Rt. Hon. Elvert Ekom Ayambem has been impeached as the Speaker of the Cross River State House of Assembly.

The Speaker was impeached on Wednesday by 17 members of the house over allegations of misappropriation of funds.

The impeachment motion was moved by Hon. Effiom Ekarika representing Calabar South 1 Constituency and seconded by Hon. Omang Charles Omang representing Bekwarra State Constituency.

Rt Hon Elvert Ayambem was elected Speaker of the 10th Cross River State House of Assembly in June 2023.

Ayambem represents Ikom 2 State Constituency in the Houses of Assembly.

More to follow…

The presidential candidate of the Labour Party (LP) in the 2023 poll, Peter Obi, has criticised the federal government for the spate of killings in Plateau and Benue states.

On Monday, gunmen attacked Zurak village in Wase LGA of the state and reportedly killed more than 40 residents.

Obi described the latest killings as one too many, and asked the federal government to live up to its constitutional responsibility of protecting lives and property.

“One continues to be disheartened by the persistent reports of terrorist attacks across Plateau, Benue, and other parts of the country,” the former Anambra governor wrote on X.

“The recent reports of an attack in Zurak village in Wase LGA of Plateau state which has left about 40 people dead and many others hospitalized remains a very sad one, which must be condemned in strong terms.

“This adds to the growing number of these heinous attacks. These repeated attacks particularly in Plateau have become too many to make any discerning mind worrisome.

“Again, I call on the government to rise to its responsibilities of securing the lives and property of Nigerians with corresponding actions.

“Above all, we must take every necessary measure to drastically reduce insecurity in the nation by investing in the critical areas of human development; education, health, and lifting people out of poverty.”

On April 18, gunmen killed at least 12 people in the Tilengpat community of Pushit district, in Mangu LGA of Plateau.

Before this, gunmen killed at least 10 residents of Mandar Shar and Kopnanle villages under Mangu and Bokkos LGAs.

There have also been persistent gunmen attacks in the north-central state of Benue, exacerbated by an age-long farmer-herder crisis.

An Ekiti State High Court has sentenced 45-year-old Alabi Oluwafemi to 15 years imprisonment for raping an eight-year-old minor in 1999.

According to the charge, Oluwafemi sometime in 1999 at Ikere Ekiti, did rape an eight-year-old girl.

The victim, in his testimony, said: “The defendant was my teacher and our neighbour. He touched my breast each time he came to teach me at home, I did not understand anything about what he was doing until he raped me in our sitting room when my mother travelled to Lagos and left me and my sister at home.

“He removed my cloth and used it to clean the blood and sperm and threw it away, I later ran to our neighbours weeping, they thought I was missing my mother but I did not tell them what happened.

“Thereafter, I dropped out of school because I could no longer concentrate on my studies. I was afraid anytime I saw him in the class. He came across me on Facebook sometime in the year 2012, he sent me a friend request and I declined.

“In the year 2023 again, he started disturbing me, I reported the matter to the law enforcement agents, and I was advised to ignore him. Thereafter, he started sending disturbing and annoying videos and messages to me, referring to the past ugly incident. When I could no longer bear it, I decided to take legal action against him.”

To prove his case, the prosecutor, Kunle-Shina Adeyemi, called two witnesses and tendered a confessional statement of the defendant, a flash drive of the defendant’s conversations with the nominal complainant, a petition and printout from screenshots of chats among others as exhibits.

In his judgment, Justice Lekan Ogunmoye said the sexual intercourse with the victim could not have been consensual. She, as an eight-year-old girl, was a minor and could not consent to sexual intercourse.

This issue is resolved in favour of the prosecution and the defendant is found guilty as charged, Ogunmoye said.