Federal Ministry of Works and Housing has shortlisted 18 firms from among 75 bidders seeking to operate and toll 12 economically viable highways on a concession basis. The ministry has also concluded the evaluating proposals for phase one of the Value-Added Concession (VAC) under the Highway Development and Management Initiative (HDMI), revealed a statement from Hakeem Bello, spokesman of the minister of works and housing, Babatunde Fashola, on Monday. The 12 roads of 1,963 kilometres will be managed by technically and financially capable private sector firms/consortia. They are Benin-Asaba, Abuja-Lokoja, Kano-Katsina, Onitsha-Owerri-Aba, Sagamu-Benin and Abuja-Keffi-Akwanga. The rest are Kano-Maiduguri (Kano-Shuarin),…

Ukraine’s foreign minister on Monday urged the U.N. chief to press Russia for an evacuation of the besieged port of Mariupol, calling it something the world body is capable of achieving. Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba told The Associated Press in an interview he was concerned that by visiting Moscow on Tuesday before traveling to Kyiv, U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres could be vulnerable to falling into a Kremlin “trap” in the war. Kuleba said Guterres “should focus primarily on one issue: evacuation of Mariupol. An estimated 100,000 people are trapped in the seaside city while a contingent of Ukrainian fighters hold…

PRESS RELEASE In 2005, a US National Intelligence Council paper “Mapping Sub-Saharan Africa’s Future” floated the idea there could be a military coup in Nigeria. At the time this was hardly an earth-shattering prediction: 2005 was only six years after the return of civilian democratic rule and just over a decade since the Abacha military coup of 1993 – the final of seven coups since independence. However, for the last 29 years – close to a generation – there have been none. Since the return of democracy in 1999 there have been six general elections, four elected presidents, four transfers…

An adviser to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy says the U.S. secretaries of state and defense are meeting with the Ukrainian leader in the highest-level visit to Kyiv by an American delegation since the start of Russia’s invasion. The adviser, Oleksiy Arestovych, said in an interview on Ukrainian TV late Sunday that the talks are going on “right now.” Zelenskyy’s meeting with U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken and U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin comes as Ukraine presses the West for more powerful weapons in its fight against the Russian invasion, which began 60 days ago. ___ Hundreds of Russians and…