Managing Director, Nigerian Railway Corporation, Fidet Okhiria, has said that the corporation will begin six train trips daily on the Standard Gauge Train across the board in 2024.

Okhiria disclosed in an interview with the News Agency of Nigeria in Lagos State, on Monday.

He said that the train was meant to operate 24 hours, but the present situation in the country had reduced the turnaround time.

“We are going to increase the number of train trips to six on Lagos-Ibadan, Warri-Itakpe and Abuja-Kaduna, which means the trips will be three times to and three times fro, making six trips in a day.

“The trips will commence before the second quarter of 2024. Right now, they are running four trips  — two up and two down across the board.

”What is limiting us is the night operations, and that is not the way train should operate. The train is meant to operate at all times. People may like to travel in the evening, but because of the security situation in the country, we limit ourselves to the daytime,” he said.

Okhiria added, “We intend to bring back passengers and freight trains from Port-Harcourt to Aba, Lagos to Kano and Kaduna because of the dry ports.”

He said the NRC had a vandalism issue in the Warri-Itakpe area in 2023, which was fixed two weeks after the incident took place.

The NRC boss said it would be difficult for the train tracks to be vandalised when occupied.

He said that the price of commodities would reduce drastically with the freight train operating across the country.

Okhiria said that the corporation would begin the Port-Harcourt-Aba, Lagos to Kano train service for both passengers and freight in the first quarter of 2024.

He also noted that the Dala Dry Port had been asking NRC to come up and bring cargo to them, while Funtua and Kaduna dry ports had also shown interest in freight haulage, adding that the railway would partner with all the dry ports in the country to reduce the time of doing business and increase government revenue.

He said that NRC had employed junior staff from levels four and six, and was awaiting government approval before placing them while commending the government’s efforts in connecting rail across the country and urging Nigerians to develop an interest in rail transportation.

NAN

Israel is pulling thousands of troops from Gaza in a possible precursor to a scaled-back offensive

The Israeli military confirmed Monday that it was pulling thousands of troops out of the Gaza Strip, a step that could clear the way for a new long-term phase of lower-intensity fighting against the Hamas militant group.

The confirmation of the planned troop drawdown came the same day that Israel’s Supreme Court struck down a key component of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s contentious judicial overhaul plan.

While the plan is not directly connected to the war effort, it was the source of deep divisions inside Israel and had threatened the military’s readiness before the Oct. 7 Hamas attack that triggered the ongoing war.

Politicians warned against reigniting those divisions and harming the national unity that has prevailed throughout the Israel-Hamas war.

Netanyahu has vowed to press ahead with the military offensive until Hamas is crushed and the more than 100 hostages still held by the militant group in Gaza are freed.

But Israel has come under growing international pressure to scale back an offensive that has led to the deaths of nearly 22,000 Palestinians. U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken, who has repeatedly urged Israel to do more to protect Palestinian civilians, is expected in the region next week.

In its announcement, the army said that five brigades, or several thousand troops, would be taken out of Gaza in the coming weeks. Some will return to bases for further training or rest, while many older reservists will go home. The war has taken a toll on the economy by preventing reservists from going to their jobs, running their businesses or returning to university studies.

The army’s chief spokesman, Daniel Hagari, did not say whether the withdrawal of some troops reflected a new phase of the war.

“The objectives of the war require prolonged fighting, and we are preparing accordingly,” he told reporters late Sunday.

The move is in line with the plans that Israeli leaders have outlined for a low-intensity campaign, expected to last for much of the year, that focuses on remaining Hamas strongholds and “pockets of resistance.”

Israel has said it is close to operational control over most of northern Gaza, reducing the need for forces there. Yet fierce fighting has continued in other areas of the Palestinian territory, especially the south, where many of Hamas’ forces remain intact and where most of Gaza’s 2.3 million people have fled.

Israel has vowed to crush Hamas’ military and governing capabilities in the ongoing war, which was sparked by the militant group’s Oct. 7 attack on southern Israel that killed 1,200 people were killed and took 240 others hostage.

Israel responded with an air, ground and sea offensive that has killed more than 21,900 people in Gaza, two-thirds of them women and children, according to the Health Ministry in the Hamas-ruled territory, which does not differentiate between civilians and combatants in its count. The Israeli military says 173 soldiers have died since it launched its ground operation.

Israel also says, without providing evidence, that more than 8,000 militants have been killed. It blames Hamas for the high civilian death toll, saying the militants embed within residential areas, including schools and hospitals.

The war has displaced some 85% of Gaza’s population, forcing tens of thousands of people in overcrowded shelters or teeming tent camps in Israeli-designated safe areas that the military has nevertheless bombed. Palestinians are left with a sense that nowhere is safe.

With tensions remaining high across the region, the U.S. announced Monday that it would be sending an aircraft carrier strike group home and replacing it with an amphibious assault ship and accompanying warships.

BATTLES IN THE SOUTH

In Khan Younis, a city in southern Gaza that Israel says is a key Hamas stronghold, residents reported airstrikes and shelling in the west and center of the city. Combat was also reported in urban refugee camps in central Gaza, where Israel expanded its offensive last week.

An Associated Press reporter saw at least 17 bodies, including those of four children, at a hospital in the central town of Deir al-Balah after a missile struck a house.

“It’s our routine: bombings, massacres and martyrs,” said Saeed Moustafa, a Palestinian from the Nuseirat camp.

Gaza’s Health Ministry said Monday that 156 people had been killed in the past day. The Israeli military said an airstrike killed Adel Mismah, a regional commander of Hamas’ elite Nukhba forces, in Deir al-Balah.

In Israel, Kibbutz Be’eri, one of the communities hit by Hamas on Oct. 7, announced Monday that Ilan Weiss, who was thought to have been kidnapped, is now believed to be dead. Weiss’ daughter Noga Weiss, 18 and wife, Shiri Weiss, 53, were held in captivity in Gaza and released on Nov. 25 during a weeklong cease-fire.

A TEST FOR UNITY

The Israeli Supreme Court’s landmark decision to strike down part of Netanyahu’s planned judicial overhaul could reopen the fissures in Israeli society that preceded the war against Hamas.

The plan sparked months of mass protests and rattled the cohesion of Israel’s military. Those divisions were largely put aside after the Oct. 7 Hamas attack.

Benny Gantz, a rival of Netanyahu’s who joined the three-member War Cabinet, called on all sides to put aside their differences and focus on the war. “These are not days for political arguments. There are no winners and losers today,” he said.

In Monday’s decision, the court narrowly voted to overturn a law that prevents judges from striking down government decisions they deem “unreasonable.” The law passed in July was the first part of the government’s plan to curb the authority of unelected judges.

REGIONAL TENSIONS

The fighting in Gaza has threatened to spread across the region.

Israel has engaged in nearly daily battles with Hezbollah militants in Lebanon, to Israel’s north, and struck Iranian-linked targets in neighboring Syria as well.

Israel’s warplanes and drones struck several areas in southern Lebanon, including a strike on the village of Kfar Kila that killed three people, state media and security officials said. Hezbollah said the three were some of its fighters.

Since the latest exchange of fire began along the Lebanon-Israel border Oct. 8, 133 Hezbollah fighters and around 20 civilians have been killed in Lebanon.

Meanwhile, Iranian-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen have fired long-range missiles at Israel and attacked civilian cargo ships in the Red Sea.

The United States has sent warships to the Mediterranean and Red Seas, providing protection for Israel and underscoring concerns the fighting could widen.

On Monday, the U.S. Navy announced that after months of extra duty at sea, the USS Gerald R. Ford aircraft carrier strike group will be heading home. The Ford will be replaced by the amphibious assault ship the USS Bataan and its accompanying warships.

AP

RUSSIAN PERSPECTIVE

Russia to ramp up attacks on Ukraine – Putin

Ukraine's weekend attack on the Russian city of Belgorod, which has left dozens of civilians dead and injured, was an act of terrorism, Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Monday. Kiev will not be left unpunished when it engages in such activities, he warned.

The president insisted that Moscow will not retaliate in kind with indiscriminate attacks on civilians, but will focus instead on Ukraine’s military sites.

The president made the remarks on New Year’s Day at a military hospital in Moscow, where he met Russian servicemen wounded during the ongoing military operation. One of the servicemen asked Putin about his take on the Ukrainian strike on Belgorod and Moscow’s approach to retaliation; the president squarely described it as a “terrorist act,” which was carried out using indiscriminate weaponry.

“With these weapons they struck right at the center of the city, where people were going out on New Year’s Eve. Just an attack, a targeted strike on the civilian population. Of course, this is a terrorist attack; there is no other way to describe it,” Putin said. Ukraine's efforts at terror are aimed at destabilizing Russia and “intimidating” the country’s population, he explained.

Russia will not retaliate in kind to Kiev’s actions, despite being capable of doing so, Putin stressed. “Of course, we can, we are capable of carpet-bombing Kiev and any other [Ukrainian] city,” the president noted.

Instead, Russia will continue targeting Ukrainian military assets and infrastructure, Putin said, warning that the number of such strikes is bound to grow. The Ukrainian authorities’ terrorist activities will not be left unanswered, he stressed.

Of course, not a single such crime, and this is certainly a crime against the civilian population, will be left unpunished, there can be no doubt about that.

“We are striking with high-precision weapons at the decision-making centers, at locations where military personnel and mercenaries gather, at other nodes of this kind, at military facilities, first of all. And they are quite painful, these strikes. That’s what we’ll continue to do,” Putin stated.

Belgorod, as well as other regions of southwestern Russia, have been subjected to repeated artillery, missile and drone strikes by Ukrainian forces amid the ongoing conflict. The city was subjected to the deadliest attack to date on Saturday, when it was struck with missiles fired by multiple rocket launchers.

The munitions damaged a number of public venues and residential buildings. The attack, reportedly ordered personally by Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky, claimed the lives of at least 24 civilians and left over 100 injured.

WESTERN PERSPECTIVE

Ukraine's Zelenskiy says Russia suffering heavy losses

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said Russian forces are suffering heavy losses and the notion that Moscow is winning the nearly two-year-old war is only a "feeling" not based on reality.

"Thousands, thousands of killed Russian soldiers, nobody even took them away," he told The Economist magazine in an interview published on Monday, referring to fighting around the besieged eastern town of Avdiivka which he visited last week.

He provided no evidence to back up his assertion but Western military analysts agree Russia is paying a heavy price in men and equipment for relatively minor gains in eastern and southern Ukraine.

There was no response to a request for comment from Russian officials on Zelenskiy's remarks.

Russian officials have said Western estimates of Russian death tolls are vastly exaggerated and almost always underestimate Ukrainian losses.

Russian President Vladimir Putin said last month Russia's position was improving and it would not stop what he calls the "special military operation" until its objectives, including Ukraine's "denazification, demilitarisation and its neutral status", have been achieved.

Russian officials have dismissed as a failure a Ukrainian counteroffensive launched in mid-2023 in the east and south.

Zelenskiy acknowledged that the counteroffensive backed by advanced Western weapons may not have succeeded "as the world wanted. Maybe not everything is as fast as someone imagined."

In contrast, he hailed the "huge result" of Ukrainian forces breaking through a Russian Black Sea blockade, enabling grain exports by way of a new route along its southern coast.

If Ukraine lost the war, he said, Russia would be encouraged to advance against other countries because "Putin feels weakness like an animal, because he is an animal. He senses blood, he senses his strength."

MOBILISING UKRAINE AND THE WORLD

With support for Ukraine facing obstacles in the United States and European Union, more needed to be done to persuade the world that defending Ukraine meant defending the world, Zelenskiy said.

"Maybe something is missing. Or maybe someone is missing," he told the magazine. "Someone who can talk about Ukraine as a defence of all of us."

Zelenskiy acknowledged that "mobilisation of Ukrainian society and of the world" that was so strong at the start of Russia's invasion is not there anymore.

Ukraine saw tens of thousands of men volunteer to fight in the first months of Russia's invasion, but that enthusiasm has waned 22 months later.

"That needs to change," he said. "Mobilisation is not just a matter of soldiers going to the front. It is about all of us. It is the mobilisation of all efforts. This is the only way to protect our state and de-occupy our land."

Zelenskiy has embarked on a flurry of international trips trying to shore up Western support. At home, he has repeatedly urged Ukrainians to do their duty.

"Victory is not received or granted, it is gained," Zelenskiy said in his New Year message to Ukrainians. "And to this end, today we have to live by the rule: you either work or you fight."

A draft law that proposed lowering the mobilisation age to 25 from 27 hassparked controversy.

Russia has said it is ready for peace talks if Ukraine takes account of "new realities", suggesting an acknowledgement that Russia controls about 17.5 percent of Ukrainian territory.

Zelenskiy rejected any notion that Moscow was interested in talks, pointing to its repeated waves of aerial strikes. Russia would only agree to a pause in fighting if it needed a break to replenish its army, he said.

** Russian drones hit sites linked to Ukrainian nationalists

Russian drones attacked a university and a museum linked to two of the most prominent 20th century defenders of Ukrainian national identity on Monday, leaving locals vowing to repair the damage.

The first smashed windows and much of the roof at the National Agrarian University, outside the western Ukrainian city of Lviv, where Stepan Bandera - a hero in Ukraine but a villain according to the Kremlin - studied.

It hit on what would have been Bandera's 115th birthday.

The second ravaged a nearby museum devoted to Roman Shukhevych.

Both men were key figures in nationalist resistance to Soviet rule and were associated with the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA) which fought Soviet forces in World War Two.

"This is the building in which Stepan Bandera attended classes. There's a memorial plaque dedicated to Bandera, and the statue too," 82-year-old Sofia Zdorovyk said as people cleared up the rubble around her.

"Everything that's been going on in our country, for so many years, do they (Russia) feel better because of it? Don't they have enough land? Natural resources? What is it that they need?"

Lviv Mayor Andriy Sadovyi described the strike on the museum as a symbolic act. "We will restore it after our victory," he said.

Bandera was the most prominent figure in a group associated with the UPA, whose ranks swelled to 100,000 by 1944, according to historical accounts, and continued fighting Moscow's rule until the mid-1950s. Shukhevych was the UPA's supreme commander.

Moscow still invokes Bandera's name to underpin its assertions that it invaded Ukraine in February 2022 to "denazify" the country, pointing to the fact that some nationalists initially cooperated with German forces in their battle against the Russians - though they later also fought the Nazis.

"Just hearing the name Bandera scares them (the Russians). It causes rage and hatred," Vasyl Lapushniak, President of the Lviv National Agrarian University, said. "They did not scare us with this. It only united us once more and showed our strength."

The honour of "Hero of Ukraine" was bestowed on both men in the post-Soviet period. Soldiers from the UPA's ranks were declared "veterans" alongside Soviet Red Army soldiers.

The nationalist army's activity has long been clouded by allegations that it carried out massacres of tens of thousands of ethnic Poles in western Ukraine's Volyn region - part of an area that was under Polish rule between the two world wars.

Poland and Ukraine have taken measures to honour those deaths and seal a reconciliation between the two neighbours.

What goes around comes aground: Tinubu is under the guidance of Okigbo’s cursed star. He is planting seeds certain to grow into labyrinthine forests with the potential to ground us. He’s going his predecessor’s way, throwing free cash at challenges on the ground, when, according to experts, he could use this money to address strategic needs of the weak, who make up the majority. Those who came before him also walked this pseudo-welfarist route of easy cash solution and flopped. There was/is little to show for the billions they spent as reliefs.

The universal principle is that what goes around must come around. It’s not so in Nigeria. With us, when what goes around goes around, it does more than coming around. As it makes its return trip, it comes aground, grounding us, leveling us, merging us with the miry mud. That’s been our history, extinct and extant. We create institutions and leaders from this back-and-forth process to form an endless cycle of assailable links in governance that remind us of the famous lines of the late poet, Christopher Okigbo: AN OLD STAR departs, leaves us here on the shore, Gazing heavenward for a new star approaching; The new star appears, foreshadows its going Before a going and coming that goes on forever… (Path of Thunder).

It is a villainous star, a kind of abiku that gives ephemeral excitement to the home where it surfaces at birth. Our present is nothing but a horrid replay of unpleasant encounters with the past. We sowed the wind yesterday; but today we’re reaping what’s greater than the wind. What goes around comes aground.

It’s tragic that we always go back into forlorn ages for deliverance from present woes. In 1984, we all stood in awe of Decree 4, and to differ with officialdom was to court doom. We were mortally pummeled by the demands of that law under military ruler Muhammadu Buhari. His days recorded some of the worst breaches of human rights in the annals of Nigeria. There was retroactive application of edicts that outraged Nigerians and the international community. Yet, more than three decades later when we wanted a president to free us from the ‘’clueless’’ hold of Goodluck Jonathan, guess who we went for. Buhari, a figure of a discarded dispensation! We dug him from his sepulchral abode, to sit over the affairs of the living; he couldn’t but bring the nation to a level where we landed in a grave crisis from which we haven’t emerged. He grounded the country and bequeathed an economy which, experts warn, won’t yield to a quick fix. They say a lot of dead debris would require to be washed away first now and  in the years ahead to make way for the real business of economic resuscitation, which would take a much longer time. We aren’t reaping the wind we sowed; we are going to be harvesting a killer hurricane.

It’s no surprise that President Bola Tinubu, Buhari’s successor, is inheriting a country left in funereal straits. What else did we expect from a predecessor he exhumed and installed as our leader? As we all can see now, Buhari didn’t remember to take the pall over him back as he receded after his eight-year reign; it is still with us, overshadowing the entire land of the living.

Tinubu is also under the guidance of Okigbo’s cursed star. He is planting seeds certain to grow into labyrinthine forests with the potential to ground us. He’s going his predecessor’s way, throwing free cash at challenges on the ground, when, according to experts, he could use this money to address strategic needs of the weak, who make up the majority. Those who came before him also walked this pseudo-welfarist route of easy cash solution and flopped. There was/is little to show for the billions they spent as reliefs.

This approach is set to inject more ‘multidimensional’ penury into the system, as revealed by local and independent international figures.

First, what does the National Bureau of Statistics, NBS, say, even after we have released raw money to the so-called poor? The body issued a report late in 2022 where it said the number of compatriots ‘’living in poverty stands at 133 million.” This is about 63% of the country’s population. There was no indication of any impact of the various levels of the direct cash interventions initiated by the successive governments. Now the World Bank. Its recent publication says ‘’extremely poor people in Nigeria (has) increased from 95 to 104 million.’’ Again, nothing to reflect the success of the cash transactions between the authorities and the underclass.

So, why would Tinubu ply the same unprofitable path? It’s because he’s tragically trapped in Nigeria’s halfway capitalist frame that promotes the deployment of capital (raw cash) to tackle the needs of the indigent masses. Otherwise, why not address these issues by applying the massive funds under his watch to build critical infrastructure: schools (along with free education for all at all levels), health centres, modern roads, employment-generating agro-ventures in the rural regions, aggressive human capacity building projects, etc.? Ready or ‘uncreated’ money in my pocket or in my bank account won’t bring about these fundamental changes in the polity. Rather, it will lead to individualistic misadventures and illusory perceptions of prosperity. While the government would assume it is pursuing popular interests, it would wake up at the end of the day to face acute mass misery, hunger, depression, inflation and poverty among those we pretend we want to help. We seem not to be decoding this five-word maxim: what goes around comes aground.

What the leaders are giving out by way of so-termed palliatives is opium sedatives from which you would wake back into the reality of your excruciating conditions, sooner or later. They offer temporary comfort, when what we need is a base on which to erect lasting social and economic justice. Isn’t it heartless not to go the whole hog of dealing with the problem of the poor, whom we have plunged into avoidable suffering through the ill-conceived displacement of the fuel subsidy? Throwing N35k monthly remittance to a very small percentage of the population for a limited period, offering ‘13th’ month bonus to civil servants, halving charges on public transportation or delivering free train rides during festive seasons, asking workers to cut the number of office hours to beat high cost of commuting, etc. all amount to a will-o-’the-wisp in the face of the real, long-term overwhelming concerns of the society. They don’t outwit the challenges. We’re only trying to tame a 21st Century plague with the concoctions of 13th Century alchemists.

Thus, all Nigerian governments, military, diarchy and civilian, have trodden a predictable trajectory. As our leaders step into office, we hail them and proceed shortly to the next stage of hauling them unto our laps. It’s never a long romance. For, just a few months after the citizens release their leaders into the performance field to fulfil their campaign pledges, the administration and its agencies begin to traumatize the people with policies that whipped us into destitution in the past.

There are many bad habits that can hinder your goals — but the “most self-destructive” habit is so common, you may not realize just how damaging it is.
″[As] human beings, we can’t help but to compare ourselves to others, and comparison is the deadliest thing we can do to ourselves because we will always come up short,” Simon Sinek, a bestselling author and leadership expert, said in a 2021 YouTube video. “All it does is exaggerate all of our insecurities.”
“It’s OK to enjoy other people’s success, but you let them live their lives and you live your life,” he added. “Oh, and by the way, they’re curating their social media. That’s not really their life. So you’re making decisions … based on their curated life.”
To avoid falling into this “circle of depression,” Sinek has a few tips to reframe your thinking:
1. Look to your peers as a source of inspiration, not as competition.
2. Take pride in the things you’re good at instead of dwelling on areas that need improvement.
3. Lean on your inner circle for support and reassurance.

CNBC

Revelers counted down to midnight on New Year’s Eve across the globe Sunday as fireworks and festive lights offered a hopeful start to 2024 for some, even as the world’s ongoing conflicts subdued celebrations and raised security concerns.

In Australia, more than 1 million people watched a pyrotechnic display centered around Sydney’s famous Opera House and harbor bridge — a number of spectators equivalent to one in five of the city’s residents.

“It’s total madness,” said German tourist Janna Thomas, who waited in line since 7:30 a.m. to secure a prime waterfront location.

Some 90,000 police and security officers were deployed around France including along Champs-Elysees Avenue, where large crowds took in a multidimensional light show projected onto the Arc de Triomphe showcasing the history of Paris and sports on the menu for next year’s Summer Olympics in the city.

In New York, people lined up early to nab a spot in Times Square for the midnight ball drop. Officials and party organizers said they were prepared to keep tens of thousands of revelers safe in the heart of Manhattan, as the city has seen near-daily protests sparked by the Israel-Hamas war.

FIREWORKS LIGHT UP THE NIGHT

Stunning fireworks displays bloomed at iconic locations like the Acropolis in Athens, Greece; reflected in the sleek glass walls of the world’s tallest building, the Burj Khalifa, in Dubai, the United Arab Emirates; and accompanied a collective cheer filling the air in Nairobi, Kenya.

As the hands of the clock sounded, tick-tock, reaching to hit the midnight hour mark, Nigerians were excited about the turn of the new year. Many citizens celebrated the New Year on Sunday night amid stunning firework displays, illuminating the skies across the nation’s atmospheric corridors.

China celebrated relatively quietly, with most major cities banning fireworks over safety and pollution concerns. Still, people gathered and performers danced in colorful costumes in Beijing, while a crowd released wish balloons in Chongqing. During his New Year address, President Xi Jinping said the country would focus on building momentum for economic recovery in 2024 and pledged China would “surely be reunified” with Taiwan.

In Taipei, Taiwan’s capital, the mood was upbeat as revelers gathered for a fireworks show at the bamboo-shaped Taipei 101 skyscraper and at concerts and other events citywide.

In India, thousands of revelers from the financial hub of Mumbai watched the sun set over the Arabian Sea. Fireworks in New Delhi raised concerns that the capital — already infamous for its poor air quality — would be blanketed by a toxic haze on the first morning of the new year.

Across Japan, people gathered at temples such as the Tsukiji Temple in Tokyo, where visitors were given free hot milk and corn soup as they stood in line to strike a massive bell.

POPE HIGHLIGHTS THE HUMAN COST OF WAR

At the Vatican, Pope Francis recalled 2023 as a year marked by wartime suffering. During his traditional Sunday blessing from a window overlooking St. Peter’s Square, he offered prayers for “the tormented Ukrainian people and the Palestinian and Israeli populations, the Sudanese people and many others.”

“At the end of the year, we will have the courage to ask ourselves how many human lives have been shattered by armed conflict, how many dead and how much destruction, how much suffering, how much poverty,” the pontiff said.

GAZA AND UKRAINE WARS GRIND ON

In Russia, the country’s military actions in Ukraine overshadowed end-of-year celebrations, with the usual fireworks and concert on Moscow’s Red Square canceled, as they were last year. Even without the festivities, people gathered in the square,and some cheered and pointed their phones at a clock counting down the year’s final seconds.

After shelling in the Russian border city of Belgorod Saturday killed 24 people, some local authorities across the country also canceled their firework displays, including in Vladivostok. Millions were expected to tune in to President Vladimir Putin’s New Year’s prerecorded address, in which he said no force could divide Russians and stop the country’s development.

Israeli strikes in the Gaza Strip killed at least 35 people Sunday, hospital officials said, as fighting raged across the tiny enclave a day after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the war will continue for “many more months,” resisting international calls for a cease-fire.

Skyscrapers in Tel Aviv were lit up in yellow to call for the release of hostages held by Palestinian militants in Gaza for more than 80 days.

“While you are counting down until the new year, our time and our lives stopped,” said Moran Betzer Tayar, the aunt of Yagev Buchshtab, a 34-year-old hostage.

In the Gaza Strip, displaced Palestinians huddled around fires in a makeshift refugee camp.

“From the intensity of the pain we live, we do not feel that there is a new year,” said Kamal al-Zeinaty, who has lost multiple family members in the conflict. “All the days are the same.”

In Iraq, a Christmas tree was decorated with Palestinian flags and symbolic bodies in funeral shrouds, placed beside a liberty monument in central Baghdad. Many Christians in Iraq have cancelled this year’s festivities in solidarity with Gaza, and have chosen to limit their celebrations to prayers and rituals.

“We hope that the new year, 2024, will be a year of goodness, prosperity and joy,” said Ahmed Ali, a Baghdad resident.

In Muslim-majority Pakistan, the government banned all New Year’s Eve celebrations in solidarity with the Palestinians.

GLOBAL TENSIONS SPUR SECURITY VIGILANCE

New York Mayor Eric Adams said there were “no specific threats” to his city’s annual bash. Nevertheless, police said they would expand the security perimeter around the party, creating a “buffer zone” that would allow them to head off potential demonstrations. On New Year’s Eve 2022, a machete-wielding man attacked three police officers a few blocks from Times Square.

Security was also heightened across European cities on Sunday.

German authorities said they etained three more people in connection with a reported threat of a New Year’s Eve attack by Islamic extremists on the world-famous Cologne Cathedral.

In Berlin, some 4,500 police officers were expected to keep order and avoid riots like those seen a year ago. Authorities also banned the traditional use of firecrackers for several streets across the city. They also banned a pro-Palestinian protest in the Neukoelln neighborhood of the German capital, which has seen several pro-Palestinian riots.

AP/Punch

Nigerian lawmakers approved a request from President Bola Tinubu to convert N7.5 trillion ($8.2 billion) in overdrafts from the central bank to longer-dated bonds that will be added to the country’s debt.

The senate granted approval at a sitting on Saturday during which they are also endorsed

a N28.77 trillion spending plan for 2024, higher than the 27.5 trillion naira figure proposed by Tinubu.

Tinubu said the conversion will reduce the cost of servicing the debt to 9% when compared to the monetary policy rate plus 3% that it currently attracts, and also improve the transparency of liabilities owed to the banking regulator.

Lawmakers in May approved the conversion of N22.7 trillion in loans from the central bank into bonds. The request was made by Tinubu’s predecessor, Muhammadu Buhari, under whose administration loans from the central bank rose by more than 3,000%. That helped increase Nigeria’s outstanding debt by more than 50%; total public debt was N87.9 trillion in September.

Bloomberg

Israeli strikes in central Gaza kill at least 35 as Netanyahu says war will continue for months

Israeli strikes in central Gaza killed at least 35 people Sunday, hospital officials said, as fighting raged across the tiny enclave a day after Israel’s prime minister said the war will continue for “many more months,” resisting international calls for a cease-fire.

The military said Israeli forces were operating in Gaza’s second-largest city, Khan Younis, and residents reported strikes in the central region, the latest focus of the nearly three-month air-and-ground war that has raised fears of a regional conflagration.

The U.S. military said its forces shot and killed several Iran-backed Houthi rebels when they tried to attack a cargo ship in the Red Sea, an escalation in a maritime conflict linked to the war. And an Israeli Cabinet minister suggested encouraging Gaza’s population to emigrate, remarks that could worsen tensions with Egypt and other friendly Arab states.

Israel says it wants to destroy Hamas’ governing and military capabilities in Gaza, from where it launched its Oct. 7 attack on southern Israel. The militants killed some 1,200 people after breaking through Israel’s extensive border defenses, shattering its sense of security. They also captured around 240 hostages, nearly half of whom were released during a temporary cease-fire agreement in November.

Just after midnight on New Year’s Day, Hamas militants fired a barrage of rockets, setting off air raid sirens in southern and central Israel. No injuries were reported.

Displaced Palestinians found little to celebrate on New Year’s Eve in Muwasi, a makeshift camp in a mostly undeveloped area of southern Gaza’s Mediterranean coast designated by Israel as a safe zone.

“From the intensity of the pain we live, we do not feel that there is a new year,” said Kamal al-Zeinaty, huddled with his family around a fire inside a tent. “All the days are the same.”

Another relative, Zeyad al-Zeinaty, who fled with the family from the Jabaliya refugee camp in northern Gaza, said his wife, brother and grandchildren are among many relatives he has lost in the war.

Israel’s unprecedented air and ground offensive has killed more than 21,800 Palestinians and wounded more than 56,000 others, according to the Health Ministry in Hamas-ruled Gaza, which does not distinguish between civilian and combatant deaths.

The war has sparked a humanitarian crisis, with a quarter of Gaza residents facing starvation, according to the United Nations. Israel’s bombardments have leveled vast swaths of the territory, displacing some 85% of Gaza’s 2.3 million residents.

THE OFFENSIVE GRINDS ON

Israel expanded its offensive to central Gaza this week, targeting a belt of densely built-up communities that house refugees from the 1948 war surrounding Israel’s creation and their descendants.

In Zweida, an Israeli airstrike killed at least 13 people and wounded dozens of others, according to witnesses. The bodies were draped in white plastic and laid out in front of a hospital, where prayers were held before burial.

“They were innocent people,” said Hussein Siam, whose relatives were among the dead. “Israeli warplanes bombarded the whole family.”

Officials from Al-Aqsa Hospital in central Deir al-Balah said the 13 were among 35 bodies received on Sunday.

The Israeli military said it was battling militants in Khan Younis, where Israel believes Hamas leaders are hiding. It also said its forces operating in the Shati refugee camp, in northern Gaza, found a bomb in a kindergarten and defused it. Hamas continued to launch rockets toward southern Israel.

Israel has faced stiff resistance from Hamas since it began its ground offensive in late October, and the military says 172 soldiers have been killed during that time.

Daniel Hagari, the chief military spokesman, said Sunday that Israel was withdrawing some forces from Gaza as part of its “smart management” of the war. He did not say how many, and held out the possibility they would return at a later point in the war.

Israeli media said up to five brigades, numbering thousands of soldiers, would be withdrawn, but it was not immediately clear if it represented a normal troop rotation or a new phase in the fighting. Hagari also said some reservists would return to civilian life to bolster Israel’s wartime economy.

The fighting has pushed much of Gaza’s population south, where people have flooded shelters and tent camps near the border with Egypt. Hundreds of thousands have sought shelter in the central town of Deir al-Balah. Israel has continued to carry out strikes in both areas.

Eman al-Masri, who gave birth to quadruplets a week ago at a hospital in Deir al-Balah, is now sheltering with them in a room with 50 other people at a school-turned-shelter. “There is a shortage of diapers, they are not available, and no milk,” she said.

ISRAELI MINISTER URGES MASS MIGRATION FROM GAZA

The scale of the destruction and the exodus to the south has raised fears among Palestinians and Arab countries that Israel plans to drive Gaza’s population out and prevent it from returning.

On Sunday, Israel’s far-right finance minister said it should “encourage migration” from Gaza and re-establish Jewish settlements in the territory, where it withdrew settlers and soldiers in 2005.

“If in Gaza there were only 100,000 or 200,000 Arabs and not 2 million, the entire discussion about ‘the day after’ would be completely different,” Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich told Army Radio.

Smotrich has been largely sidelined by a war Cabinet that does not include him. But his comments risked worsening tensions with neighboring Egypt, which is deeply concerned about a possible mass influx of Palestinian refugees, along with other friendly Arab countries.

Later Sunday, an official in the prime minister’s office said Israel does not want to resettle Palestinians.

“Contrary to false allegations, Israel does not seek to displace the population in Gaza,” the official said in a statement to The Associated Press. “Subject to security checks, Israel’s policy is to enable those individuals who wish to leave to do so.” The official spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss the matter with the media.

Israel is also at odds with the United States, which has provided crucial military aid for the offensive, over Gaza’s future.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said Israel must maintain open-ended security control over the Gaza Strip. At a news conference Saturday, he said the war would continue for “many more months” and that Israel would assume control of the Gaza side of the border with Egypt.

Israel says Hamas has smuggled weapons from Egypt, but Egypt is likely to oppose any Israeli military presence there.

Netanyahu has also said he won’t allow the internationally-backed Palestinian Authority, which administers some parts of the occupied West Bank, to expand its limited rule to Gaza, where Hamas drove its forces out in 2007.

The U.S. wants a unified Palestinian government to run both Gaza and parts of the Israeli-occupied West Bank as a precursor to eventual statehood. The last Israeli-Palestinian peace talks broke down over a decade ago, and Israeli governments since have been staunchly opposed to Palestinian statehood.

AP

WESTERN PERSPECTIVE

Kharkiv strikes were retaliation for Belgorod attack, Russia says

Russia on Sunday said it attacked military facilities in the Ukrainian city of Kharkiv overnight, including a hotel housing military commanders and "foreign mercenaries", in response to Ukraine's strikes on Belgorod the previous day.

Kharkiv officials had said that at least six missiles hit Ukraine's second city, injuring at least 28 people and damaging residential buildings, hotels and medical facilities, followed by waves of drone attacks on housing blocks.

Russia's statement said its attack hit the former Kharkiv Palace hotel and the headquarters of the Ukrainian Security Service for the Kharkiv region.

It said military and intelligence officers involved in Ukraine's attack on Belgorod had been among those killed, along with "foreign mercenaries and militants" preparing to carry out cross-border raids.

Ukraine military intelligence spokesman Andriy Yusov told local media that no military objects had been targeted in Russia's attack on Kharkiv and that no one from his agency was harmed.

Vyacheslav Gladkov, governor of the Belgorod region adjoining northern Ukraine, said the death toll from Saturday's Ukrainian rocket attack on the regional capital had risen to 24.

In a posting on Telegram he said there were also 108 wounded and that 37 apartment buildings had been damaged.

There was no official comment from Kyiv in the hours after the attack on Belgorod and Reuters was unable to independently verify the Russian reports.

Like other Russian border zones, Belgorod has suffered shelling and drone attacks all year, which authorities have blamed on Ukraine, though none have previously been on such a scale.

Both sides deny targeting civilians in a war that Russia launched against its neighbour in February 2022. The United Nations says that more than 10,000 civilians have been killed in Ukraine and nearly 60 people inside Russia.

Ukrainian news outlet RBC-Ukraine on Saturday quoted unidentified sources as saying that Ukrainian forces had directed fire at military targets in Belgorod in response to the massive Russian bombardment of cities and infrastructure across Ukraine the previous day.

Russian newspaper Kommersant reported that Ukraine had fired its missiles from the Kharkiv region across the border.

RUSSIAN PERSPECTIVE

Russia explains retaliation for Ukrainian ‘terror attack’

Russia’s military has conducted a string of high-precision missile strikes targeting Ukrainian military facilities and officials in response to the Ukrainian strike on Belgorod on Saturday that left more than 20 civilians dead, the Defense Ministry has said. 

In a statement on Sunday, the ministry said that Moscow’s forces had struck decision-making centers and other military targets in the city of Kharkov, not far from the border between the two countries. 

It noted that a high-precision missile strike on the building formerly housing the Kharkov Palace Hotel eliminated “representatives of the Main Intelligence Directorate and the Armed Forces of Ukraine, who were directly involved in the planning and execution of the terrorist attack in Belgorod.”

The building also housed up to 200 foreign mercenaries who were gearing up for “terrorist raids” into Russian territory, officials added.

Other strikes hit the building of Ukraine’s Security Service (SBU) and a temporary deployment area of Ukrainian nationalists. “Representatives of the SBU leadership, foreign mercenaries and fighters of the Kraken unit, who were directly preparing sabotage on Russian territory, have been taken out,” officials said. 

In addition to this, an attack was carried out on a branch of the national space control center in western Ukraine, which had been used by Kiev for reconnaissance. Fuel depots in Kharkov and the Kiev-controlled part of Russia’s Zaporozhye Region were also destroyed, according to the statement. At the same time, the ministry stressed that the Russian military “only strikes military targets and infrastructure directly associated with them.” 

Ukrainian officials in Kharkov have confirmed the barrage, saying that there had been six strikes that damaged “civilian infrastructure,” with 28 injured.

The new attack comes in response to a Ukrainian bombardment of Belgorod that killed at least 24 people, including four children, with 108 injured. Moscow has said that the barrage used both cluster munitions, as well as Czech-made projectiles. On Saturday, Vassily Nebenzia, Russia’s envoy to the UN, accused Western countries of complicity in the attack, warning that those who orchestrated it would be “punished.”

Reuters/RT

An Igbo adage says that when an anomaly persists for one year, it becomes the norm. So slowly, steadily but surely, it is becoming a norm, an accepted aberration, for a president in Nigeria to appoint himself as a minister. It is like saying in a country of 200 million-plus, there is no one good or capable enough to hold that particular office except the man entrusted with the running of the nation.

It was President Olusegun Obasanjo that started it. Nicknamed the “Trinity President” in some quarters, for six out of his eight years in office, i.e., from 1999 to 2005, Obasanjo was president, petroleum minister and minister of state for petroleum.

It was only in 2003, the last year of his first term that he appointed Edmund Daukoru, the current traditional ruler of Nembe Kingdom in Bayelsa State, as special adviser on petroleum and energy and then minister of state in 2007.

I think Muhammadu Buhari got so fascinated by this “Trinity” arrangement that he saw Obasanjo run that he too made himself the Czar of Nigeria’s petroleum sector by appointing himself into the same offices.

One curious observation is that they both chose to head the petroleum ministry despite their shallow knowledge of the sector. Both presidents were soldiers who rose to become generals. Nigerians would expect them, especially Buhari, to head the defence ministry if they must be ministers. But the Ministry of Petroleum holds an enticing attraction to them. Can it be because Nigeria’s crude oil is called “sweet”?

Addressing some select reporters at a Global Leaders’ Summit on Countering ISIL and Violent Extremism, in London, Buhari said: “I will remain minister of petroleum. I will appoint a minister of state for petroleum.”

And that was even before he had taken the names of his prospective ministers to the Senate. Unlike Obasanjo, he had once served as oil minister and, unlike him again, he appointed a minister of state earlier.

When the news broke that he was going to announce himself as petroleum minister, Vanguard newspaper published an editorial advising against such a move.

“The nation is still at sea over how Obasanjo handled the same job for six years from 1999 when he assumed power. Several turnaround maintenance projects were undertaken and billions of naira sunk and yet the refineries remained comatose,” the article read.

But how did Nigeria’s oil sector with its “sweet crude” fare under the two former generals-turned-civilian presidents?

Reports have it that Obasanjo’s leadership at the petroleum ministry was characterised by lots of opacity and breach of due process. The seeds of the controversial Malabu oil deal were planted in that period.

The Guardian, on January 13, 2008, wrote, “Under Obasanjo, the government was not run based on budget and he did not consider himself bound by the budget. He was the budget. He provided figures and allocations and spent money as he liked without any evidential accountability to the National Assembly. Nobody knew what the revenue was. The National Assembly didn’t know; he was not revealing anything. How much came into the government coffers from the oil sales? Nobody knew except himself. He was the sole minister of petroleum.”

And because of this, in December 2007, seven months after he handed over power to Umar Yar’Adua, the Conference of Nigerian Political Parties (CNPP) petitioned the anti-graft agency he set up, the EFCC, demanding that Obasanjo be probed as he no longer enjoyed constitutional immunity.

The petition read in part: “Let us start by stating that Obasanjo, during his tenure, illegally appointed himself the minister of petroleum resources, contrary to section 147 of the 1999 Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria.

“Secondly, his activities in the oil industry were shrouded in secrecy, as he never rendered proper accounts of the oil revenue to relevant agencies like the Revenue Mobilisation, Allocation and Fiscal Commission (RMAFC).

“Thirdly, it is also on record that neither the Federal Executive Council nor the National Assembly was ever presented memoranda or budgets of the oil industry.”

Buhari’s case was almost similar. Probably no other leader in Nigeria’s history has had the swell of goodwill to tap into as him when he took over in 2015, but he sadly turned such enthusiasm into grave disappointment, his regime falling from what many, rightly or wrongly, had high hopes on, to one that the nation couldn’t wait to see the back of.

According to Buhari, the reason he wanted to be the minister was to right the wrongs in the oil industry, which was plagued by corruption, massive fraud, and crude oil theft.

But in his “determination to sanitise Nigeria’s oil industry and free it from corruption and shady deals,” he spent over N11 trillion on “subsidies” and over $19 billion on the maintenance of refineries that did not refine even a single litre of petrol throughout his eight years.

The Constitution of Nigeria that authorised the president to appoint ministers also gave the power of their vetting and confirmation to the Senate of the Federal Republic. Specifically, section 147 of the Nigerian constitution provides that: “(1) There shall be such offices of Ministers of the Government of the Federation as may be established by the President. (2) Any appointment to the office of Minister of the Government of the Federation shall, if the nomination of any person to such office is confirmed by the Senate, be made by the President.

Neither of the presidents presented himself to the Senate for vetting and clearance as enshrined in the Constitution. And all of them shunned defence, their field and what needed professional supervision for sweet crude. This made some people think that if Emefiele became president as he wanted, he may also make himself minister of petroleum as well as CBN governor.

But when this trend first reared its ugly head, some conscientious Nigerians did not take it lying down. A group called the Niger Delta Democratic Union went to a Federal High Court, asking it to issue “an order directing Obasanjo to appoint a Minister of Petroleum Resources under the mandatory provisions of the Petroleum Act Cap 350 Laws of the Federation of Nigeria, 1990 as amended.”

Filed by Austin Ayowe and Dafe Chuks on behalf of the NDDU, the plaintiffs also sought “an order restraining President Obasanjo and the Petroleum Products Pricing Regulatory Authority (PPRA) from further exercising any function or powers of a minister of petroleum resources.”

Even though the suit was struck out on 15 September 2004 by Stephen Adah, the presiding judge, who held that the applicants had no locus standi to file the suit, perhaps that case forced Obasanjo to appoint Daukoru as minister of state the next year.

However, in November 2018, a Federal High Court in Abuja declared that Buhari cannot legally double as the minister of petroleum resources.

The court made the declaration while giving judgment in a suit filed in 2017 by the former president of the Nigerian Bar Association, Olisa Agbakoba, who urged it to restrain Buhari from continuing to hold the office of the minister of petroleum resources, contending that Section 138 of the 1999 Constitution forbids the president from “holding any other executive office or paid employment.”

We are quick to shout that Nigeria borrowed its system of governance from America, but tell me which American president was a secretary (minister) at the same time.

Unfortunately for our nation, our leaders pick and choose according to what suits their purpose from the American system. The United States enacted the 1967 Anti-Nepotism law which forbids federal officials from employing family members into certain governmental positions and the cabinet. Can anyone mention that to recent Nigerian public officeholders? We have recently been regaled by stories of how even in the temple of justice, some senior judiciary figures make way for their children, wives and mistresses to become judges. It is the same in practically every segment of public service.

We still have a long, long way to go before we can get it right. But the worrying question is: are we even willing to try?

** Hassan Gimba is the Publisher and Editor-in-Chief of Neptune Prime.