ENYA'S GIST BLOG

  President Muhammadu Buhari has again ruled out the possibility of his government devaluing the naira. The president said Saturday that the priority of his administration was to ensure national food security before export of food products. The president said this while contributing to a Presidential Panel Roundtable on Investment and Growth Opportunities at the opening session of the Africa 2016: Business for Africa, Egypt and the World at Sharm El-Sheikh, Egypt. President Buhari said for Nigeria, being a mono-economy dependent on oil, and with a teeming unemployed youth population, the way out of the current slump in the global oil market, is for the administration to focus on agriculture and solid minerals development. “The land is there and we need machinery inputs, fertilizer and insecticides,” he said. Reiterating his opposition to the devaluation of the naira, President Buhari said Nigeria cannot compete with developed countries which...

emizyyhung2@gmail.com The Economic and Financial Crimes Commission Friday told a federal judge that the whereabouts of Government Ekpemupolo, a former militant leader, were unknown. Festus Keyamo, counsel to the EFCC, said a combined team of Nigerian police and military officers had been combing the creeks for weeks without success. The judge had issued a warrant for the arrest of Mr. Ekpemupolo (also known as Tompolo) on February 8 after he shunned repeated invitations to appear before the EFCC for questioning. Last week, the commission declared the ex-militant wanted. “We wish to inform the court that the warrant of arrest that this court issued in respect of the first defendant (Mr. Ekpemupolo) has not been ‎executed despite the best efforts of all the security agents in this country,” Mr. Keyamo told the judge on Friday. “Every security agent in this country is involved in the search for the first defendant. What is unfolding is something that has never been se...

Somalia’s President, Hasan Sheikh Mohamud on Sunday made a revelation that Boko Haram fighters were trained in Somalia before returning to Nigeria. He disclosed this in his speech at a security conference in Germany. “Without a stable Somalia, the whole region of the Horn of Africa will remain unstable and by and large, the African continent. There are proofs and evidence that (for) some time Boko Haram has been trained in Somalia and they went back to Nigeria. “The terrorists are so linked together, they are associated and so organised, (that) we the world we need to be so organised,” he was quoted by Reuters. It was not, however, clear from his comments, if he believed al Shabaab was still training Boko Haram fighters, who have pledged allegiance to Islamic State militants in Syria and Iraq. Somalia’s al Shabaab, which has connections with al Qaeda and wants to overthrow the Somali government and impose a harsh version of Islamic law, claimed responsibility for a b...

A large number of people wait for food air-drops by ICRC (International Committee of the Red Cross), outside Thonyor, in South Sudan, on February 3, 2016. AFP / ALBERT GONZALEZ FARRANALBERT GONZALEZ FARRAN/AFP/Getty Images   They are an incongruous sight in a neglected, run-down African capital city. Lines of smart black SUVs with tinted windows can be seen parked outside the handful of smart hotels and restaurants, or driving along the pot-holed roads that lead to grand residences, government ministries and military compounds. The Cadillacs. Mercedes GLs and luxury Hummers would not look out of place in a Belgravia or Knightsbridge square. But this is Juba, in war-torn South Sudan. And these in-your-face symbols of wealth are sharply at odds with the official description of a country that, although oil-rich, is among the 25 economically weakest and least developed in the world. More than four million people, a third of its population, face serious food shortages and ...

Did the Pope have a lover? Letters reveal 'extraordinary' relationship between John Paul II and married woman Letters written by Pope John Paul II have emerged that reveal the pontiff was involved in an "extraordinary" relationship with a married woman lasting more than 30 years. The former Pope, who died in 2005 and was canonized in 2014, met Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka before he was elected Pope in 1978. The letters, which lay undiscovered and away from public view in the Polish national library until they were shown to the BBC's Panorama programme, tell of a complex and intense friendship in which it has been suggested that Ms Tymieniecka told the pontiff she loved him. In the correspondence, Pope John Paul II  declares she is a "gift of God", indicating he was struggling to come to terms with the nature of their relationship. He writes:  "If I did not have this conviction, some moral certainty of Grace, and of acting in obedienc...

Bosnia Herzegovina files formal application to join EU President of the EU commission Federica Mogherini says official process has begun Monday 15 February 2016 08:25 Bosnia-Herzegovina has applied to join the EU, the President of the European Commission Federica Mogherini has said. At an event in Brussels, diplomats indicated Sarajevo may not have met all the conditions required to submit an application. Nonetheless, Ms Mogherini said the 28 EU states would now analyse the application, and she said it was good news for the bloc and for Bosnia, a former Yugoslav republic where a 1990s war killed 100,000 people. "At a time when the Union is questioned from within, seeing that with our immediate neighbours there is such an energy and willingness to join and work hard to adapt their countries, society, economy, institutions, systems to the European standards, gives us the sense of responsib...

Luis suarez Barcelona forward Luis Suarez says former club Liverpool are the only Premier League team he would consider playing for. The 29-year-old is currently loving life at Barca and told the Daily Mail that he is hoping to stay with the Champions League holders for the foreseeable future. But the Uruguay international added that he was not totally ruling out a return to Anfield, where he spent a successful three and a half years before moving to Spain in the summer of 2014.

Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev said the world was fighting a new Cold War, warning of grave consequences for the West if it didn’t cooperate with Russia in Syria and elsewhere. ADVERTISEMENT “We have slid, in essence, into times of a new Cold War,” Medvedev said in a speech Saturday to senior international officials at a marquee security conference in Germany. Medvedev cited the Syria conflict as an arena of much needed Russian-Western cooperation, especially on military issues. The key to resolving that conflict, he said, was the cooperation of “Russian and American military officials—regularly, constantly, every day.” “Military officials must be in constant contact,” Medvedev said, returning to the point later in his remark...