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THE Lagos State governor, Mr Babatunde Fashola, SAN, yesterday, accused Jaykay Pharmacy, owned and managed by the governorship candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, Mr. Jimi Agbaje of owing the state N1.6 million as unpaid land use charges. But in a swift reaction, Mr Agbaje faulted the claims made by the governor that his company defaulted in the payment of the land use charge. Speaking further, he said; “let us do that mathematics to see how many facilities the fund would have provided in our hospitals and stationery in our schools. But this was the same person who was complaining that the state government spent three per cent of its budget on Primary education. Local Government is responsible for the management of the primary schools and yet he has withheld their taxes.” Continue...

A former Minister of Defence, Theophilus Danjuma, has demanded the immediate arrest of some former Niger Delta militants for threatening to plunge the country into war if President Goodluck Jonathan is not re-elected in the February 14 election. He stated this on Wednesday in Kano during the commissioning of the multibillion naira Kwakwasiya city, one of the three mega cities built by the administration of Governor Rabi’u Kwankwaso. The leader of the Niger Delta Peoples Volunteer Force, NDPVF, Mujahid Dokubo-Asari; Victor Ben Ebikabowei, aka, Boy Loaf; Government Ekpudomenowei, aka, Tompolo; and other militants had last Saturday vowed to ensure that President Goodluck Jonathan, wins the February presidential election. The former militant leaders and their followers, who spoke at a meeting in Government House, Yenagoa, Bayelsa State, threatened to unleash violence on the country and take back Niger Delta oil should the president lose the election. Continue...

Scientists tracking the Ebola outbreak in Guinea say the virus has mutated. Researchers at the Institut Pasteur in France, which first identified the outbreak last March, are investigating whether it could have become more contagious. More than 22,000 people have been infected with Ebola and 8,795 have died in Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia. Scientists are starting to analyse hundreds of blood samples from Ebola patients in Guinea. They are tracking how the virus is changing and trying to establish whether it's able to jump more easily from person to person "We know the virus is changing quite a lot," said human geneticist Dr Anavaj Sakuntabhai. Continue reading the main story