Manchester United have spoken to Alejandro Garnacho after the winger liked social media posts criticising manager Erik ten Hag over his handling of the player.

The Argentina international, taken off at half-time in their 2-2 draw at Bournemouth on Saturday, liked two messages on X, by United fan and YouTuber Mark Goldbridge.

One post accused Ten Hag of “throwing (Garnacho) under the bus” because of comments the United boss made about the 19-year-old’s performance.

The other said Garnacho “had a poor first half but taking him off at half-time and holding him up as the problem is a joke”.

Garnacho swiftly “unliked” both messages, an action the club believes shows contrition, and a United source told the PA news agency the matter had been dealt with internally.

The teenager has become a key player for United this season, scoring nine goals and providing four assists in 42 games.

The incident follows one in September when Jadon Sancho said on X that he had been made a “scapegoat” after being left out of the squad for the Arsenal match, with Ten Hag saying he had trained poorly.

Sancho said he would “not allow people saying things that (are) completely untrue”, interpreted as accusing Ten Hag of misrepresenting reasons why he was not in the side.

The 24-year-old was banished from the first team before being loaned to Borussia Dortmund in January.

Ten Hag’s position has come under renewed pressure after the draw against Bournemouth, which left United seventh in the Premier League table, 13 points off the top four.

The FA Cup is the only silverware that United can win this season — they take on second-tier side Coventry in the semi-final at Wembley on Sunday.

[Vanguard]

Kano anti-graft agency files fresh charges against Ganduje

There is a strong belief among business leaders around the globe that businesses should no longer be about just making money. Every business should care deeply about society. This is why we frequently now hear of corporate social responsibility. Businesses are these days greatly concerned about social issues like inequality in society, poverty, primitive diseases, environmental protection, discrimination against women and minorities, and the entire gamut of social justice. Bill Gates, Warren Buffet, and David M. Rubenstein are among those involved in the Giving Pledge, some of the world’s richest men who have resolved to give much of their wealth to charity or worthy social causes.

Nigeria’s Allen Onyema, founder and chairman of Air Peace, is easily Nigeria’s version of these globally known entrepreneurs because of his commitment to the common good. The Lagos-London flights which his Air Peace started on Saturday, March 30, 2024, bear an eloquent testimony to his passion for the public good. No sooner he started the lucrative routes than foreign airlines in Nigeria announced drastic reductions in their fares. The foreign carriers, however, cleverly attributed the cutbacks to the Central Bank’s clearance of a backlog of $7bn owed them and the recent marginal gain in naira value. Interestingly, a section of the Nigerian media fell into their mind game and carried their propaganda without proper analysis. But that’s a story for another day.  

As Tunde MacAlabi, the founder of the Africa International Investment and Trade Exhibition and Fair noted a few days ago, British Airways now charges N1.25m for a one-way ticket to London, and no longer N3.5m, as was the case a few weeks ago, even during the winter which is normally a low season. KLM has come down from $1,500 a few weeks ago to $641 for a trip from Lagos to Amsterdam. Turkish Airlines now accepts N1.76m instead of N5m, to fly a passenger from Lagos to Istanbul. The list goes on. The good news is that the slashes are on average about 50%, and the reductions may continue in the foreseeable future. All this is because Nigeria’s Air Peace is charging a mere N1.2m for the busy Lagos-London route.

The Air Peace chairman, noted MacAlabi, could have gone into a deal with foreign airlines to keep the Lagos-London fare high because of its enormous lucrativeness, but the patriot in him would not have allowed it. Onyema used his planes in 2020 amid the COVID pandemic, when most airlines in the world were in a total mess, to lift Nigerians who were under the sustained barrage of xenophobic violence in South Africa back to the country free of charge. He lifted 286 persons home on May 29 and 301 others the next day. He has also brought home distressed Nigerians from war-torn Ukraine and Sudan free of charge in 2022 and 2023, respectively. He has supported the Nigerian national football team without looking back. All this without regard to tribal, sectional, regional, religious, and gender differences.

Against this backdrop, Nigerians are touched deeply anytime Onyema says that his reason for setting up Air Peace was not to make money but to serve the tremendous social purpose of providing jobs for Nigerians and creating business opportunities where they could serve as suppliers and consultants. I have attended two such meetings in Abuja in the last two years. Indeed, it was his late father, as he revealed, who made him set up Air Peace in 2012 and the following year it commenced commercial operations. It is today Nigeria’s largest air carrier, with 38 planes. It began when Onyema’s father asked him to employ teeming kinsmen and others flooding the house for financial assistance. He took to the airline business because he already had a private jet and acquired some aircraft management experience.

It is logical to hold up Allen Onyema as a quintessential Nigerian practitioner of shared prosperity, the concept that everyone in society should benefit from prosperity. The idea that a business should exist purely for the shareholders is now discredited. Shareholder capitalism which the likes of Milton advocated fiercely has fallen out of favour because it has created or worsened many problems in the world like the phenomenon of the rich getting richer and the poor getting poorer. In place of shareholder capitalism, there is now stakeholder capitalism. Stakeholders in a business are not just the investors but also the workers, the suppliers, distributors, the host community, the government, and even non-government organizations (NGOs). Among the top persons who have embraced this new thinking is Klaus Schwab, the German engineer, economist, and founder of the famous World Economic Forum whose annual meetings in January in Davos, Switzerland, are attended by thousands of top government leaders, writers, business leaders and thought leaders around the globe.

It is delightful that there are Nigerian entrepreneurs who subscribe to shared prosperity. Onyema stands out even among his peers. The new Lagos-London operations by Air Peace mean more aircraft for the airline, more direct and indirect jobs for Nigerians, and, of course, more prosperity for our people. To repeat the obvious, the Lagos-London flights have resulted in radical reductions in fares by Nigerian travellers. The cuts mean more savings for the people and more investments in their well-being and their businesses. The Air Peace founder truly runs a business with a soul.

Malam Abdullahi, a retired director in the federal public service, lives in Abuja.

Former governor of Kaduna State, Malam Nasir El-Rufai, says fuel subsidy is back, but many Nigerians do not know this.

Fielding question from newsmen in Maiduguri , Borno State capital, on Monday, El-Rufai said the federal government is now paying more than before.

In his inaugural speech, President Bola Tinubu had announced the removal of fuel subsidy, saying its payment was no longer justifiable.

But El-Rufai, who said he was in support of the policy, said the government had to make necessary adjustments.

“Fuel subsidy is another policy that has been implemented by the president, it’s the right policy. I always supported withdrawing fuel subsidy.”

“But, in the course of implementation as you can see the government has now realized that the subsidy has to be back because right now, we are paying a lot of money for subsidy even more than before.

He said many people don’t know that fuel subsidy is back, “but, if they want to know whether we are subsidizing or not, they should compare the price of petrol and diesel because petrol should be more expensive than diesel but diesel is priced above a thousand naira while petrol is at N600 per liter.

“So, we are still subsidizing Petrol because the government has realised that they way it implemented the fuel subsidy initially required some adjustments. That’s what I keep saying about policy and policy pragmatism,” he said.

El-Rufai had earlier presented a paper titled: “Leadership and Public Policy: Navigating Challenges and Lessons”, at the Capacity-building workshop for Senior Government Officials of Borno State.

[DailyTrust]

as court overrules defendant, admits his statement

A Federal High Court in Abuja heard on Monday, April 15, how police investigators were able to track the man behind an online publication that accused the ex-works and housing minister, Babatunde Fashola of writing the judgments of the Presidential Election Petition Court (PEPC).

Ibezim Chike Victor, who is alleged to be one of the three individuals linked to the publication made on an online platform – Reportera.ng, is being tried on a six-count charge, marked: FHC/ABJ/CR/434/2023 brought against him by the Inspector General of Police (IGP).

Victor is charged with criminal conspiracy, cyberstalking, and defamation, among others.

Testifying before the court on Monday, a police investigator, Inspector Ikemba Cyprian said his team was able to track Victor through his phone number by deploying technology.

Lead in evidence by prosecuting lawyer, E. O Ochai, Cyprian said the defendant’s phone number – 08146435568 – was provided by Fashola in two petitions, dated August 7 and 8, 2023 which he addressed to the IGP.

The witness said the nominal complainant (Fashola) stated, in the petition, that the publication was to the effect that his premises were surrounded by soldiers because he was writing judgments for the PEPC that was hearing petitions, challenging the last presidential election. 

He said immediately the petitions were assigned to his team, Fashola was invited and he volunteered a statement.

“We analysed the phone number on the petition and found that belonged to the defendant,” the witness said.

He added that upon realising that the number belonged to the defendant, Victor was invited and when he subsequently responded to the invitation, he volunteered a statement.

The witness added that, in his statement, dated August 10, 2023, the defendant admitted that he bought the MTN SIM card and registered it.

Ochai applied to tender the defendant’s statement, but Victor’s lawyer, Kanayo Okafor objected on the grounds that Sections 6(2)(d),17(2) and 15(4) of the Administration of Criminal Justice Act (ACJA) were not complied with.

In a ruling, Justice Bolaji Olajuwon overruled Okafor and admitted the statement on grounds of relevance.

The witness added that when his team contacted the Court of Appeal, authorities of the court said the judgments of the PEPC were written by Justices on the panel and not any outsider.

He said his team also contacted the Nigerian Army Headquarters and was told that no soldier was deployed to Fashola’s premises as claimed in the offending publication.

“At the completion of the investigation, we found that the defendant made the publication to smear the hard-earned reputation of the nominal complainant. We also found that there was no siege on the nominal complainant’s house by the army,” he said.

The witness added that the investigation also revealed that the nominal complainant did not write the judgment as claimed in the defamatory statement.

He added that the investigation revealed that the defendant and other of his collaborators use the same office and share the same phone number.

“We found that the publication was such that could lead to the breakdown of law and order,” the witness said.

At the completion of Cyprian’s testimony, Okafor prayed to the court for an adjournment to enable him to return on a later date to cross-examine the witness.

Although Ochai objected to the defence lawyer’s application for adjournment, Justice Olajuwon adjourned till April 19 for cross-examination.

[TheNation]

The Coroner Inquest sitting in Ogba Magistrate Court examining the death of a 12-year-old student of Dowen College, Lekki, Sylvester Junior Oromoni, has attributed his death to his parents’ and doctor’s negligence.

The Coroner Magistrate, Mikhail Kadiri, held that Oromoni died as a result of failed treatment for his enlarged liver.

Oromoni died on November 30, 2021.

His death was attributed to bully and an alleged poisonous substance he was forced to drink in the school.

He was said to have mentioned that he was beaten up by five senior students of Dowen College whose names were Favour Benjamin, 16, Edward Begue (16), Ansel Temile (14) Kenneth Inyang and Micheal Kashamu, 16, son of late Senator, Buruji Kashamu, before he died.

The incident led to the indefinite closure of the school despite denying the claim.

The school insisted that the boy complained of leg pain following an injury he sustained while playing football.

Meanwhile, the Lagos State Commissioner of Police ordered a full-scale investigation into the incident.

On January 5, 2022, the Lagos State Government exonerated the five students and five employees of Dowen College, Lekki, Lagos, who were accused of the death of Sylvester Oromoni.

Two years later, Oromoni was laid to rest at the family’s compound at Ogbe-Ijoh, Warri South-West Local Government Area of Delta.

Kadiri said, “Based on the foregoing it is clear that the deceased health deteriorated in (doctor) PW 3’s care.

“PW 3, did not take proper care of the deceased, PW 3, completely abandoned the deceased for a period of more than 32 hours.

“The deceased’s death was an avoidable one but for the negligence of the parents and PW 3, they didn’t take him to the hospital until the day he died on November 30, 2021.

“The deceased went through an avoidable and excruciating pain and made to suffer needlessly,” Kadiri said.

Watch video below: https://x.com/MobilePunch/status/1779912480463974821

[Punch]

The Kano State Working Committee of the All Progressives Congress has invalidated the suspension of the National Chairman, Abdullahi Ganduje by his ward in APC Dawakin Tofa Local Government Area.

The working committee also suspended the party leaders at the ward level.

PM News earlier reported that the ward leaders through Legal Adviser, Halliru Gwanzo, said Ganduje was alleged to be involved in bribery.

Gwanzo said the allegations against the Ganduje were serious and he needed to be suspended.

He said: “We decided to suspend Dr. Abdullahi Ganduje from the party due to the seriousness of the allegations against him”

But the Local Government Chairman for the APC, Inusa Dawanau, stated that who purportedly suspended Ganduje were being suspended six months over their involvement in anti-party activities.

He claimed that there were their records of meetings with another party.

In his reaction, the state’s APC chairman, Alhaji Abdullahi Abbas, said, “We have evidence of meetings between the State Government officials and those who suspended the National Chairman, and the State Working Committee has agreed to sanction them for six months. They will remain suspended until the expiration of the period”.

[PM News]

Investors have continued to backpedal on the stock market, especially in the banking sector, on the back of the proposed recapitalization of the banks announced late last month by the Central Bank of Nigeria, CBN.

The risk-off sentiment resulted in the loss of N633 billion as investors took profits from the banks.

Consequently, the market capitalization of all the listed equities fell to N57.87 trillion at the close of the holiday-shortened week from N58.498 trillion in the previous week, representing a 1.1 per cent decrease.

Also, the benchmark All Share Index (ASI) of the Nigerian Exchange Limited (NGX) declined by 1.1 per cent to 102,314.56 basis points from 103,437.67 basis points in the previous week, driven by losses in the shares of Guaranty Trust Company (GTCo) Plc (-13.75%), FBN Holdings Plc (-11.15%) and Zenith Bank Plc (-5.88%).

Month-to-Date (MtD) and Year-to-Date (YtD) returns slipped to -2.1 per cent and +36.8 per cent, respectively.

Further analysis shows that activity level was also impacted by the shortened trading week, as the total trading volume and value weakened by 69.2 per cent Week-on-Week (w/w) and 50.5 per cent w/w, to 734 04 million units and N31.58 billion respectively.

Sectoral performance was negative, reflecting the sour mood in the market.

Precisely, all the major sectoral indices declined with the banking sector, leading with 7.2 per cent depreciation, followed by the insurance sector 2.4 per cent; consumer goods sector (-1.3%); oil and gas sector (-0.3%) and the industrial goods sector which fell by 0.2 per cent.

Analysts at Cordros Capital, in their projection for the week, said: “Looking forward, we anticipate that market sentiments will remain negative, with investors continuing to react unfavourably to the potential dilution stemming from the CBN’s recapitalization initiative.”

“In the medium term, we expect investors’ sentiments to be influenced by developments in the macroeconomic landscape and corporate actions,” they added.

Analysts at Parthian Securities, however, projected that the market performance will be mixed this week, saying: “We expect investors sentiment to be mixed at this week’s trading session.”

Vanguard News Nigeria