Gist Arena

According to breaking news reports, a small plane heading to Senegal from Burkina Faso carrying 7 people including a sick French woman who was being evacuated, has gone missing. Senegalese authorities said the plane lost contact very late yesterday after disappearing from radar  when it was 111 kilometers (69 miles) west of Senegal's seaside capital, Dakar.

Edo state Governor, Adams Oshiomhole and his wife, Iara, attended the Edo National Associations Convention which held in LA yesterday Saturday September 5th. See more photos below

Former President Jonathan   says   that the recent appointment of former Minister of Agriculture Akinwunmi Adesina as the 8th President of the African Development Bank, AfDB, is an attestation to the fact that he had a very good team during his administration. Jonathan said this in a congratulatory letter he sent to Adesina on his new appointment "Given your exemplary record of performance, while serving as the Honourable Minister for Agriculture and Rural Development in my cabinet, I have no doubt that you will deploy your energy and the bank’s resources to ensure that Africa experiences a new era of accelerated development. You were not only a critical voice in my economic team, you also walked the talk, and earned the praise of our countrymen and women, by ensuring that Nigeria’s quest for self-sufficiency in food production became an achievable dream. I am particularly pleased with your emergence as the AfDB boss; a development, I believe, has come as a reward fo...

What we prayed for. Hopefully, the owners of these trailers & their drivers will adhere to this. Lagos State Government today announced that  trailers and articulated vehicles are no longer allowed to ply the city between the hours of  6 a.m.  and  9 p.m.  to prevent accidents following the fatal one that occurred on September 2nd. The Permanent Secretary, Ministry of Transportation, Oluseyi Whenu, disclosed this at a meeting in Lagos with the leadership of the various transport unions in the State. He explained that the restriction was to ensure strict enforcement of the Road Traffic Law, which, according to him, was often violated by the trailer drivers. He said the government would henceforth go tough on any trailer that contravenes the law.

A seven-year-old girl (names withheld) has narrated how her father paid her after sexually abusing her at their Ojokoro Housing Estate, Meiran, Ijaiye, Lagos, residence. The primary three pupil said: “My daddy usually gives me money after touching my private part or putting his penis in my mouth. He touches my private part when my mother is outside washing clothes or when she is not in the house.” The victim’s father, identified as Chukwuemeka Odunzie, allegedly started defiling his daughter early last year. Narrating her ordeal, the victim’s mother, Mrs Odunzie, said: “Last year, my son told me that his younger sister was fond of playing with her private parts. It sounded strange that a seven-year-old child would be doing that.“I will talk to her, scold her and sometimes beat her. There was a time I told my husband.“All he said was that if she was acting strangely I should take her to any of these white garment churches. I was alarmed when one day, while we were in ...

In an unlikely coincidence, three Irish sisters gave birth on the same day at the same hospital. And what's more remarkable is that their fourth sister was expected to give birth sometime soon after her 3 sisters! Mairead Fitzpatrick and her sisters Joeline Godfrey and Bernie Ward all gave birth at Mayo General Hospital in Castlebar on Tuesday. While the siblings were given close due dates, they never expected their babies to share the same birthday. “We never thought it would all happen on the one day,” says Fitzpatrick, who gave birth to her son first at 3:25 a.m. The new mom named him Thomás Óg. At 11 a.m, Joeline welcomed her daughter, Sorcha, via C-section, and finally around 8:30 p.m., Bernie gave birth to her son Phelim. “The two girls that delivered my little boy delivered Bernie’s boy as well,” Fitzpatrick said. “So two women delivered two cousins in 24 hours.”

In line with president Muhammadu Buhari's anti-corruption campaign, the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission has secretly frozen the bank accounts of former President Goodluck Jonathan’s associates. According to PUNCH, the move by the anti-graft agency was aimed at scuttling the transfer of the alleged looted funds from the accounts for other reasons. A member of a key transition committee of the All Progressives Congress, who spoke to one of our correspondents on condition of anonymity, on Friday, said the need had become necessary in view of the magnitude of the alleged theft of public resources by the affected persons. The affected accounts, SUNDAY PUNCH learnt, belonged to Keketobou Foundation, owned by former Special Adviser to Jonathan on Niger Delta and Coordinator of the Amnesty Programme, Mr. Kingsley Kuku, and Mieka Divers Limited as well as Global West Vessels Limited reportedly owned by ex-Niger Delta warlord, Mr. Government Ekpompolo, aka Tompolo. ...

The former governor who was involved in a car accident in Abuja last week shared a photo from his hospital bed and thanked everyone who'd called to find out how he was doing. See his tweets below