Rep. Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., the ranking Democrat on the House Homeland Security.   Committee, introduced the Denying Infinite Security and Government Resources Allocated toward Convicted and Extremely Dishonorable (DISGRACED) Former Protectees Act, a bill he says will strip former US President Trump of Secret service protection if it is passed into law. Trump was found guilty on felony charges Thursday, raising potential challenges for the Secret Service responsible for protecting him.   Trump was found guilty on all 34 counts of falsifying business records in the first degree in New York v. Trump. The charges were related to alleged payments made ahead of the 2016 presidential election to silence pornographic performer Stormy Daniels about an alleged 2006 extramarital sexual encounter with Trump. Trump denied all charges and any affair with Daniels. But the conviction raises the possibility the presumed 2024 Republican nominee could end up being barred. That development would rai

Nigerian politician, Dino Melaye has said politics should not be considered a profession or vocation.     The former Kogi State Governorship candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, stated this in a post on Sunday, May 2, 2024.    “Politics ought not to be a vocation or profession. It is the part-time profession of every citizen who would protect the rights and privileges of free men. A man without a second address will have his life in politics, scarce of honesty,” he wrote.  

There is no doubt that while Nigeria is one of the world’s largest consumers of rice as staple, she is far from being self-sufficient in production. The rice value chain has been the focus of past administrations, particularly to make the country self-sufficient in rice production, but, unfortunately, there has not been significant achievement in that regard based on bedeviling factors including poor political will, smuggling, sabotage, international interference and influence.       According to a report of the Food and Agriculture Organisation, FAO, Nigeria is the largest producer of rice in Africa, producing about 8,435,000 tonnes annually, followed by Egypt, Madagascar, Tanzania and Mali. To showcase Nigeria’s capacity to produce rice for self-sufficiency and export, former President Muhammadu Buhari on January 18, 2022, through the Central Bank of Nigeria, CBN, mobilized rice farmers to assemble over 1 million bags of paddy rice in pyramids under the Anchor Borrowers Scheme, ABP,