‘N70K Against N200k,’ Nigerian Passport Now Higher Than Minimum Wage

DAMILOLA OLONADE

    ‘Third increase in just two years,’ Peter Obi speaks on alleged “obsession of this administration with putting a burden on the populace.”   Presidential candidate of the Labour Party (LP) in the 2023 elections, Mr Peter Obi, has criticised the President bola Ahmed Tinubu-led Federal Government’s decision to increase the cost of Nigerian passports, expressing surprise that the government has continued to add to the burden of Nigerians. At N100,000 for a 32-page booklet, Obi observed that the international travel document has become higher than the minimum wage…

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‘N100k, N200k Effective from Sept 1,’ Nigerians To Pay More For Passport

DAMILOLA OLONADE

  Why we increased prices – Immigration Service   The Nigeria Immigration Service (NIS) has announced an increase in the cost of obtaining the Nigerian Standard Passport, effective from September 1, 2025. In a statement signed by the Service Public Relations Officer, ACI AS Akinlabi, on Thursday, and obtained by Platforms Africa, the new fees will apply only to applications made within Nigeria. “The review which only affects Passport Application fees made in Nigeria, now set a new fee thresholds for 32-page with 5-year validity at N100,000 and 64-page with…

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‘He Sold National Plane, Pocketed Money,’ President’s Son Convicted

DAMILOLA OLONADE

Obiang, son of Equatorial Guinea president, will go on trial in a Paris court on January 2, 2017 in a case of “ill-gotten gains”   A court in Equatorial Guinea convicted a son of the country’s president for illegally selling off a plane belonging to the national airline, a court official said. The judge ruled on Tuesday that Ruslan Obiang Nsue, one of the sons of President Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo, must serve six years in jail unless he compensates the state for the missing aircraft, supreme court press director…

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Florida executes man convicted of 1992 triple murder

ADEOLA YUSUF

A man convicted of the 1992 murders of three people has been put to death by lethal injection in Florida on Thursday in the 11th execution in the southern US state this year. Curtis Windom, 59, was sentenced to death for killing his girlfriend Valerie Davis, her mother Mary Lubin, and Johnnie Lee, a man who allegedly owed him a gambling debt. The execution was carried out at 6:17 pm (2217 GMT) at the Florida State Prison, and his last words were unintelligible, according to US media witnesses. The US…

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US Moves To Shorten Visa Duration For Students, Journalists

Abibat Babalola

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has announced plans to shorten the validity period of visas issued to international students and foreign journalists. Under the proposed rule, F visas, granted to foreign students, would be capped at a maximum duration of four years, instead of covering the entire length of academic programs. Currently, doctoral candidates, for example, can hold visas valid for more than five years. For foreign media professionals, visas would be limited to 240 days, with the possibility of a single extension of another 240 days. However,…

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Tinubu Rewards Teenager Who Won Global English Contest With N200k

ADEOLA YUSUF

    What girl who outshone more than 20,000 participants from 69 countries, including native English-speaking nations, to clinch the world title, said about N200,000 government’s gift   The Nigerian Government, on Thursday, gifted the winner of the TeenEagle global finals competition, Nafisah Abdullahi, N200,000. Platforms Africa reports that at a special recognition ceremony in Abuja on Thursday, the Minister of Education, Dr. Tunji Alausa, alongside the Minister of State for Education, Professor Suiwaba Ahmad, celebrated Nafisa’s remarkable feat and other students who excelled during the competition, maintaining that the…

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Int’l Air Passenger Numbers At Nigerian Airports Exceed 3.5 Million In One Year

Abibat Babalola

Abuja, Lagos, Port Harcourt Accounted For 70% Of N215bn Air Transport GDP In 2023 – NBS The numbers of international passengers who travelled to and fro. Nigeria in 2023 exceeded 3.5 million. Platforms Africa reports that Olubunmi Kuku, managing director of FAAN, who said this, added that over 16 million passengers also traversed Nigeria’s domestic terminals. This came as the Nigeria Bureau of Statistics (NBS) declared that Nigeria’s air transport sector contributed N215.6 billion to the country’s gross domestic product (GDP) in 2023. READ ALSO: Baltasar Engonga, Notorious Equatorial Guinea…

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Baltasar Engonga, Notorious Equatorial Guinea Official, Jailed For Embezzlement

DAMILOLA OLONADE

  Nicknamed “Bello”, Engonga made world headlines in November with the sex tapes, some of them filmed in his office at the finance ministry, published on social media while he was in detention pending the embezzlement case.   A court in Equatorial Guinea has sentenced a senior government official, Baltasar Ebang Engonga, to eight years in prison for embezzlement, months after he became notorious over leaked sex tapes with other officials’ wives. The Bioko provincial tribunal convicted Baltasar Ebang Engonga of diverting money claimed as professional travel expenses for personal…

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Reactions As Activist Lists Four Alleged Ghost Ministers In Tinubu’s Govt

DAMILOLA OLONADE

Human rights lawyer, Deji Adeyanju has alleged that four Ministers serving in President Bola Tinubu’s government are ghosts. In a post on his official Facebook page on Tuesday, Deji, a known critic of the All Progressives Congress, APC administration said the four Ministers are not known. According to him, the Ministers include, Sa’idu Alkali, Minister of Transportation; Ibrahim Gaidam, Minister of Police Affairs; Bosun Tijjani, Minister for Communications, Innovation and Digital Economy and Oyetola Gboyega, Minister of Marine and Blue Economy. A number of his followers, who stormed the comment…

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‘128 Years,’ France Returns Skull Of Beheaded King To Madagascar

DAMILOLA OLONADE

‘Beheaded in 1897, skull displayed in Paris’s national history museum for about a century,’ five things you may hitherto not know about King Toera, Malagasy monarch decapitated by French troops during a 19th-century massacre France on Tuesday returned three colonial-era skulls to Madagascar, including one believed to be that of a Malagasy king decapitated by French troops during a 19th-century massacre. The skull, believed to belong to King Toera, was handed over in the first restitution of human remains since France passed a law facilitating their return in 2023, along…

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