BREAKING: Federal Govt Postpones Population Census To May
Photo credit: Leadership
The Federal Government has shifted the 2023 population and housing census earlier scheduled for March 29, 2023.
Minister of Information and Culture, Lai Mohammed, disclosed this to State House correspondents on Wednesday shortly after the weekly Federal Executive Council (FEC) meeting presided over by President Muhammadu Buhari at the Presidential Villa, Abuja.
According to the Minister, the exercise will now hold in May, 2023.
He also disclosed that the Council approved the sum of N2.8 billion for the National Population Commission (NPC) to procure some softwares to be used for the conduct of the census.
He said, “There was a memo presented by the National Population Commission, seeking for some softwares to allow them conduct the census in May this year. I believe because of the rescheduling of the elections, they cannot commence the census as scheduled.
“They sought Council’s approval for a contract to procure software for the census at the sum of N2.8 billion.”
Recruitment: NDLEA urges calm over website glitches
Photo credit: Leadership
The National Drug Law Enforcement Agency has assured candidates seeking to participate in its ongoing recruitment exercise that concerted efforts are being made to resolve challenges they are facing on the application portal with a view to making the process seamless henceforth.
Our correspondent gathered that the online application portal of the anti-narcotics agency began to experience glitches due to the heavy traffic of over 200,000 applicants trying to access the system barely hours after it was opened on Sunday, March 12.
Reacting to the incident in a statement obtained by our correspondent on Wednesday, the Director, Media and Advocacy, NDLEA, Femi Babafemi, said the system was currently synchronising the data at the back-end of the infrastructure in order to adjust to the server upgrade.
He further noted that the agency upgraded the infrastructure on Tuesday, March 14 to accommodate the large volume of applicants after over 53,170 applicants had successfully logged into the portal.
Babafemi said, “The NDLEA has assured candidates seeking to participate in its ongoing recruitment exercise that concerted efforts are being made to resolve challenges they are facing on the application portal with a view to make the process seamless any moment from now.
"Barely hours after the online application portal was opened on Sunday, March 12, it began to experience glitches due to the heavy traffic of over 200,000 applicants trying to access the system.
“To resolve this, the agency upgraded the infrastructure on Tuesday 14th March to accommodate the large volume of applicants after over 53,170 applicants had successfully logged into the portal".
“At the moment, the system is synchronising the data at the back-end of the infrastructure in order to adjust to the server upgrade. The agency’s management, therefore, wishes to apologise to the applicants for the hitches being experienced and urge them to exercise patience while the system completes synchronisation to serve them better.”
Cross River: Support group endorses LP’s party chairman as guber candidate
Photo credit: Tribune
A group under the aegis of Coalition of Support Groups for the Labour Party has criticized the resolve of Peter Obi’s support groups on their endorsement of a gubernatorial candidate other than Ogar Osim, the state party chairman of the Labour Party, who claims he is the party’s flag bearer.
According to the group, the LP’s state chairman Ogar Osim remained LP’s gubernatorial candidate in Cross River State. The group further said the comments of Peter Obi on Arise News on Monday 13th March 2023, was misconstrued and doesn’t translate to an endorsement.
Speaking to journalists in Cross River, leader of the group, Mr Odu Mikel, explained that, “Our attention has been drawn to the purported endorsement of a particular governorship candidate, in a video that has gone viral. In that video, our Governorship candidate, his Excellency Peter Obi is misconstrued to have endorsed the Governorship candidate in Cross River state for the Saturday, March 18 Governorship election.
“The purported endorsement video is misunderstood, misconstrued and taken out of context, hence its the handwork of desperate politicians who want to twist the interview of our president in waiting. We should be aware and shun all their antics.
"Peter Obi cannot endorse another candidate when we have a capable and resilient Governorship candidate, Ambassador Ogar Osim, who is hundred percent Obedient".
“Endorsing another candidate is tantamount to anti-party which is a gross violation of the Labour Party constitution, for which the sanctions are better imagined than explained.”
When contacted, the leader of the Coalition of support groups for Peter Obi, Mr Daniel Ofem, said whoever is not interested in the endorsement of Senator Sandy Onor should meet in the field on election day as the people are ready to speak through the ballot: “whatever they want to is their concern we will meet in the field on Saturday”, Ofem Said.
INEC commences distribution of sensitive materials to 20 Bauchi LGAs
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Bauchi State office of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) on Wednesday commenced the distribution of sensitive materials to its offices in the 20 LGAs of the State.
The exercise is in preparation ahead of the Saturday, 18th March gubernatorial and state assembly elections.
The Commission also assured the residents of the state of timely distributions of all materials and items needed for the conduct of the elections across all the 20 LGAs headquarters where INEC offices are sited before Saturday’s elections.
Resident Electoral Commissioner (REC), Alh Mohammed B. Nura gave the assurance during the distributions of the sensitive materials at the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), in Bauchi saying that “today, we are here to distribute the sensitive materials in the custody of the CBN to the various 20 LGAs across the State.”
He also noted that last time the Commission had distributed the items on Thursday and they reached the local government headquarters on the same day, where they had Friday and Saturday morning to escalate to the polling units.
According to the REC, the main reason for this early commencement of the distributions exercise of the materials was to have enough time to see if there is any shortfall in the items in the boxes and for the officials to know how they can report to the headquarters for early replacement of the remaining shortfall items before the Saturday’s exercise.
He explained that the other time the items were distributed at the INEC office, but this time the Commission decided to do the exercise at CBN because the quantity of the items is not much like that of the Presidential elections.
Some of the stakeholders comprising of party agents, securities, as well as elections observers during the distributions of the items, expressed satisfaction and confidence with the overall process.
Our correspondent learnt that items distributed included Form EC 8B (1) and Ballot Papers for the governorship and state assembly elections in the State.
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