Author: Festus Adeloye

US President Donald Trump says he was “very surprised” and “disappointed” with former ally Elon Musk’s criticisms of his centrepiece budget bill. “Elon and I had a great relationship. I don’t know if we will anymore,” Trump told reporters in the White House on Thursday. It was the president’s most direct criticism yet of Musk’s lobbying efforts against the proposals to cut taxes and slash government spending – a plan that has drawn criticism from the tycoon and some Republicans. In response, Musk doubled down on X and accused the president of “ingratitude”, adding: “Without me, Trump would have lost…

Zia Yusuf has resigned as the chair of Reform UK after suggesting it was “dumb” of the party’s newest MP to ask the prime minister if he would ban the burqa. Yusuf, a donor and businessman, said he was resigning after less than a year in the job because he did not believe working to get a Reform government elected was a good use of his time. His departure is a blow to Nigel Farage as he tries to professionalise his rapidly growing party, with political rivals saying it shows the Reform leader cannot work with other senior figures without…

President Donald Trump has ordered an investigation into his predecessor Joe Biden’s actions during his presidency, accusing aides of a “conspiracy” to “deceive the public about Biden’s mental state”. Trump aimed at the former president’s use of an autopen, a device replicating signatures to authorise documents. Several presidents, including Trump himself, have used autopens. He framed its use as evidence of a broader scheme to disguise Biden’s cognitive state. “This conspiracy marks one of the most dangerous and concerning scandals in American history,” Trump said on Wednesday. Biden, 82, swiftly dismissed the allegations, calling Trump’s claims “ridiculous” and politically motivated.…

The Department of State Services (DSS) has asked the Abuja division of the Federal High Court to restrain a former presidential candidate, Prof. Pat Utomi, from making public comments or engaging in any form of rally, relating to his announced plan to establish a shadow government in the country. The security agency had accused Utomi, candidate of the African Democratic Congress (ADC) in the 2007 presidential election of attempting to illegally usurp the executive powers of President Bola Tinubu. Justice James Omotosho has fixed June 25 to hear the suit marked: FHC/ABJ/CS/937/2025, which has Utomi as the sole defendant. Meanwhile, DSS…

The founder of the Citadel Global Community Church, Pastor Tunde Bakare has explained why he visited President Bola Tinubu. Bakare explained that his conversation with the President focused on national development and the future of Nigeria. He spoke after his courtesy visit to President Tinubu in Lagos, on Wednesday. The visit was revealed in a post by presidential aide, Bayo Onanuga, who shared a photo of the President with the cleric on his X handle. Bakare had, during an address in April at his in Lagos, called on President Tinubu to implement immediate and strategic interventions to steer Nigeria out of…

Prominent legal practitioner and Senior Advocate of Nigeria, Dr. Monday Ubani, has raised the alarm over the growing abuse of Point of Sale (POS) machines in Nigeria, warning that the once-innovative payment system is now being hijacked by criminal syndicates to move illicit funds beyond the reach of security agencies. Ubani, in a statement titled “The Urgent Need to Regulate POS Transactions in Nigeria’s Financial Ecosystem”, called on the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), the National Assembly, and security agencies to urgently take decisive action to stem what he described as a looming national security and judicial crisis. According to…

Suspended Senator Natasha Akpoti-Uduaghan (Kogi West) has raised the alarm that her official telephone line has been cloned and is being fraudulently utilised to intimidate some Nigerian dignitaries. In a petition to the Director of the National Cybercrime Centre, Nigeria Police Force, Abuja, through his lawyers, M. J. Numa and Partners, dated June 4, 2025, Akpoti-Udughan said the “unknown persons are impersonating her personality to make unsolicited calls and deliver messages pretending to have originated from her.” She added that this deployment of advanced cyber tools collectively suggests the existence of “a coordinated attempt to compromise” her identity and possibly…

The Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) has announced an important change on the deduction of charges for Unstructured Supplementary Service Data (USSD) transactions. Starting Tuesday, June 3, 2025, Deposit Money Banks (DMBs) will no longer be allowed to deduct these fees directly from customers’ bank accounts. Instead, the charges will be deducted from users’ mobile airtime balances. United Bank for Africa (UBA) informed its customers of this update through an email on Tuesday. The bank’s statement reads: “In line with the directive of the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC), please be informed that effective June 3, 2025, charges for USSD banking services will no…

Former Rivers Governor Rotimi Amaechi has said the current chairman of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), Mahmood Yakubu, would have been a stumbling block for the All Progressives Congress (APC) in the 2015 elections if he were in charge at the time. Amaechi made the comment while speaking on Arise TV late on Tuesday night, commending former INEC Chairman Prof. Attahiru Jega, for making the electoral process transparent while in office. According to the former Minister of Transportation, Jega’s transparency led to the APC’s registration and eventual victory in 2015. “The current chairman of INEC, if he was the…

As a way of playing down the outrage that trailed the glaring snub of Lagos State Governor, Babajide Sanwo-Olu last week, President Bola Tinubu has invited the governor to accompany him for the commissioning of the Lekki Deep Sea Port Tax Credit Concrete Road on Thursday. TheScrutinyNG exclusively gathered that many leaders of the party were unhappy with the events that played out at the weekend during the commissioning and have been making efforts to intervene. The President last Saturday snubbed Sanwo-Olu at the commissioning of the Lagos-Calabar highway. The commissioning of the first 30-kilometre stretch of the Lagos-Calabar Coastal…