These are the top stories you should be monitoring today.

The governor of Kaduna, Nasir El-Rufai was at the centre of a controversy yesterday.

Senator Suleiman Hunkuyi (Kaduna North) accused him of personally supervising the demolition of his property used as the secretariat of a faction of the All Progressives Congress (APC) in the state.

The APC’s “Restoration” group promoted by the Senator last Thursday queried El-Rufai and suspended three of his aides.

The Hunkuyi-led faction suspended El-Rufai for six months, for “failing to reply to the query” three days after it was issued.

Senator Shehu Sani told his colleagues that El-Rufai allegedly led a team of soldiers and policemen to 11, Sambo Road, Kaduna to demolish a house belonging to Hunkuyi.

Sani noted that it had become obvious that members of the APC in Kaduna “cannot accommodate somebody who has the tendencies of Adolf Hitler, Mobutu Sese Seko and Nebuchadnezzar.”

Deputy Senate President Ike Ekweremadu, who presided, said that Sani’s report was not open to debate.

Dana Air plane last night skidded off the runway while landing at the Port Harcourt International Airport, Omagwa in Rivers.

Passengers were evacuated by emergency officials of the Federal Airports Authority of Nigeria (FAAN). No casualty was recorded.

The FAAN attributed the incident to a downpour accompanied by a strong wind and storm.

A Federal High Court sitting in Abuja has adjourned to February 28 for three sureties to leader of the proscribed Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB), Nnamdi Kanu, including Senator Enyinnaya Abaribe, to either produce him in court or show cause why each of them should not forfeit his N100 million bail bond.

The court had at the last proceedings on December 5, 2017, adjourned to yesterday for the sureties to explain why Mr Kanu suddenly stopped attending court and account for his whereabouts.

Vice President Yemi Osinbajo, yesterday revealed the strategies of the Federal Government in tackling the herdsmen/ farmers clashes in Benue, Taraba and other states.

According to statement by the Senior Special Assistant on Media and publicity Laolu Akande, the government has been deploying mobile police forces, army and Air Force to troubled areas and Nigerian Army formations and units in Benue State.

Osinbajo said, “The approach of the government has been to deploy mobile police forces to troubled areas and also both the army and Air Force, the Nigerian Army formations and units in Benue for example, especially 72 Special Forces Battalion, have consistently maintained Forward Operating Bases at the flash areas covering Guma, Logo, Katsina-Ala and Agatu Local Government Areas.”

One of the schoolgirls that escaped Boko Haram’s Monday night attack on Dapchi town of Yobe, Aishatu Abdullahi, has said some of the girls may have been taken away by the armed insurgents.

The Yobe State Commissioner of Police, Sunmonu Abdulmaliki Tuesday night, said that the school was attacked, but no immediate confirmation that any of the schoolgirls were abducted.

And stories from around the world…

US President Donald Trump has signed an order to ban bump-stock devices, which were used by a gunman who killed 58 Las Vegas concert-goers last year.

Speaking at the White House, Trump said he had directed the justice department to propose a law to make the accessories illegal.

Such devices enable a rifle to shoot hundreds of rounds a minute.

The situation in the Syrian rebel enclave of the Eastern Ghouta is “beyond imagination“, the UN’s co-ordinator in Syria says, following days of bombing by Syria’s government.

Panos Moumtzis told the BBC the bombardment near the capital Damascus, said to have killed at least 250 people, had caused “extreme suffering“.

North Korean officials “dangled” a historic meeting with the US vice-president Mike Pence during the Winter Olympics but pulled out at the last minute, the White House claimed on Tuesday.

The face-to-face encounter in South Korea would have been the first between senior officials from the Donald Trump administration and Pyongyang, which are in a standoff over Kim Jong-un’s pursuit of nuclear missiles that threaten the US mainland.

“North Korea dangled a meeting in hopes of the vice-president softening his message, which would have ceded the world stage for their propaganda during the Olympics,” said Pence’s chief of staff, Nick Ayers.

Officials in Cape Town on Tuesday moved the date when taps are expected to run dry in the drought-stricken city to July 9 from June 4, after residents cut back on their water usage.

Omoleye Omoruyi

Omoleye Omoruyi… an apprentice web/game developer, novelist, sensitive to happenings in the world. Meet him @Lord_rickie on Twitter/Instagram