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BREAKING: Israel readies soldiers for ground invasion of Lebanon
“We are attacking all day, both to prepare the ground for the possibility of your entry, but also to continue striking Hezbollah,” were the words with which authorities indicated the readiness of the Israeli army to put boots on ground by marching into Lebanon, to upscale the onslaught against Hezbollah, through aerial bombardments.
Lieutenant General Herzi Halevi was quoted as giving the indication when he spoke to the tank brigade of the army, on Wednesday, as bombs continue to drop on major targets in Lebanon, following the days of blitzkrieg being conducted by the air force in the country.
Lebanon’s health minister said Wednesday’s strikes killed 51 people and injured 223, including in mountainous areas outside Hezbollah’s traditional strongholds, while Hezbollah said it had targeted Israel’s Mossad spy agency on Tel Aviv’s outskirts in the morning — the first time it has fired a ballistic missile in almost a year of cross-border clashes sparked by the Gaza war.
Channels Television, quoting agency reports, said in response, Israel said it hit 60 Hezbollah intelligence sites, among hundreds of the group’s targets struck across Lebanon, a development that is coming amid escalating cross-border clashes, after Israeli raids on Monday killed at least 558 people in the deadliest day of violence since Lebanon’s 1975-90 civil war.
The report quoted Nour Hamad, a 22-year-old student in the eastern Lebanese city of Baalbek, described living “in a state of terror” all week, adding: “We spent four or five days without sleep, not knowing if we will wake up in the morning.”
The rest of the report went thus: In Tel Aviv, sirens sounded following Hezbollah’s unprecedented missile launch.
Tel Aviv resident Hedva Fadlon, 61, told AFP: “The situation is difficult. We feel the pressure and the tension… I don’t think anyone in the world would like to live like this.”
US National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said Hezbollah’s attack on Tel Aviv was “deeply concerning” but added there was “still time and space for a diplomatic solution here to de-escalate the tensions and to prevent an all-out war”.
The Israeli military said “over 280 Hezbollah” targets had been struck across Lebanon on Wednesday, adding the strikes were ongoing.
“Fighter jets struck 60 terrorist targets belonging to Hezbollah’s intelligence directorate,” the army said.
It also said two reserve brigades were being called up “for operational missions in the northern arena”, adding this would “enable the continuation of combat against the Hezbollah terrorist organisation”.
The United Nations Security Council said it would hold an emergency meeting on the crisis in New York on Wednesday, while UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres warned the situation was critical.
– Rocket commander killed –
The UN’s International Organization for Migration on Wednesday said 90,000 people had been displaced in Lebanon since Monday.
Among them, “many of the more than 111,000 people displaced since October… are likely to have been secondarily displaced”, a statement from the UN’s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs added.
It came after two days of what the Israeli military called “extensive” strikes on Hezbollah positions in Lebanon.
The Lebanese group on Tuesday confirmed an Israeli claim that it had killed their rocket forces commander Ibrahim Kobeissi in a strike on the Lebanese capital.
At the UN General Assembly in New York, Secretary-General Guterres issued a stark warning.
“We should all be alarmed by the escalation. Lebanon is at the brink,” he said, while cautioning against “the possibility of transforming Lebanon (into) another Gaza”.
US President Joe Biden, whose government is Israel’s main backer, said “full-scale war is not in anyone’s interest”.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu delayed his departure for New York until Thursday, where he too is due to speak at the General Assembly.
“During the day, the prime minister will hold consultations to discuss the continuation of the attacks in Lebanon,” his office said.
Netanyahu defied international calls for restraint, vowing on Tuesday to keep up Israel’s campaign against Hezbollah.
“We will continue to hit Hezbollah… the one who has a missile in his living room and a rocket in his home will not have a home,” he said.
Iran, Hezbollah’s main backer, condemned Israel’s raids, with supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei saying the recent killing of Hezbollah commanders would not crush the group.
“Some of the effective and valuable forces of Hezbollah were martyred, which undoubtedly caused damage to Hezbollah, but this was not the sort of damage that could bring the group to its knees,” he said.
While the Israel-Lebanon border has seen near-daily clashes for a year, the violence escalated dramatically last week, when coordinated communications device blasts that Hezbollah blamed on Israel killed 39 people and wounded almost 3,000.
Then Israel carried out an air strike on Hezbollah’s south Beirut stronghold, killing a top military commander and other fighters and civilians.
Efforts to end the war in Gaza, which analysts say are key to stopping the escalation in Lebanon, remain stalled.
Netanyahu has been accused by critics of stalling in Gaza ceasefire negotiations and prolonging the war to appease far-right coalition partners.
The war in Gaza began with Hamas’s October 7 attack on Israel, which resulted in the deaths of 1,205 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on Israeli official figures that include hostages killed in captivity.
Of the 251 hostages seized by militants, 97 are still held in Gaza, including 33 the Israeli military says are dead.
Israel’s retaliatory military offensive has killed at least 41,495 people in Gaza, most of them civilians, according to figures provided by the Hamas-run territory’s health ministry. The UN has described the figures as reliable.
Succour has come to students of the Nnamdi Azikiwe University Teaching Hospital (NAUTH), following the decision of the management to shelve implementation of the newly introduced ₦580,000 tuition fee for nursing students – a move that followed immediate protests from the students.
Joseph Ugboaja, Chief Medical Director of the hospital, a guest on The Morning Brief a breakfast programme on Channels Television, told his audience on Thursday, that the plan had been shelved.
Street protests had broken out early in the week as the students, challenged the institution for shooting up the fees from the initial N90,000 to the new figure, representing more than 500 per cent increase.
Ugboaja, who said the decision to suspend the new fee followed meetings with student leaders, the school management and the governing board after the protest, adding that more consultations would now be undertaken to ensure that all parties were carried along.
His words: “What the students complained was that they were not carried along at the final decision making for the fees. They know that there was a review, their opinion was sought, but at the level of taking decision they said there were not carried along.
“So, I had a meeting with them, I had a session with the school management, I also had a session with the board and we have decided that the management will suspend the implementation of the new policy.
“So, we have stopped it and then the committee is now going back to them to have a session with the students and all of them will come together and agree on the way forward.
Stressing the need for consultations with the students, the varsity boss who defended the proposed fee, maintained that even at the new amount it remained the lowest in the South-East region, adding that the review became necessary following the transition from the basic nursing programme to a National Diploma and Higher National Diploma structure.
“What we were running before is the RN/RM programme, that is the basic nursing programme but recently we moved to the ND programme articulated by the Nigerian Nursing and Midwifery Council. So, we are now running the ND/HND programme.
“Now we have two sets of students, the basic nursing and basic midwifery students and then we have the ND and HND students. People that were paying the N90,000 are the basic nursing and midwifery students. But the ND and HND students, they have paid the fees, they don’t have issues, people that have issues are the people that have been paying the ₦90,000.
“The basic nursing and basic midwifery students have been paying the ₦90,000 since the school commenced, in fact we have not reviewed our fees since we started the school, that fee has been paid like that. Now what the board did was to adjust the fees to come up with current realities. Even with the ₦580,000, our fee remains the lowest in the region, you can find out, I can give you the comparative figures.”
The CMD also lamented that teaching hospitals do not benefit from intervention funds from the Tertiary Education Trust Fund (TETFund), which he said contributed to the need for an upward review of the fees.
He added that the fee adjustment was also linked to the hospital’s vision of building a teaching hospital that will rank among the top three in the country by 2030.
“There’s no doubt about it. I am a die-hard democrat. I followed that belief wholeheartedly, committed to a united Nigeria, and that principle and the philosophy will live and die with me,” were the exact words of President Bola Tinubu on Wednesday night, with which he tried to showcase his democratic credentials to the world.
Coming against criticisms of his government taking Nigeria towards a one-party state owing to his emasculation of the opposition, Tinubu maintained that nothing could be further than that as he was only trying to follow the principle of democracy by respecting the decisions of the majority.
The President, who spoke at an inter-faith breaking of the fast with members of the National Working Committee of the All Progressives Congress (APC) and the leadership of the Inter-Party Advisory Council (IPAC) at the Presidential Villa, Abuja, told his audience that he actually had the marks of lacerations from his struggle against the military to prove his status.
He said: “The Chairman of IPAC, Yusuf Dantalle, provoked some questions. I am glad we are all democrats. And we all subscribe to this democracy voluntarily, willingly, and we’ve been at it selflessly in the last 26 years.
“Some of us had been bruised struggling for it. We were detained, we protested, we had street demonstrations, we went into exile, and all of that. We formed NADECO. I followed the leadership destiny that God has chosen for me.”
Stressing that the unity and stability of the country rested on the pillars of good governance and assured that his administration would uphold these principles for posterity, Tinubu also told his audience that strengthening internal democracy within political parties remained fundamental to building credible electoral institutions, processes, and systems.
Regarding the contentious issue of direct primaries being the only way of producing candidates of political parties outside the consensus option, the President argued that it provided party members with better opportunities to participate and determine their representatives at various levels of governance.
He said: “The majority will have their way, and the minority will have their say and their way. I must not stand in their way. That is the sweetness, the essence of democracy. I am a registered voter. I am on the same platform as you. I’m going to stick to my platform.
“When it was against me years ago, I toed the line. I was in opposition without a threat to any human being except the military junta. I want democracy, and since democracy is back here, there’s a fundamental voluntariness that is enshrined, and I am extremely glad to listen to you.”
Nigerians hoping that the Federal Government would intervene to cut down the price of petroleum products particularly Premium Motor Spirit (PMS), currently on the upward spiral, had their hopes dashed with indications that such a move is not coming sooner or later.
Wale Edun, Minister of Finance, who conveyed the said news on Wednesday morning, maintained that the days of government intervening in regulating petrol prices were over and would not do so now even with the growing volatility in global oil markets triggered by the escalating conflict in the Middle East.
Edun, who said the government would instead introduce measures to cushion the economic impact of the war involving the United States, Israel, and Iran, added that President Bola Tinubu had already announced plans to provide an additional 100,000 Compressed Natural Gasconversion kits to help motorists switch from petrol to CNG, which costs about 25 to 30 percent of the price of petrol.
FG’s position is coming on the heels of the demand by the African Democratic Congress (ADC) that the government should cap the price of fuel to prevent it from soaring beyond a certain threshold to cushion the effect on Nigerians, citing examples in other parts of the world.
His words: “When there is market failure is where the regulator steps in. But in terms of balancing pricing, what we are looking to do is to manage the disruption and we don’t know how permanent or temporary it could be.
“But in the meantime, rather than reverting back and taking backward steps, we’ll look at every other measure that we have that can help the cost of living of Nigerians.”
The conflict in the Middle East has triggered sharp fluctuations in global energy markets, with crude oil prices briefly rising above $100 per barrel on March 9 their highest level since July 2022 before easing to about $87 the following day.
Earlier, the finance ministry warned that the conflict could affect Nigeria’s crude oil and gas prices, capital flows in financial markets, as well as global logistics and supply costs.
The surge in crude prices has also pushed up ex-gantry petrol prices, with many retail stations across Nigeria increasing pump prices. The development has led to higher transport fares on several major routes.
Edun said price adjustments by private sector operators reflect prevailing market conditions, citing developments at the Dangote Refinery.
The refinery recently reduced its ex-gantry petrol price to about ₦1,075 per litre after implementing three earlier increases, although retail pump prices remain elevated.
“Dangote reduced their price from, I think, around ₦1,200 to now just over ₦1,000 to ₦1,050, and that’s the dynamics of the market,” the minister said.
He added that Nigeria’s refining capacity is strengthening the country’s economic resilience, pointing to investments by Aliko Dangote, president of the Dangote Group.
“But I think we should be thankful at this time for the capacity we have in Nigeria to refine crude into petrochemicals and petroleum products,” Edun said.
He also noted that several countries lacking domestic refining capacity are facing greater economic disruption as energy prices rise.
BREAKING: Succour to NAUTH students, as authorities shelves N580,000 tuition fees
Nobody can question my democratic integrity in Nigeria – Tinubu
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