The TCN announced that its “maintenance crew will carry out scheduled preventive maintenance on the bay of its T1A 150MVA, 330/132/33kV transformer bay” on Thursday and Friday, January 18 and 19, 2024.

According to a statement by the TCN General Manager, Public Affairs, Ndidi Mbah, the maintenance would last eight hours, running from 9 am to 5 pm on each day.

Mbah disclosed that to commence the maintenance exercise, “TCN would transfer the load from T1A 150MVA transformer to its T2A 150MVA transformer in the same substation”.

She added that consequently, there would be “an interruption of bulk power supply to Jos and Yola DisCos through the T1A transformer”.

She clarified that the interruption would only affect bulk supply during the transfer period only, and not for the entire eight-hour period it would take to complete the maintenance exercise on both days.

“The short outage during the transfer period would affect supply to Gombe and some parts of Yola and Bauchi states only, during transfer time on both days.

TCN will, however, restore bulk power supply through the transformer immediately after the maintenance exercise,” Mbah explained.

The transmission company regretted “any inconvenience this may cause electricity consumers within the affected areas”.

The TCN maintenance crew had on Saturday carried out scheduled preventive maintenance on the Jos-Lafia 330kV transmission lines, which it said had been redundant for some time.

The schools were de-certified due to examination malpractices.

According to the Director of Examination, Ministry of Education, Gombe State, Ali Yaya, they were decertified due to malpractice-related issues.

The Director made the disclosure during a meeting with principals of the state secondary schools and the management of the ministry

Similarly in 2022, the Ministry received a fresh set of six schools that committed the same offence and they were also de-recognised with a penalty of N500,000 fee per school payable to WAEC.”

While lamenting the impact of the de-certification on the overall student performance in the 2022 Senior Secondary Certificate Examinations final result, Yaya noted that examination malpractice was currently the major challenge facing senior secondary schools in the state and which must be addressed.

“The percentage of 2022 result was 55.6 percent as against 79.5 percent for 2021 and this is in connection with the examination malpractice recorded in six of our schools,” he added.

He warned all principals across schools to stay away from examination malpractice of any form, adding, “Any principal found wanting again in any form of Exams Malpractice will be seriously punished and the penalty should be paid by the school.”

When contacted on how the state government through the ministry of education planned to revert the hammer by the examination body, the Commissioner for Education, Dr. Aishatu Maigari, said the government would never support malpractices.

“Zero tolerance to exam malpractice is our stand,” Maigari added.

Addressing members of course 15 of the Executive Intelligence Management Course of the Institute of Security Studies Abuja at the 301 headquarters on Monday, Mbanefor noted that the failure of authorities to adequately fund and equip the police has undoubtedly hampered its performance, hence the intervention of the military in internal security matters.

He said, “The military, which is basically trained in war and with the core mandate of protecting the sovereignty of the country against external aggression, is being overstressed in internal security matters with no room for training and retraining as required to keep troops in tune with modern war strategies.”

Commenting on the security situation in Gombe State, Mbanefor said though the state is relatively peaceful when compared to its neighbours, he noted that the threat to peace remains real. He explained that activities of political thugs, kidnapping and migration of criminal elements from other parts of the country have remained major security concerns.

He also noted that the location of the state in the centre of the North-East has been exploited by insurgents for their logistics supplies but assured that with the quality synergy among the security agencies in the state and the support of Governor Muhammadu Inuwa Yahaya, efforts would be sustained to secure the state.

Earlier, the Faculty spokesperson of the National Institute of Security Studies Abuja, Dr. Nka Obi-Bisong, informed the Commander that the team was in the state on a study tour to assess the impact of climate change and global warming on security and the socio-economic wellbeing of the people.

Officials of states including Ogun, Gombe, Benue, Lagos, Ondo and Sokoto, said they had enough bed spaces to admit COVID-19 patients.

This came to the fore as the number of officially confirmed COVID-19 infections hit 236, 014 while the rate of full vaccination was stalled at 3.9 per cent as of Saturday.

Despite the increasing cases, the Nigeria Police Force, the military, and other security agencies have failed to enforce the compulsory vaccination mandate for their personnel.

On Friday, the country recorded 1,584 new cases, while on Saturday the Nigeria Centre for Disease Control confirmed 1,305 new cases of the virus.

The agency added that on Saturday alone, 21 persons died of COVID-19 complications bringing the fatality toll across the 36 states and the Federal Capital Territory to 3,014.

Amidst the surging cases, the Ogun State Government said it had no fewer than 260-bed spaces in the four isolation centres in the state. The state Commissioner for Health, Dr Tomi Coker, while fielding questions from one of our correspondents in Abeokuta, said there was no need for more beds over the rising cases of COVID-19

She said “Ogun State has 260 isolation beds; four isolation centres.  No no need for more beds.”

Coker said the state was not charging any fee for COVID-19 tests. She however said N39,000 was being charged by private laboratories in the state.

In a meeting conducted via teleconference and chaired by the forum’s Chairman, Governor Simon Lalong of Plateau State on Monday April 13, the state governors said having a lockdown in the region is not possible as most of the residents are farmers who need to go to their farms.

A statement released by the Plateau state governor’s Director of Press and Public Affairs, Dr Macham Makut, said the governors in the meeting expressed disappointment that the region has few testing centers for the Coronavirus.

The statement in part reads “They (northern governors) agreed that at the moment, each state would adopt the measure suitable to its setting because total lockdown of the region will come at a very high cost since most of its citizens are farmers who need to go to farms since the rains have started. Another issue discussed by the northern governors was the issue of palliatives from the Federal Government where they regretted that so far, no state in the region had received a dime as special allocation despite the fact that some of them have recorded cases while others are making frantic efforts to prevent any outbreak, as well as prepare against any eventuality. This they observed has eaten deep into the pockets of the states as they have spent a lot of money already and may not be able to sustain this for a long time. Since prevention is better than cure, they canvassed that the Federal Government grant them some special funds just as it has done to other states. The northern governors lamented that the region has no testing centre, which is very disturbing. They resolved to again liaise with the Federal Government to ensure that each state at least gets one testing centre while highly populated ones get two. The governors also discussed the economic impact of COVID-19 on the region and decided that they needed to take a holistic look at the economic prospects of the region with a view to repositioning it for less reliance on federal allocation and to prepare for the future by diversifying to areas of comparative advantage such as agriculture, manufacturing, tourism and human capital development. They consequently set up a seven-man committee chaired by the Governor of Kebbi State, Atiku Bagudu, to fashion out the way forward. Other members are the governors of Kaduna, Sokoto, Kwara, Nasarawa, Jigawa, Gombe and Nasarawa states.”