to the nation’s voters’ register, as at May 24, bringing the total number of Nigerians captured to vote at an estimated 80 million.

Yakubu in giving reasons why some intending voters may have had problems enrolling themselves into the national voters register during the ongoing continuous voters registration exercise, said the commission had to cut down on cost as it would have cost the commission N1.2 billion daily to mount registration centres at every polling unit as demanded by some stakeholders.


The Kwara State Prisons Controller, Adewale Adebisi, on Wednesday disclosed that the crime rate in Kwara is low when compared with other states of the federation. 

Adebisi made the disclosure while speaking at the 2018 Kwara Security Summit put the total number of  inmates across four prisons of Ilorin, Mandala, Omu Aran, and Lafiagi in Kwara to be 844,  adding that there was effective policing compared to other states of the federation.

He described the incidences of recent armed robbery attack in Offa and Kaiama are as unfortunate and stressed that crime rate in the state was getting high daily due to economic hardship and high rate of inflation, coupled with daily influx of inmates to the prisons with unimpressive outflow of inmates out of prison, adding that many graduate youth were jobless, unengaged due to lack of entrepreneurial skills.

“The government should establish industries, create jobs and the wealthy citizens should cultivate habit of helping the less privileged by creating job and empower the youth”, he said.


The Nigerian Air Force (NAF)  has rescued 3 persons held captive in Gusau, for weeks through its 207 Quick Response Group (QRG) after it executed coordinated air and ground operations on armed bandits’ position at Daji Kagara area of Zurmi LGA in Zamfara State.

NAF Director of Public Relations and Information, Air Vice Marshal Olatokunbo Adesanya in a statement said the mission conducted by Special Forces personnel followed human intelligence reports and subsequent confirmation, by NAF Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance (ISR) aircraft, of the hideout of the armed bandits.

More coordinated air and ground operations would be executed in the coming weeks towards improving the security situation in the state, the statement said.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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