Category Nigeria News

US President Donald Trump said Sunday he was “very angry, pissed off” with Russian leader Vladimir Putin, NBC reported, marking a sharp change of tone as Washington seeks to end the war in Ukraine.

NBC’s Kristen Welker said Trump had called her to express his fury over Putin questioning Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s future as a leader — something that Trump himself has done.

Welker, on her NBC show “Meet The Press” on Sunday, quoted directly from an early-morning telephone conversation with the president.

“If Russia and I are unable to make a deal on stopping the bloodshed in Ukraine, and if I think it was Russia’s fault… I am going to put secondary tariffs on all oil coming out of Russia”, Trump said.

Trump told Welker that he “was very angry, pissed off” over Putin’s recent comments about Zelensky’s credibility and talking about new leadership in Ukraine.

The US president has been pushing for a speedy end to the more than three-year war since taking office, but his administration has failed to reach a breakthrough despite negotiations with both sides.

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Putin rejected a joint US-Ukrainian plan for a 30-day ceasefire, and on Friday suggested Zelensky be removed from office as part of the peace process.

Trump told NBC that Putin knows he is angry, but said that he has “a very good relationship with him” and “the anger dissipates quickly… if he does the right thing”.

– Russia bolstered –

Warming ties between Washington and Moscow since Trump’s return to office and his threats to stop supporting Kyiv have bolstered Russia on the battlefield as it pursues its floundering invasion.

Ukraine has accused Russia of dragging out talks with no intention of halting its offensive, with fresh attacks on the northeastern border city of Kharkiv.

Six strikes hit overnight Saturday into Sunday, wounding personnel undergoing treatment at a military hospital and killing at least two people in a residential building, according to Ukrainian officials.

Russian forces also captured a village just seven kilometers (four miles) from the border of Ukraine’s central Dnipropetrovsk region in their latest advance, Moscow said Sunday.

The Kremlin’s troops have not crossed the boundary of the region since their offensive began in 2022, but they have been grinding towards it for months in the hope of a breakthrough.

– No ceasefire –

Putin, in power for 25 years and repeatedly elected in votes with no competition, has often questioned Zelensky’s “legitimacy” as president, after the Ukrainian leader’s initial five-year mandate ended in May 2024.

Under Ukrainian law, elections are suspended during times of major military conflict, and Zelensky’s domestic opponents have all said no ballots should be held until after the conflict.

Trump has himself had rocky relations with Zelensky, calling him a “dictator” and clashing with him live on camera at the White House last month.

Zelensky, in his evening address on Saturday, sought to rally his country’s allies against Putin.

“For too long now, America’s proposal for an unconditional ceasefire has been on the table without an adequate response from Russia”, Zelensky said.

“There could already be a ceasefire if there was real pressure on Russia”, he added, thanking those countries “who understand this” and have stepped up sanctions pressure on the Kremlin.

Both Moscow and Kyiv agreed to the concept of a Black Sea truce following talks with US officials earlier this week, but Russia said the deal would not enter into force until Ukraine’s allies lifted certain sanctions.

Explaining the secondary tariffs threat, Trump told NBC it would make it such that “if you buy oil from Russia, you can’t do business in the United States”.

“There will be a 25 percent tariff on all oil, a 25 to 50 point tariff on all oil”, he said, without giving further details.

The beautiful and classy Olori Ivie Atuwatse III is one of the young and upwardly mobile queens in Nigeria championing the frontiers of women empowerment and girl-child education. She is married to one of the most influential traditional rulers in the country, the 21st Olu of Warri, Ogiame Atuwatse III. In this interview on Channels Television’s The Morning Brief programme, the distinguished queen said women, as natural nurturers, have proven their mettle in banking and can replicate the same success in politics if supported.

&nbsp, Enjoy the excerpts…

I know you are super passionate about girl-child education. Why are you very passionate about girl-child education?

The girl-child or women in general are my first constituents. You can’t have a passion for anything if you don’t share their story. I know that women empowerment and girl-child education are smart things to do. Girls will eventually become women and we know that women empowerment is not just the right and just thing to do but the smart thing to do because when you empower a woman, you empower a community. So, as a development advocate, I’m very passionate about girl-child education.

What are the barriers you see and what do you think the action has to be to break it as quickly as possible?

There are a lot of barriers to the female gender, from things like lack of quality education to period poverty, especially for the girl-child in our communities in the Warri Kingdom, to social expectations. From where most of the girl children come from, poverty is already a barrier but on top of that are social norms with girls more likely to be told to stay at home with their mothers and go to the market as opposed to going to school.

There’s also a huge barrier with early teenage pregnancy, as an advocate, I’m looking for how we can prevent that but also to encourage women or girls in our area to go back to school or to learn skills that would better them. So, I mean the barriers are quite enormous. What I’ve seen in the first line of engagement with women and girls in our community are some of these barriers, social norms out of school, education, period poverty and teenage pregnancies.

Let’s talk about the social and corporate elements. We’ve seen some success in the corporate spaces when you look at banking but in politics, the highest height a woman has ever attained is a Speaker of the House of Representatives. We know how she was kicked out eventually, but after that, it hasn’t been any form of a success story. We have never had a female governor elected. So, what are we missing out on not giving women at that level a seat on the table?

I know that naturally, the approach for women in leadership, or the approach to female leadership as I like to call it is very different. Women are natural nurturers and interestingly enough, I like to say there’s something that they say that women are emotional and emotions are seen as a bad thing especially when it comes to leadership. But truly I think women have the ability when not just be emotional but we can be emotionally intelligent, emotions are not a bad thing when you have the intelligence to understand what they’re saying and move in that direction.

I think women as natural nurturers have a different style of leadership which is necessary in the political leadership space, the economic leadership space, and corporate leadership space. By naturally being women, we’re able to have a better understanding of the broader scope of being multifaceted. In that aspect, by our failure to engage women leaders, we’re missing out on our ability to build better. We’ve seen it across the corporate status mostly when banks want to build up, they bring in women into their positions of leadership so that they can actually build. Women are natural builders, nurturers and so I think we’re missing that.

Economically, I know that the International Monetary Fund (IMF) says that Nigeria alone will increase her GDP by 133% if we’re able to close that gender gap. So, it’s a smart thing to do. We have to ensure that women in leadership are put in elected positions of power. I say this to anyone who cares to listen: it’s not just about us electing the women, the women have to come up, and women have to allow each other to push this agenda. Women must also push the agenda of getting more women in these positions of political power.

We know your husband as a man of steeze. We saw him on the scooter in a viral video. He’s very stylish, he’s very modern and upwardly mobile in his outlook but tell us, despite all of these, how easy or difficult if you will has it been being the wife of a king?

We have a great relationship, I always say that he’s first my husband before he’s my king and so we deal very intimately with each other. We’re friends and we’re partners, so I don’t know if I can say that it’s been hard. It’s not been hard thankfully, we’ve been able to navigate quite easily because our communication is brilliant, we’ve been able to navigate the complexities of the throne and this new position, thankfully. I think just communication and love and intimacy.

That’s beautiful to hear, I know a lot of people would also love to see you maybe on a scooter or something similar.

I have no balance, so I can’t help you there, I can’t even ride a bicycle.

So, to girls out there who probably see you every day and they’re like: ‘ Can I be like her? ‘ What would want to tell them?

I think that would be: ‘ Don’t be afraid to own your space, to own your voice. ‘ It’s still very humbling and I say it with all humility, it’s still very humbling to think or to even be perceived as somebody to look up to, a role model and I take it with a huge responsibility. I don’t take it lightly to know that in the space that I’m in, there are people and young girls who are looking up to me, I don’t take that very lightly but if there’s one thing that I have to say to them, it would be to not be afraid to own who they are. I think as girls, as women, especially very early on, we unfortunately or fortunately have people write our scripts for us.

Donald Trump on Sunday repeated his suggestion that he might seek a third term as US president, NBC News reported, which would defy the two-term limit stipulated in the US constitution.

In a Sunday-morning phone call with NBC News, Trump said “I’m not joking”, when asked to clarify a remark on seeking another term, adding: “There are methods which you could do it”.

The 78-year-old billionaire has a history of suggesting he might serve more than two terms, but Sunday’s remarks were the most concrete in terms of referring to plans to achieve the goal.

Trump has launched his second presidency with an unprecedented blitz of executive power, using the world’s richest man, Elon Musk, to dismantle swaths of the government, and said his supporters want even more.

“A lot of people want me to do it”, Trump told NBC News on Sunday. “But, I mean, I basically tell them we have a long way to go, you know, it’s very early in the administration”.

Amending the US constitution to allow a third presidential term would require a two-thirds majority in both the House and Senate, which Trump’s Republican Party does not have.

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Trump said it was “far too early to think about it”, but told NBC he had been presented with plans that would allow him to seek reelection.

When NBC asked Trump of a possible scenario whereby Vice President JD Vance would run for president and then abdicate the role to Trump, the US president said “that’s one” method.

He added that “there are others”, but refused to share further details.

If Trump does not approach Congress for the constitutional amendment, he would need to get support from two-thirds of the country’s 50 states to call a constitutional convention that would propose changes to the charter.

Whether he goes through Congress or the states, he would then require ratification from three-quarters of all states.

Both routes appear to be unlikely, given the current number of states and Congressional seats under Republican control.

A constitutional convention has never been successfully called in the United States, where all 27 constitutional amendments have been passed by the congressional method.

In January, days after Trump took office, Republican Andy Ogles of Tennessee introduced a House joint resolution to amend the constitution to allow presidents up to three terms.

A Nigerian boxer, Segun ‘ Success ‘ Olanrewaju, on Saturday, died in Ghana during a boxing bout.

Olarenwaju was a former National and West African light-heavyweight champion.

He was competing against Ghanaian boxer, Jon Mbanugu, at Fight Night 15 of the Ghana Professional Boxing League at Bukom Boxing Arena when he suddenly lost consciousness.

Reports indicate that he was ahead on points before the unfortunate incident occurred.

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A widely circulated video on social media captures the moment he collapsed in the ring, further shocking fans and the boxing community.

Olanrewaju, a highly respected figure in Nigerian boxing, held both National and West African light-heavyweight titles during his career.