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President Muhammadu Buhari lost the use of his mobile number acquired from telecommunications company, MTN Nigeria, Monday, when his line was deactivated, for failing to register the line fully. Sources at the Villa Told THE BRIEF that DSS agents went into a frenzy, when the President’s mobile phone carrying an MTN SIM card, went dead. MTN was immediately contacted on the issue, to which the DSS was told that the line was among those deregistered by the company for incomplete registration. Subscribers on the network who were yet to fully register their lines before the end of January, were pummeled with more than 10 notifications daily, asking them to complete the process, or lose all functions on the network. A source from the MTN office in Abuja confirmed the incident to THEBRIEF, saying the act was expected, as not only the President’s line was deactivated, on the day. The source told our correspondent that the deactivation process was automatic, and did not re...

The Supreme court has upheld the election of Governor Emmanuel Udom of Akwa Ibom state. The apex court in its ruling on wednesday set aside appeal court judgement which cancelled elections in all 33 Local Government Area of the State, calling for a re-run. The seven member-panel of Justices of the apex court led by the CJN, Justice Mahmud Mohammed declared Emmanuel dully elected. Election Petition Tribunal had earlier cancelled the election in18 of the 31 Local Government Areas of the state before the Appeal Court in Abuja last December nullified the entire election on the grounds of non-compliance to the Electoral Act. Also the Supreme Court has unanimously upturned the judgement of Court of Appeal which sacked Governor Okezie Ikpeazu of Abia State. affirmed the election of Ikpeazu as it ruled that his appeal against the judgment of the lower court has merit.

An Indian pharmaceutical firm claimed on Wednesday to have developed the world’s first vaccine against mosquito-borne Zika virus. Dr Krishna Ella, Head of the Biotech International Limited, the company, based in the southern Indian state of Andhra Pradesh’s capital Hyderabad, said at a news conference that it has already filed for a patent for the Zika vaccine. Read also: What You Need To Know About Zika Virus “On Zika, we are probably the first vaccine company in the world to file a vaccine candidate patent about nine months ago,” he said. Ella said the firm has sought the Indian government help for carrying out human and animal trials for the two candidate vaccines, which have been developed by its scientists, using a live Zika virus. The claims came a day after the World Health Organisation said that the Zika virus poses a global public health emergency requiring a united response. The virus has been linked to cases of microcephaly, in which babies are born with underdev...

The Nigerian Air Force, in its bid for increased self-reliance, has successfully reconfigured 2 demilitarized Alpha Jets in its inventory that were hitherto acquired without weapon delivery capability. The Chief of Air Staff -Air Marshal Sadique Abubakar was seen with NAF technicians at the reconfiguration site. When the MRAP would they be also  refer to obsolete  equipment bought by PMB? Read: The United States government on Thursday donated 24 Mine-Resistant Armour Protected, MRAP, vehicles to the Nigerian military. According to NAF, the 2 aircraft are among the 4 Alpha Jets bought from the United States in 2015 by the immediate past administration to enhance the operational capability of the NAF to combat Boko Haram insurgency in the North East. However, the aircraft could not be deployed to the theatre of operation before now due to the inherent weapon delivery deficiency hence its limited use for training purposes.

The United States government on Thursday donated 24 Mine-Resistant Armour Protected, MRAP, vehicles to the Nigerian military. Presenting the armoured vehicles worth N2.2 billion to the army in Lagos, the representative of the US government, Patrick Doyle said, “As part of the continuing support from United States to the government, and the people of Nigeria to defeat Boko Haram, I am proud to stand here today as the representative of the US secretary of defence, Ashton Carter, and commander and the representative of the US Africa command, General David Rodriguez, to present the donation of this 24 Mine-Resistant Armor-Protected (MRAP) vehicles to the Nigerian army.” Doyle stated that the equipment needed to be serviced and fixed with good spare parts before they could start operating. “The repairs of the vehicle is up to the Nigerian government to do; they can repair them on their own if they have the facility to do that, but of course, the spare parts are very particular to t...