The Guardian reports that the Nigeria Centre for Disease Control (NCDC) has recorded 685 new cases of the Coronavirus (COVID-19), bringing the total number of infections in the country to 131,242.
The NCDC disclosed this on its official Twitter handle late Sunday.
According to the report by the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) the number of cases recorded on Sunday is the least the NCDC has reported in the past four weeks after confirming 576 cases on Jan. 2, 2021.
The latest update takes the country’s infection tally to 131,242, the sixth-highest in Africa behind Ethiopia, Egypt, Tunisia, Morocco and South Africa.
The agency sadly announced eight coronavirus-related deaths in the past 24 hours, taking the country’s number of deaths to 1.586.
The Vanguard says that the former President, Chief Olusegun Obasanjo, has said that Nigeria was in a deficit where leadership is concerned, noting that the technocrats to lift the country and the African continent up were not lacking in the country.
Obasanjo, who was president between 1999 and 2007, said this in an interview with academic and historian, Toyin Falola, held virtually on Sunday.
According to Obasanjo, no matter what anyone wants to do, leadership needs to provide the right environment and incentive. He said: “Nigeria has no scarcity of people to lift the country and Africa up. But Nigeria is deficit in leadership.”
He said the lack of understanding and knowledge of leadership has made it impossible for administrations to build on the achievements of their predecessors. As a result, Obasanjo surmised, “after a government had made two steps of progress forward, the successors moved two steps to the side and one step backwards.”
ThisDay reports that a human rights group under the aegis of Edo Civil Society Organisation (EDOCSO) has instituted a suit challenging the federal government directive that all mobile phone subscribers should link their phone numbers to their National Identification Numbers (NIN).
The suit marked: FHC/B/CS/13/2020 was filed at the Federal High Court, Benin Division, Edo State, by counsel to the plaintiffs, Dele Igbinedion.
A copy of the suit, which was made available to journalists in Benin-city, named the National Identity Management Commission (NIMC), Federal Ministry of Communications and Digital Economy, Nigeria Communications Commission (NCC), the Attorney-General of the Federation as first, second, third and fourth defendants respectively
Others are the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) as fifth defendant; Federal Road Safety Commission (FRSC) as sixth defendant, and the Nigeria Immigration Service (NIS) as seventh defendant.
Igbinedion, on behalf of his clients (members of EDOCSO), sought whether the directive that all mobile phone subscribers should link their phone numbers to their NIN is not a breach of his clients’ rights to privacy as guaranteed by the 1999 Constitution (as amended).
The newspaper says that the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) has stepped into all cases of data depletion and wrong deductions of consumers’ credit through an ongoing forensic audit instituted by the Commission.
The Executive Vice Chairman of the NCC, Prof. Umar Danbatta, stated this while receiving ‘Man of the Year 2020’ award from MoneyReport magazine in Abuja.
The EVC said while consumer protection remained a key focus area of the Commission’s regulatory activities, it has accomplished improvements in this direction through various initiatives aimed at putting mobile operators on their toes to be more consumer-centric.
He said through the ongoing forensic audit, the Commission plans, “to get to the bottom of why consumers are experiencing data depletion and the possibility of compensating them for wrong deductions, which may arise from short message service (SMS).”
“We have instituted and we have insisted that despite the fall in data price, that forensic audit must go on and must be concluded and the outcome communicated to the CEOs of telecom companies,” Danbatta said.
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