Across Nigeria’s 36 states and the Federal Capital Territory, these are the five top news stories you shouldn’t miss.

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Bayelsa: Varsity students protest against planned ‘school uniform’

Students of the state-owned university in Bayelsa, Niger Delta University, have staged a peaceful protest against plans by the institution’s management to introduce school uniforms for the university students – The Punch reports

According to reports, the students marched around the campus at Amassoma on Monday, 5th June, chanting solidarity songs and demanding the stoppage of the plan. The school management was said to have come up with the plan to curb what it termed indecent dressing, especially among female students on campus.

The protest was continued on Tuesday, 6th June, as students also condemned the closure of the fees’ portal for old students and the continued ban on the activities of the Students’ Union Government, which they said was a deliberate attempt to suppress student unionism.

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Soyinka accuses government of kidnap

Nobel Laureate, Wole Soyinka has accused the Nigerian Government of kidnap in an interview where he talked about the ‘arrest’ of Nnamdi Kanu – Premium Times reports

Mr Soyinka, who condemned the Nigerian government’s action, however, criticised Mr Kanu’s ‘hate rhetoric’ while he was in hiding outside the country.

“For me, was it right to have kidnapped [him]? You can say intercepted as much as you want but for me Kanu was kidnapped and that is wrong internationally and it is wrong morally,” he told the BBC in an interview.

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Presidency defends clampdown of Igboho and Kanu

The Presidency, on Tuesday night, defended the security crackdown on Yoruba agitator Sunday Igboho and the ‘interception’ of Nnamdi Kanu – The Nation reports

“Last week, we saw the enhanced collaboration of the Nigerian law enforcement agencies, as they executed with great synchronisation arrests of individuals who had inflicted pain and hardships on fellow citizens. The subversive leader of the proscribed Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB), a group known for its murderous actions and virulent messaging was detained as a result of cross-border cooperation.
This international operation was executed in a closely coordinated fashion following which he was handed over to our National Intelligence Agency (NIA), and then returned to Nigeria to face the Law.
The violence inspired by IPOB has led to hundreds of fatalities, particularly targeted at government assets and law enforcement agents,” A statement by Senior Special Assistant to the President on Media and Publicity Mallam Garba Shehu, reads in parts.

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Court orders Ganduje to pay N800k to Daily Nigerian publisher

A high court in Kano has ordered Governor Abdullahi Ganduje to pay N800,000 to Ja’afar Ja’afar, publisher of Daily Nigerian, an online newspaper, over a dollar bribery video – The Cable reports

A series of secretly recorded videos in 2018 had shown a figure believed to be Ganduje pocketing wads of dollars allegedly taken as kickbacks. The governor, however, denied the videos, saying they were doctored. He blamed it on mischief makers who were bent on tarnishing his reputation.

He had also gone to the court in the attempt to clear his name while asking the publisher to pay N3 billion in damages.

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Despite crash, crypto surge threatens financial system

A serious crisis may be approaching as an increasing number of Nigerian youths take to the wide-swing cryptocurrency investment, notwithstanding a financial regulatory restriction by the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) – The Guardian reports

In February, The CBN had banned financial institutions from handling transactions relating to decentralised digital currencies otherwise known as cryptocurrencies, numbering over 4,000 in digital circulation.

However, findings by the publication indicate that more youths, leveraging peer-to-peer opportunities, have adopted the relatively new investment window despite the ban. Not even the recent crash that saw Bitcoin, the flagship asset, losing over 50 per cent of its price, has discouraged investors.