Showing posts with label Nigeria. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Nigeria. Show all posts

Thursday, June 2, 2016

Vote CYPRIAN AMGBAH National President FEDGOKOSA

Hello K96 My name is Cyprian Amgbah,i am an old boy of the great FGC kwali Abuja, Pro Unitate.

It is my desire to contest for the position of  National President,FEDGOKOSA.In the coming weeks before the AGM i will unveil my plans but before then please take out time and digest my brief manifesto.

I invite you to join me let's take KWALI to greater heights and leave our mark in the sands of time.

MY MANIFESTO;-

During my tenure as the PRESIDENT of our alumni group, I aim to achieve the
following;-

1. Bridge the gap between the older sets and younger sets, to create a forum
where we can all work together and be able to access data base - so complete
list of all students and obtain their contact details from school and social
sites
2. Bridge the link between Nigeria and diaspora members, to enable better
engagement and functions as one body.
3. A National website that can identify members, their occupation, the
services they can provide and links for business interests, that will
further involve members reunions in whatever country they find themselves
leading to more effective contacts.
4. Bridge the link between chapters to enable chapters function together as
a body and involve each other in their programmes.
5. To consider the formation of new chapters in different locations within
and outside Nigeria
6. To align SETS and CHAPTER goals with national objectives presenting them
under one body
7. To contribute and support more school projects to FGC Kwali Abuja,
including involvement in major programmes that will support education (prize
giving ceremony, library, computer training), sports (rebuilding sports
complex) and personal developments (career talk and relocation aspects
beyond Nigeria).
8. To organise more CHOP CHOP parties for networking purposes through non
official gatherings
Thank you

Monday, March 28, 2016

Is Lagos the Most Dangerous Party City on the Planet?

03
it was midnight on Saturday and the club was heating up. Some men were decked out in black tie, others in Ankara print caftans and matching fezzes. They leaned on the bar in double-breasted sports coats and Windsor knots, and glided across the dance floor in high-dollar sneakers, draped in silver and gold chains, eyeballing women of all shapes and shades who dazzled in designer gowns, slinky dresses, short shorts or miniskirts, by turns accentuating or revealing ample curves, long legs or an elegant neckline.
It was my second night in Lagos, Nigeria, and once more I was in a room of clinking glasses and rumbling bass, a room filled with Nigeria’s upper crust bouncing to indigenous Afro-pop. Everything was washed in hot pink. Beams from a bank of rotating lights glinted off gaslight chandeliers and mirrored ornaments behind the bar. Bottles of Dom Pérignon set in buckets of dry ice left vapor trails as they streamed from the bar in the arms of statuesque African beauties conveying them to booths manned by oil or telecom executives, real estate developers, entrepreneurs and their guests.
Many of them, still in their 20s and 30s, were already millionaires, and all of them were hustlers. This was Lagos (pronounced “lay-gos”) after all, and one conceit is that everybody here has three hustles: An oil mogul may also own a restaurant while bankrolling a recording session with an up-and-coming MC. On the street level it’s no different. In this export-dependent, corrupt, dangerous city, whether you’re living high or low, one job never feels like enough.

Friday, August 28, 2015

United Nations Eminent Peace Ambassador, Clubstar Signs For Peace | 2015 Kogi & Bayelsa State Elections

As Nigeria goes to the supplementary poll in Bayelsa state and kogi state,card readers, security issues have dominated the polity, with fears that the elections might not be peaceful in several local governments, towns and villages in the concern states. United Nations Eminent Peace Ambassador, Clubstar who recently joined forces with “The forest dame initiative” an NGO based in Abuja, Lambada Entertainment, Chaperon Group, (Muyiwa Olobayo CEO)  La Luz Entertainment  to promote the message of peace during and after the elections and to promote their anticipated single #Jabele+CLUBSTAR nig  FT +KEFCHILD OLUWA  produced by +Chinwuba Igbokwe . 

Monday, June 30, 2014

Koscielny wary of Nigeria threat (Yobo: I believe in this team)


Koscielny wary of Nigeria threat
Yobo: I believe in this team


While Didier Deschamps's France side garnered plaudits by sweeping past Honduras 3-0 and crushing Switzerland 5-2, a more cautious tone has been heard as they prepare for Monday's FIFA World Cup Round of 16 tie against Nigeria.  A much-changed team could only draw 0-0 in their final Group E fixture against Ecuador on Wednesday. Both Bacary Sagna and Morgan Schneiderlin suggested that France were potential champions after the stalemate at the Maracana, but centre-back Laurent Koscielny has since introduced a note of caution as Les Bleus prepare for Monday's game in Brasilia.It is only seven months since France had to overcome a 2-0 deficit to beat Ukraine in their qualifying play-off and the Arsenal defender says that it would be unwise to look too far ahead. "The first objective was to get through the group phase. Now it's to go as far as possible," he said."We are competitors and we are ambitious, but we know that we have opponents against us and that we might lose. We're aware of our qualities. Something changed after the Ukraine game, but anything is possible in a knockout match and for the moment we're only focusing on the last 16."Koscielny could line up in central defence alongside Raphael Varane at the Mane Garrincha National Stadium as Mamadou Sakho is doubtful due to a thigh injury. The Liverpool centre-back had to go off in the 61st minute of Wednesday's game and trained on his own on Saturday.Yohan Cabaye will come into the team in place of Schneiderlin after missing the Ecuador game due to suspension, but Paul Pogba's place is under threat from Moussa Sissoko.   After a laborious 0-0 draw with Iran in their opening game, Stephen Keshi's Nigeria side booked their place in the last 16 by edging Bosnia-Hercegovina 1-0 and then impressed in a 3-2 loss to Argentina. CSKA Moscow winger Ahmed Musa twice produced immediate replies to goals from Lionel Messi, only for Argentina left-back Marcos Rojo to net a 50th-minute winner.
"We need to defend well, take our chances up front and learn from the Argentina game," Musa said. "In the second round, it's winner takes all. I know with hard work and God's support we shall make history. But prayers without hard work is nothing, so we need to be at our best against France to make it happen."
Chelsea forward Victor Moses missed the Argentina game due to a muscular complaint, but he trained with the squad in Brasilia on Saturday. Winger Michael Babatunde is out after his wrist was fractured by a shot from team-mate Ogenyi Onazi during the match against Argentina, but Keshi has an otherwise fully fit squad to choose from. For Joseph Yobo, the pre-match ritual is as much a part of the game as the half-time team talk. In his 16 years as a professional, the Nigeria defender has always readied himself for action the same way, slipping on his shirt and then singing and praying before stepping on to the pitch. It is a routine he has gone through innumerable times – but on precisely 100 occasions for the Super Eagles. A sterling servant for his country, Yobo had the honour of bringing up his century of caps against Argentina in Nigeria's final Group F game at Brazil 2014.Although his side slipped to a 3-2 loss in that match, the 33-year-old came away with almost entirely positive memories. After all, not only did he hit a significant personal milestone, Bosnia and Herzegovina's 3-1 victory against Iran ensured that Nigeria tied down a berth in the Round of 16. "Qualifying for the knockout phase was our first objective," the Super Eagles' captain told FIFA.com. "We're very happy because that hadn't happened to us since 1998. This time, we did it with pride, by finishing second and trying to win first place against Argentina."

'I'm proud of our team'They gave the South Americans a genuine scare too, though Yobo feels they could have done even more. "We're disappointed because we didn't play that game to win it from the very first minute," explained the Fenerbahce stopper, who spent the last six months on loan at Norwich City. "We thought a draw would be a good result, but in the second half we came out even stronger to try and win the match. That's what we should have done from the very first minute."
Lionel Messi's early strike showed up the flaw in their conservative game plan, but Yobo took plenty of encouragement from how the match subsequently played out. "I'm proud of our team and our reaction after we fell behind," he said. "We're happy to have qualified but disappointed not to have got a better result."

That in itself says much about the ambition in the Nigeria ranks, given that La Albicelesteboast a pair of World Cup titles and were able to bring a four-time FIFA Ballon d'Or winner to the party. "They're one of the best teams in the world and it was a huge test for us," added the former Everton stalwart, who hardly needed a second to think before naming the greatest forward he has faced in his long career. "Oh Messi – he's the best by far. I'd already played against him in 2010 and he caused us problems then, but we managed to stop him scoring. He's a really special player. You only have to look at how he made us suffer today."

In truth, the Barcelona star was the one real difference between the teams in Porto Alegre, where Stephen Keshi's men proved that they have made tangible progress since their campaign got under way. "Lots of people said that we started off too timidly against Iran (0-0), but they were a solid team and we've improved since our first game," said Yobo. "Our third match was probably our best since the tournament began, even if it ended in defeat."

Forward momentum
With 100 caps under his belt, the veteran is now able to adopt a more detached perspective on Nigeria's results, looking beyond the outcome for a more nuanced take on the performance. Even so, a study of their scorelines suggests that the Super Eagles have been resurgent since 2001. "I've played in this side for many years, so I've been able to see it evolve," Yobo noted, having previously graced the World Cup stage at Korea/Japan 2002. "We won the Africa Cup of Nations, booked our place in the World Cup without any trouble and now we've qualified for the second round. It's not often that I've experienced so many pieces of good news in a row. That shows you we're improving. This team is young, but it's growing fast and learning quickly. We're taking confidence from our campaign so that it can help us in our next match."   

That takes the African champions to Brasilia for a meeting with France, where Yobo spent the 2001/02 season during a brief spell at Marseille. Like Argentina, Les Bleus are sure to provide another probing examination, particularly with Karim Benzema in such keen form. "We've just played against the best forward in the world, so we're ready to measure ourselves against anybody," said Yobo, before adding with a grin: "I don't see what we should be afraid of. I believe in this team, and I think we can do it."

Yobo will collect his 101st cap in that encounter, and understandably he hopes to go through his pre-match ritual a few more times yet on Brazilian soil. "If we don't win the next game, there won't be a 102nd cap and so on. But what if I can make it to 104 in Brazil?"


Thursday, June 26, 2014

Nigeria through despite Messi-inspired defeat (Nigeria-Argentina: A rivalry that keeps on running)


Argentina secured top spot in Group F and preserved their unblemished record at Brazil 2014 with a 3-2 win over Nigeria illuminated by braces for Lionel Messi and Ahmed Musa. Alejandro Sabella's side will be joined in the Round of 16 by the Super Eagles, who contributed greatly to this enthralling match and progress due to Iran's defeat to already-eliminated Bosnia and Herzegovina.
Even in a World Cup packed full of thrilling games, this was one of the best yet, and the tone was set as early as the third minute. That was when Messi opened the scoring in some style, crashing a first-time shot into the roof of the net from 12 yards after Vincent Enyeama had tipped Angel Di Maria's initial effort on to the post.
Nigeria, though, weren't content to allow Argentina's captain to again hog the headlines, and they drew level with the next attack of the game. The impressive Ahmed Musa was the player responsible, exploiting a one-on-one with Pablo Zabaleta to cut inside from the left and curl an inch-perfect right-foot shot just inside the far post.
It was a terrific goal from a player who would continue to cause problems, although it was Argentina who carved out the better of the game's opportunities.
Di Maria was again prominent, and on 25 minutes he measured an inviting low pass across goal that Messi - sliding in - missed out on converting by a matter of inches. Soon after, the Real Madrid winger went directly for goal, unleashing a 35-yard drive that was flying into the bottom corner until Enyeama got across to tip it wide.
It wasn't long, though, before Messi again took centre stage. A minute into first-half injury time, and having forced a brilliant save from the keeper with an earlier free-kick, he re-established La Albiceleste's lead from an almost-identical position. This time, there was no chance for Enyeama, with the Barcelona star curling a left-foot shot from 25 yards that cleared the wall and dropped just inside the right-hand post.
But once again, Nigeria wasted little time in responding to Messi's brilliance. Just a couple of minutes into the second half, Musa emulated the Argentina skipper by completing a double of his own, racing through and wrong-footing Sergio Romero with a low shot into the bottom-left corner.
Argentina would not be a denied a third straight win, though, and they secured the points just three minutes later. It was the scrappiest of all five goals, with Marcos Rojo bundling a corner home with his knee, but that didn't matter to the Albiceleste fans or to the scorer, who had never before found the target for his national team








Since coming face-to-face at the 1994 FIFA World Cup USA™, Argentina and Nigeria have played each other time and again in major tournaments, crossing swords with such frequency that meetings between the two sides are almost to be expected now.
“It’s become a classic rivalry because we always, always, always play them,” joked Super Eagles coach Stephen Keshi following last December’s draw for Brazil 2014. A look at the record books shows that he's not far wrong.
Their back catalogue features two finals in the Olympic Games – in 1996 and 2008 – three FIFA World Cup clashes and the final of the FIFA U-20 World Cup in 2005. Along the way the two sides have treated the world to some unforgettable moments, which FIFA.com has decided to relive as an appetiser for their latest coming together in Porto Alegre on Wednesday.
The highlights include Diego Maradona’s last FIFA World Cup appearance, a dazzling display by a fresh-faced Lionel Messi in the final at Netherlands 2005, Gabriel Batistuta’s goal against the Super Eagles at Korea/Japan 2002, and their most recent duel, at South Africa 2010.






Saturday, June 21, 2014

Emenike: The pressure has to be there


Emenike: The pressure has to be there
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“You can't hide from pressure. Football is a game of pressure. Everyone expects big things from you.”
The broad shoulders of Emmanuel Emenike look capable of withstanding their fair share of expectations, but after Nigeria's opening 0-0 draw with Iran – where the reigning African champions largely failed to ignite – he accepts there will be even more than usual when they face Group F rivals Bosnia and Herzegovina.
As a result the team have come in for some criticism from the football-loving streets of Abudja, Lagos and across the rest of their West African homeland on the other side of the Atlantic, but the burly Fenerbahçe striker feels they must take it in their stride. “When things don't go well, everyone speaks, everyone talks the way they like,” he told FIFA.
“But what can you do? You just have to carry on working hard, that's all you can do. The pressure has to be there. The match didn't go the way we wanted, we just have to carry on and win the Bosnia and Herzegovina game and see what happens. The game against Iran was disappointing.”
The passion for the Super Eagles is huge amongst the 170 million people in the continent's most populous country, and when Stephen Keshi's side step out into the Arena Pantanal at 11pm African time, Emenike expects day-to-day life will be put on the back burner. “Nigeria is a football-loving country and even for U17 or U20 matches everyone locks up their shops,” the joint top-scorer at last year's CAF Africa Cup of Nations explained. “Even the people on the street go in to watch Nigeria play, so we always want to try our best to make the country happy, because everyone always wants to watch Nigeria play and always wants us to do well.”
I always try to prove myself and to be there, to play for Nigeria because I play for the badge.
Emmanuel Emenike, Nigeria striker
While they dominated possession and managed more shots on goal than their Asian counterparts, they were frustrated in a game that – in terms of respective FIFA/Coca-Cola World Ranking positions – offered the greatest chance at exiting the field with maximum points in hand. As a result, Emenike concedes that spirits were hit in Curitiba, but their vigour has returned ahead of the clash with the FIFA World Cup™ first-timers.
“The unity is still there,” the 27-year-old said. “I think the first few seconds after the Iran game, the spirit in the changing room was a little bit low, but now, seeing it yesterday and today, even in training, everyone is fighting.”
This, he feels, is a factor helped by some of veteran figures in the side. Joseph Yobo and Vincent Enyeama are both within a few caps of reaching their centuries, and the perspectives of the seasoned professionals within the dressing rooms have made the difference, Emenike feels. “They always speak to us and try to advise us, especially Yobo as the captain.”
These choice words are what has given them a steely focus heading into this crucial game that will decide whether qualification for the Round of 16 remains in their hands. “[Yobo] is always trying to speak to the players, [letting us know the Iran result] was not the end of the world. Because we could go out there and beat Bosnia and still go through.”
And as those fans back home watch on, willing their boys in green to victory, Emenike proudly declares that he will be running at the Europeans' defence with the supporters in his mind because of the crest on his chest. “I always try to prove myself and to be there, to play for Nigeria because I play for the badge,” he declared with passion. “I play for the people back home, who are watching us on the screen. That is all I can say.”

Tuesday, June 3, 2014

Cultist Go On Rampage, Kill 15 In Broad Daylight in Owerri,Imo state Capital

Some suspected cult members went on rampage yesterday, June 2, killing no fewer than 15 people in Owerri, the Imo State capital in broad daylight.
Suspected Cultists
Some of the cultists who were arrested
The cultists were said to have gunned down some of their victims while using axe on others.
According to an eyewitness who pleaded anonymity, the incident was caused by the death of a member of the Black Axe confraternity who was allegedly ambushed and killed by members of a rival cult group, the Buccaneers, in one of the popular hotels in Owerri.
The source said the Black Axe cult members who were armed, trailed the suspected killers of their members to Ekeonunwa market where they killed about five people in the presence of traders, who abandoned their goods to parts of the city and scampered for their lives.
They traced others to another part of the city, there they shot a man a man who just recently got married. They were said to have cut him into pieces before some armed police men arrived the scene.
They engaged in a gun battle which lasted for hours, with the policemen and 8 suspects were arrested.
Confirming the incident, the Police spokesman Andrew Enwerem said the number of casualties was yet to be confirmed, adding that investigations are ongoing to apprehend other suspects.
READ MORE: http://news.naij.com/67474.html

Sunday, June 1, 2014

Children of Biafra: Their Spirits Continues to Haunt Nigeria


By Ambrose Ehirim

Some Commentaries from accounts of the documentary "Nchamere Nd'Igbo: Evidence of the Anti-Igbo Pogrom":

The Igbo generation today, our generation, must ensure that this genocide never happens again. Nigeria murdered 3.1 million Igbo children, women and men people between 29 May 1966 and 12 January 1970. This figure represents one-quarter of the Igbo nation's population at the time, The Igbo genocide is the foundational genocide of post-(European)conquest Africa and the most devastating genocide of 20th century Africa. All those involved in the murder of the Igbo will be brought to trial. They can be sure of that. No one murders Igbo people and gets away with it. International law on the crime of genocide has no statute of limitation. This we know. 

........................................Herbert Ekwe-Ekwe, Leading Scholar, Igbo Genocide

The story of the tragic history of Nigeria. I can see myself in one of those sick and starving children. We saw it and suffered it and God saw us through it. And nobody should ever make us go through it again. We all still bear the scars of those horrible years. And we must never forget that Igbo Holocaust.

........................................Noble Ojigwe

Those who are responsible for this will pay, either here, or in the hereafter; unless there is no God.

........................................Paschal Ukpabi, Southfield, Michigan-based attorney

This is horrible. I am so unaware of these atrocities in the world and the individually stories. I feel her pain. May the world know Peace through the divine love of mothers.

........................................Kuumbar Recasner, Hollywood celebrity custom jewelry designer, reading the story from my documentary "Nchamere Nd'Igbo: Evidence of Anti-Igbo Pogrom" where   a mother cradles her dead child watching Russian Ilyshin bombers. The woman herself died few moments later.
 

Starving Children of Biafra: Image culled from the cover of Chimah J. Korieh and Ifeanyi Ezeonu's editions of "Remembering Biafra: Narrative, History, And Memory of the Nigeria-Biafra War"  

Every now and then, my colleague, Austen Oghuma, and I, would dabble into arguments and related discourses regarding a never ending internal strife that had overwhelmed a Nigerian national state since Yakubu Gowon's-led genocidal campaign against the Igbo nation, following the proclamation of "no victor, no vanquished" assertions--really not meant from the haters' heart, the vanquishers, the bloodthirsty northern Nigerian Islamic Jihad nihilists, a Yoruba nation in collaboration and a Russian-British backed federal Nigerian forces; the vandals--to start all over as a rebirth nation on the basis of reconstruction and moving on for national interest, nothing seemed to have worked.

Gowon was celebrating war victory in what he had attempted--genocide--with his colleagues of bigots and haters who had made innocent civilian population including women and children their victims, and jubilant over the destruction of a nation state without any remorse, and, with no attempt to apology in the sense that the victims were either compensated by way of retribution or a moral plan by rendering help to rebuild what had been plundered and demolished.

No one in Gowon's military regime had thought of what measures on compromise to have initiated a healing process from wounds inflicted on an entire state, with ominous consequences that had befell them, and why it had mattered if the country should move on marching toward onward objectivity as nation states indivisibly obtained. The clan of Gowon's-led military juntas--Murtala Mohammed, Olusegun Obasanjo, Hassan Katsina, I.B. Bissala, Theophilus Danjuma, Mohammed Wushishi, and several others--the brutal genocidal commanders and administers of the affairs of state of a military regime during the so-called "Reconstruction Era" had focused on another direction entirely; the pillage of the nation's resources coupled by a continued humiliation of the Igbo nation in which their properties had been embezzled at the time of persecution when the Igbo flee.

In what had been tragic from its method of operation, and recalling back to what had generated the formation of a national state, each time Oghuma and I, pops up, as usual, in order of the anti-Igbo pogrom, we discuss in detail what a fabricated Nigeria had been since the fabricators, the British empire, on what it had displayed at its expedition during which the country, Nigeria, coined as so, and had not been in existence before then, and from what the tribal leaders they had bumped into in the quest for divide and conquer at the time of its colonial conquest, the tribal leaders who were not in any position to fathom what the British had intended, for they were not prepared to face the challenges posed in the fusion of a variety of different people together, who had communed by language spoken, food consumed, tradition and custom adopted and, pattern of dwelling following their forebear's footsteps and how it should have been kept intact and viable--the aftermath of that union, if the tribal leaders in question had vision and had not been confused when a prescribed amalgamation by the colonial administrators and its flawed compromise of a nation state called Nigeria had taken place, what had been a Nigeria from the 1914 Amalgamation to this day and time, and, state of troubles, shouldn't have been.

Before colonial conquest, nations--the Igbo, the Yoruba, the Hausa, the Ijaw, the kalabari, the Urhobo, the Itsekiri, the Igala, and other ethnic groups--had existed as nation states and governed itself according to its nature and how it all began from its ancestral roots. These nations had been republics and much, much better in its charge toward the affairs of state than a forced direct democracy which was alien at the time, and which had been shoved to their throat on the grounds of empowering an authentic order of rule designated for a better education and enlightenment. And to be sure of the colonial conquests so as to enforce the rules of democratic fabrics, it should be borne in mind that the "Southern League" in its original partitions of nation states were already educated by its format and enlightened, thus the way they had been governed through the republican ideal.

The British empire did what it had to do, its platform made up with expectations to reach its desired goals--which, eventually, was accomplished through the series of constitutional conferences and a leadership they had wanted for the fabricated nation--bestowing power to the north on accounts of made-up numbers that justifies popular and electoral votes in a power to the north for easy access through coercion and theft, of the nation's natural resources and manpower, trained, and catapulted abroad to neutralize powers and influences the "Southern League" may have had.

It was this very idea that created a condition from around which the empire was able to adopt series of measures to portray its good intentions, in bringing developments to a people in darkness, labelled as is, with the opportunity to tap its resources--a way of its operation all around the continent in which they have not given up.

Nigeria's situation as to other colonies since an abominable amalgamation declared in 1914, was derived from a confused and pigheaded tribal leaders who had lacked a sense of purpose and belonging through the colonial era and constitutional conferences until the freedom bell rang on October 1, 1960 for its sovereignty, none envisioned the impossibility of Nigeria to live in harmony throughout its trial of considering whether the nation states and democracy would fair well under the British colonial mandate.

Though in a hurry and unprepared for nationhood because of the irregularities and manipulations inserted by the colonists and a bunch of local and tribal war lords who gave no trust and confidence on what had been fabricated for the time being, and what had been thought of the new nation as indivisible, promising, with unity and faith as emblem was first erupted by political disorder and chaos upon its beginning from the Western jungles of the Yoruba nation when in 1962 the Obafemi Awolowo-led Action Group, the AG, and fractions of disloyal party members had not been able to get along on related party lines, the first shot of decamping from a party and joining another, began creating balls of confusion, leading to the nation's first major political crisis, arresting the very political situation which had taken nearly sixty years to obtain from the colonists in 1914, given on confessional implementation to hold on, and access the possibilities of democracy, in which by its dispense takes the nation downhill never to be the same again from a birth that was originally full of uncertainties.

Also, in a Nigeria overwhelmed by the state of denial, and not acknowledging what had happened between 1966 and 1970, which draws Oghuma's attention, and of his arguments about my persistence of recalling in every discourse, acts of the blood thirsty nihilists and the anti-Igbo pogrom which was yet to be explained as the nation moved on with the open denial as if nothing happened; bringing to my attention what indeed should be explained clearly when the Igbo had decided to opt out of Nigeria, and in particular, when Biafra had invaded the Midwest, overpowering it, and in advance to Lagos to end the war as supposedly should, that it was abundantly obvious that Biafrans looked for trouble and begun something they could not finish.

My arguments which was also quite understood, stated, and, one being weary of pointing out, that upon the premeditated acts and diabolical nature of killing the Igbos in the north, and the widespread incidents of looting of Igbo properties all around the nation as the Igbo flee, in addition to plundering them, that nothing had justified such actions under any circumstances. And that what the Nigerian vandals had done was uncalled for and if only they had respected the decisions reached at Aburi, that no such attempts of Awolowo's economic blockade as evil minded the project was, wouldn't have occurred and a better option could have been implemented rather than the ugly situation which denied food and medicine, a "war strategy" according to Awolowo by avoiding to "feed their enemies fat" and which had worked in desperately starving women, infants and children to death.

What had been more damning was what had begun the pogrom before Awolowo's initiatives to wipe out the Igbo from the face of the earth upon effect of the economic blockade. And, though, nothing was going to stop the murderous Islamic Jihad hoodlums and nihilists who had gone from school to school, church to church, at the market square and place to place of Igbo dwelling--Minna, Kaduna, Zaria, Jos, Sokoto, Kano, Makurdi, Bauchi, Maiduguri and a long list of other places--of a capsuled blood soaked event, most of the atrocities in the north, if not all, were not captured on camera because of a plan to seal every act of the genocidal intent, and after they had carried out their operations in the North, hundreds of thousands of the Igbo had perished.

And despite what had been sealed in the north as the Islamic nihilists carried out its operation to wipe out every Igbo, many instances in the East when a full course war was blown up, the international community, the humanitarian services and a global media were able to capture the events; which we use today as evidence, and for instance, in Owerri, thousands of Igbo children, near death and suffering from dysentry lay on the ground amid vomits and human waste and nobody seemed to want to help them.

In Mbano, thousands of children, too, were found either weakened and could no longer walk, even with the help of relief workers, some of them, their bodies rejected nutritious food as a result of the advanced malnutrition. That was not the case in the north where mass graves were used by the nihilists, after hacking their victims, killing them in most brutal of circumstances--capsuled and without coverage.  

In what the Islamic Jihad nihilists had begun in May 29, 1966 until the vanquishers emerged in January 15, 1970, to jubilate in what it had seen as victory with an estimated 2 million murdered, never did it occur to any that the spirits of these innocent children sent to their graves without justification will continue to haunt the nation until the appropriate and right thing is done.

Monday, May 19, 2014

Photo: Leading Hollywood stars unite to drum support for the immediate release of abducted Chibok School Girls

Oldest Rev. Father, Monsignor Pedro Martins, dies at 103

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Yesterday, the Catholic community and the country at large were thrown into mourning when news filtered that Nigeria’s Oldest Reverend Father, Monsignor (Col.) Pedro Ayodele Martins of the Archdiocese of Lagos, passed on.
He was aged 103 and had a been a priest for 70 years .
According to a statement by the Archdiocese: “With gratitude to God the giver of life, we announce the passing away of Msgr. Pedro Ayodele Martins this morning at the age of 103 years”
Born in 1911, the young Martins was the second but first surviving child of Marcelino Domingo Martins and Regina Clarice Martins. He was ordained a priest by Bishop Patrick J Kelly SMA of Benin City in present day Edo State on August 8, 1943. After his Ordination, he then proceeded to the University College, Cork, Ireland.
During his life-time, he filled many positions of responsibility, teaching at St Gregory’s College in Lagos as well as ministering in several parishes throughout the Archdiocese. He also served as Vicar General to the immediate past Archbishop of Lagos, now Anthony Cardinal Okogie. In 1970, he was made Monsignor. During his military career he served with the Nigerian Armed Forces, rising to the position of Head Chaplain to the Armed Forces. He served in the Congo and with many Army formations in Nigeria.
Reacting to the news of his death, a lecturer and formator at the SS Peter and Paul Major Seminary, Bodija, Ibadan, Reverend Father Melchiezedek Okpala, said that God had finally called Monsignor Martins home. ‘’ When I heard the news, my first instinct was thanks be to God because he had wanted this for a very long time and now, God had finally called him home. We must celebrate his long, illustrious life, legacy and give thanks to God for this dinosaur of a man’’
Also speaking to Sunday Newswatch, Project Director at Saint Albert the Great Major Seminary, Reverend Father Julius Olaitan, said Nigeria has truly lost a great man. ‘’ We just lost a great Nigerian and a wonderful priest. Baba was there for us all as a sign of God’s enduring love’’.
He added that even in his old age and frail nature, he was a courageous father who linked the young to their history and sought to help everyone remain in touch with God. ’’ We will definitely miss his elderly and wise counsel, his great sense of humour and spiritual guidance,’’ he said.

Sunday, May 18, 2014

National Hero: 15-Year-Old Boy RESCUES Two Girls From Boko Haram


Baba Goni
Their faces scratched and bleeding, the pitiful remains of their once-smart school uniforms ripped and filthy, the two teenage girls were tethered to trees, wrists bound with rope and left in a clearing in the Nigerian bush to die by Islamist terror group Boko Haram.
Despite having been raped and dragged through the bush, they were alive – but only just – in the sweltering tropical heat and humidity.
This grim scene was discovered by 15-year-old Baba Goni. ‘They were seated on the ground at the base of the trees, their legs stretched out in front of them – they were hardly conscious,’ says Baba, who acted as a guide for one of the many vigilante teams searching for the Nigerian schoolgirls abducted from their school last month by Boko Haram – and now at the centre of a concerted international campaign for their freedom.
The horrific scene he and his comrades encountered, a week after the kidnap early on April 15, was in thorny scrubland near the village of Ba’ale, an hour’s drive from Chibok, where 276 girls aged 16 to 18 were taken from their boarding school dormitories – with 223 still missing. It was still two weeks before social media campaigns and protests would prick the Western world’s conscience over the abduction.
In the days following their disappearance, rag-tag groups such as Baba’s, scouring the forests in a convoy of Toyota pick-up trucks, were the girls’ only hope.
But hope had already run out for some of the hostages, according to Baba, when his group spoke to the terrified inhabitants of the village where Boko Haram had pitched camp with their captives for three days following the kidnap.
 
The chilling account he received from the villagers, though unconfirmed by official sources, represents the very worst fears of the families of those 223 girls still missing.
Four were dead, they told him, shot by their captors for being ‘stubborn and unco-operative’. They had been hastily buried before the brutish kidnappers moved on.
‘Everyone we spoke to was full of fear,’ said Baba. ‘They didn’t want to come out of their homes. They didn’t want to show us the graves. They just pointed up a track.’
The tiny rural village, halfway between Chibok and Damboa in the besieged state of Borno in Nigeria’s north-east, had been helpless to stop the Boko Haram gang as it swept through on trucks loaded with schoolgirls they had taken at gunpoint before torching their school.
Venturing further up the track, Baba and his fellow vigilantes found the two girls. Baba, the youngest of the group, stayed back as his friends took charge.‘They used my knife to cut through the ropes,’ he said. ‘I heard the girls crying and telling the others that they had been raped, then just left there. They had been with the other girls from Chibok, all taken from the school in the middle of the night by armed men in soldiers’ uniforms.
‘We couldn’t do much for them. They didn’t want to talk to any men. All we could do was to get them into a vehicle and drive them to the security police at Damboa. They didn’t talk, they just held on to each other and cried.’
For Baba, a peasant farmer’s son who has never been out of rural Borno, it was shocking to see young girls defiled and brutalised by the notorious terrorists he knew so well.
But his own life has been full of tragedy and he told how he had ‘seen much worse’ than the horror of that day in the forest clearing.
A bright-eyed Muslim boy from the Kanuri ethnic group, proud of a tribal facial scar and nicknamed ‘Small’ by all who know him because of his short, slim frame, he described a happy childhood with three brothers and two sisters in Kachalla Burari, a collection of mudhouses not far from Chibok.
Without electricity or running water, the children spent their days helping on their father’s subsistence farm, planting maize and beans and millet.
Baba and his friends used home-made catapults to shoot birds and in the rainy season fished in the river with bent hooks. But by his tenth birthday, the scourge of the radical Islamist Boko Haram was creeping up on everyone in Borno State.

Baba and his siblings attended a local madrassa, or religious school, where they learnt the Koran, but he had no formal teaching and cannot read or write to this day.
By 2009, Boko Haram were becoming active in his area, peddling their message of hatred to Christians, but also turning on Muslims they branded as informers. Nigeria’s chaotic military was incapable of defending itself or its citizens.
Baba’s village life came under siege. There were attacks on the Christian population in the region, with bank robberies funding the gang. Disaffected, unemployed youths from local families were recruited and neighbours who once lived in peace now spied on one another.
 
One night as he slept in his family’s mudhouse in the village, the gunmen came door to door, looking for informers. ‘I heard some noise, I woke up and saw men coming through the door, shooting at my uncle who was in the bed beside mine,’ he said. ‘That was the end of my childhood, the end of everything. I saw his body covered in blood, I backed away, and the men turned their guns on me. They grabbed me roughly and took me outside to a pick-up truck.
Baba, telling his story confidently and lucidly, wants to skate over the details of his two hellish years in the Boko Haram camp in Sambisa Forest. Today there are special forces soldiers swarming over the vast nature reserve and circling overhead in surveillance aircraft.
For this slight boy, there was no such worldwide interest as he scurried back and forth at the command of a ruthless gang dug into woodland far from any help or rescue.
He remembers many of them lived with women who had come voluntarily into the camp. He never saw any girls abducted. This latest phenomenon is unknown to him. ‘There were many abducted boys, but no girls,’ he said. ‘We were all scared to death and had to do whatever we were told – fetch water, fetch firewood, clean the weapons.
‘We couldn’t make friends – you didn’t know who to trust. I was made to sleep next to the Boko Haram elders, the senior preachers. I had no special boss in the camp, I was ordered around by everybody’.
The men prayed five times a day yet would leap on their motorbikes and trucks to carry out killing sprees.
‘I knew they had started out as holy men but now I saw them as criminals, loaded with weapons and ammunition,’ he said.
As he got older, he was taught how to use an AK-47, how to strip it down and clean it, and reassemble it.
He could never understand what drove the men. They did not use alcohol or hard drugs, though he sometimes saw them smoking marijuana. They were monsters and he felt convinced they were mad.

‘They were wild, even when they prayed so loudly in groups together, making us join in. They were insane, unpredictable, and always planning their next attack. I never wanted to be one of them.
‘They slept rough every night, just taking shelter under trees in the rainy season,’ he said. ‘We all wore the same afaraja [the Nigerian long shift and trousers] day and night. We washed them when we could. We slept on mats made of palm leaves, out in the open with the trucks all parked nearby, ready for a hasty move if necessary.’
He said the fear, and the endless boredom, were his worst enemies. ‘They made us work hard so it was easy to sleep. I don’t remember crying through homesickness. I think the night when my uncle was killed in front of me did something to my feelings forever. It seems mindless, but I adapted to my life out there.’
Then came the day when he was given a ‘special’ but sickening task. One of the commanders told him he was going on a journey and would be tested for his loyalty to the group.
‘He brought two of his senior men to stand beside me. He said I would be going with them to my family’s home and I would have to shoot and kill my father.’ Baba had no time to plan. He was sandwiched between the two fanatics as they set off on a motorbike for his village home.

‘I pretended I was willing to do the job. I took the ammunition belt I was handed and clung on as we drove through the rough bush. When we were less than a mile from a nearby village, I threw the ammunition belt to the ground and pretended it had slid out of my hands.
‘They stopped to let me pick it up. Instead, I ran as fast as I could through the undergrowth. I didn’t care about thorns or snakes or anything. They shot at me and I could hear the bullets flying past and hitting the trees, but I was not going to stop for anything. I made it to the village and some kind people let me hide there.
‘The shooting would have been heard by local vigilante groups. I think that is why I wasn’t followed by the men on the bike.’
The next day Baba went home. He saw his grieving parents and siblings for the first time in two years.
‘But I couldn’t stay,’ he said. ‘I was bringing danger to their door and we all knew it.’
Confirmation of that came when Baba soon heard that vengeful Boko Haram chiefs had put a bounty on his head for his defiance of the equivalent of £12,000 – a fortune in the local economy.
‘I took a bus to Damboa, to report to the youth vigilante group,’ he said. ‘I wanted to work with them and I knew I was doing the right thing.’

His family, terrified, abandoned their home soon afterwards and today live in a remote part of Borno, rarely seeing their eldest son. He lives with a cousin who is also under a Boko Haram death threat.
He became a valuable volunteer with the vigilantes. He helps man checkpoints where Baba points out members of Boko Haram to the rest of the team.
But he was soon exposed to brutality of a different kind – this time from the government side. He helped to get one of his captors, a man he only knew as Alaji, arrested and handed to the soldiers.
‘It felt good at first, but then they shot him dead right in front of me,’ he said.
Now joining the patrols armed with a shotgun and machete, Baba has been able to give valuable intelligence to the Nigerian authorities about Boko Haram’s way of life in their camps.
‘By now I have seen this violence many times. It never gets better. It will always be an even worse sight than finding those poor schoolgirls in the forest,’ he says.
READ MORE:  http://news.naij.com/66548.html

Thursday, February 13, 2014

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