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A t least 20 people have been killed in a church shooting in Sutherland Springs, Texas, according to Wilson County Sheriff Joe Tackitt. Many more have been injured, authorities said Sunday. The shooter was killed after a brief chase north into neighboring Guadalupe County, according to Guadalupe County Sheriff's Office spokesman Robert Murphy. It is unclear if the shooter was killed by police or took his own life, Murphy said. The FBI is responding to the scene of the shooting, according to Michelle Lee, spokeswoman for the FBI's San Antonio field office. Local police also have responded to the scene, which occurred at the First Baptist Church, a witness told CNN. The witness, a cashier at a gas station across the street from the church, said she heard about 20 shots being fired in quick succession while a church service was underway around 11:30 a.m. local time. Sutherland Springs is in Wilson County, about 30 miles east of San Antonio. Wilson Count...

T he Deputy President of the Senate, Senator Ike Ekweremadu, has congratulated the people and Government of Enugu State on the successful conduct of the November 4, 2017 Local Government election in the State, describing it as the best council election in Nigeria’s recent history. Ekweremadu, who commended the State Government for its policy of non-interference in the electoral process, also congratulated the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, on its outstanding victory, noting that it was just the beginning of payback to Governor Ifeanyi Ugwuanyi for his developmental strides in the state in the time of financial crunch and the political peace he restored to the State. The PDP was announced winner of the 17 chairmanship positions in the State as well as 258 councilorship positions. Elections in two remaining wards in Udi council area were inconclusive. However, it did not affect the outcome of the chairmanship election. Mr. Uche Anichukwu, Special Adviser (Media) to th...

I ndications have emerged showing that the ‘full list’ of all the appointments made by President Muhammadu Buhari since he assumed office on May 29, 2015 as released by the Presidency is inaccurate. The 159-member list contains several errors and omissions as no fewer than 29 names of heads of agencies or parastatals were missing on the list while data provided for another five were incorrect. The presidency had been challenged by a publication by BusinessDay which indicated that 81 of Buhari’s appointments are either from the North-east, North-west or North Central. In apparent response to that report as well as several similar ones, the Special Adviser to the President on Media and Publicity, Femi Adesina, released the list of 159 appointees on Saturday.  Below are several omitted names and some wrongly described titles in a list some political observers in the country have described as “a desperate bid to cover Buhari’s lopsided appointments.” 1. FRCN, ...

T he Presidency has released a full list of all the appointments made by President Muhammadu Buhari since he assumed office on May 29, 2015. The Special Adviser to the President on Media and Publicity, Femi Adesina, released the list of 159 appointees on Saturday night, a copy of which his office emailed to PREMIUM TIMES. “Here is an updated table of President Muhammadu Buhari’s appointments, disproving the allegations of lopsidedness,” the presidential spokesperson said while forwarding the list to journalists. In the list, Mr. Adesina identified (in red letters) appointees he said BusinessDay left out of a list of 100 it recently published. Mr. Adesina had earlier on Saturday released a graphical representation of the appointments in response to a report by BusinessDay that an overwhelming majority of the Mr. Buhari’s appointees were from his native northern region. The BusinessDay report that 81 of the president’s 100 political appointees are northerne...

T he President of the Nigerian Senate, Bukola Saraki, is among 40 world politicians whose offshore hideaways were exposed by a new ICIJ investigations dubbed #Paradise Papers. A review of data obtained by German newspaper, Suddeutsche Zeitung, and ICIJ from two offshore secrecy providers (Appleby and Asiaciti Trust) and 19 secrecy jurisdictions showed uncovered a new offshore shell company owned by the politician. (PREMIUM TIMES will publish a detailed story on the senator on Monday). The leaked 1.4 terabyte data, now infamously dubbed Paradise Papers, contains 13.4 million records and is no doubt one of the biggest leaks in history. For a year, more than 380 journalists from 96 media organisations in 67 countries pored over the gigantic data, which cover a period of nearly 70 years, from 1950 to 2016. PREMIUM TIMES is the only Nigerian media organization involved in the investigation. More than 120 politicians and country leaders, in nearly 50 countries as well...

N igerian government has removed President Muhammadu Buhari’s adviser on prosecution, Okoi Obono-Obla, as Chairman of the Special Investigation Panel on the Recovery of Public Property. Attorney General of the Federation and Minister of Justice, Mr. Abubakar Malami, SAN, in a statement on Sunday, said that recent actions of Obono-Obla ran contrary to the enabling act that established the panel. The AGF directed Obono-Obla to “henceforth desist from carrying out any operation in his capacity as head of the panel”. Obono-Obla was notified of his sack via a letter dated November 1 with file number HAGF/SH/2017/VOL/1/60, which was signed by the AGF. In the letter, Malami maintained that activities of the panel contravened established administrative procedures and protocols in the nation’s civil service structure. He warned Obono-Obla to strictly comply with FG’s directive that he should hands-off from further presiding over any activity in the name of the pane...