Speaker Dogara Condoles with Kano over Students’ Deaths

The House of Representatives Speaker, Rt. Hon. Yakubu Dogara, has condoled with the parents, government and people of Kano state over the loss of students who had gone to represent the state at a quiz competition in Lagos.
Seven Kano State students and their driver who died along Lagos-Ibadan expressway were on Thursday buried in Kano, amid tears. The funeral prayer was conducted at the Emir’s Palace, Kano, around 9 a.m., and the deceased were buried at the Tarauni cemetary.

Among those that attended the prayer were Gov. Abdullahi Ganduje, members of the state Executive Council, other top government officials as well as parents and sympathisers.

Presidency justifies media clampdown

The Presidency said yesterday that the clampdown on the print media by soldiers is in order.

The act which the Newspaper Proprietors Association of Nigeria (NPAN) condemned as an attack of FREE SPEECH by soldiers. Adding that certain newspapers such as LEADERSHIP, DAILY TRUST, The NATION and PUNCH were the target of the military harassment

Senior Special Assistant to the President, Doyin Okupe told journalists in Abuja that the country’s security is at stake and “you cannot neglect security threats because we are living in trying times.”

But he claimed that President Goodluck Jonathan has no hand whatsoever in the continuing assault on the print because as he said, the soldiers’ action runs contrary to his principal’s political belief.
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CONFIRMED: Jonathan received new video of abducted girls begging for their lives

The Presidency yesterday confirmed receiving a new video showing the abducted Chibok schoolgirls begging for their lives. 

The Girls were seen pleading with President Jonathan to help rescue them from their Boko Haram captors. 

Senior Special Assistant to the President on Public Affairs, Dr. Doyin Okupe, made the confirmation in an interview with CNN aired last night. 

The British newspaper Mail on Sunday had reported that the video was delivered to the Presidency by a Boko Haram intermediary as “proof of life” for the girls and to encourage the President to accede to the sect’s demands.