Orits Wiliki: “I Married My Kid Sister, My Mother’s Last Born”

  

In what is considered a taboo in almost every culture in the world, veteran reggae superstar, Orits Wiliki claims with pride.

The veteran singer who celebrated his 30 years on stage as a musician in Lagos opened up to Punch the secret behind his marriage to popular actress and singer, Becky.
He said: –
“I married my kid sister – my mother’s last born. We are as close siblings can be. That is why we have stayed together for this long.”

New power tariff for residential consumers to take effect in June 2015

The Nigerian Electricity Regulatory Commission, NERC has frozen the newly-approved tariff for residential consumers till June 2015.A statement issued on Thursday and signed by NERC’s Head of Media, Mr. Michael Faloseyi, said that the tariff was a review of the Multi Year Tariff Order, MYTO 2, to factor the losses that were now different.
It explained that the new price of gas was usually part of the minor review done every six months and that the review had raised the cost of distributing power supply nationwide by the 11 electricity distribution companies (Discos).
According to the statement, the tariff is expected to affect all electricity consumers.
“But because of the commitment that NERC to ensure that consumers are not further disposed to increased cost until there are improvements in supply, which we expect shortly, we have frozen the increment for six months for Residential consumers (R2).
“We approved an amendment to the MYTO tariff basically which means a new tariff order that continues with the existing framework but now shows a different figure for the remaining five year tariff structure,” it said.
It said with the commencement of MYTO 2.1, NERC would hold electricity distribution, transmission, generation companies and other market operators to the terms and conditions of their licences.
The statement said the measures were being put in place to ensure that the new owners fund their operations and improve electricity supply.
It said the rationale behind the adjustment was to shield ordinary Nigerians from possibility of rates shock that could have accompanied the review.

22 State Governments Still Owe Workers Over 3 Months Salaries – NLC

The Secretary General of the National Union of Textile Garment and Tailoring Workers of Nigeria (NUTGTWN), Comrade Issa Aremu, has decried the non-payment of workers’ salaries by 22 state governments in the country, saying the development is unacceptable.

In a statement he issued in Kaduna on Thursday, Aremu, who is also the vice president of the Nigeria Labour Congress, NLC, described the development as a wage theft, wage robbery and economic crime.
The NLC vice president noted that the same governors, who had failed to pay workers their salaries for more than three months, were able to come up with funds to pay their delegates during the just concluded party primary elections across the states.

He, therefore, urged governors of the affected states to devise the same means they used to source for funds to pay delegates, to settle the workers’ salaries without further delay.

He said: “We see that delay in payment of salaries as wage theft, wage robbery. It is actually an economic crime because Nigeria Labour law says thou shall pay the worker as and when due. In fact by 22nd of every month you must have paid the workers fully.

“We never heard of any delegate being owed a single penny during the primary elections, but they cannot get money to pay the workers. In fact, some of the delegates even bought new cars and properties after the primaries because the money they got in just few days is much more than what workers earn in many months”.

Comrade Aremu further noted that it was time for the Federal Government to review upward the national minimum wage in order to reflect with emerging economic challenges and also warned against any attempt by government to further impoverish the Nigerian workers with reduction in pay or loss of jobs on account of the recently announced austerity measure by the Federal government.

He also pointed out that the $65 per barrel of crude oil as captured in the 2015 budget confirmed that Nigeria is an oil dependent economy contrary to the claim by the Minister of Finance and Coordinating Minister for the Economy, Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala that the budget is projected on a non-oil revenue basis.
Instead, the labour leader believed that sustainable budgets were the ones based on revenue arising from real sector of the economy such as domestic manufacturing and exportation of finished goods.

Mr Aremu said that the National Assembly, while debating the budget proposal, should put policies that will grow the real sectors of the economy and also ensure that the Central Bank of Nigeria lowers the interest rate and stop the free fall of the Naira which will undermine purchasing power of working class Nigerians.
He also asked the National Assembly to make sure the budget captured practical measures on reducing cost of governance, which must begin with drastic reduction of pay and allowances of the Executive and Legislature.

Police arrest 3 armed robbery suspects in Edo

2014-12-27 08:09
Benin - The Edo Police Commandhas arrested three armed robbery suspects along Uwa Street, in the Oredo Local Government Area of the state.

A statement signed by the Edo Police Public Relations Officer, Mr Joseph Edoigiawerie, said the trio are Samson Obi, Terry Ekokota and Esther James.

It said they ‎were arrested by the command at their hideout, following a tip-off.
"A search conducted on them led to the recovery of two locally-made guns, two live cartridges and some charms from the suspects,’’ the statement said.

The suspected armed robbers were also said to have confessed that they were planning an operation before they were apprehended.

Meanwhile, the command has recovered one locally-made single-barrel gun, 13 live cartridges, one Army camouflage cap and three wraps of weeds, suspected to be Indian hemp.

The statement said the items were recovered from the vehicle of two fleeing suspects.
The suspects, both male, were said to have abandoned the car on sighting some officers of the command, who were on a routine patrol in the Oluku area of Benin.

"The policemen on routine patrol at Oluku were informed about the suspicious movements of two men seated in a Cordoba car with registration number AG 678 AKA‎,’’ Edoigiawerie said in the statement.
The state police command, while appreciating the public for providing useful information to it, however said in the statement that efforts "are in progress to fish out the fleeing suspects’’.

- NAN

We’ve mobilised 70,000 members to PDP – Group

A group within the All Progressives Congress, Justice Forum, says 70,000 of its members in the South-West have defected to the Peoples Democratic Party.

About 3,000 defectors who converged on the Salvador Towers in Surulere, said they left the APC because the national leader of the party, Asiwaju Bola Tinubu, had abandoned them after they helped his party to win elections.

Speaking with journalists at the event, the leader of the group, Chief David Abidakun, explained that the members were from across the South-West and not Lagos alone.

He noted that the group was one of the major founding groups of the Alliance for Democracy and later became the most populous group in the defunct Action Congress of Nigeria that merged to form the APC.

He said, “We are not counting the number of people here but our membership. We have a membership of over 70, 000 in the South-West and all of us will join the PDP in our various states in the South-West after the formal ceremony

“We believe that the PDP is the place to be and so we have decided to be part of the winning team.”

The Deputy Chairman of the PDP in Lagos, Chief Sikiru Apena, who received the defectors, promised to treat them like old members of the PDP.

When contacted, however, the Publicity Secretary of the APC in Lagos, Mr. Joe Igbokwe, said the defection was meaningless, describing it as the biggest joke of 2014.

Igbokwe, who said the crowd at the venue was rented by the PDP, described the event as a charade.

He said, “It is of zero consequence. Those that defected have no weight. They have no strength, no finance and no training to make an impact. It is the biggest joke of 2014. It is a rented crowd. You know when you give people about N2, 000 each, they will come for any event.

“No serious person will be in that group. Tell me, where could they get 70,000 members from? In law, such an action is called ‘Brutum Fulmen.’ It has zero consequence.”

North Korea calls president Obama a monkey after blaming US for shutting down its internet

North Korea blamed the US for its internet outtage (Picture: AFP/Getty Images)

North Korea has compared president Barack Obama to a monkey and blamed the United States for shutting down its internet after it was accused of hacking Sony Pictures over The Interview movie.
The communist regime said the US president was behind the release of the film and described the movie as illegal, dishonest and reactionary.
‘Obama always goes reckless in words and deeds like a monkey in a tropical forest,’ an unidentified spokesman at the commission’s Policy Department said in a statement carried by the country’s state news service, Korean Central News Agency.
In May, the news agency published a dispatch saying Obama had the ‘shape of a monkey.’
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President Barack Obama, with first lady Michelle Obama (Picture: AP)

North Korea had denied involvement in the crippling cyberattack, but expressed anger over the comedy, which depicted the assassination of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un.
Sony Pictures initially called off the release of the film, citing threats of terror attacks against US movie theatres, but following widespread criticism of the decision, including from Obama, the movie opened this week.
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The Interview opened this week (Picture: Reuters)

North Korea’s defence commission also blamed Washington for intermittent outages of its websites this past week, which happened after the US had promised to respond to the Sony hack.
The US has so far declined to say if it was behind the shutdown.

Wike accuses Amaechi of funding Buhari’s campaign with N30bn

campaign of the All Progressives Congress.

Wike explained that the development had made it impossible for the state government to pay workers’ salaries, adding that the governor was using state resources to fund the APC with the hope that he would be picked as the running mate to the APC presidential candidate, Muhammadu Buhari.

The PDP governorship candidate pointed out that Amaechi was being deceived by the leadership of the APC to continue to fund the party, adding that the APC leadership had never been interested in selecting the governor as Buhari’s running mate.

Speaking during his thank-you visit to Ikwerre Local Government Area on Thursday, Wike noted that the future of Nigerians was in the PDP and not the APC.

“Do you know why workers’ salaries have not been paid? Amaechi spent N30bn in funding the presidential campaign of the APC. They (the APC leadership) allowed him to spend the money and later, they called him mugu (fool).

“They (the APC leadership) said we will not make this ‘boy’ who does not respect the President (Goodluck Jonathan) the vice president. We should know that our future is in the PDP and not the APC,” Wike stressed.

The former minister also decried the statement credited to the APC governorship candidate in the state, Dr. Dakuku Peterside, that he (Peterside) would build on Amaechi legacy.

According to him, some of the governor’s actions on the state judiciary, monorail project were not worth continuing as a legacy.

Reacting to Wike’s allegation, the state Commissioner for Information and Communication, Mrs. Ibim Semenitari, said the PDP governorship candidate spoke without fact, even as she challenged him to show any proof that Amaechi was funding the APC.

“It is unbelievable that a man who wants to be the governor of this state can make such an unbelievable statement without any proof. We challenge him (Wike) to show proof that Governor Amaechi spent N30bn to fund the APC campaign.”