APC stakeholders protest alleged imposition of chairmanship candidate ahead of Lagos LG polls (Vanguard)
A meeting of All Progressives Congress (APC) stakeholders in Ojokoro Local Council Development Area (LCDA), Lagos State, was disrupted on Monday following protests over the alleged imposition of a chairmanship candidate ahead of the July 12 Lagos Council elections.
The meeting, which began peacefully at 4:00 PM at 7, Ijaoye Street, quickly escalated when some aggrieved party members and leaders stormed the venue in protest.
Chaos ensued as protesters chanted anti-imposition slogans, accusing the party leadership of forcing a chairmanship candidate on them. “Ole” (thief), “we cannot take it,” “Obasa should not impose chairman on us from Agege,” and “Sanusi is not from Ojokoro” were some of the slogans shouted by the demonstrators, who claimed the candidate, identified as Sanusi, had no local ties to Ojokoro and was being imposed by party leaders from Agege. Read more
Frustrated ‘‘investors’’ loot CBEX office in Ibadan (Nation)
A group of angry investors stormed the CBEX office in the Oke Ado area of Ibadan, Oyo State, after the digital trading platform reportedly crashed, leaving many users with zero balances in their accounts.
The mob forcibly entered the premises, looting furniture and office equipment.
The incident was triggered by widespread frustration and financial losses among users who had invested in the platform. Read more
Gunmen abduct worshippers on Lokoja mountain (DailyTrust)
Gunmen reportedly stormed a prayer session at a remote mountain site in the Egbola area, along Agbaja Road in Lokoja Local Government Area of Kogi State and abducted an unspecified number of the worshipers.
The incident is said to have occurred on Friday during a night vigil on the mountain.
A woman identified as Mary Adams Gure was said to have been rescued by men of the state vigilante services who got wind of the incident and mobilized to the scene and confronted the gunmen in a gun duel. Read more
Nigeria’s economic crisis worsens as food inflation soars to 21.79% in March — NBS (Sun)
Nigeria’s cost of living crisis worsened in March 2025 as food inflation surged to 21.79 percent year on year, the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) has said.
In a report released today, the NBS said the inflation is caused by the hike in price of essential staples such as garri, rice, and fresh produce, with the month-on-month data showing food inflation rose to 2.18 percent up from 1.67 percent in February.
The NBS also said fresh ginger, yellow garri, Ofada rice, natural honey, crabs, potatoes, plantain flour, and fresh pepper are key contributors to the spike, as prices for these items rose by double digits due to supply issues, seasonal shortages, and soaring transportation costs. Read more
Police arraign employee over alleged N2.1m fraud (Guardian)
A 45-year-old staff member of a Lagos-based company, D Breeze Protection Service Ltd., Kolawole Dawodu, has appeared before an Ikeja Magistrates’ Court for allegedly defrauding his employer of N2.1 million.
Daodu is standing trial on a three-count charge of conspiracy, stealing and obtaining under false pretences, to which he pleaded not guilty.
The prosecutor, SP Josephine Ikhayere told the court that the defendant committed the offences sometime in July 2024 and April 7, at No 217/219 Ikorodu Road, Illupeju, Lagos. Read more
Assaulted female driver will get justice, says Lagos NURTW chair (Punch)
The chairman, Lagos State Council of the National Union of Road Transport Workers, Mustapha Adio, popularly known as Tafa Sego, on Monday, said the assaulted female driver, Yetunde Amole, in the state would get justice.
Adio made this disclosure when he received the lady during a meeting at the union’s office in Oko Oba, Agege area of the state.
Amole, who arrived at the union headquarters earlier in the day, was warmly received and ushered into the chairman’s office. Read more
PDP govs say no to coalition, dump Anyanwu, Udeh-Okoye (Tribune)
Governors elected on the platform of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) rose from a meeting in Ibadan, the Oyo State capital, on Monday, where they declared that formation of a coalition of political parties would not be necessary to defeat the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) in 2027.
Some stakeholders of the party and leaders of other opposition parties have been holding a series of meetings since mid-last year with the sole aim of forming a coalition of parties to confront the APC in the next general election.
But members of the PDP Governors’ Forum (PDPGF) rose from a meeting in Ibadan, Oyo State on Monday to declare that the party does not need to merge with any other party to defeat the APC in 2027, as according to the governors, the 2027 election would be a battle between the APC and the Nigerian people. Read more
Sudan’s siege city – BBC smuggles in phones to reveal hunger and fear (BBC)
“She left no last words. She was dead when she was carried away,” says Hafiza quietly, as she describes how her mother was killed in a city under siege in Darfur, during Sudan’s civil war, which began exactly two years ago.
The 21-year-old recorded how her family’s life was turned upside down by her mother’s death, on one of several phones the BBC World Service managed to get to people trapped in the crossfire in el-Fasher.
Under constant bombardment, el-Fasher has been largely cut off from the outside world for a year, making it impossible for journalists to enter the city. For safety reasons, we are only using the first names of people who wanted to film their lives and share their stories on the BBC phones. Read more
Ukrainian artist Margarita Polovinko dies at 31 in combat with Russia (Artnews)
Ukrainian artist Margarita Polovinko, whose drawings and photography excavated her post-Soviet reality and later, the Russian invasion, died at age 31 while serving as a combat medic. Her death was announced on April 8 by her sister, who wrote in an Instagram post, “Margarita died defending Ukraine.”
Margarita Polovinko was born March 24, 1994, in Kryvyi Rih, an industrial city in central Ukraine, and the cultural peripherality of her time and place informed her early artistic preoccupations.
“My mother worked at the Kryvyi Rih steel plant all her life,” she told the Ukrainian online news outlet Suspilne Kultura in 2023. “When you’re a kid and you see people who go to work and don’t look positive, no profession attracts you. Unless it’s something that benefits society.” An athlete benched because of a bad heart, Polovinko instead went to art school. Read more
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez hits Marjorie Taylor Greene with 1 damning question (HuffPost)
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) on Monday renewed her call for a ban on lawmakers trading individual stocks after a disclosure filing showed that Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) bought shares in a number of companies just before President Donald Trump announced a pause on tariffs.
“We saw Marjorie Taylor Greene buy that dip,” Ocasio-Cortez said at a rally in Idaho with Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.). “I got one question for her: How much did you make? How much did you make off of people’s despair? How much did you make off that panic? How much did you make off of that suffering?”
She slammed lawmakers for using their access to “sensitive information” to make trades ― and said Trump’s on-again, off-again tariffs were part of that scheme. Read more
Gwyneth Paltrow Says She Regretted Not Having More Kids ‘For a Long Time’ (USmagazine)
Gwyneth Paltrow used to want to have more than two children.
“My dad [Bruce Paltrow] used to say the only regret he had in his entire life was not having more kids, and I felt like that for a long time until I got yours too,” Gwyneth, 52, told husband Brad Falchuk on the Tuesday, April 8, episode of her “Goop” podcast, while referring to her late father. “I got to tack on.”
She added, “[Our daughters Apple and Isabella] were graduating, and it started to just feel really light and really cohesive. Since then, we’ve had so many moments like that. I feel like it keeps deepening, and it’s such a particular kind of delight to see our four kids in their own relationships and being friends with each other and loving each other.” Read more
Bryan Adams Finally Reveals the Truth Behind the Lyrics of “Summer Of ‘69” (AmericanSongwriter)
Bryan Adams is a legend best known for his glittering vocals and guitar track on “Summer Of ‘69”. And in a recent podcast interview, he finally revealed the true story behind the lyrics of the iconic pop-rock song.
Adams dished on a few details behind the song in an interview with Squeeze frontman Chris Difford on the I Never Thought It Would Happen podcast last week.
According to Bryan Adams, “Summer Of ‘69” is a semi-autobiographical tune. You might remember the line “I got got my first real six string / Bought it at the five and dime.” There’s some truth to this lyric. However, the truth is slightly different from what the lyrics read. Read more
Report reveals escalation of violence against Christians in the Holy Land (CNA)
The annual report by the Rossing Center, a Jerusalem-based organization dedicated to interfaith coexistence, documented 111 cases of harassment and violence against the Christian community in Israel and East Jerusalem in 2024.
The report revealed a climate of hostility that, according to one of the study’s authors, Federica Sasso, only represents “the tip of the iceberg of a much larger phenomenon.”
“Many more attacks occur, but they are very difficult to monitor,” she told ACI Prensa, CNA’s Spanish-language news partner. Read more
Flying Eagles coach unfazed by ‘‘tough’’ U-20 AFCON draw (Punch)
Flying Eagles head coach Aliyu Zubairu has played down notions that the Nigerian U-20 team are in a group of death for the 2024 U-20 AFCON in Egypt, PUNCH Sports Extra reports.
During a new draw that was conducted on Sunday, Nigeria were drawn in Group B where they will face Tunisia, Kenya and Morocco, as they hope to win their eighth continental title.
The Flying Eagles were formerly drawn alongside Egypt, South Africa and Morocco but a new draw was occasioned by the withdrawal of former hosts Ivory Coast. Read more
Sergio Perez ‘set to drive’ for one Formula 1 team in 2026 after signing ‘lucrative’ sponsorship contract (F1oversteer)
Sergio Perez might be about to make an immediate return to the Formula 1 paddock after losing his seat at Red Bull Racing at the end of last season.
The Formula 1 driver’s market has already sprung into action this year, and unsurprisingly, Red Bull were the team involved.
Sergio Perez discovered he had been replaced by Liam Lawson at the end of the 2024 campaign, but the New Zealander’s Red Bull career only lasted two race weekends.
Lawson struggled greatly with the RB21, and it was Yuki Tsunoda who was promoted into his place in time for his home race in Japan. Read more
Concacaf opposes 64-team World Cup plans for 2030 (BBC)
Concacaf president Victor Montagliani has criticised a proposal to expand the 2030 men’s World Cup to 64 teams.
The plans, put forward by South American governing body Conmebol, have also drawn opposition from Uefa president Aleksander Ceferin and the Asian Football Confederation (AFC).
The tournament will be hosted by Spain, Morocco and Portugal, after the opening matches are held in Argentina, Paraguay and Uruguay. Read more
The Ferrari ‘push’ given to Lewis Hamilton after Bahrain GP apology (PlanetF1)
Ferrari team principal Fred Vasseur has revealed that he gave Lewis Hamilton a “push” after his poor qualifying result at the Bahrain Grand Prix.
Excluding his victory in the Chinese Grand Prix sprint race last month, Hamilton claimed his best result to date for Ferrari by finishing fifth in Bahrain on Sunday.
It came 24 hours after Hamilton was heard apologising profusely to Ferrari over team radio after a mistake on his final lap of qualifying left him down in ninth, six positions behind team-mate Charles Leclerc. Read more
Promoter Bob Arum believes Tyson Fury will never fight again (ESPN)
Boxing promoter Bob Arum has said that he believes Tyson Fury will never fight again after he announced his retirement from the sport in January.
The former heavyweight champion announced his latest retirement from boxing one month after losing a rematch with Ukrainian Oleksandr Usyk.American promoter Arum, who worked with Fury in the past, has said he thinks this retirement is final. Read more