Saudi Arabia has announced that 1,301 pilgrims died during this year’s hajj.

In an interview on Sunday, Fahd Al-Jalajel, the country’s minister of health, said 83 per cent of the 1,301 fatalities were unauthorised pilgrims who walked long distances in high temperatures to perform the hajj rituals.

The minister said 95 pilgrims were being treated in hospitals, some of whom were airlifted for treatment in Riyadh, the capital of Saudi Arabia.

“1,301 people died during the #Hajj1445 season. May Allah have mercy on them all, 83% of them are not authorised for Hajj, who walked long distances under the sun, without shelter or rest, including a number of elderly people and people with chronic diseases,” he said.

On May 26, the National Hajj Commission of Nigeria (NAHCON) said Tawakaltu Alako, a Nigerian pilgrim, slumped and died in her hotel at Makkah.

Following this incident, NAHCON has reported many more deaths in this year’s hajj.

Abubakar Adamu, head of Nigeria’s medical team for 2024 Hajj, had told journalists on July 17, that one of the Nigerian pilgrims died due to heatstroke while on his way to Jamrate to perform the ritual of throwing stones.

Temperatures in Mecca this year climbed as high as 51.8 degrees Celsius (125 degrees Fahrenheit).

Mohammed Al-Abdulaali, a spokesperson for the Saudi health ministry, had said that more than 2,760 pilgrims suffered from sunstroke and heat stress on July 16 alone.

An armed man has allegedly raped an 18-year-old girl in Adewumi village, Ife South Local Government Area of Osun State, on Wednesday evening.

The suspect, identified as Jelili Ogunbunmi, reportedly ambushed the victim and her boyfriend at gunpoint before committing the assault.

According to sources in the community, the victim, identified only as Blessing, was accompanied by her boyfriend, Daniel, when they were accosted by the gunman while on an errand to purchase soft drinks.

A security source, speaking on condition of anonymity, revealed that the suspect, armed with a dane gun, ambushed the couple along a bush path.

“They pleaded with Ogunbunmi to have mercy, but their pleas fell on deaf ears,” the source stated.

“He threatened to kill them both. Daniel fled the scene, leaving Blessing with the assailant.”

The source added that Ogunbunmi then allegedly dragged Blessing into the bush and sexually assaulted her after which he threatened to kill her if she called for help.

Following the incident, Daniel reported the matter to the police, leading to Ogunbunmi’s arrest.

Yemisi Opalola, spokesperson for the Osun State Police Command, confirmed the incident to THE WHISTLER on Sunday evening.

Opalola said, “Ogunbunmi has been arrested and we recovered a dane gun he used to perpetrate the crime. The matter has been transferred to the State Criminal Investigation Department.”

Says first commercial transaction added $5m foreign reserves

President commends ministry’s major milestone in administration’s drive to diversify economy

Minister of Solid Minerals Development, Dr. Dele Alake, has presented to President Bola Ahmed Tinubu the latest gold bars sourced from artisanal and small gold miners and refined by an agency of the Ministry,  Solid Minerals Development Fund, to meet the London Bullion Market Association Good Delivery Standard.

At the presentation at the State House Abuja, Alake praised President Tinubu for supporting reforms in the solid minerals sector, assuring that the National Gold Purchase programme will increase the country’s reserve and boost the naira’s value.

Alake said the refined gold would be sold to the Central Bank of Nigeria to bolster foreign reserves.

He said the presentation marked the first commercial transaction under the National Gold Purchase Program (NGPP), the centralised offtake scheme supported by a decentralised aggregation and production network of artisanal and small-scale miners and cooperatives.

“The successful completion of the first commercial transaction clearly demonstrates the  National Gold Purchase Program’s effectiveness. It has increased the nation’s foreign  reserves assets and shown that using the Nigerian Naira to purchase a liquid asset traded  in United States Dollars, such as gold, is a viable strategy. This transaction has also  underscored the potential of the National Gold Purchase Program to enhance fiscal and  monetary stability,” the minister said.

Alake said the first commercial transaction had delivered +US$5 million increase in Nigerian’s foreign reserves assets, 70+ kilograms of gold refined to the London Bullion Market Good Delivery Standard and successful aggregation of locally mined gold thereby injecting about NGN6 billion into the rural economy.

Receiving and displaying a symbolic bar, President Tinubu commended the Ministry for achieving a major milestone in the administration’s drive to diversify the economy.

“This is another concrete step towards the diversification process under the Renewed Hope Agenda” the President said.

Executive Secretary of the Solid Minerals Development Fund, Fatimah Shinkafi, in her presentation said the London Bullion Market Good Delivery Standard was the globally recognised stringent and trusted standard that enables the global trade in gold and silver bars.

“Only gold and silver bars that meet our Good Delivery standards are acceptable in the settlement of a Loco London contract – where the bullion traded is physically held in London,” she said.

Shinkafi said through the efforts of the National Gold Purchase Program under the Ministry of Solid  Minerals Development, Nigeria had joined a select group of countries bolstering their gold  reserves by purchasing gold in local currency to foster economic confidence, enhance  currency stability, and create a more attractive environment for foreign investment.

 dislodge local guards protecting Sanusi

The police have reportedly stormed the emir’s palace in Kano state and displaced the local guards protecting Muhammadu Sanusi, the recently reinstated emir.

According to Premium Times, the hunters who served as local guards left the palace as soon as the police officers took over the security of the building.

This was said to be a move aimed at securing the main palace for the relocation of Aminu Bayero, the deposed 15th Emir of Kano, following a court order that faulted his dethronement.

On Thursday, a federal high court in Kano nullified all actions of the state government repealing the Emirates Council Law of 2019.

In his ruling, Muhammad Liman, the presiding judge, said the defendants were aware of an interim order previously granted by the court but ignored it and implemented the law.

BACKGROUND

On May 23, the Kano house of assembly passed the amended bill, which Abba Yusuf, the governor, signed into law.

The law repealed the 2019 version, which divided the Kano emirate into five jurisdictions and was relied upon to dethrone Muhammadu Sanusi as emir in 2020. 

On the same day the law was repealed, Sanusi was reinstated as Emir of Kano by kingmakers and the governor.

Aggrieved, Aminu Babba Dan Agundi and Sarkin Dawaki Babba of the Kano emirate approached the court to restrain the respondents from enforcing, implementing, and operationalising the law that reinstated Sanusi.

On May 23, Liman ordered the defendants to “suspend” and “not give effect to the Kano State Emirate Council (Repeal) Law, 2024, as they affect all offices and institutions of the Emirate Council created according to the provisions of the Kano State Emirate Council Law, 2019”.

The Kano police command had also said it would not comply with the directive of the state government on the eviction of Bayero from the Nassarawa palace which he moved into after he was replaced by Sanusi, the new emir, who moved into the main palace in Kano.

Since then, Bayero, who is said to have the backing of some federal government officials, has been under the protection of a retinue of soldiers and police officers at the Nassarawa palace.

Ese Brume produced a sensational performance to win the gold medal in the long jump event of the 2024 African Athletics Championship in Cameroon on Sunday.

She has now won the gold medal in the event four times while maintaining her unbeaten run in Africa for eight years.

It was not a smooth sailing run from Brume, who recovered from a slow start to overtake Burkina Faso’s Marthe Koala, who led with 6.72m after five attempts.

Brume showed her tenacity and immense quality to finish first in the race with 6.73m to win the gold medal.

Another Nigerian long jumper, Prestina Ochonogor finished fourth with 6.28m.

Temitope Adeshina won the silver medal in the high jump final event after losing to Rose Yeboah of Ghana.

Team Nigeria has now won a total of seven medals in the African Athletics Championship with three gold medal two silver and one bronze.

Orji Kalu, senator representing Abia north, says President Bola Tinubu has done well in certain areas of the economy.

He added that the president needs to do more in other areas because citizens are starving.

Speaking with Channels Television, Kalu said the country needs fiscal policies that would lead to the production of more food.

“I’m sure the president has done well in some areas and he also needs to improve in many other areas. I’m a very practical person, I fear nobody and I support the truth,” he said.

“President Tinubu has done so well in some areas, and in some other areas of feeding our people, people are hungry so I cannot say.

“He has done well in economic policy, monetary policy. Very good.

“But in fiscal policies we haven’t grown more food. I want us to grow more food.”

The former governor said the proposed N62,000 minimum wage would not address the ongoing inflation.

“I’m a proponent that local governments should be getting their money fully,” he added.

“I also believe that N62,000 cannot do anything. N90,000… and why I’m proposing N90,000 is very simple. We have not increased the minimum wage in five years.

“I’m a practical person. The civil servants need good treatment.”

The General Overseer of Christ Embassy Church, Pastor Chris Oyakhilome, has spoken out about the fire outbreak that gutted the church’s building in Oregun, Ikeja, Lagos.

Recall that the Loveworld Convocation Arena (LCA), formerly the headquarters of Christ Embassy Church, was gutted by fire on Sunday morning.

In a message to his congregation, Pastor Chris, President of the Loveworld Nation disclosed at the ongoing International Cell Leaders Conference (ICLC) Sunday Service at the Church Camp Grounds in Asese, along the Lagos-Ibadan expressway, that the building is one of the best worship facilities.

“That’s the best worship facility, frankly, in this part of the world. It’s worth multiple millions of dollars,” he said.

Pastor Chris called on the Secretary General of Loveworld, Kay Adesina, to share his eyewitness account of the incident.

Adesina said: “It’s really, really messed up. We were not able to enter, but we could see from outside. I took some of the pictures. The whole of the interior was coated in fire. And everywhere inside actually collapsed, including the offices.”

He also noted that the fire services tried to put out the fire from outside, as they couldn’t enter the building.

“The fire services that were there, they saw that they couldn’t go in. So they tried to put out the fire from outside. But all, including the external wall, you see, all the walls are compromised.

“But the only reason why the whole structure is not compromised is because they are steel structures. Otherwise, you would think that the whole building would collapse. So it’s really in a bad state,” the Secretary said.

Pastor Chris however emphasized that the church is not defeated and will build an even more beautiful structure.

“We will build a beautiful one, let the devil licks his wounds. We must look at life from the spiritual.

“It is painful to watch such a thing happen. The place is filled with fire and smoke, they can’t even go inside.

“When a thing like that happens, you can say, oh Lord, why? You say, Lord, Thank you for your Grace from those very grounds,” he said.

The general overseer also referenced a past experience where the church faced a similar challenge, the Ikebukuro attack, and how they overcame it.

“I’ll never forget, when the supposed bombings took place at the Ikebukuro attack, they thought it was war.

“There were explosions at Ikebukuro, atomic. The sounds were so loud, the explosions were so loud. Many thought there was war. And they began to flee from all that area,” he recounted.

When asked if he was surprised by the fire outbreak, Pastor Chris said, “Not, not even the slightest surprise, not even the slightest surprise. But that’s another day’s talk.

“When something like this happens, we have to remember that we are not of this world.

“What do I mean by that? Every single day, God protects us. He protects us, He protects everything that He gives us, with His glory and His grace, every single day. He protects us.”

The cause of the fire remains unknown, but officials from the Lagos State Fire and Rescue Service are currently investigating the incident. Despite the physical damage, Pastor Chris and the Christ Embassy Church are determined to rebuild and continue their mission.

Ways and means advances by the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) to the administration of President Muhammadu Buhari amounted to N7.5 trillion as at December 2022, according to official documents seen by TheCable.

This is significantly lower than the N30 trillion reported by the senate joint committee on banking, finance, national planning, agriculture and appropriation which led to the setting up of a probe panel headed by Isah Jibrin (Kogi east).

Ways and means is a loan facility through which the CBN finances the federal government’s budget shortfalls.

The CBN law limits advances under ways and means to 5 percent of the previous year’s revenue, but this has been observed mostly in the breach over the years.

This way of financing government deficits usually results in macroeconomic instability, leading to inflation and high exchange rates because of the excess liquidity injected into the economy.

THE BREAKDOWN

Documents seen by TheCable show that as at December 19, 2022, the total outstanding overdraft to the federal government in its “treasury subtreasury account” at the CBN was N22,719,703,774,306.90.

This was made up of N7,531,819,048,929.66 as ways and means, N13,725,408,432,557.50 as total costs of transactions on federal government securities in the capital market, and N4,618,829,652,047.41 as interest charges on the overdraft facility.

The loans were not reflected as part of the debt stock of the federal government until December 2022 when the Buhari administration officially requested the national assembly to do so.

TheCable understands that there were only three requests for ways and means by Buhari throughout his tenure, even though the facility was disbursed more than thrice — some automated because of the sovereign risk on securities.

The biggest amount — nearly N2 trillion — was disbursed in 2020 during the COVID-19 outbreak when government revenues fell as a result of the lockdown. The federal government got loans from the CBN for intervention programmes during the pandemic.

The next biggest amount was in 2022 when N1,473,618,756,185.62 was advanced to the federal government. It was the same year Russia invaded Ukraine, leading to a spike in food prices globally.

In 2019 — the year Buhari was elected for a second term in office — N1.4 trillion was provided to the federal government via ways and means.

One of the biggest beneficiaries of the overdraft was the Nigeria Bulk Electricity Trading (NBET), which got N1.3 trillion under the “payment assurance facility” to keep the Nigerian electricity supply industry (NESI) “liquid”.

Two private power generation companies — Azura Power West Africa and Accugas Limited — got steady payments from the federal government under the controversial “take or pay” arrangement.

Azura gets $30 million monthly while Accugas receives $10 million, also monthly.

Nigeria’s credit rating is at risk if there is a failure to meet up with the payment obligations to Azura and Accugas in two of the most curious cases of sovereign guarantee hanging on the nation’s neck.

The Niger Delta Power Holding Company (NDPHC) also got huge funds from the overdraft.

SENATE PROBE IN LIMBO

Olayemi Cardoso, who succeeded Emefiele as CBN governor, said in February 2024, that the bank would no longer grant ways and means advances to the government “until all outstanding debts are refunded”.

This was after the senate approved the securitisation of an outstanding debit balance of N7.3 trillion ways and means in the first six months of the Bola Tinubu administration.

On March 11, 2024, Senate President Godswill Akpabio inaugurated a 17-member ad hoc committee of the red chamber to probe the “N30 trillion Ways and Means” secured under Buhari and report in “six weeks”.

The deadline is now past by nine weeks and the panel is yet to submit its report.

TheCable has contacted Jibrin for an update on the probe but he is yet to respond.

At its inauguration, Akpabio charged the committee to be confidential and “keep investigations away from the prying eyes of journalists”.

A collaborative effort involving the Nigerian Embassy in Dakar and a Senegalese NGO has led to the rescue of 24 Nigerian girls from s*xual exploitation in the Tamaccounda and Kedougou regions of Senegal.

The collaborative effort successfully freed the girls from their exploitative situation.

The acting Ambassador of the Nigerian Embassy in Dakar, Salihu Abubakar, revealed the details to the News Agency of Nigeria on Sunday.

According to him, the victims, mostly girls and women aged between 11 and 24, but predominantly underage girls, were trafficked to Senegal through Cotonou, Benin Republic, via the Mali-Senegal border for s*xual exploitation.

"These girls and many more are being trafficked to Senegal through Cotonou, Benin Republic via Mali to the Senegal border for prostitution," Abubakar explained.

Preliminary investigations indicate that the majority of the girls and women were school dropouts from Edo and Delta states, with a few others from Imo, Abia, and two from Plateau. Abubakar confirmed that out of the 24 girls and women, 22 had been repatriated weeks earlier, while the remaining two returned safely to Nigeria on Saturday.

The health status of the victims and details regarding the duration of their exploitation remain undisclosed. However, the diplomat emphasised that the successful repatriation highlights the strong international cooperation between the embassy and the NGO, "Free the Slaves" (La Lumiere in French), in combating human trafficking.

"Our main goal and number one priority is to discourage the trafficking of our Nigerian girls to any part of the world for prostitution under any guise," Abubakar said.

A student of the Air Force Comprehensive School, Kaduna, Blaise Felix Aliyu, has died.

The student was punished to death by two of his senior colleagues.

Aliyu, an orphan, who lost his parents in 2013, is said to be survived by his twin brother, who is also a student at the military boarding school, located in Mando, Kaduna.

Two SS3 students reportedly summoned the 15-year-old to their room under the pretext of punishing him but ended up killing him.

The deceased body has been deposited in the mortuary.

Reacting to the development, Air Vice Marshal Edward Gabkwet, spokesperson for the Nigerian Airforce (NAF), expressed the institution’s sorrow.

In a statement issued on Saturday, Gabkwet said an investigation to unravel the circumstances surrounding the incident is ongoing.

“The Chief of the Air Staff, Air Marshal Hasan Abubakar, and indeed the entire NAF family are saddened by the painful and unfortunate incident of the untimely death of one of our students at Air Force Secondary School, Kaduna, on June 19, 2024.”

“To avoid all sorts of speculations, a thorough investigation is currently ongoing to unravel how, why, and what actually led to the death of the victim. Rest assured that this matter is receiving the utmost urgency it deserves, and we won’t rest until it is unravelled,” the statement said.