Professor Florence Obi, the Vice-Chancellor of the University of Calabar has claimed that her vacation to the United States was for the purpose of concluding collaboration discussions with the DePaul University. This claim was made public by an article on DetailingCrossRiver.org

The article went further to claim that the collaboration talks with various US base varsities started with the visit of Professor Margaret Workman and Umoh Isidore from DePaul University to Calabar in July.

The VC is also said to have visited the North Eastern Illinois University, where she met with Cris Toffolo, Director, International Programs and the Chair of Social Work Programs of the University, Professor Job Ngwe.

According to reliable sources, the main purpose of Professor Florence visit to Chicago was for a week long Leadership Development Programme for Vice-Chancellors and Principal Officers of Nigeria Universities organised by the Committee of Vice Chancellors of Nigeria in conjunction with the University of Chicago.

But surprisingly she wasn’t accompanied by any of her 5 principal officers including her DVC Academics, Professor Angela Oyo-Ita, who is a former Commissioner in Cross River or the DVC Administration, Professor Micheal Okom, who has the constituted duty of work closely with partnership with other institutions or the Registrar, Mr. Gabriel Egbe or even her Librarian, Professor Aniebiet Inyang Ntui, who is the Most Read Researcher in Nigeria and has recently received an appointment from the European Union.

The timetable for the various collaborations is said to have been worked out to start in January 2023 due to the ongoing ASUU strike.

The Minister of Education, Adamu Adamu, on Tuesday said the government could only afford 23.5 percent salary increase for lecturers, while a 35% increment will be enjoyed by professors.

The minister also noted that the President, Major General Muhammadu Buhari (retd.) warned against signing agreements which the government will not be able to meet.

Adamu disclosed this while speaking during the meeting with vice-chancellors and other stakeholders in the university system.

He said,”The Federal Government can only afford a 23.5% salary increase for all category of the workforce in Federal Universities, except for the professorial cadre which will enjoy a 35% upward review.

“Henceforth, allowances that pertain to ad-hoc duties of the academic and non-academic staff shall be paid as at when due by the Governing Councils of Universities to which such services are rendered and to the staff who perform
them.

“That a sum of 150 billion Naira shall be provided for in the 2023 Budget as
funds for the revitalization of Federal Universities, to be disbursed to the
Institutions in the First Quarter of the year, and that a sum of 50 billion Naira shall be provided for in the 2023 Budget for the payment of outstanding areas of earned academic allowances, to be paid
in the First Quarter of the year”.

Speaking at the end of the meeting, the pro-chancellor of the National Open University of Nigeria, Professor Peter Okebukola, noted that the government was ready to go all out to ensure that the university lecturers return back to school.

LONDON — After months of upheaval, Britain will rely on predictable and time-honored traditions today as power and an abundance of economic and political problems are transferred from Prime Minister Boris Johnson to Liz Truss.

Here’s how the day is expected to unfold
* Johnson will deliver farewell remarks from the prime minister’s official Downing Street residence. Count on colorful metaphors, a Latin phrase or two, and boasts about his own accomplishments from a politician who — despite all the scandals — may yet stage a comeback.
* Johnson and Truss will travel to see Queen Elizabeth II — at Balmoral Castle in Scotland this time, rather than the traditional Buckingham Palace setting. The 96-year-old queen has missed many events on the royal calendar because of her health. But as long as the key players will come to where she’s been staying, she does not appear to want to delegate this one.
* In a private audience, Johnson will bow to the queen and tender his resignation. Truss will follow, asking permission to form a government. The ceremony is called kissing hands, though in modern politics there is no kissing.
* Truss will return to London as Britain’s 56th prime minister, and Britain will join a small club of nations that have had at least three female heads of government.

Liz Truss is to become the UK’s next prime minister after winning the contest to replace Boris Johnson as Conservative Party leader. But where did she come from and what makes her tick?

A Remain supporter who has become the darling of the Brexit-backing Conservative right wing.

A former Liberal Democrat activist, who marched against Margaret Thatcher in the 1980s, but who now claims to be the keeper of the Thatcherite flame.

It is fair to say that Mary Elizabeth Truss has been on a political journey.

She may not be a household name like her predecessor at Number 10 – and she was not the first choice of Tory MPs to replace Boris Johnson.

But her promise to return to fundamental Conservative values – cutting taxes and shrinking the state – proved to be exactly what party members, who got the final say over who took over from Mr Johnson, wanted to hear.

And, crucially, as foreign secretary she remained loyal to Mr Johnson until the bitter end as other ministers deserted him, winning her favour with Johnson loyalists.

Grassroots Tory supporters of Liz Truss see in her the steadfast, tenacious and determined qualities they admired in Margaret Thatcher – an image Ms Truss herself has tried to cultivate.

But despite her shifting political positions and allegiances over the years, these words also come up frequently when friends and family are asked to describe her character – along with “ambitious”.

Liz Truss: The basics

Age: 47

Place of birth: Oxford

Home: London and Norfolk

Education: Roundhay School in Leeds, Oxford University

Family: Married to accountant Hugh O’Leary with two teenage daughters

Parliamentary constituency: South West Norfolk

“She’s a very opinionated person in terms of what she wants,” said her brother Francis in 2017, when recalling his older sister’s teenage dalliance with vegetarianism.

“When you go to a restaurant, you might be 14 but she was precocious about what she wants, what she didn’t want.”

When the family played Cluedo or Monopoly, “she was someone who had to win,” added Francis in a BBC Radio 4 profile of Truss.

“She would create some special system to work out how she could win.”

Maurizio Giuliano, a university contemporary who first met her at a Liberal Democrat event, says she stood out from the other students.

“I remember her being very well-dressed compared to other 18 to 19-year-olds. She also had the demeanour of a real adult compared to what we were at that age.

“She was forceful and opinionated and she had very strong views.”

Serious political debate was the order of the day in the Truss household, according to Francis, the youngest of her three younger brothers.

“You didn’t sit around talking about the latest Megadrive game at the dinner table, it was much more issues, political campaigns etc,” he told Radio 4’s Profile programme.

It must have felt inevitable that she would get involved in politics in some capacity when she grew up, but no-one in her family would have predicted the path she eventually took.

Born in Oxford in 1975, Ms Truss has described her father, a mathematics professor, and her mother, a nurse, as “left-wing”.

As a young girl, her mother took her on marches for the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, an organisation vehemently opposed to the Thatcher government’s decision to allow US nuclear warheads to be installed at RAF Greenham Common, west of London.

Though she is now proudly a Conservative from Leeds, back then she was a Scottish liberal.

The family moved to Paisley, just west of Glasgow, when Ms Truss was four-years-old.

In a BBC interview, she recalled shouting “Maggie, Maggie, Maggie – oot, oot, oot,” in a Scottish accent, as she took part in marches.

The Truss family later decamped to Leeds, where she attended Roundhay, a state secondary school. She has described seeing “children who failed and were let down by low expectations” during her time there.

Some of Ms Truss’s contemporaries at Roundhay have disputed her account of the school, including Guardian journalist Martin Pengelly, who wrote: “Perhaps she is selectively deploying her upbringing, and casually traducing the school and teachers who nurtured her, for simple political gain.”

One Roundhay school mate, who did not want to be named, told the BBC: “It was a really good school, really supportive teachers. Quite a lot of us have gone on to good universities and good careers.”

Although not part of her friendship group, he has clear memories of the young Truss.

“She was quite studious, serious,” he says, with a “heavy social conscience” and part of a group that were into environmentalism.

“I remember a school trip to Sellafield and her asking difficult questions and giving them a grilling. I remember that quite distinctly.”

At Oxford University, Ms Truss read philosophy, politics and economics. Friends recall a well-liked, if frenetic student.

“I remember her determination which was very impressive for me,” says Jamshid Derakhshan, who was studying for a postgrad degree in mathematics when Truss was an undergraduate.

“She was very quick with everything. Going around the college quickly, being everywhere.”

As to what sort of prime minister his old friend will make, Dr Derakhshan says: “My feeling is she’s not going to be stuck with one particular idea, she’s very flexible in her mind and what will be best for the time.”

Ms Truss was involved in many campaigns and causes at Oxford but devoted much of her time to politics, becoming president of the university’s Liberal Democrats.

At the party’s 1994 conference, she spoke in favour of abolishing the monarchy, telling delegates in Brighton: “We Liberal Democrats believe in opportunity for all. We do not believe people are born to rule.”

She also campaigned for the decriminalisation of cannabis.

“Liz had a very strong radical liberal streak to her,” said fellow Lib Dem student Alan Renwick in 2017.

“We were setting up the Freshers Fair stall, Liz was there with a pile of posters, saying ‘Free the Weed’ and she just wanted the whole stall to be covered with these posters.

“I was scurrying around after Liz trying to take these down and put up a variety of messages, rather than just this one message all over the stall.”

Her conversion to conservatism, towards the end of her time at Oxford is said to have shocked her left-leaning parents, but for Mark Littlewood, a fellow Oxford Lib Dem, it was a natural progression.

“She’s been a market liberal all of her adult life,” according to Mr Littlewood, who is now director general of the libertarian, free market think-tank, the Institute of Economic Affairs.

“Her political career reflects her ideology – she has always been highly sceptical of big government and privileged institutions who think they know best,” Mr Littlewood said.

She clearly changed parties, but that “was a judgement about what’s the best and most likely vehicle for her to succeed in politics and get what she wants to get done,” Mr Littlewood said.

Nevertheless, what she has described as her “dubious past” came back to haunt her as she tried to convince Tory members she was truly one of them.

At a leadership hustings in Eastbourne, some in the audience jeered, as she told them: “We all make mistakes, we all had teenage misadventures, and that was mine.

“Some people have sex, drugs and rock and roll, I was in the Liberal Democrats. I’m sorry.”

She had become a Conservative because she had met like-minded people who shared her commitment to “personal freedom, the ability to shape your own life and shape your own destiny,” she explained.

After graduating from Oxford she worked as an accountant for Shell, and Cable & Wireless, and married fellow accountant Hugh O’Leary in 2000. The couple have two children.

Ms Truss stood as the Tory candidate for Hemsworth, West Yorkshire, in the 2001 general election, but lost. Ms Truss suffered another defeat in Calder Valley, also in West Yorkshire, in 2005.

But, her political ambitions undimmed, she was elected as a councillor in Greenwich, south-east London, in 2006, and from 2008 also worked for the right-of-centre Reform think tank.

Conservative leader David Cameron put Ms Truss on his “A-list” of priority candidates for the 2010 election and she was selected to stand for the safe seat of South West Norfolk.

But she quickly faced a battle against de-selection by the constituency Tory association, after it was revealed she had had an affair with Tory MP Mark Field some years earlier.

The effort to oust her failed and Ms Truss went on to win the seat by more than 13,000 votes.

She co-authored a book, Britannia Unchained, with four other Conservative MPs elected in 2010, which recommended stripping back state regulation to boost the UK’s position in the world, marking her out as a prominent advocate of free market policies on the Tory benches.

During a BBC leadership debate, she was challenged about a comment in Britannia Unchained, describing British workers as “among the worst idlers in the world”. She insisted she had not written it.

In 2012, just over two years after becoming an MP, she entered government as an education minister and in 2014 was promoted to environment secretary.

At the 2014 Conservative conference, she made a speech in which she said, in an impassioned voice: “We import two-thirds of our cheese. That. Is. A. Disgrace.”

The speech was little noticed at the time, but it has taken on a life of its own on social media, attracting much mockery and becoming widely shared.

Two years later came arguably the biggest political event in a generation – the EU referendum.

Ms Truss campaigned for Remain, writing in the Sun newspaper that Brexit would be “a triple tragedy – more rules, more forms and more delays when selling to the EU”.

However, after her side lost, she changed her mind, arguing that Brexit provided an opportunity to “shake up the way things work”.

Under Theresa May’s premiership, she became the first female Lord Chancellor and justice secretary, but she had several high-profile clashes with the judiciary.

Her initial failure to defend judges after they were branded “enemies of the people” by the Daily Mail, when they ruled Parliament had to be given a vote on triggering Brexit, upset the legal establishment.

She later issued a statement supporting the judges, but she was criticised by Lord Chief Justice Lord Thomas of Cwmgiedd as “completely and absolutely wrong” for not speaking out sooner.

After 11 months as justice secretary, she was demoted to chief secretary to the Treasury.

When Boris Johnson became prime minister in 2019, Ms Truss was moved to international trade secretary – a job which meant meeting global political and business leaders to promote UK PLC.

In 2021, aged 46, she moved to one of the most senior jobs in government, taking over from Dominic Raab as foreign secretary.

In this role she has sought to solve the knotty problem of the Northern Ireland Protocol, by scrapping parts of a post-Brexit EU-UK deal – a move the EU fiercely criticised.

She secured the release of two British-Iranian nationals who had both been arrested and detained in Iran.

And when Russia invaded Ukraine in February she took a hard line, insisting all of Vladimir Putin’s forces should be driven from the country.

But she faced criticism for backing people from the UK who wanted to fight in Ukraine.

Her decision to pose for photographs in a tank while visiting British troops in Estonia, was seen as an attempt to emulate Margaret Thatcher, who had famously been pictured aboard a Challenger tank in 1986. It also fuelled speculation that she was on leadership manoeuvres.

Claims she was deliberately trying to channel Thatcher grew even louder when she posed for a photograph in a white pussy bow collar of the kind favoured by the Iron Lady.

But she has always dismissed such criticism, telling GB News: “It is quite frustrating that female politicians always get compared to Margaret Thatcher while male politicians don’t get compared to Ted Heath.”

Ms Truss’s campaign for the party leadership has not been free of controversy.

Pressed on how she would tackle the cost-of-living crisis, she said she would focus her efforts on “lowering the tax burden, not giving out handouts”.

She has been forced to scrap a plan to link public sector pay to regional living costs by a backlash from senior Tories who said it would mean lower pay for millions of workers outside London.

And she called Scotland’s First Minister Nicola Sturgeon an “attention seeker”, adding it was best to “ignore her”.

She also got into a spat with French President Emmanuel Macron, who accused her of “playing to the gallery” at a leadership hustings. Asked if Mr Macron was a “friend or foe”, she had said the jury was still out.

But it was domestic issues, or rather one domestic issue, that dominated the sometimes fractious leadership contest with Rishi Sunak.

Ms Truss’s response to the cost-of-living crisis, promised within days of taking office, is likely to define her premiership and her chances of gaining a mandate of her own at the next general election.

Pictures have emerged which show the Vice-Chancellor of the Univeristy of Calabar (UNICAL), Professor Florence Banku Obi on Vacation in the Chicago City Area of the United States.

During her ongoing visit to United States, she has been at spotted at the Chicago Shakespeare Theater, the 320 River Bar and on a Ferry Ride along the coast of the Lake Michigan.

Professor Florence is the 11th Substantive and First Female Vice-Chancellor of the Varsity, a few months earlier she was seen visiting various tourist site in the United Kingdom.

obyrich:
I know what a sub-station means. There used to be a 132KV transmission line from Alaoji power station to Calabar. I am making inference from the picture. Looks like the billows is coming from a spot. That's why I suspect power transformer catching fire. We are in rainy season. Lightning can cause it. It once happened at Egbu Road substation in Owerri around 2009.

obyrich:
Maybe the transformer has caught fire.

By Akachukwu Ifeanyichukwu
There is an ongoing fire outbreak at the Calabar Injection Power Sub Station situated at the Tinapa Resort, Cross River State.

The cause of the fire outbreak is yet to be known.

Sapa23:
While Klopp's side went back home with a point each from their first 2 games with Fulham and Crystal Palace.

Sapa23:
Both clubs have had a slow start to the season with the Devils falling by a goal to Brighton then trashed by Brentford with 4 goals within 35 mins.

Obi4Ever:
Our beautiful Minister of Education.

Professor Aniebiet Inyang Ntui has been named as the “Most Read Researcher in Nigeria” according to statistics made available by the Web of Science, with over 500,000 reads on the ResearchGate Portal.

Professor Aniebiet, the University Librarian of the University of Calabar has more than twenty years of experience in the lecture room and library of the University. She is an Associate of the European Union Research Initiative – Europeana, the University of the West of Scotland’s Centre for African Research on Enterprise and Economic Development, and the University of Glasgow’s UK-COP 26 Universities Climate Network. Aniebiet has served as a Consultant of Information Management to the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, United Nations Development Programme, and the World Bank.

Professor Aniebiet Inyang has been recently named as one of the Powerful Women of the University of Calabar and the possible Minister of Education in the Peter Obi-led administration if he can successfully win the February 2023 Nigerian Elections.

BeautifulMind2:

There are more pressing issues that needed to push the state economy, education, health etc than building government house when you have alternative, I hope you read basic economics in school about scale of preference Even Obiano didn't build government house they first provided the basic infrastructures that are more important to Anambra people, it just Soludo that have decided to build the government now

kay1one:


I'm done bragging with you.

It's obvious your not a medical doctor. If you were, you would know that grades are not awarded on that basis.

You're in Belgium only. I'm licenced to practice in both Nigeria and England.

Continue exposing yourself.

kay1one:


I'm done bragging with you.

It's obvious your not a medical doctor. If you were, you would know that grades are not awarded on that basis.

You're in Belgium only. I'm licenced to practice in both Nigeria and England.

Continue exposing yourself.

kay1one:


I was a med student in 2010. Calculate. Real medical doctor o. Not paramedic

kay1one:


Lol... I won't tell you what I do for a living. Trust me, you'll keep quiet afterwards. I can't be poor by God's grace

kay1one:


Lame excuse to not have a good character

BATified2023:
he’s not cursing he’s making things clear to u

U igbos ehn,your eye go soon clear