Governor Umaru Al-Makura of Nasarawa State on Monday said that the inaugural meeting of governors of the newly registered All Progressive Congress, APC, will be held in Lafia, the state capital before the end of August.

The governor dropped the hint during a stakeholders meeting of theAPC in the government house, Lafia.

The meeting, which was attended by former state executives of the three parties that merged into APC, the Action Congress of Nigeria, ACN, the All Nigeria Peoples Party, ANPP, and the Congress for Progressive Change, CPC, agreed to set up a committee to commence the process of winding down of the parties in the state.

Governor Al-Makura explained that the APC was born out of patriotism and that it would promote the ideal of internal democracy. He said the party will work to achieve the aspirations of the people and ensure fairness without religious or tribal biases in order to move the country forward.

He said the success of the merger is a sign of true patriotism on the part of those who struggled for the realization of the APC.

“We are doing it out of patriotism and to redirect the affairs of the country for the better thorough visionary development,” he said.

Al-Makura said the APC will genuinely serve Nigeria and better the lot of the ordinary citizens.

“Our power evolved from the grassroot because of the respect and recognition we have for our teaming members in trying to depart from the mentality of the past as the case may be in otherpoliticalparties’.

“Before”, the Nasarawa State governor observed, “I was operating as an orphan as the only CPC governor”, adding that “now

I can raise my head above the roof with about ten colleagues to champion our collective course”.

The meeting came to an end with the various chairmen of the three merging political party giving their vote of thanks and advice on how the new party could be united.

Former governorof the Central Bank of Nigeria, CBN, ChukwumaSoludo, and former minister of the Federal Capital Territory, FCT,Nasir el-Rufai, have resigned their membership of the THISDAYeditorial board, the newspaper has reported.

Soludo resigned to pursue his governorship ambition in AnambraState on the platform of the All Progressives Grand Alliance, APGA.

On the other hand, El-Rufai’s resignation from the Board is to enable him devote his attention to his new position as the deputy national secretary of the All Progressives Congress, APC.

During his membership of the THISDAY Editorial Board, Soludo ran a bi-monthly column titled: ‘The Soludo Solution’, which focused on evidence-based policy analysis of African and Nigerian economic developments.

The column, which began running in August 2012, specialised in macroeconomics, monetary policy, public finance and fiscal policy, financial systems, institutional economics and political economy.

El-Rufai also ran a popular, sometimes controversial column in the newspaper and it is speculated that he nurses a presidential ambition.

Seven days mourning has been declared by the Nigeria Union of Journalists, NUJ, for the three journalists who lost their lives in an auto crash on Friday evening.

The national president of the NUJ, Garba Mohammed, who addressed journalists in Osogbo, said the accident occurred at about 7p.m. on Friday evening, when one of the rear tyres of the bus that conveyed the journalists burst along the Ilesa-Ile-IfeHighway, resulting in several somersaults.

Thirteen journalists in all were said to be returning from Abuja after a meeting of the union.

Among the dead are Kafayat Odunsi of Nigerian Television Authority, NTA; Adolphus Okonkwo of Voice of Nigeria, VON andTunde Oluwanike of Federal Radio Corporation of Nigeria, FRCN.

The remaining ten other journalists sustained injuries in various degrees and were immediately rushed to the Ladoke AkintolaUniversity Teaching Hospital, Osogbo, for treatment where the remains of the dead were also deposited.

Two of the wounded, whose conditions were critical have been transferred to Ibadan for treatment.

In his address on Saturday, the NUJ President directed that all activities of the union at the chapel, state and national levels be suspended throughout the mourning period and that condolence registers be opened in all the states and at the national headquarters.

Mohammed condoled with the families of the deceased and members of NUJ. He reiterated the need for national insurance scheme for every journalist, saying the nature of the job required a comprehensive insurance for practitioners.

The NUJ president in company of the Osun State NUJ chairman,Abiodun Olalere, the national vice-chairman, South west, DeleAtunbi; and the Osun State commissioner for information, SundayAkere, visited the injured at the hospital.

Meanwhile, the Osun chapter of the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, commiserated with the NUJ over the death of three journalists.

The state’s PDP chairman, Gani Olaoluwa, said in a statement inOsogbo that “the untimely death of the professionals was a great loss to the NUJ family and the country at large.”

Also, the Kwara State governor, Abdulfatah Ahmed, described the death of three journalists as unfortunate, shocking and devastating.

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An Abuja High Court on Friday, vacated the interim order restraining the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP’s special convention slated for August 31, as the plaintiffs applied for the suit to be struck out.

The plaintiffs, Abba K. Yale, Yahaya Awira Sule and Bashir Maidugu, through their lawyer, F. N Nwosu, told the court that they had resolved to table their grievances before the national reconciliation committee constituted by the party.

Although both counsels to the party and its chairman did not oppose the application for withdrawal of the suit, they insisted that contrary to the request by the plaintiffs that the case be struck out, the appropriate order the court ought to make in the circumstance was to dismiss the matter in its entirety.

“This suit is struck out and the effect of the earlier order restraining the 1st defendant from holding its convention loses its potency. That order is hereby discharged as it crumbles with the striking out of this case,” Justice Belgore said in his brief ruling.

He said “consequently, the order restraining the defendant and its agents or any group of persons acting on its behalf, from convoking, convening or holding any convention, special or ordinary, for the purpose of electing its national officers for any office, is hereby vacated.”

The judge maintained that in view of the fact that the plaintiffs filed their motion for discountenance under Order 27 rule 3 of theFCT high court rules, the court had no choice than to strike out the originating summons, adding, “no judge will insist that a plaintiff must continue with a suit against a named defendant, that will fall against common sense.”

He noted that he had earlier enjoined the warring parties to pursue an amicable settlement of their dispute out of court.

“It is in the interest of all concerned, at least, on the part of this court, it will help to decongest the docket and allow the court to concentrate on other matters,” he said.

Bagega, the Nigerian village in Zamfara State that suffered one of the world’s worst recorded incidents of lead poisoning is now habitable  and more than 1,000 contaminated children can now start receiving treatment, a doctor and a scientist from two international agencies said Friday.

For some, it already is too late to reverse serious neurological damage, Michelle Chouinard, Nigeria country director for Doctors Without Borders, told The Associated Press.

“Some children are blind, others paralyzed and many will struggle at school with learning disabilities,” she said.

Doctors Without Borders discovered the scourge in 2010 but nothing was done until this year because the federal government did not provide a promised $3 million, the group said.

The poisoning caused by artisanal mining from a gold rush killed at least 400 children, yet villagers still say they would rather die of lead poisoning than poverty, environmental scientist, Simba Tirima, said.

“The Villagers make 10 times as much money mining as they do from farming in an area suffering erratic rainfall because of climate change,” he said.

“Managing five landfills with some 13,000 cubic meters (nearly 460,000 cubic feet) of highly contaminated soil, and teaching villagers how to mine safely are major challenges to prevent new contamination,” he added.

At the peak of the gold rush, Tirima said, more than 1,000 itinerant miners and followers were camped around the village – deep in the countryside, beyond the reach of paved roads and electricity and quite cut off in the rainy season when dirt roads become impassable.

Despite its remote location, the booming economy attracted people from Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger to Bagega, which also drew many locals as a regional commercial centre with a primary and high school, a hospital and weekly market.

“The entire human population of 6,000 to 9,000 was exposed, including some 1,500 children under the age of 5,” he said.

“The more basic methods used to get at gold helped cause the poisoning. Some women used hammers to beat open rock ore. Others used some of the 60 grinding mills at a processing area adjacent to the village and water reservoir,” Tirima said.

Many also took the rocks that carried high concentrations of lead into their homes for processing and that the poisoning was facilitated because the particular lead compounds are very toxic and easily absorbed into the body, unlike other forms of lead.

Human Rights Watch said the death toll of 400 was only an estimate as villagers initially tried to hide the deaths, fearing the government would stop their illegal mining. The group said it was the worst epidemic of its kind in modern history.

“The government released money for the cleanup in February, Doctors Without Borders began prescreening in March and found that nearly every one of 1,010 children tested need therapy,”Chouinard said.

Of these figure, 267 are severely contaminated and will getchelation – where medication binds the lead to a child’s blood and helps them to eliminate it faster from their system.

All the children had more than the international standard maximum of 10 micrograms per deciliter of lead in their blood. Some had as much as 700 micrograms per deciliter, she said, adding that the children will have to be treated for one to two years.

Government officials initially reacted by trying to enforce a ban on illegal mining. When that did not work, they promised to find other sources of income for villagers, but so far nothing has happened.

Floods destroyed crops worth millions of naira on Friday following the collapse of Kankia dam in Kankia local government area ofKatsina State.

The News Agency of Nigeria, NAN, reports that rice and maize farms have been washed away following the collapse of the dam.

Some of the victims said that the situation could affect irrigation farming, which could further lead to food security problem, unemployment and rural-urban drift.

Abba Almu, a farmer, told NAN that the incident, which was the first of its kind in the history of the town, had destroyed crops worth millions of Naira.

Almu urged the state and federal governments to come to their aid as many of them would not have food for their families.

He also called for the immediate re-erection of the collapsed dam’s embankment.

Another victim, Abdulkadir Mai’unguwa, said the disaster would negatively affect the over 500 irrigation farmers in the area who relied on the dam for irrigation activities.

Mai’unguwa also said that herdsmen had to move to nearbylocalgovernments following the collapse of the dam.

The chairman, caretaker committee of the council, AbubakarLawal, disclosed that the dam was purportedly rehabilitated recently by the federal government under the constituency project of the member representing the area, Ahmed Babba, noting that “yet, it collapsed.”

He appealed to the lawmaker to as a matter of urgency call the contractor back to site to reconstruct the embankment and widen the water spillway to avert future occurrence

The Plateau State House of Assembly on Friday expressed worry over the inability of the state government to access funds from the Subsidy Reinvestment and Empowerment Programme, SURE-P.

The member representing Pigana constituency, Gondina Sambo, raised a motion that the state was yet to access funds from the SURE-P since its inception, noting that other states had since received money from the programme.

He said that the development is worrisome since the funds were needed by the state government in the effort to work out its peace strategies, adding that Plateau State had not gone beyond the level of screening, short-listing and opening of accounts for beneficiaries.

“Nothing has happened in relation to the programme in Plateau State,” Sambo said.

However, as the matter was debated, another member, ZainabDogo, representing Quanpan South constituency, requested for a special committee of the House to look into the matter.

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She said that funds from the programme were needed to douse tension in the southern part of the state by restive youths.

Following a voice vote, the Speaker, John Dabwan, announced a special committee of the house, headed by the chairman of the House Committee on Finance, Dalyop Mwansat, to look into the matter.

The committee was given until Tuesday to submit its report.