Headline

Approach Zimbabwe For Solution To Inflation, Obasanjo Tells FG

Published

2 years ago

March 5, 2024

Former President Olusegun Obasanjo, on Monday, advised that Nigeria should approach the government of Zimbabwe for a solution to the current all-time high inflation in the country.

He noted that since Zimbabwe was recently confronted with the same problem and came out of it, the southern African country would have useful advice for Nigeria.

In its latest release, the National Bureau of Statistics put Nigeria’s inflation at 29.9 per-cent.

The country is currently grappling with high cost of living, with pockets of protests breaking out across the country as Nigerians contend with increasing prices of foodstuffs.

Obasanjo, speaking on Monday at a youth leadership symposium as part of activities lined up for his 87th birthday, said Nigeria had Zimbabwe to learn from.

The symposium with the theme “Opportunities for Peace: Roles of the Youths in Conflict Prevention in Africa” held at the Olusegun Obasanjo Presidential Library, Abeokuta.

It was put together by the Centre for Human Security and Dialogue in collaboration with the Institute for African Culture and International Understanding, Olusegun Obasanjo Presidential Library.

The ex-President said the times of challenges were not to give up but to face the problem head-on and draw lessons from those who encountered similar problems in the past and overcame.

He said, “When the time is rough and tough, the tough must get going..no problem is new and no problem will be permanent. Committing suicide is not the end of any problem, confront it and take it to God because he could do anything. When you have a problem look at those who have had this problem before and how they overcame it.

“We have this problem of galloping inflation in the country now but do we have a country with such problems recently? Yes we do, Zimbabwe had this problem recently. Shouldn’t we ask them how they did it even if our approach will be different? Even if whatever we shall be doing will be different but we can ask questions to navigate our way out.”

Obasanjo also posited that dialogue, not guns or any form of violence, would help resolve the various conflicts on the African continent.

He said that like never before, conscious efforts to build and inculcate a culture of peace and security in the youth must be intensified to spur them to be at the vanguard of promoting peace rather than being used to perpetrate violence on the continent.

He said, “We must begin to bring up our youths in the culture of peace and security. The chances are where we have a culture of love, we will have peace. The first thing to do is to inculcate in the youths the ingredients of peace which is love and fellowship.

“Look at the attributes that God gave us to have a life of stability, life of peace, they are as I mentioned, kindness, mercy and forgiveness. All of these attributes are professed by God and He shared same with us to make life pleasant for us. But when we build negative attitudes, pull him down, then there will be a problem.”

He referenced biblical characters Esther, “who was able to secure her race from being exterminated,” and Joseph, “who helped to fight famine.”

“The youth must be at the vanguard of pursuing peace. They must be able to persuade those who believe that gun and violence is the way out of conflicts to have a rethink. The way out is conversation and dialogue.

“We have had our issues here during the civil war. We killed ourselves mercilessly and destroyed our best facilities but we still came back to the roundtable to get the challenge resolved.

“Youths must develop the culture of peace, the culture of humaneness, the culture of living the way God wants us to live,” Obasanjo added.

The coordinator of the programme and former Executive Secretary of the National Universities Commission, Prof Peter Okebukola, said the essence of the symposium was to further drive home Obasanjo’s commitment to the African youths.

Okebukola, who is the Director of the Institute for African Culture and International Understanding, Olusegun Obasanjo Presidential Library, said, “This event is a testament to the belief that it is not enough to grant young people a seat at the table; their involvement must be vital and meaningful.

“Through targeted interventions, inclusive policies, and international collaboration, we aim to empower West African youths as catalysts for positive change, paving the way for a more peaceful and harmonious society.”

Headline

UK Police Hunt Asylum Seeker Mistakenly Freed For Sex Offence

Published

8 hours ago

October 25, 2025

Editor

UK police were still hunting Saturday for an Ethiopian asylum seeker and convicted sex offender whose crimes sparked a wave of anti-immigration protests and who was accidentally released from prison.

Prime Minister Keir Starmer said he was “appalled” by Friday’s “totally unacceptable” error that saw 38-year-old Hadush Gerberslasie Kebatu freed rather than sent to an immigration detention centre.

“This man must be caught and deported for his crimes,” the UK leader added.

Kebatu had served the first month of a one-year sentence for sexually assaulting a teenage girl and a woman, but was reportedly due to be deported when the Prison Service mistake occurred.

Kebatu’s high-profile case earlier this year in Epping, northeast of London, sparked demonstrations in various English towns and cities where asylum seekers were believed to be housed, as well as counter-protests.

Justice Secretary David Lammy said late Friday night that Kebatu was “at large in London” after he was seen boarding a train to the capital in Chelmsford, eastern England.

Essex Police, which is leading the search with the help of London’s Metropolitan Police, said Saturday that “inquiries are continuing at pace this morning to locate and arrest” him.

“Officers worked throughout the night to track his movements, including scouring hours of CCTV footage,” the force added, noting “it is not lost on us that this situation is concerning to people”.

The Telegraph reported he was wrongly categorised as a prisoner due to be released on licence and handed a £76 ($101) discharge grant.

The father of Kebatu’s anonymous teenage victim told Sky News that “the justice system has let us down”.

Police arrested the asylum seeker in July after he repeatedly tried to kiss a 14-year-old girl and touch her legs, and made sexually explicit comments to her.

He also sexually assaulted an adult woman, placing a hand on her thigh, when she intervened to stop his interactions with the girl.

At the time, Kebatu was staying at Epping’s Bell Hotel, where scores of other asylum seekers have been accommodated, and which became the target of repeated protests.

Headline

UK Is A Home, Not Hotel, Kemi Badenoch Tells Immigrants, Starmer’s Govt

Published

2 days ago

October 23, 2025

Editor

UK Conservative Party leader Kemi Badenoch has slammed Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s Labour government over its immigration policy, declaring that Britain is “a home, not a hotel.”

Badenoch accused Labour of weakening the country’s borders and enabling mass automatic citizenship.

In a 1:11-minute video posted on her official X account on Friday, Badenoch claimed Labour’s proposed reforms could allow up to two million immigrants to automatically qualify for British citizenship starting next year.

“From next year, two million immigrants can automatically claim British citizenship. Two million people! That’s nearly twice the population of Birmingham. That’s massive,” Badenoch said in the video.

Badenoch noted that the Conservative Party has introduced a deportation bill to bring immigration down.

NDLEA intercepts drugs hidden in snails, others meant for UK, US, DRC
Among the measures she endorsed in the video were deporting all foreign criminals, mandatory age checks, no more pretending to be kids, tougher visa rules and salary thresholds, disapplying the Human Rights Act to immigration cases, and no more abusing human rights laws to judge deportations. Make asylum support repayable, and no permanent right to stay in the UK if you’ve relied on benefits.

“Until that’s law, we won’t fix this. Labour should adopt it now. It’s time to get tough. That’s what the Conservatives’ Deportation Bill delivers, and we’re going to go further. Our country is a home, not a hotel. And if we don’t defend it, no one else will.”

In the caption that came with the video, she tweeted, “Labour has blocked every single measure we’ve put forward to cut immigration and stop abuse of the system.

“Now they’re pushing one half-arsed proposal — it’s weak; it won’t work. It’s time they stopped playing games and backed our Deportation Bill.”

Headline

King Charles To Pray With Pope Leo In Historic Vatican Visit

Published

3 days ago

October 23, 2025

Editor

King Charles III will on Thursday meet Pope Leo XIV at the Vatican and make history as the first head of the Church of England to pray publicly with the pontiff for five centuries.

The 76-year-old monarch, who is the supreme governor of the Church of England, arrived in Rome on Wednesday evening with his wife, Queen Camilla, for what Buckingham Palace described as a “historic” state visit.

It will be Charles’s first meeting with Leo since the US-born pope took over as head of the world’s 1.4 billion Catholics in May, following the death of Pope Francis.

The royals will arrive at the Apostolic Palace at 10.45am (0845 GMT) for private talks with the pope.

The king and queen will then join an ecumenical service at midday (1000 GMT) in the Sistine Chapel led by Pope Leo and the archbishop of York, Stephen Cottrell, currently the senior cleric of the Church of England.

Broadcast live by Vatican media, it will be the first time a reigning English or British monarch has prayed publicly with a pope since English king Henry VIII broke with Rome in 1534.

Triggered by the pope’s refusal to annul the king’s marriage so he could marry another woman, the schism made the monarch head of the separate Church of England.

Thursday’s service, held beneath Michelangelo’s spectacular ceiling frescoes, will be centred on conservation and protecting the environment, a cause championed by Charles.

It will bring together Catholic and Anglican traditions, with the choir from the Sistine Chapel joined by that from Saint George’s Chapel, Windsor Castle, one of the king’s residences.

– Schism –

The religious break between London and Rome remains, even if there has been a significant rapprochement in recent decades.

In 1961, the late Queen Elizabeth II, Charles’s mother, became the first British monarch to visit the Holy See since the split.

The law was changed in 2013 so that marrying a Catholic would no longer disqualify someone from becoming monarch — although they still have to be a Protestant themselves.

The rapprochement is important because “Anglicanism was born in reaction to the Catholic Church, and therefore in opposition,” said Hyacinthe Destivelle, a French priest and member of the Vatican’s dicastery (department) for promoting Christian unity.

This is no longer the case, despite “theological differences in recent decades”, he told AFP.

Unlike the Roman Catholic Church, the Church of England — the mother church of the world’s 85-million-strong Anglican community — ordains women and allows priests to marry.

Sarah Mullally was recently named the first female archbishop of Canterbury, the Church’s top cleric, although she has yet to officially take up her post.

– Royal Confrater –

Charles and Queen Camilla are also set to take part in a service at the Basilica of Saint Paul Outside the Walls in Rome, one of four major papal basilicas, which has historic links with the English crown.

The king will be made a “Royal Confrater” of the basilica and presented with a specially designed seat for use by him and future British monarchs.

Charles has visited the Vatican several times and met privately with Pope Francis on April 9, just days before the pontiff’s death.

The king sent his son and heir, William, to the funeral and his brother, Prince Edward, the Duke of Edinburgh, to Leo’s inauguration mass.

The visit comes as the Catholic Church celebrates the Jubilee, a year-long event held every 25 years, which has drawn millions of pilgrims to the Vatican.

It also comes at a delicate time for Charles, following new revelations about his brother Prince Andrew, who is mired in a scandal surrounding late US sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.

Andrew announced on Friday that he would relinquish his title as Duke of York, reportedly under pressure from Charles. He had already stepped back from royal duties in 2019.

AFP