Son of Bishop David Oyedepo, founder of Living Faith Church, Isaac, has confessed to struggling with pornography at a point in his life.

Isaac disclosed that he got indulged in Pornography during a trip to an European country.

Featuring on a podcast “Confession Box,” Isaac said he overcame through the help of God.

According to Isaac: “My confessions are good ones that will help people. I struggled with pornography before.

“I remembered how it started, we travelled to one country and I was meant to be in the room alone, I switched on the TV and that’s it.

“But God brought me out of it very quickly. A lot of people still struggle with it and I think of somebody who had struggled with it and had walked up to me and told me how to come out, I would have come out quickly.

“I think people feel there are things we shouldn’t talk about, but today there are some pastors and church members still struggling with it.

“You may be anointed, seeing signs and wonders but it does not mean you are standing right.

“There is this old saying that if it’s working it means you are standing right but I found out that it’s not always the case. There are times I found out I wasn’t right, but grace and mercy found me.

“For the sake of someone who is genuine in the congregation, God can bypass you to meet the person; this is my confession.”

Former president of Nigeria, Olusegun Obasanjo has said despite that Nigeria is a complex country it is not too difficult to govern.

Obasanjo while commissioning presidential lodge inside Osun state Government House, Oke-Fia, Osogbo alongside Governor Ademola Adeleke and former governor, Prince Olagunsoye Oyinlola on Sunday, May 12, noted that governance is easy when leaders are honest with their conscience.

He said: “With my experience, Nigeria is a complex country but Nigeria is not a difficult country to rule, maybe one can also say the same that Osun state is a complex state but Osun State is not a difficult state to rule.

“You have to be honest with your conscience, with the people and with your God. You have to be a man of character and attributes that everybody will see that Ademola Adeleke, when he sees opportunity to dance, he would dance but is a man of integrity, honesty and hardwork, it is very important! When light comes, darkness vanishes.”

He also declared that Adeleke is his dancing partner any day because he has proven to the world that he is happy and also very hardworking governor.

He advised Adeleke that, “You are working on roads, don’t joke with it because when we make necessary provision for the people to have jobs and they will work. Many Yoruba people want to work but what is impeding that is the road to ply. When we provide wherewithal for them they would work. I will plead with you to continue with that.”

Earlier, Adeleke explained that the VIP lodge was abandoned after the administration of Rauf Aregbesola who left it at 35 percent completion.

“However, work commenced on the project three months ago and now it is completed. This lodge can accommodate 5 dignitaries with their team conveniently at a time.”

Governor Douye Diri of Bayelsa State has said the country’s “lopsided” federalism practice has hindered the development of states, calling for a review of revenue derivation formula in line with the practice of fiscal federalism.

Diri, who queried the existing practice where resource-endowed states in Nigeria, particularly in the Niger Delta, get 13 percent as monthly allocation from their resources, insisted that it was wrong to describe Bayelsa as insolvent and unable to exist without monthly federal allocation while its resources were being expropriated to Abuja and shared to other states in the country.

Speaking over the weekend in Houston, Texas, when Ijaws in the United States of America and Canada conferred on him the award of “Icon of Unity and Social Justice” as part of the three-day 2024 convention organized by Ijaw National Congress (INC)-Americas, Diri appreciated the organisers for upholding the Ijaw tradition and culture even in the diaspora.

Former Nigerian first lady, Dame Patience Jonathan; Minister of State for Petroleum (Oil), Senator Heineken Lokpobiri; as well as renowned author and Ibenanaowei of Ekpetiama kingdom, King Bubaraye Dakolo, were honoured.

Diri said: “The leadership of the Niger Delta has been with the Ijaws over the years. Now it looks like we are getting tired. But we should not. We have to continue with our leadership role while galvanising support from our neighbours and brothers in the region.

"The Niger Delta is an area that should be better than it is if we were allowed to use our resources for our development. Since I arrived this country, what crossed my mind has been how Bayelsa would be if we practised true federalism whereby we get 100 per cent of our revenue from oil and gas and not 13 per cent as it is today. Maybe we would have had one small Houston in Yenagoa.

"You cannot take away the resources in my state and the internally generated revenue that would have accrued to us and expropriate it in the name of Federation Account Allocation Committee (FAAC). Every month end, the 36 states in the country gather in Abuja to share resources accruing from my state and they still come back to insult us that our state is insolvent.

"I have never seen anywhere in the world where the essence of the FAAC is to share revenue only from oil and gas. What about the revenue from other mineral resources like gold? Why are they not also shared? This is the naked truth,” he said.

He urged them not to allow the fire of Ijaw nationalism that has been ignited to extinguish and ensure that the annual event was sustained while promising the support of his administration.

A former Head of State, Gen Yakubu Gowon (rtd), has said Nigeria would have been a better country if President Umaru Musa Yar’adua had completed his tenure.

Gowon spoke on Monday during a first President Umaru Musa Yar’adua international leadership conference and awards organised by Global Initiative For Leadership Success in Abuja.

Recall that Yar’adua became president in 2007, but in 2010, he died as a result of ill- health.

Gowon said Yar’adua had achieved significant milestones for Nigeria within his short time in office including granting amnesty to the Niger Delta militants as a way of restoring the economy of the country.

He lamented that though Yar’adua admitted that the process that produced him as president in 2007 was flawed and constituted the Justice Muhammed Uwais Committee for electoral reforms, successive administrations failed to continue with his initiative.

Gowon said, “He was a decent man; a man with absolute integrity. He was an honest man. He did very well and he has to be remembered. He was so honest that he said the process that brought him to power was not right. And he set up a committee. But it was not followed by successive leaders.

"However, I believe that one day, we shall have a solution. He was honey and sincere in dealing with any problem, and he was incorruptible. You can not blame him for corruption; he was clean. His various activities including the amnesty programme that he brought to the Niger Delta ensured our economy was protected.

“His illness and death, I believe if God had allowed him to complete his years in service, I believe Nigeria would have been better. A lot of things would have been better because he meant well for the country. So continue that love for the country and love for one another to make Nigeria great.”

Gowon also decried the spate of insecurity in the country and called on government and security agencies to fish out perpetrators of violent killings, abductions of schoolchildren in the North, and kidnapping for ransom in other parts of the country.

In his welcome address, the Chairman, Board of Trustees (BOT) of the Global Initiative For Leadership Success, Gen A.B Mamman, said, “The blatant refusal to adopt and implement in whole this Uwais Committee report is consequential on the ever-faulty governance leadership recruitment system in Nigeria till date, accounting yet for her to remain in doldrums.

"Most public office holders continue to appear at the the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), or the Independent Corruption Practices and Other Related Offences Commission (ICPC) office to answer questions on their tenure and so many reasons.”

The governor of Katsina State Dikko Radda says poverty is one of the major factors fueling banditry in the country, citing instances where young people are recruited into crime for as low as N500.

"The issue of the hypothesis behind political motive as responsible for banditry is not true,” the Katsina State governor said on Friday’s edition of Channels Television’s Politics Today.

“Secondly, what also causes the recruitment of under the logistics services for bandits was a result of poverty because surprisingly with N5,000, N2,000, and N200, you can be able to convince some of these youths to join into this exercise which brings about money,” he insisted.

The governor lamented that banditry which is rife in the North-West region of Nigeria has become a business venture for some persons including government officials.

'Business Venture’
“Now it has turned out to be a business venture. A business venture for the criminals, some people who are in government; and some people who are in security outfits, and some people who are responsible for the day-to-day activities of their people,” the governor said. “These are so many reasons why we are unable to bring banditry to an end.”

In recent years, criminal gangs known locally as bandits have repeatedly raided places mostly in rural areas in the northern region, abducting many and killing others.

President Bola Tinubu has made reducing insecurity one of his priorities. Some have called for negotiations with the bandits as a way to end the menace.

But the Katsina State governor said his government won’t negotiate from a “point of weakness”.

"When you understand the terrain of the forest, and the different camps that we have within those forests… like in Katsina, we have more than 100 different camps that are being led by somebody. So, they have many leaders, many camps and if you’re negotiating with camps A and B and don’t negotiate with camps C and D, it will not bring any lasting peace,” Governor Radda said.

“Even if you negotiate with the leaders, the other followers of the leaders may not necessarily comply with the directives of their leader. So that is what makes the negotiation with the bandits a very difficult task,” he said.

"What I said is that I would never go into negotiations with any criminal at the point of weakness,” the governor added.

The Lagos State Police Command has arrested a gang of suspected ritualists who specialise in killing people and harvesting body parts for sale in various states.

The suspects include a woman who is an Osun priestess, a community chief, an Ifa priest, an Islamic cleric, and a trado-medicine practitioner.

While confirming this burst on Friday, the spokesperson of the command, Benjamin Hundeyin, explained that the suspects who operate in one of the extreme divisions of Lagos were arrested through intelligence reports from the public.

According to him, the leader of the gang, a 33-year-old man, Ademola Akinlosotu, confessed initially that he was exhuming corpses from cemeteries and selling their parts to ritualists but later graduated to killing and selling human parts to customers on demand.

Speaking on his antecedents, Akinlosotu said that he moved from killing people to harvesting parts because his clients requested fresh parts rather than dead body parts.

Akinlosotu said ”while I and some members of the gang would do the killings,” he would supply the parts to a 52-year-old man, Ahmed Wahab, aka Alfa Bororo, who operated from Badagry in Lagos State and Ogun State, to supply his clients.

The suspect said a fresh human head is sold at N45,000 or N50,000 while a dried human head sells between N30,000 and N35,000; heart for N70,000 and hands for N50,000.

Akinlosotu speaking further admitted to killing two persons, which included a friend he met through social media, before he was arrested.
He said before they killed anyone, the herbalist would be contacted to consult an oracle to determine whether the killing would be successful or would bring trouble.

The suspect alleged that a traditional ruler in Badagry requested him to kill his son because he was giving him problems. He also said that the day they were to carry out the killing was when a friend he met online visited him, and he was killed.

Akinlosotu said that all he harvests, when he kills, is the person’s head, the heart, and the hands.

Hundeyin said exhibits of different human parts were recovered from the suspects as the police continued the trail of other suspects. The command said that the suspects would be charged to court as soon as investigations are completed.

The military high command says it has concluded its long-awaited investigations on the bombing of innocent citizens Tudun Biri village of Igabi LGA of Kaduna State.

It also said two officers of the Nigerian Army, who were found wanting about the incident would face court-martial, saying the operation shouldn’t have happened in the first place.

The Director, Defence Media Operations, Edward Buba, disclosed this at an ongoing press briefing at Defence Headquarters, Abuja on Thursday.

Daily Trust had reported how the drone bombing mistake, which occurred on Sunday, December 3, 2023, resulted in dozens of casualties and injuries to residents of Tudun Biri, Ugara and Sabon Gida after they converged at Tudun Biri to celebrate the Maulud.

The Nigerian Army, which claimed responsibility for the deaths, attributed the incident to a mistake.

Giving an update at the briefing, the report of the investigation has been submitted to the appropriate quarters, adding that he was constrained to speak much about the incident.

The naira closed the month of April on a good footing as it gained N28.15 at the official market, trading at N1,390.96 to the dollar.

Data from the official trading platform of the FMDQ Exchange, a platform that oversees the Nigerian Autonomous Foreign Exchange Market (NAFEM), revealed that the gain represented a 1.98 per cent appreciation for the naira.

The percentage increase is significant when compared to the previous trading date on Monday, April 29.

The local currency experienced a two-week steady fall by exchanging at N1,419 to a dollar.

The success story was replicated in the volume of currency traded as the total daily turnover increased.

The daily turnover stood at 225.36 million dollars on Tuesday, up from 147.83 million dollars recorded on Monday.

Meanwhile, at the Investor’s and Exporter’s (I&E) window, the naira traded between N1,450 and N1,200 against the dollar. (NAN)

Two undergraduates of Ambrose Alli University (AAU), Ekpoma, Edo State have been shot dead in a cult-related reprisal attack.

It was gathered yesterday that one of the victims was a member of the Students’ Union Government (SUG) and a 400-level student in the Faculty of Agriculture.

The incident occurred on Poultry Road Extension in Ekpoma after the death of a person named Eddy, who was reportedly beaten to death for allegedly using fake bank alerts to make purchases.

However, the circumstances surrounding Eddy’s death were misinterpreted as an attack by rival cult members, leading to a retaliatory attack by a rival cult group and resulting in the deaths of the two students.

The Edo Police Public Relations Officer (PPRO), Superintendent of Police (SP) Chidi Nwabuzor, confirmed the cult-related killings and stated that some suspects had been apprehended, with investigations ongoing.

In a related development, one person has been killed and several properties were destroyed on Tuesday in a deadly clash between cult groups in Kwara State.

The incident occurred at Eyenkorin, Asa Local Government Area.

The Commissioner of Police, Victor Olaiya, confirmed the incident, saying “Mobile men and tactical teams have been deployed and are presently on the ground.”

The Public Relations Officer of the Kwara State Fire Service, Hassan Adekunle, said firefighters were called to the scene around 4:50 hours only to find two buildings engulfed in flames.

"Investigations revealed a sinister plot as the inferno was deliberately set by rival groups clashing in a deadly confrontation. One life was lost and the bereaved group avenged it by targeting the home of the rival group’s leader, leaving two houses in ruins,” Adekunle said.

Daily Trust reports that five persons had been killed in recent clashes between Eiye and Aiye rival cult groups in the state.

A 65-year-old suspect, Lukman Odejoju has narrated how alcohol packaged in nylon influenced the killing of his mother.

Vanguard has reported that the suspect killed his mother over palm oil proceed in Kajola village via Apomu, Isokan local government area of Osun state.

Fielding questions from journalists while he was being paraded at the State Police Command headquarters in Osogbo, he said the alcohol popularly referred to as ‘pelebe’ led him to an argument with his mother.

“We were both arguing inside the farm over handing over of her palm plantation to me but she refused. Amid the argument I pushed and strangled her, but I didn’t know she would die.

“Before I went to the farm, I had taken a sachets of alcohol. It was after the incident it dawned on me that I had committed a grave mistake.

“I adjusted her body and went to the village to bring people back to the scene. It was at the scene I told them what happened.

“I love my mother, I am her eldest surviving child out of five children and I urge the government to forgive because it was not intentional”, he pleaded.

ACTING National Chairman of the Labour Party, Prince Ifagbemi Awamaridi, has raised an alarm of alleged plans to kill the LP, saying they would resist the plots.

Briefing newsmen in Lagos, Awamaridi, in a press statement titled: “Nigeria; the hard way, the only way” apologized on behalf of the party for the “disappointing conduct of the past executives,” which he described in Yoruba as “Gbajue” (fraud).

He said: “I and other members of the party apologize on behalf of the Labour Party for the disappointing conduct of the Gbajue executive.

“They commercially rented the party as a Special Purpose Vehicle mapped out as a mischief to kill the party in such a way that the party will be de-registered.

"The de-registration move they are making is done secretly, and we are aware. We will resist it with our last blood.

“We are now in charge of the Labour Party, and any group or individuals that call themselves the Labour Party are mere political clubs as all former excos’ tenures have expired.”