Nigeria Election update

     Finally the stage is set, time has come for the INEC chairman ( Prof Attahiru Jega) to announce the final result of the total number of votes that each party scored in the contest on who is to lead Nigeria for the next four years.

     Meanwhile as this is being done at the INEC situation room / collation center, at the APC office in Abuja party supporters  are gathered outside the APC National head quarters office in enthusiasm, dancing and charting the party's slogan awaiting the official declaration of their party's candidate as the winner of the 2015 presidential polls.

    Jubilation went higher as several Governors of the APC arrives the APC head quarters premises awaiting their party representative (General Mohammadu Buhari) who has won the presidential race.

     It has also been said that the current president (Dr Ebele Goodluck Jonathan) who is the candidate of the PDP has called the candidate of the APC (General Mohammadu Buhari) to congratulate him on his victory.

     General Mohammadu Buhari the APC candidate won this election with a difference of about 2.6m votes, winning almost all the States in the North, West and South West as well. Living only the East, Southwest and the South-south to the current president who is the candidate of the PDP.

Nigerian Election

Nigeria government to close border due to upcoming Election from wednesday mid-night to saturday mid-night

IG of Police declares coffin in all states from 8am saturday to 5pm same day due to election taking place in the country.

Singaporeans say farewell to Lee Kuan Yew

Singaporeans have wept in the streets and gathered in their thousands to pay their respects to the country’s founding leader, Lee Kuan Yew, as his coffin was transported on a gun carriage to parliament for public viewing.
After a two-day private wake for the family, the coffin was taken on Wednesday from the Istana government complex, Lee’s workplace for decades as prime minister and cabinet adviser, to the legislature, where his body will lie in state until the weekend.
The 91-year-old patriarch died on Monday after half a century in government, during which Singapore was transformed from a poor British colonial outpost into one of the world’s richest societies. Lee will be cremated after full state honours on Sunday.
His son, Lee Hsien Loong, the country’s prime minister, said there were “overwhelming queues” outside parliament and that visiting hours had been extended until midnight to cope with the turnout.
Applause and shouts of: “We love you” and: “Lee Kuan Yew” broke out as the dark brown wooden coffin, draped in the red-and-white Singapore flag, emerged from the Istana inside a tempered glass case on a gun carriage pulled by an open-topped military truck.
Earlier, in scenes that evoked Singapore’s colonial past, Lee’s coffin stopped in front of the complex’s main building, where British administrators once worked, as a piper from Singapore’s Gurkha Contingent – the city-state’s special guard force – played Auld Lang Syne.
It was brought down the tree-lined Edinburgh Road to the Istana’s main gate and then made a turn in the direction of parliament as a crowd including students in uniform with black armbands waited behind barricades.
Many along the route were in tears as they raised cameras and mobile phones to record the event. Some threw flowers on the path of the carriage. Office workers watched from the windowMargaret Quek, 49, added: “I don’t mind waiting until nighttime.”
R Tamilselvi, 77, brought two of her granddaughters, each clutching flowers. “Lee Kuan Yew has done so much for us. We used to live in squatter (colonies) in Sembawang, my husband was a bus driver. Now my three sons have good jobs and nice houses. The children all go to school. What will we be without Lee Kuan Yew?”
Lee first became an MP in 1955 and served as prime minister from 1959, when Britain granted self-rule, to 1990. He led Singapore to independence in 1965 after a brief and stormy union with Malaysia.
Singapore now has one of the world’s highest per-capita incomes and its residents enjoy near-universal home ownership, low crime rates and first-class infrastructure.s of high-rise buildings along the route.
Singapore’s president, Tony Tan, and his wife, Mary, were the first to pay their respects after Lee’s closed coffin was placed in the foyer of Parliament House. Local media said Singaporeans began queuing after midnight on Tuesday for a chance to be among the first to pay their respects to the man popularly known by his initials LKY.
Even before the lunch break, the queue was already snaking for up to two kilometres (1.2 miles) as Singaporeans awaited their turn to enter the viewing hall. Many unfurled umbrellas to shield themselves from the scorching sun, with temperatures in the humid tropical island hitting 33C (91F) at midday.
They came from all walks of life, from office workers and managers to students and the elderly in wheelchairs.

Governor Isa Yuguda of Bauchi State said President Goodluck Jonathan’s visit to Bauchi on Monday had diminished the so called Buhari factor in the North East region.

Yuguda said this in an interview with correspondents at the newly inaugurated Abubakar Tafawa Balewa International Airport, Bauchi, on Tuesday ahead of Saturday’s presidential poll. According to him, the visit is one of the President’s most successful trips to Bauchi.

The difference is now very clear; the question of opposition or Buhari factor or whatever sentiment, has already diminished.

And this is by the Grace of the Almighty Allah because He is the only one who can guide and He has guided people aright and the polity has stabilised.

And they have realised that going for their best candidate devoid of sentiment that is what they should do; that is what is in line with their religious injunction, the governor added.
Yuguda noted that the president come like a home boy; he is more like the son of the soil.

Everybody is jubilant. You can see the ‘Achaba’ (commercial motorcycle riders) union which has over 20,000 motorcycles giving free ride to the public because of Jonathan. If that is the position, Bauchi is hisown.

The governor predicted total victory for Jonathan at the polls. What we expect is a clear win of Mr President, Goodluck Ebele Jonathan.

There will be very wide margin between him and his opposition candidate,” he said.
The governor said PDP was not divided in the state over the primaries that threw up the candidates for the 2015 elections.

He described the party primaries in the state as transparent and warned those who did not witness it to avoid making negative comments about them.

I believe it was the most transparent primaries ever held in the history of Nigeria, Yuguda said.
The governor attributed the developmental strides recorded during his tenure to prudent management of resources and proper public accounting.

He said the state maintained its aesthetics because “we introduced the culture of being clean because being a predominantly Muslim environment, Islam leverages on cleanliness.

They say that cleanliness is next to Godliness. Our people have adopted the culture and we have also introduced measures on how to teach people how to keep their environment clean.

He said in addition the Bauchi State Agency for Waste Disposal, “we have engaged the tipper operators.

In fact, we engaged about 40 daily. We pay them on a monthly basis to carry all the garbage to keep them outside the town,

Lagos State University Closed Down Indefinitely

The Lagos State University (LASU), has been closed down indefinitely following the inability of the government to meet the demands of its staff union including the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU),Senior Staff Association of Nigerian Universities (SSANU) and National Academic Staff Union (NASU).

Some of the demands of the staff unions include:  the appointment of an acting vice-chancellor to preside over the convocation that would have been held last week and right the wrong allegedly done by the Vice-Chancellor, Prof. John Obafunwa’s including the victimization of its members, withdrawal of certificates of lecturers and abuse of due process by the university’s management. The closure,according to reports,might not be unconnected with the crises that had been rocking the 30-year-old institution with the unions being at loggerheads with the VC over several issues.

It had also passed a vote-of-no-confidence on him several months ago. Last week, staff unions, including the SSANU and NASU, had staged a mass protest where Obafunwa was successfully booted out.

During the protest at the institution’s campus in Ojo, Obafunwa, who gained entrance with the aid of security officials, was chased out with sachet of  water  thrown at him

Presently lecture and other activities within the school premises is on hold due to the lock down.

Germanwings plane black box found as mystery surrounds Alps crash

 No immediate indication as to cause of flight 4U9525 crash in which all 150 people
French air investigators are urgently examining a black box cockpit voice recorder (CVR) from a Germanwings Airbus A-320 to try to solve the mystery of why the aircraft crashed into a mountain in the southern Alps, killing all 150 people on board.
Investigators are puzzled as to why the crew did not send out a mayday or distress signal as flight U49525 rapidly lost altitude for eight minutes, or why the pilot did not change course to avoid smashing into a rocky ravine at around 430mph (700kmh).
In the last 10 minutes of the flight there was total radio silence from the crew of the Barcelona–Düsseldorf flight operated by Lufthansa’s low-cost subsidiary.
Tuesday’s crash happened around 11am local time in calm weather. Unverified information from plane-tracking websites appeared to rule out an explosion or a mid-air stall, both of which would cause a much faster descent. Experts said planes such as the Airbus would be able to glide for some distance in the case of total engine failure.
David Learmount, the operations and safety editor of Flightglobal, said on Twitter: “German-operated A320s do not crash in the cruise. Not these days. This one is weird.

The French prime minister, Manuel Valls, said a helicopter crew had landed near the crash site and found no survivors. Aerial photos showed the plane was, in the words of one official, “pulverised”. The largest piece of wreckage was little more than the size of a small car.
As the CVR was being analysed, Pierre-Henri Brandet, a spokesman for the French interior ministry in Seyne-les-Alpes, said the search for bodies and a second black box on the isolated, rocky site had been called off for the evening and would resume at dawn.
Live Germanwings search and recovery at crash site suspended overnight – live updates
Debris is located as French prime minister, Manuel Valls, says he fears up to 150 people have been killed

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Among the dead passengers were two babies, and 16 German school pupils returning from an exchange trip to Spain with their two teachers.
Christophe Castaner, a Socialist party MP, was one of the first to fly over the barren high altitude crash site and described a scene of horror.
“It’s a sharp ridge and steep slope that is difficult to access. We have seen the catastrophe and terrible things. It was clear the victims were there in the midst of the destroyed aircraft.
“We saw women, men, children, and babies. Yes, we saw babies,” the visibly shocked Castaner told journalists.
Jean-Louis Bietrix, a mountain guide who accompanied the first emergency services up the mountain, said there was nothing left of the plane.
“There’s debris, but you have to look closely to see things. It’s like the plane has totally disappeared,” he said.
The German foreign minister, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, said the crash site was “a picture of horror. The grief of the families and friends is immeasurable. We must now stand together. We are united in our great grief.”
The crash site can only be accessed after a three-hour walk from the nearest road.
It is the worst air accident in France since 345 people were killed when a Turkish Airlines DC10 crashed near Paris in 1974. In 2000 an Air France Concorde crashed shortly after takeoff from Charles de Gaulle airport in Paris in July 2000, killing all 100 German passengers, nine crew and four people on the ground.
Valls said “no hypothesis” could be ruled out about the cause of the tragedy.
Bernard Cazeneuve, the interior minister, said the black box had been sent to the Bureau d’Enquêtes et d’Analyses (BEA), the French air accident investigation authority, for “immediate examination”.
He added that the crash zone had been secured and that a criminal investigation team would arrive to collect evidence on Wednesday
The dead, including two pilots and four cabin crew, are believed to include 45 Spanish and 67 German nationals. The French president, François Hollande, also spoke of a Turkish national among the victimsAngela Merkel, Germany’s chancellor, who plans to travel to the crash site on Wednesday, said the crash had plunged Germany, France and Spain into “deep mourning
Although Investigation has suspended till tomorrow due to dark clouds, and very high level of snow.

Jet crash

A second opera singer, Maria Radner, was among the victims with her baby and husband,  along with a Spanish mother and her seven month+ old child.

The mayor of the small Spanish town of Jaca in the Pyrenees mountains says that a woman originally from the town died in the crash along with her baby boy.

Jaca Mayor Victor Barrio said Marina Bandres had been attending a funeral in Jaca for a relative and was taken to the Barcelona airport by her father.

Bandres lived in Britain. Barrio did not know if her husband was on the flight with her and the boy, Julian, who was seven or eight months old

Plane was flying from Barcelona to Düsseldorf,150 people were on board, including two babies,French officials say there were no survivors,45 Spaniards, 67 Germans, including 16 schoolchildren and two teachers, among feared victims.

Jet crashes in France

French authorities said they expect no survivors after a German plane carrying at least 142 passengers and six crew members from Barcelona to Düsseldorf crashed today in southern France.

The wreckage of the aircraft, an Airbus A320 operated by Germanwings, a budget subsidiary of Lufthansa, was located in the French Alps by a military helicopter

The plane carrying mostly German and french citizen had sixteen students and two teaches on board returning from a transfer back home.