•  Russia helps junta to retake military base – Report

Niger Republic’s ruling junta on Saturday said that it “gradually took back control” after mutinying soldiers attacked key sites around the capital including the presidential palace, after the city was rocked by hours of heavy gunfire.

Reports claimed the members of Niger’s presidential guard, helped by Russian forces, recaptured a key military base in the capital, Niamey, from the mutinous soldiers.

“The presidential guard has retaken control of the air base with the help of the Russians,” a diplomatic source told AFP.

The source added that several of the rebelling soldiers had been killed.

As the clashes broke out, soldiers blocked access to the presidential palace and national television, with Tele Sahel going off air for just over an hour yesterday morning before being restored around 10:00 am (0900 GMT).

“There was an attempt by insurgents from the Nigerien armed forces to enter the presidential palace,” a security source told AFP, adding that “they were pushed back by the presidential guard”.

Niger’s Defence Minister, General Salifou Mody, in a statement read on state television, said a group of soldiers held some troops hostage at a barracks in Niamey and opened fire at “certain sensitive sites” in the city, without naming them.

“The prompt reaction of the defence and security forces made it possible to contain this heated moment and they gradually took back control of these sites,” he added.

Mody’s statement called on the people to “remain calm and freely go about their business”.

Niger has been ruled for three years by a military junta that has struggled to contain jihadist violence flaring in the West African country for around a decade.
An African diplomat in Niamey said for now the presidential guard was still loyal to ruler General Abdourahamane Tiani.

“Everything is calm again, we can’t hear any more shooting,” a resident of the Yantala district close to the presidential palace said late Saturday morning.
Gunfire began in the early hours of Saturday morning, prompting the military to issue a statement on its social media pages urging people to stay calm and “avoid sharing unverified information”.
“Our defence and security forces have been mobilised for the defence of the homeland,” the statement said.

One local resident told AFP that there was “heavy gunfire and explosions” at Base 101 in Niamey, a claim confirmed by several other witnesses.

The first shots were heard at about 1:00 am local time and continued until daybreak, according to a video published by a local journalist filming the area around the airport.

Another local resident said he heard “bursts of gunfire” at about 7:00 am local time, adding that the weapons heard” are not the kind that terrorists on motorbikes can carry”.

“I went to get credit for my phone. I saw a military vehicle heading towards the base that had to turn back,” he said.

Another resident west of Niamey said he heard sporadic small arms fire at about 5:00 am.
Videos online showed armoured vehicles deployed to reinforce the neighbourhood near the airport.

Niamey airport has been targeted twice this year by jihadists, first by the Islamic State in the Sahel (EIS) in January, then in late June by its rival, the Group for the Support of Islam and Muslims (JNIM), the Sahel branch of Al-Qaeda.

The jihadist groups not only target civilians and the military but are also struggling for dominance over each other in the Sahel, and especially in Niger.

Twenty assailants were killed and four soldiers wounded in the January assault, authorities said at the time.

Following years of foot-dragging on a FOI petition filed by Mr Greenspan in 2023, the FBI on Friday complied with a court order directing it to release Mr Tinubu’s records.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation has hand delivered records of President Bola Tinubu’s 1993 drug-trafficking and money-laundering case to Judge Howell Beryl of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, saying they are for her eyes only, court filings seen by Peoples Gazette indicated.

The FBI secretly submitted the records on Friday to avoid disobeying a court order while sidelining transparency campaigner, Aaron Greenspan, who petitioned the Bureau for the Nigerian leader’s records in a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit.

Following years of foot-dragging on a FOI petition filed by Mr Greenspan in 2023, the FBI on Friday complied with a court order directing it to release Mr Tinubu’s records. Mr Greenspan worked with Nigerian journalist, David Hundeyin, to file the petition in 2023.

The records submitted as “under seal, ex parte, in camera declarations were hand delivered to the Court on August 28, 2026 in compliance with this Court’s Minute Order dated August 20, 2026,” filings showed.

Ms Beryl lost her patience with the FBI after the bureau missed several deadlines , giving excuses on why it could not immediately provide the records.

She issued August 28 as the final ultimatum to the FBI, which prompted the FBI’s decision to comply, showing it “in camera” to the judge alone, without carrying along the petitioner.

Earlier this week , FBI claimed that submitting the records would violate Mr Tinubu’s privacy and argued that FOI was established to screen the operations and records of government institutions, not necessarily private individuals.

For decades, Mr Tinubu has avoided speaking on the drug affair, refusing to clarify controversies surrounding his involvement in a case that saw him forfeit hundreds of thousands of dollars to the U.S. government.

Mr Tinubu also sought to block the release of his records, asserting his rivals only sought to use them to discredit him in a Nigerian presidential election. He begged the court to protect his privacy rights.

The United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois in 2023 released documents holding Mr Tinubu’s encounter with American authorities over allegations of narcotics trafficking and money laundering.

By Tony Edike

A life stitched together with music, courage, generosity and the enduring lesson that love is worth more than wealth

Dolly Parton came from a place where there was not much money, but there was music, faith, family and love.

She left that place and became one of the most recognisable women in the world.

Yet, somehow, she never truly left it behind.

Dolly Parton, the country music legend, songwriter, actor, entrepreneur and philanthropist, died on 25 August 2026 at the age of 80 after a brief battle with cancer. Her death brought an outpouring of grief from admirers, fellow artists and generations of people whose lives had been touched by her music and generosity.

But perhaps the best way to understand Dolly was not through the rhinestones, the fame, the awards or the fortune.

Perhaps it was through a coat.

A simple coat made by her mother.

In “Coat of Many Colors,” Dolly transformed a childhood memory into one of the most enduring lessons in popular music. Her mother, unable to afford an expensive coat, stitched together scraps of fabric to make one for her daughter. At school, the little girl was mocked because of what she wore.

Dolly Parton wearing her Coat of Many Colours

But Dolly did not remember that coat as a symbol of shame.

She remembered it as a symbol of love.

Her mother had made it for her.

And that distinction says almost everything about Dolly Parton.

The world saw rags.

Dolly saw love.

The world saw poverty.

Dolly saw the richness of having a mother who cared enough to make something with her own hands.

The world saw something to laugh at.

Dolly found a story worth singing.

That was her extraordinary gift: the ability to take the ordinary, the painful and the humble and turn it into something beautiful.

The lesson in the coat

There is a lesson in that song that reaches far beyond country music.

It tells us not to measure people by what they wear, what they own, where they come from or how much money they have.

It teaches us that humiliation does not have to become defeat.

Dolly Parton

It teaches us that our beginnings do not have to determine our destination.

And, perhaps most importantly, it teaches us to recognise the value of the people who loved us when we had nothing to offer them.

Dolly never appeared ashamed of her humble beginnings. Instead, she carried them with her.

She remembered the mountains of Tennessee. She remembered her family. She remembered poverty. She remembered her mother’s hands.

And she turned those memories into songs that travelled around the world.

That is why her success was never simply about becoming famous.

It was about becoming something bigger than fame.

From the mountains to the world

Born into a large, poor family in rural Tennessee, Dolly Parton rose from circumstances that could easily have limited her ambitions. Instead, she became a prolific songwriter whose catalogue stretched into the thousands, a country music pioneer whose songs crossed genre and national boundaries, an actor whose performances became part of popular culture, and a formidable businesswoman.

Songs such as “Jolene,” “9 to 5” and “I Will Always Love You” became cultural landmarks.

But numbers alone cannot explain Dolly Parton’s impact.

She did something more difficult.

She made people feel understood.

She could sing about heartbreak without bitterness, ambition without arrogance and poverty without shame.

She could make millions laugh while reminding them of the struggles that millions quietly endure.

And beneath the wigs, sequins, humour and larger-than-life personality was a woman who understood the dignity of ordinary people.

She gave her success away

Dolly Parton’s generosity was not an accessory to her fame. It was part of her identity.

Dolly …gave her success away

Through the Dollywood Foundation and its Imagination Library, she helped put books into the hands of children around the world. The programme has distributed more than 300 million books, reflecting her lifelong belief in the transforming power of reading and education.

She also supported healthcare, education, disaster relief and medical research, including a $1 million donation toward COVID-19 vaccine research.

In that sense, the little girl in the coat of many colors never disappeared.

She simply grew up and acquired the means to make sure that other children had opportunities she had once lacked.

Dolly knew what it meant to have little.

And when she had much, she remembered.

That may be one of the greatest measures of a person’s character.

A legacy beyond music

Dolly Parton’s death leaves a remarkable space in American culture and in the wider world.

She was a country star, but she belonged to more than country music.

She was an actor, but her influence reached beyond film.

She was a businesswoman, but her greatest enterprise may have been the lives she changed.

She was a philanthropist, but she never seemed to regard generosity as a performance.

She was Dolly.

Funny. Glamorous. Sharp. Warm. Ambitious. Unapologetically herself.

And, beneath it all, deeply connected to the people and places that made her.

Her passing is therefore not simply the death of a celebrity.

It is the end of a remarkable human story.

A story that began in poverty and travelled through music to the whole world.

A story about a woman who refused to be defined by what she did not have.

A story about someone who understood that success is most meaningful when it becomes an opportunity to lift others.

The coat remains

In the end, perhaps Dolly Parton’s most important message was never complicated.

Love your people.

Remember where you came from.

Do not be ashamed of humble beginnings.

Do not measure human worth by possessions.

And when life gives you the opportunity to help someone else, do it.

The coat her mother made from scraps could easily have been remembered as an emblem of poverty.

Instead, Dolly turned it into an emblem of love.

She took something the world might have considered worthless and made it priceless.

Perhaps that is what she did with her entire life.

She took humble beginnings and made them beautiful.

She took pain and made music.

She took success and turned it into service.

She took her story and gave it to the world.

Dolly Parton has left the stage, but the music remains.

The books remain.

The kindness remains.

The lessons remain.

And somewhere, in the hearts of millions who heard her sing about a little girl wearing a coat her mother made for her, the colours remain bright.

A coat of many colors.

A life stitched together with love.

A legacy that will not wear out.

May God grant the soul of Dolly Parton eternal peace.

•  Edike is Publisher/CEO, The Advocate Newspaper Nigeria