Nigeria vote delay would be Boko Haram 'victory' - APC

Abuja - Nigeria's opposition said Monday that delaying next month's election because of raging Boko Haram violence would mark "a victory" for the insurgents, and urged the government to respect the electoral calendar.

The opposition All Progressives Congress (APC) charged the ruling Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) with secretly backing postponement, and of using the Islamist attacks as justification.

"The truth is that the forthcoming elections terrify the PDP and the (President Goodluck) Jonathan administration to such an extent that they are looking for ways to postpone or scuttle the polls," APC spokesman Lai Mohammed said in a statement.

"Any postponement on the basis of the insurgency in the northeast will represent a victory for the terrorist group Boko Haram," he added.

The PDP has not come out in favour of pushing back the February 14 vote, but National Security Advisor Sambo Dasuki has said election officials needed more time to distribute voter ID cards.

Violence in Boko Haram's northeastern strongholds has escalated dramatically in recent months, most recently with the weekend assault on Borno State capital Maiduguri that was repelled by armed forces.
Jonathan's position on a potential delay was left unclear in a statement released Sunday following his meeting with US Secretary of State John Kerry.

The president said the May 29 date for inaugurating the winner of the election was "sacrosanct," but he made no specific comment on the inviolability of February 14 for voting.

"This is not reassuring enough," APC spokesman Mohammed said. "For us, the February 14th and 28th dates (of state governor and state assembly elections) are as sacrosanct as the handover date of May 29th."
Spokesman for the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), Kayode Idowu, told AFP Monday the body remains firmly committed to holding the election on February 14.

He denied reports published Monday in the APC-controlled Nation newspaper that the national security advisor had scheduled a meeting with the election chief to push for a delay.
Regarding Dasuki's argument that more time was needed to distribute voter cards, the APC said any claim of "INEC not being ready for the elections is sheer baloney".

- AFP

Wande Coal’s album is finally coming!

2015-01-26 18:21
Lagos - After a seven year album break, singer Wande Coal is releasing his sophomore album.

The singer shared his joy Instagram over his upocomming album in 2015.
“Can't wait for you all to hear the music I've been creating. It's all about the music this year. Love all my die hard fans that have stayed with me through thick and thin, this album will be for you. #BlackDiamond” he wrote on Instagram.

Wande Coal’s album titled Mushin to Mo’hits was released in  2008  under the defunct Mo’hits Records.
Presently Wande Coal owns his own record label, Black Diamond Entertainment.

Ebola to have 'marginal impact' on African economy: UN

2015-01-26 18:21
Addis Ababa - Africa's economy is likely to suffer only a minor blow from the Ebola outbreak despite the "considerable" impact on Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone, a UN official said Monday.

"From the start, the ECA was confident that the alarmist projections were wrong," said Carlos Lopez, the executive secretary of the UN Economic Commission for Africa.

"We could not visualise more than a marginal impact on the region's performance, given that the three most affected countries account for less than one percent of Africa's combined GDP," he said, adding that the "suffering experienced by Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone is considerable."

"Africa's growth forecast is still higher than in any other continent," said Lopez, who was speaking to top African diplomats ahead of an African Union summit on Friday and Saturday.

However he said conflict, insecurity and terror threats, together with a fall in oil and raw material prices, were weighing on the continent.

"Their impact on the continent's economic performances stretches from missed opportunities to contagious risk perceptions that are much more serious than those surrounding the Ebola outbreak," he said of the impact of conflict and terrorism notably attacks by Boko Haram in Nigeria, and fighting in Somalia, South Sudan and Central African Republic.

- AFP

Jonathan's campaign to Ondo set to end crisis

Ondo - The People's Democratic Party in the Ondo State said it is anticipating President Goodluck Jonathan's visit, as he rallies at the Democracy Park, Punch reported.

People in the state are hopeful that Jonathan's visit will end the crisis that has rocked the state during the past four months.

The Public Secretary of the party, Banji Okunomo, has stated that communities in the state are still not over the detention of first civilian governor, Chief Adekunle Ajasin. Therefore want nothing to do with the All Progressive Party.

About 100 000 people are expected to attend the presidential rally and is stated it would be the best held so far.

For more on this story visit Punch

Jigawa to immunise millions of children against polio

2015-01-26 18:21

Dutse  - The Jigawa government on Sunday said it planned to immunise 1 578 000 children against polio virus across the state in the first round of the 2015 exercise.
The immunisation officer in the state, Hassan Kwalam, disclosed this during the inauguration of the exercise in Dutse.
He said there was no case of the virus in the state but continued vaccination would help to prevent the disease in the state.
According to him, the four-day immunisation will be conducted across the 27 local government areas of the state.

"We do not have any case of polio but routine immunisation would assist us to tackle and prevent any outbreak of the disease in the near future.
"As far as we are concerned, we have eradicated the virus from the state because there was no any reported case of polio in any part of Jigawa in the past 27 months.’’

Speaking at the event, the Emir of Dutse, Nuhu Sunusi, warned traditional heads of all the Emirates in the state against any complacency that could hamper the effort of eradicating the wild polio virus from the country.

Sunusi, who is also the Chairman of the North-West Zone of Traditional Ruler’s Task Force on Polio Eradication, said that even though there were no more new cases of the disease in the state, more should be done to contain the scourge permanently.

The emir noted that the persistence of the team working in the state together with the support of government was key to the success recorded so far in the new feat achieved of none discovery of new cases.

He reiterated the traditional institution’s continued support toward complete eradication of the disease.
Now the focus is on us by the international community to see if we can deal with the situation the way we dealt with the Ebola disease, and I know we can do it,’’ he said.

- NAN

Too few ill for Liberia Ebola vaccine trial

2015-01-26 17:47

Davos - A steep fall in Ebola cases in Liberia will make it hard to prove whether experimental vaccines work in a major clinical trial about to start in the country, the head of the US National Institutes of Health (NIH) said on Saturday.

The NIH might have to move some testing to neighbouring Sierra Leone, while regulators could end up approving Ebola shots based on efficacy data from animal tests backed by only limited human evidence, Francis Collins told Reuters.

Liberia, once the epicentre of West Africa's deadly Ebola epidemic, has just five remaining confirmed cases of the disease, a senior health official has said.

The sharp decrease in cases is clearly good news, but it poses a problem for scientists from the NIH, GlaxoSmithKline and Merck, who want to enrol 27 000 people at risk of infection in the pivotal Phase III Liberian study.

"It's going to be a hard trial," Collins said on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum in Davos. "It's possible we may have to move some of the effort to Sierra Leone, which is unfortunately in not quite such a good position as Liberia."

The big Liberian trial, the first of several planned for West Africa, aims to enroll at-risk people such as healthcare staff, family members and burial workers. It will test a GSK vaccine, a rival one from Merck and NewLink, and a placebo.

"It may, at this point, be hard to find 27 000 people at risk," Collins said. "It is going to be challenging."
Nonetheless, vaccines could still be submitted to regulators using efficacy data from non-human primate experiments, plus proof of safety and immune system response in humans.

"That is the default and certainly the FDA [US Food and Drug Administration] has that particular pathway available. If it is not possible to get the rigorous human data, it is still possible a vaccine could be approved," Collins said.

Healthcare experts meeting in Davos this week have stressed the need to keep up the fight against Ebola until there are zero cases in West Africa, where more than 8 600 people have died from the disease.

Jeremy Farrar, director of Britain's Wellcome Trust health charity, said vaccines and drugs were still needed for the current epidemic and to fight future ones.

Johnson & Johnson, working with Bavarian Nordic , also has an Ebola vaccine in earlier-stage clinical tests.
Reuters

First GSK Ebola vaccine shipment due to arrive in Liberia

2015-01-23 18:29
London - The first batch of GlaxoSmithKline's experimental Ebola vaccine has been dispatched to West Africa and is expected to arrive in Liberia later on Friday, the British drugmaker said.

The World Health Organization said on Thursday the Ebola outbreak in West Africa, the worst in history, appears to be waning but cautioned against complacency. The epidemic has seen 21,724 cases reported in nine countries since it started in Guinea a year ago. Some 8,641 people have died.

The shipment of an initial 300 vials of GSK vaccine will be the first to arrive in one of the three main Ebola-affected African countries, the company said in a statement.

It will be used in the first large-scale vaccine trials in coming weeks, in which healthcare workers helping to care for Ebola patients will be among the first to get it.

Researchers hope eventually to enrol up to 30,000 people in the trial, a third of whom would get GSK's candidate vaccine.
 
The vaccine, co-developed by the National Institutes of Health in the United States and Okairos, a biotechnology firm acquired by GSK in 2013, is now being tested in phase I safety trials in Britain, the United States, Switzerland and Mali involving around 200 healthy volunteers in total.

"Initial phase I data...are encouraging and give us confidence to progress to the next phases...which will involve the vaccination of thousands of volunteers, including frontline healthcare workers," said Moncef Slaoui, GSK's Global Vaccines chief.

The vaccine uses a type of chimpanzee cold virus to deliver safe genetic material from the Zaire strain of Ebola, the strain responsible for the unprecedented West African epidemic.

Data show the vaccine is safe in people, including in a West African population and in a range of dose levels, GSK said. It has now chosen the most appropriate dose for the Liberia trial.

Slaoui stressed that GSK's shot, like other candidates from a NewLink Genetics and Merck collaboration, and from Johnson & Johnson and Bavarian Nordic, remains in development and cannot be deployed unless and until it proves safe and effective.

Commenting on progress against the outbreak and on developing vaccines, Jeremy Farrar, director of Britain's Wellcome Trust health charity, said: "This is certainly not the time for...efforts to be reduced. There is no doubt that we need vaccines and therapeutics for this epidemic and to try to prevent and respond to the inevitable future epidemics."

- Reuters