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A wanted 57-year-old dr¥g kingpin, Alhaji Sulaiman Jimoh (alias Olowoidiogede, populary known as Temo), has been arrested by operatives of the National Drug Law Enforcement Agency (NDLEA) in Lagos State.

The suspect was arrested at his enclave after an initial resistance from him and his horde of hoodlums, NDLEA said in a statement on Wednesday, July 24.

According to the statement, “In the last two years, the NDLEA had intercepted large consignments of illicit drugs worth billions of naira owned by Temo but he has remained largely evasive while a few encounters with him and his armed gangs in his Mushin enclave had resulted in g¥nfight.

Some of the recent seizures of his shipments include: a 14, 524.8 kilograms of Ghana Loud, a strong strain of cannabis sativa, smuggled into Lagos from Ghana in two trucks and a J5 bus intercepted at Ojuelegba area of Lagos in the early hours of Sunday 28th January 2024; two truck-loads of the same substance weighing 8,852kg intercepted at Eleko beach, Lekki Lagos on 4th May 2023 and 252kg of Loud seized from his enclave in Mushin on Wednesday 26th July 2023.

The drug kingpin was very notorious for always being on the move to evade arrest but with persistence and determination of the Agency aided by modern tools and intelligence, the concerted effort to get him paid off at 10am on Monday 22nd July 2024 when NDLEA’s surveillance teams on his trail tracked and pinned him down at Igbarere street, Mushin.

A reinforcement of about 50 operatives was immediately mobilized to the area while he was attempting to escape in a Mercedes Benz SUV GLE 350 marked 01G-300G.

His attempt to escape by mobilizing hoodlums to engage and distract the operatives however failed after which he was overpowered and whisked away from the chaotic scene while his men surrendered to the superior firepower of the anti-narcotic agents who also succeeded in recovering the Mercedes Benz SUV the suspect was found in.“

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The Secretary to the Government of the Federation (SGF), George Akume, on Wednesday, July 23, met with ministers on the proposed nationwide protest against economic hardship by Nigerian youths.

The meeting was convened behind closed doors and has all the over 40 ministers in the President’s cabinet in attendance, according to Channel Television.

Some of the Minister spotted are Nyesom Wike (FCT), Yusuf Tuggar (Foreign Affairs), Zephaniah Jisalo (Special Duties), Tahir Mamman (Education), and Abubakar Bagudu (Budget and Planning).

Others are Wale Edun (Finance), Mohammed Idris (Information), Bello Matawalle (Defence), David Umahi (Works), and the National Security Adviser (NSA) Nuhu Ribadu, amongst others.

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With the days of Bidenomics now numbered, voters are waiting to see what exactly the president’s preferred replacement would do for their finances. 

President Joe Biden announced Sunday he is dropping out of the presidential race, putting the spotlight on the candidate he endorsed to take his place, Vice President Kamala Harris.

“It seems likely that a Harris administration, should it come to pass, would support many of the economic policies pursued by the Biden administration,”  Michael Pugliese and Aubrey George, economists at Wells Fargo Securities, wrote in a commentary Monday. “Should Vice President Harris win the nomination, we will be watching closely to see what economic policy breaks she has with the current president, if any.”

With the tax code, national debt, and numerous other financial matters at stake in the election, there are many unanswered questions about what, if anything, Harris would do differently than her predecessor. However, her record may hold clues.

Harris did propose several major tax and economic policies during her time as a senator from California and when she ran for president in 2020.For example, in 2018, Harris introduced a bill that would establish a tax credit of $3,000 a year for individuals and $6,000 for married couples, a move that would tilt the tax code more in favor of lower income earners. Biden’s temporary expansion of the Child Tax Credit in 2021, which he sought to make permanent, similarly boosted the incomes of working and middle-class households, but only for people with children.Notably, in 2019, Harris said if she were elected president she would repeal the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017, the series of tax cuts passed by former president Donald Trump. Whoever wins the presidential election will have to deal with the TCJA one way or another since many of its provisions expire in 2025.The act cut taxes for corporations and high income earners, drawing criticism from Democrats, but also simplified the tax code and expanded the child tax credit. Biden, rather than calling to fully repeal the law, said he would not raise taxes for anyone making over $400,000, suggesting that the TCJA provisions benefitting lower and middle-income earners would stay in place.

Biden also proposed raising the corporate tax rate to 28% from its current level of 21%, whereas the full repeal that Harris proposed would make it revert to its pre-TCJA level of 35%.

For his part, Trump has said he would extend the entire TCJA. 

In 2019, Harris proposed a major healthcare reform, joining Bernie Sanders and other progressives in calling for medicare coverage to be extended to everyone regardless of age. Harris’s Medicare For All plan would have been paid for partly by a new tax on financial transactions, including 0.2% from every stock trade.

Whatever specific policies Harris favors, the broad outlines of the choice facing voters are unlikely to change, some analysts noted.

The Democratic side favors more social programs, tax breaks for low and middle-earners and higher taxes for the wealthy, while Republicans have argued for broader tax cuts, including for businesses and the wealthy. The two sides also differ on trade, with Trump having proposed across-the-board tariffs on imports, in contrast with Biden’s policy of narrow tariffs on certain products like Chinese electric cars. 

“We would not expect the Democrats’ fiscal and trade policy agenda to shift meaningfully in the event that Harris is the nominee,” Jan Hatzius, chief economist at Goldman Sachs wrote in a research note.

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The minister of the federal capital territory (FCT), Nyesom Wike, has said that the proposed August 1st nationwide protest is politically motivated.

Speaking with newsmen on Tuesday, July 23, he said: “Let’s tell ourselves the simple truth. If we are playing politics let’s say we are playing politics; if we want to be sincere to ourselves, let’s be sincere to ourselves and help our country.

The country is rotten. You know that the country is rotten, and a government has just come to see what it can do to at least, move it from where we are to a certain level, and you say that miracle must be performed within one year.

You are here now, we are talking about a project that was awarded 13 good years ago, what has happened? Nothing.

Now a government has come to see how it can fix all these things and we are in too much of a hurry demanding that it must be done now. It is not possible. The protest is a political protest.

So, let’s not listen to political protesters and political jobbers who just want to be popular. You know there are some people who believe that if they don’t criticise, they will not be popular.

We are going to elections very soon; these are political gimmicks. Just know that the government is a serious government and working to solve the problem.

We believe that things will turn around, but we should be patient with the government.”

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President Bola Tinubu has appealed to youths in the country to shelve the planned nationwide protest billed for August 1.

Speaking with State House correspondents on Tuesday, July 23, after a meeting with the president, Mohammed Idris, minister of information and national orientation, said Tinubu is working hard to address the grievances of the young people.

According to the minister, “We also discussed the issue of the country generally, and Mr. President has asked me to again inform Nigerians that he listens to them, especially the young people that are trying to protest.

Mr. President listens to them; he takes what they say seriously, and he is working assiduously to ensure that this country is good not just for today but also for the future.

The issue of the planned protest—Mr. President does not see any need for that; he asked them to shelve that plan, and he has asked them to await the government’s response to all their pleas; he has listened to them like I said.“

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Nigerian journalist cum politician, Dele Momodu, has responded to Reno Omokri over the recent interview he granted on TVC.

Reno in his interview stated that he wonders how a Yoruba graduate who runs an ‘Owambe magazine’ can be an expert on the Nigerian economy.

Momodu is a graduate of Yoruba Language and runs a society magazine called Ovation.

Responding to Reno’s statement, Momodu said that he understand what it feels to be on exile.

He stated that he nearly fell into depression while urging Omokri that he was going to be alright.

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