• Nigerian Professor, Tijjani Mohammad Bande, has been appointed as the new President of the United Nations General Assembly(UNGA). 

• He is the second Nigerian to be appointed to this post, prior being Mr. Joseph Nanven Garba(1989-1990). Prof. Tijjani Bande will succeed María Fernanda Espinosa Garcés.

• Prof. Tijjani Bande was born at Zagga (Present-Kebbi State) and he was the permanent representative of Nigeria to the UN.

• He is a graduate in Political Science from Ahmadu Bello University, Nigeria and holds MA (Political Science) from Boston University, USA  as well as Ph.D (Political Science) from the University of Toronto, Canada.

• He served the Le Centre Africain de Formation et de Recherche Administratives pour le Dèveloppement (CAFRAD) as the Director-General from January 2000 to February 2004.

• Between 2004 and 2009, he was the Vice-Chancellor Usman Danfodiyo University, Sokoto. He has also served as the Director-General of the National Institute for Policy and Strategic Studies in Nigeria from 2010 to 2016.

• He is the recipient of Nigeria’s Officer of the Order of the Federal Republic (OFR), one of Nigeria’s highest national honours. Along with this, he has also won merit awards from various institutions and Governments, including US and China.

 

 

• France has released Belhassen Trabelsi, brother-in-law of ousted Tunisian president Zine El-Abidine Ben Ali, on bail while it mulls a extradition request from Tunisia.

• Lawyers Xavier Nogueras and Marcel Ceccaldi said in Marseille that they had obtained Trabelsi’s conditional release owing to procedural problems, confirming news initially announced by the Tunisian justice ministry.

• Trabelsi who faced charges of organised money laundering and has paid 100,000 euros in bail, must remain in France and report regularly to a local police station.

• Trabelsi, 56, who faced charges of organised money laundering and has paid 100,000 euros in bail, must remain in France and report regularly to a local police station.

• It was the second time that an appeals court in Aix-en-Provence, southeastern France, had ordered his release from a jail in Marseille. The first time was on March 28, but before Trabelsi walked free, the Aix-en-Provence prosecutor arrested him again based on a February 2017 warrant issued by a Tunisian magistrate.

• Tunisia`s extradition request refers to a series of convictions in absentia and three 10-year sentences handed down between February 2017 and June 2018 for financial crimes.

• The millionaire businessman and brother of Ben Ali`s wife Leila Trabelsi left Tunisia in January 2011 when the Arab Spring uprising forced the veteran leader to flee to Saudi Arabia.

• Trabelsi and his family flew in a private jet to Montreal to seek Canadian political asylum, a request that was denied twice. He disappeared in June 2016 just days before he was to be expelled from Canada, and was arrested in southern France in March 2019.