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The police prosecutor, ASP Eyo Owai, docked the accused on a three-count charge of felony, stealing and obtaining money under false pretence, contrary to Sections 526, 390, 419 of the Criminal Code, Cap. C17, Vol. II, Laws of Lagos State of Nigeria, 200According to the charge sheet, the suspect was arrested recently at Aminu Street, Alapere, Lagos. Tokunbo Bewaji allegedly collected N650,000 from Oba Olamilakan Ifayemi on the pretence of obtaining a visa for his pregnant wife to deliver in the United States of America but he could not get the visa or refund the money. When the charges were read to him, he pleaded not guilty and the trial magistrate, Mrs. Y. O. Aje Afumiwa, admitted him to bail in N60,000 with two sureties who must produce evidence of tax payment to the Lagos State government. The case has been adjourned till 2 January, 2011
The 2010 World Tobacco Day (which is today) focuses on the need to ban all forms of
promotion of tobacco even with a new direction to fight the recruitment of the womenfolk into smoking, In clubs,bars,malls & even some schools Ladies are not just boozing like the guys they are also puffing and beating the guys at it says the World Health organisation .
It may sound odd, but the World Health Organisation says more girls than boys smoke tobacco; giving new reasons why the anti-tobacco crusade must now address the womenfolk.
When on Friday, WHO called for a special protection of women and girls against tobacco, it was not as if the organisation had assumed the other members of the society needed not to be shielded from the harmful effects of what is perceived globally to be an addictive consumption.
It was because global researches have indicated a growing, worrisome trend in the habit of women and girls who take tobacco as a thing of glamour and status. WHO’s new direction of campaign is to press home the focus of this year’s World Tobacco Day..
WHO’s Director-General, Dr. Margaret Chan, said, “The trends in some countries are extremely worrisome,” adding, “Tobacco use is neither liberating nor glamorous. It is addictive and deadly.”
This 2010 campaign theme, “Gender and tobacco with an emphasis on marketing to women, focuses on the harmful effects of tobacco marketing towards women and girls. It also highlights the need for governments to ban all tobacco advertising, promotion and sponsorship and to eliminate tobacco smoke in all public and work places as provided in the WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control,” according to the global health body.
Nigeria, where the campaign against smoking has been gaining ground through the efforts of the Environmental Rights Action, is ranked among countries which WHO Director-General said the trend is pretty worrisome.
Smoking may be one habit that is generally perceived to be rife among males, but a recent survey, according to WHO, shows that there is a growing rate of tobacco use amongst girls and women. Women and girls are said to represent 20 per cent global smoking population.
“In half of the 151 countries recently surveyed for trends in tobacco use among young people, approximately as many girls uses tobacco as boys. More girls use tobacco than boys in some of the countries, including Bulgaria, Chile, Colombia, Cook Islands, Croatia, Czech Republic, Mexico, New Zealand, Nigeria and Uruguay.
“Women are a major target for the tobacco industry in its effort to recruit new users to replace those who will quit or die prematurely from tobacco-related diseases. The leading preventable cause of death, tobacco use kills more than five million people every year, about 1.5 million of whom are women,” says WHO on Friday.
And what is the nexus between tobacco and women? Or better still; what is the attraction? After strategic manners in which the anti-smoking campaigners across the world had tackled the recruitment of youths into smoking by tobacco manufacturers and marketers, there is said to be a new path manufacturers and marketers are following to force smoke down the throats of women. By linking smoking with beauty, young girls are easily fascinated and are consequently recruited into the habit.
Analysts are of the view that the same method employed in using the media to present slim girls as paragon of African beauty is being promoted to make young girls believe that their beauty is incomplete without tobacco addiction.
But it is not only those who engage in the practical habit of direct smoking that are considered to be smokers. Passive smokers abount through their inhaling of smokes in public places.
The inclusion of Nigeria amongst countries considered to be having a disturbing rate of smoking girls further reinforces the points being raised by Nigerian crusaders that the government needs to act fast before tobacco-related diseases add to its alleged unenviable record in health management.
Programme Manager of the Environmental Rights in Nigeria, an affiliate of the Friends of the Earth, Mr. Akinbode Oluwafemi, said the focus on the need to save women and girls from smoking, which is the theme of this year’s tobacco day, should compel some persons in high places to act fast.
“It will interest you that the chairman of the Senate Committee on Health, Senator Iyabo Obasanjo-Bello, is a woman. And we believe that where the interests of women are concerned, a woman in the status of the senator should use her position to ensure the welfare of her fellow womenfolk,” say Oluwafemi.
His call is on the strength of a bill which was said to have been presented to the Senate by a member, Senator Olorunnimbe Mamora which, according to him, is yet to be passed into law.
Among other things, the bill seeks to ban smoking in public and end all forms of promotion of the product in the country.
Mamora, who spoke with our correspondent on Sunday, said there had been deliberate moves to scuttle the bill at the National Assembly, adding that some of his colleagues who swore to defend the wellbeing of Nigerians were engaging in acts that are inconsistent with their oath of office.
Mamora said, “No amount of propaganda; no amount of purported job creation by the British American Tobacco can justify the number of lives being destroyed through the use of tobacco. This is because certain incontrovertible evidence have been established linking tobacco use to various diseases.”
In a separate statement on the 2010 World Tobacco Day, Oluwafemi called for the passing into law of the bill as a sign of government’s readiness to recognise the global concern for the health of its citizenry.
He stated, “It is a fact that dangers are associated with smoking. The World Health Organisation estimated that 5.4 million people die every year due to tobacco-related diseases, with majority of these deaths happening in developing countries.
“Tobacco is the only consumer product that is guaranteed to kill half its consumers if used according to manufacturers’ intention. It contains more than 4,000 dangerous chemicals harmful to the body.
“It is also a fact that stringent measures aimed at reducing smoking in Europe and America have driven the tobacco industry to developing countries like Nigeria, where the industry continues to flout regulations, marketing to young and impressionable youths, and hooking them on smoking.”
Indeed, another recent survey, according to Oluwafemi, also shows that two persons die each day in Lagos hospitals as a result of tobacco-related ailments.
With the theme of this year’s event, many expect that the focus will now shift to demystifying those messages being sold to girls which make them embrace smoking as a way of upping their beauty profiles.
Perhaps, that will compel manufacturers and marketers to also review strategies. But then, the health of the citizenry is at the centre of it all.
Yahoo Yahoo Boy just sent this to all his yahoo pals on yahoo messenger :"EFCC and ICPC....dey online ...dem dey always talk like whitie.......oooh ...and for networks dem dey hack into networks ...especially
starcoms,new browsing networks ....so they are hacking thru ..and they
will send money to someone via western union ...jasi bro i just dey tell
u cos i don see people wey dem don catch and it was on efcc show on
saturdays ....CAREFUL bro pass this to every one on your list Breaking
News to everyone. This is to let everyone know that Nigeria Telephone
Companies are now working with EFCC. Zain just called my pal on 27th of
feb. They are trying to get personal details about him. They called with
08021900000. Pls becareful out there"
Western Union, MTCN yahoo yahoo boys, and the mugu. A partnership of Criminals with western union as the principal Partner !
Underground Investigation out !
A typical 419 procedure
1.send out bulk email aka spam with a suitable (format) Charity,abacha family,Lottery etc
2. get a reply from a mugu/maga
3.Con maga/mugu/maye the 419 process (carry phone,wash wash process, etc )
4. Maga sends money to you posing as a british resident via western union
5.The Western Union Agent (a Scammer) recieves a text/call from the scammer in Nigeria with the details of the WU txn like the name ,amount,control number makes forged documents like a passport or drivers license. He fills the form and signs it !
6.Western union gets paid a commision for the transaction .The agent gets a commission from WU for the transaction
WU comes for periodic checks and forewarns the agent as they need time to get their books ready .
Western Union has long been known to be a conduit for the transfer of illegal sums of money by all kinds of scammers and conmen
This institiution for what it is worth has not been known to have any ties or alliances with instigators of these nefarious acts
until the advent of the Nigerian 419 phenomenom. As far back as 1999 Nigerian scammers have routed their scam proceeds through western union
to nigerian cities and agents based in Nigeria.
but with time as the advance fee fraud became international it attached an iconic stigma to nigeria , The losers or conned or mugu/maga/maye or the Americanised slang for them suckers, became smarter and were quick to protest if requested to send
funds through WU to nigeria. This was not good for business
and a solution had to be found .Root of the problem was the location of these WU agents .How about setting up WU agents in the UK ?
How about it !
Quickly as this was a matter of money and Nigerians are known to rise to the task immediately if it involved quick cash. Nigerian UK residents initially
made aquaintancers with WU Agents and a deal was struck .Most WU agents were Asian and not privy to the money making 419 empire took percentage cuts in being
recievers of these sums .
After steps 1-6 is over the Agent owner who gets about 5percent of the recived money natuarally becomes the winner in this deal as the volume of transaction
grows exponentially with cash recieved and per se per se infinitum admitum The need for such WU agents to be Nigerians gained ground and thereabouts became mainstream
WU began to grant approvals for WU agents to small businesses like Hairdressers,corner grocery shops etc and the WU agencies slowly shifted to Nigerians and a small stream of Ghanaians within the African
community in the UK
.This began the golden age of western union as business for these dummy WU agents grew so did commisions for WU grow also as it was a double commision transaction for most
deals as they had to be routed through WU in the UK and then through WU to Nigeria (to the original scammers) each leg of this txn accruing a commision payable to WU and the WU agent it self. !
Easy as stealing money from a baby.
But Then WU started to get complaints fron the mugus and magas and not wanting to be the spoilsports decided to investigate and what they found was alarming !
There was indeed serious 419 money laundering going through them !
Reprisal time you would think ? hmmmmmm yes uh uh .. hell no ! some of these Agents with ghost Receivers were pulling in close to a 100,000pounds a day and with WU charging at least 5percent.One of these shops was taking care of area targets !
How can a small barber shop have a footfall of twenty people all day yet you received over a 100,000pounds about 25million naira ! and sent about 60percent of these funds to Nigeria ! and WU does nothing ?
Well no The art of stealing can be elevated to the art of stealing aiding & abetting,error of omission and making it legal according to the laws of the land .WU pays tax to the UK
and this is good money for the Her majestys Revenue and customs. The
british poliuce largely ignores these activities and focus more on the drug
threat and gang violence which is more ruinous to their society as it generates
little or no tax .. If this was not so why do they sit back and watch WU prtner
with scammers.
To keep this credible,WU then went on a public flogging and suspended a few agents over non compliance received through them and then the inverse inquisition began as WU area managers
went around “educating” their
agents on how to detect fraud they were perpetrating ! LOL ! !!!!(laugh out
loud !)
Competition:
Then money transfer became very competitive as more and more people got into the money transfer business and Companies like Fexco another WU derivative and Moneygram became very active in taking a
market share in International Transfer.MG or mama gee as moneygram is known got
into the market and gave licenses to these corner shops in an attempt to beat
WU .MG is American and their Standards and policies are quite strict towards
laundry.
As at 2007 there was a steady crop of American Mugus who preferred to send money via MG as they became wary of WU any Nigerian MG agent therefore had a gold mine sitting in his laps and the MG was reserved for such stubborn mugus.by mid to late 2008 MG
introduced another set of guidelines to check Passports and other ID of individuals and required a photocopy of
the ID sent in for every transaction.Nigerians not to be outdone were more than
ready to make fake ID which cost about 40pounds each. This cost was borne by
the scammer who sent in the the MG Message control number (MTCN) or “control “
as it is called by scammers. Then the big shock came as Mugus began giving
feedback to MG who did a thorough audit of their Agents branches and found that
a good number of them in the peckham,dalston,woolwich,canning town areas were
actively involved in the money laundry of 419 scam proceeds.
A boy steps boldly into the night traffic and waves a gun to bring the cars to a halt, clearing a path for a motorcycle which screeches into the intersection. Riding pillion is another boy, brandishing a machinegun.
Later two teenagers, also riding pillion on motorbikes, flash their guns at
other motorists; nearby, a boy can be seen taking aim with a rifle equipped
with a telescopic sight. Other youths wander the street smoking crack.
For residents, the junction between the busy Dom Helder Câmara and dos
Democráticos, in North Rio de Janeiro, has become known as the Corner of Fear — and video footage of daily life there has shocked a nation already
familiar with guns and violence.
The latest images, captured by undercover journalists from the Rio tabloid Extra, have exposed the city’s criminal youth culture in a manner that echoes the journalistic investigation featured in the film City of God.
The age of the criminals — one pistol-toting boy is 12 — is obvious cause for alarm, but so is the seeming impunity with which they act.
The video footage has provided a glimpse into the city’s underworld that hardly touches Rio’s wealthier citizens.
Local newspapers rarely show at first hand the violence that permeates the city’s slums (favelas). Since the brutal torture and murder of the journalist Tim Lopes — who was caught filming secretly in the Vila Cruzeiro favela in 2002 — Brazilian reporters have been reluctant to take their cameras into slum areas. Any reports that are filed tend to come from correspondents talking from inside armoured cars, or are images showing the aftermath of a shooting.
“What is shocking is this parallel power, the fact that they are very young,” said André Cabral De Almeida Cardoso, 41, a teacher. “They are so brazen about it.”
Valera dos Santos, 34, a maid who lives in a favela in São Paulo, said: “My
God, I’ve never seen pictures like this. It’s absurd, they’re just boys.”
The journalists who captured the images were also taken aback. “Even knowing the reality of what could happen, you are still shocked by the glamour that these weapons represent in the arms of minors,” said Fernando Torres, 27, one of a team of three who spent four nights undercover at the Corner of Fear.
“These images are desolate,” said Lucy Petroucic, 56, a translator. “These boys have become little Taleban who think they have nothing to lose.”
Within hours, police arrested one of a group of bandits shown in the video and
promised that changes were on the way. Luiz Fernando Pezão, Rio’s Deputy
Governor, told reporters that a new police base would open nearby in May.
