Jonathan spoke during the official inauguration of the Youth Employment in Agriculture Programme and the Fund for Agricultural Finance in Nigeria which held at the Presidential Villa, Abuja.

He said, “For the Nigerian young men and women, those who we have seen today and the ones outside there, we appreciate and commend you because anything that you are involved, you bring glory to this country.

“Anything that the old people like us are involved in, it is always problems.

“Young people are involved in sports, soccer, athletics and so on, and within the period that I have been here as Vice President and President, they have always been bringing glory to us.

“Young people are involved in the movie, popularly called Nollywood, and this continues to bring glory to us.

“Young people are involved in music, like D-Banj, and they always continue to bring glory to us.

“But see politics that old people like us are involved in, we continue to quarrel and abuse ourselves everyday and create problems for innocent Nigerians.

“So, we believe that the future of this country is in the hands of young people. The young Nigerians will surely take us to where we want to be.

“One day, you will take us to the moon. I believe in the young, creative and talented people. Surely, we will create enabling environment for you because you stand for the future of this country and you will make this country great.”

The Inspector General of Police, Mr Suleiman Abba, has given approval that junior officers with higher qualification should be considered and elevated to senior officer cadre.

This is contained in a statement issued by the force spokesman, Mr Emmanuel Ojukwu, on Tuesday in Abuja.

Ojukwu said that the gesture was in line with the IG’s resolve to boost the morale of the police workforce.

He said that a circular to that effect had been issued to commands and formations across the country on Monday.

Ojukwu said they were directed to compile and forward names of all serving Inspectors and Rank and File with Higher Certificates such as University degrees, HND, OND and NCE for necessary processing.

The police in Lagos are battling to find a 13-year-old girl, Chikwuo Ezennia, who reportedly fled her house with a yet-to-be-identified man, suspected to be her lover.

PUNCH Metro learnt that Ezennia, who is in Basic 4, had come to Lagos from Nneni village in the Anaocha Local Government Area of Anambra State to spend her holiday with her relatives.

Our correspondent gathered that the girl, however, fled her relatives’ apartment on Ishola Bello Close, Iyalla Street, Alausa, Lagos, in the afternoon of Thursday, November 20, when the family had gone out.

It was gathered that when the girl’s aunt, Mrs. Ambrose Okolo, and her husband returned from work at about 6pm, Ezennia was nowhere to be found.

Our correspondent gathered that during the initial search for her, some neighbours told the Okolos that they saw the teenager walking away with a man in the afternoon.

Ezennia was said to have told the neighbours that her aunt maltreated her and had travelled away for a week. Hence, she would be staying with a friend during that period.

PUNCH Metro learnt that the family reported the matter at the Alausa Police Division the following day. It was gathered that the police invited some persons, who allegedly saw the girl, for interrogation.

Our correspondent gathered that Ezennia, who speaks only Igbo fluently, was supposed to return to her village by the end of December. It was further learnt that Ezennia had a record of fleeing home to stay with men when she was in the village in Anambra.

When PUNCH Metro visited the apartment on Tuesday, Okolo, who is a self-employed chartered accountant, said the family was anxious to know the supposed lover, who had been shielding the girl, adding that all efforts to locate her had proved unsuccessful.

She said, “Ezennia is just 13, but she looks big enough to be called a man’s wife. If you see her, you will think she is a lady. She just came from the village to spend some time with us and she is supposed to go back this December. But since that Thursday, we have yet to find her.

“The reason I suspect she may be with a lover is because of some recent developments. Just a week before that incident, I travelled to Benue for a programme, and she was alone with my children in the house. There is a phone that my children use which contains only my number and my husband’s.

“But when she fled home and we started the search, I picked up the phone and to my surprise, I saw a string of strange numbers.

“The children said Ezennia used the phone when I travelled.

“I wondered who she might have been calling since she is new in Lagos.”

PUNCH Metro learnt that calls and text messages sent to the numbers by the family since the day of the incident had not been replied to.

Efforts by our correspondent to obtain Ezennia’s photograph were unsuccessful as the teenager had yet to take any since she arrived in Lagos.

The Lagos State Police Public Relations Officer, DSP Kenneth Nwosu, confirmed the incident.

He said Ezennia was still on the police’s list of missing persons.

“If seen, the public should contact Alausa Police Station,” he added.

The reluctance of some oil marketers to import petrol owing to alleged non-payment of subsidy arrears and the subsequent reduction in loading activities at the Apapa depots are currently putting serious pressure on product supply across the country.

There are fears that scarcity of petrol is imminent if the situation is not addressed.

Some filling stations, which in recent times were always open to dispense petrol, had challenges meeting customers’ demand. This development became evident on Sunday.

The Chairman, Nigeria Union of Petroleum and Natural Gas Workers, Lagos Zone, Alhaji Tokunbo Korodo, told our correspondent on the telephone on Tuesday that the number of trucks loading fuel per day had reduced.

He also said loading of fuel at the Coconut area of Apapa, Lagos had been disrupted following the road construction work along the axis.

“Any marketer that has product along that corridor will not be able to load,” Korodo said.

Commenting on the state of the current state of the depots, he said, “Most depots are fast drying up. That is why there is a slight unofficial increase in the price of the product that is currently being sold at the Apapa depots. From N86 per litre, we now see some marketers selling for N90 to N91 (without trucks).

He said despite claims that the fourth quarter import allocation and its supplementary had been approved by the government, the non-payment of subsidies to marketers could make a nonsense of the move as importers would not be willing to do further importation.

“Marketers need money to bring in this product. They put down a lot of money to import the product, and may not be able to do additional importation if they are not paid as and when due.”

When our correspondent visited some depots at Apapa on Tuesday, many tankers were seen idle; only few were lifting products.

Depots where activities were spotted included Aiteo, Nipco and Conoil.

The idle tankers also worsened the traffic situation in the area making it difficult for car owners and other commuters to move freely.

The spokesperson for an oil marketing company in Apapa told our correspondent in confidence that the ex-depot price per litre had risen by over N1 following the pressure.

When our correspondent spoke with the Petroleum Products Pricing Regulatory Agency’s spokesperson, Mr. Lanre Oladele, on the telephone, he said there were enough products in the country to last for another 50 days.

He confirmed that the fourth quarter import allocation as well as its supplementary allocation had been approved by the government.

According to him, some construction works were being done along the Apapa axis, which could be causing some supply challenges. “This does not mean product is not available,” he stressed.

When our correspondent reached the Executive Secretary, Major Oil Marketers Association of Nigeria, Mr. Femi Olawore, he said the situation was being examined.

He declined to make further comment on subsidy payments or supply trends.

An independent oil marketer, who insisted he wanted to be anonymous, told our correspondent that some marketers were already complaining of non-payment of subsidy arrears.

He said the marketers were not willing to import because subsidy had not been paid on their past importation.

In October this year, the Federal Government through the PPPRA granted approval to oil marketing and trading companies to import 600,000 metric tonnes of petrol pending the approval of the fourth quarter fuel import allocations. This was part of the efforts to sustain regular supply of petrol in the country.

One of the world’s most feared virus is losing its edge. HIV is evolving to become less deadly and less infectious, according to a major scientific study led by British scientists.

The team at the University of Oxford has shown that it was taking longer for HIV infection to cause AIDS.

The rapid evolution of HIV, which has allowed the virus to develop resistance to patients’ natural immunity is at the same time slowing the virus’s ability to cause AIDS.

The study also indicates that people infected by HIV are likely to progress to AIDS more slowly — in other words the virus becomes less virulent — because of widespread access to antiretroviral therapy (ART). Both processes make an important contribution to the overall goal of the control and eradication of the HIV epidemic.

Scientists said: “Twenty years ago the time to AIDS was 10 years, but in the last 10 years in Botswana that might have increased to 12.5 years. One might imagine as time extends this could stretch further and further and in the future people being asymptomatic for decades.”

In 2013, there were a total of 35 million people living with HIV worldwide according to the World Health Organization.

The study was led by researchers at the University of Oxford, along with scientists from South Africa, Canada, Tokyo, Harvard University and Microsoft Research.

Lead scientist Professor Phillip Goulder from the University of Oxford, said: “This research highlights the fact that HIV adaptation to the most effective immune responses we can make against it comes at a significant cost to its ability to replicate. Anything we can do to increase the pressure on HIV in this way may allow scientists to reduce the destructive power of HIV over time.”

The research was carried out in Botswana and South Africa, two countries that have been worst affected by the HIV epidemic. Across those countries, researchers enrolled over 2000 women with chronic HIV infection to take part in the study.

The first part of the study looked at whether the interaction between the body’s natural immune response and HIV leads to the virus becoming less virulent.

Central to this investigation are proteins in our blood called the human leukocyte antigens, which enable the immune system to differentiate between the human body’s proteins and the proteins of pathogens. People with a gene that expresses a particular HLA protein called HLA-B57, are known to benefit from a protective effect to HIV.

Infected patients with the HLA-B57 gene progress more slowly than usual to AIDS.

This study showed that in Botswana, where HIV has evolved to adapt to HLA-B57 more than in South Africa, patients no longer benefit from this gene’s protective effect.

However, the team’s data show that the cost of this adaptation to HIV is that its ability to replicate is significantly reduced, therefore making the virus less virulent.

The authors show that viral adaptation to protective gene variants, such as HLA-B57, is driving down the virulence of transmitted HIV and is thereby contributing to HIV elimination.

In the second part of the study the authors examined the impact of ART on HIV virulence. They developed a mathematical model, which concluded that selective treatment of people with low CD4 counts will accelerate the evolution of HIV variants with a weaker ability to replicate.