Ribadu bags global ‘lifetime achievement’ award
Founding chairman of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), Malam Nuhu Ribadu has bagged a lifetime achievement award on anti-corruption campaign. The award, which was administered by Qatar-based think-tank, Rule of Law and Anticorruption Centre (ROLACC), celebrates corruption fighters, academics and campaigners from around the world.
The award ceremony was held on Friday at the Putrajaya International Convention Centre in Malaysia.
Malaysian Prime Minister, Mahathir Mahamad and the Emir of Qatar, Sheikh Tamim Al Thani attended the ceremony.
Sheikh Al Thani instituted the award in support of support of the United Nation’s anticorruption drive. The award is in four categories, with joint winners in each category. Each category of the award comes with a cash prize of $250,000.
Ribadu jointly won the lifetime/ outstanding achievement category alongside former South African corruption fighter and ex-World Bank vice president, Leonardo McCarthy. The honourees were presented with a plague and certificate each by the two leaders.
Ribadu was nominated for the award by the African Centre for Media and Information Literacy (AFRICMIL), a civil society organization doing pioneering work on whistleblowing policy in Nigeria. His win followed approval by ROLACC’s HighLevel Selection Committee and the board.
In his short acceptance speech Ribadu described the award as a tribute to persons around the world working to curb corruption. He paid tribute to his colleagues at the EFCC, some of whom paid the supreme price in their line of duty. He said the award will boost the morale of corruption fighters who would come to realize that their job is not thankless, after all.
Also honoured alongside Ribadu, was Cambridge University don, Prof Jason Sharman, Dr. RobtelNeajaiPailey of Oxford University, who won the academic excellence category. Doyin Adebusuyi, Ado Ekiti
A16-year-old secondary school student in Ado Grammar School, Ado Ekiti, Ekiti State, Mathew Favour, has been hacked to death by another student, Kehinde Timilehin, using a machete within school premises.
Favour, who was in Senior Secondary II, was said to be contesting the efficacy of a charm with the suspect on who actually had superior power, during which he was stabbed in the chest and later died at the Ekiti State University Teaching Hospital(EKSUTH), Ado Ekiti.
Sources told our correspondent on Friday that Favour, who was from Kogi State, actually brought the ‘juju’ weapons to school but was killed after the axe and knife wrapped with white and red scarf could not pierce the suspect who overpowered him and stabbed him in “self-defence.”
The school has now been taken over and barricaded by police, to forestall a possible reprisal attack emanating from a threat issued by the deceased’s family.
Police Public Relations Officer, Ekiti Command, DSP Caleb Ikechukwu said he has not been officially briefed about the killing.
Killings: Tiv council frowns over‘attempt to change narrative’
The Tiv Area Traditional Council (TATC) in Benue State has frowned at an attempt by some key government functionaries of the Presidency to change the narratives of the Benue killings allegedly perpetrated by herders’ militia.
This is contained in a communiqué issued and made available to our correspondent yesterday in Makurdi at the end of an emergency meeting of the Tiv Supreme Council (Ijitamen) held in Gboko.
The council therefore urged all Tiv political actors and politicians to desist from making inflammatory statements over the killings to avoid unnecessary heating the security situation in Tivland as it also decried the state of insecurity in Sankera axis of Tiv land to include Kastina-Ala, Logo and Ukum local government areas.