MYSTERY (3)

Friday, January 28, 2011   A woman, Oluremi Bolaji, 32, held residents of Ijeshatedo, Surulere and its environs spell bound when she mysteriously appeared on the minaret of the Ijesha Central Mosque in Lagos...

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 Residents of the area had woken up to see the woman perched dangerously atop the minaret which is under construction as part of ongoing renovation works on the three-storey mosque.

 

The scene of the incident became a Mecca of sort as residents from the neigbouring communities gathered to witness the incident. Many of the onlookers expressed surprise at how Bolaji managed to climb the mosque tower even as they wondered how the mother of three would be rescued safely.

 

Meanwhile, there were different sides to the Bolaji saga. While some people claimed she was a witch on a failed mission, and reaping the fruits of her wickedness, others said she was mentally deranged, a claim

 

corroborated by Bolaji’s father.. According to Bolaji’s father who wept openly at his daughter’s risky situation, the victim was mentally ill and the family had been making plans to move her to a psychiatrist home for treatment before the incident.

 

Amid the confusion over how to rescue Bolaji safely from her precarious position, a commercial tricyclist, simply identified as Ikechukwu, offered to bring the lady down if his colleagues would compensate him with the sum of N1, 000. There was another angle to the Ikechukwu story, as another account said he had actually placed a bet with some other young men at the scene that he could bring down the woman. The wager was put at N1,000.00.

 

Ikechukwu, after getting the assurance that he would be given the money began to climb the minaret. Unaware that he was embarking on a dangerous mission, Ikechukwu never returned to claim the money he was promised. He was allegedly pushed down by Bolaji using one of the wooden beams the construction workers had placed in the minaret. He landed, hitting his head on the concrete floor. He died instantly. Following Ikechukwu’s fatal fall, Bolaji was said to have boasted that she would kill more people should they venture to bring her down.

 

However, the Imam in charge of the mosque, Ganiyu Oyebanjo, was said to have contacted the policemen and men of the State Fire Service. Daily Sun gathered that before the arrival of the crime fighters, a native doctor was said to have made a futile attempt to rescue Bolaji. The medicine man was said to have recited some incantations, cast spell but to no avail. He was reportedly chased away by the crowd. Men of the state fire service on their arrival splashed water on the victim hoping it would scare her, yet she remained adamant.

 

When Daily Sun arrived the scene Bolaji was seen entertaining her audience. Repeatedly, she would remove her clothes dance around while the malefolk applauded her. When it was obvious that the woman just had to be saved from possible death, able-bodied men comprising mainly of members of the Oodua Peoples Congress (OPC), took over the rescue mission.

 

They beckoned on her to come down, while she shouted in Yoruba language that they should leave her alone. She began throwing stones at the men who for safety had to wear helmet. Gradually the men climbed up the tower, distracted the lady while another with the aid of a plank pushed her from the minaret to the roof of the mosque. She was eventually brought down from the roof.

 

The mob attempted to lynch Bolaji but for the quick intervention of the police. She was whisked to Ijesha police station and later moved to a private hospital where she is receiving treatment. Her father lamented that things would not have degenerated to this if his daughter had not been turned back by Yaba Psychiatric hospital. According to him, the hospital had asked that the family should first treat the wounds Oluremi had inflicted on herself before bringing her for admission. The angry mob took to the street, protesting the death of Ikechukwu and calling for the heads of the woman and members of her entire family.

 

The mob barricaded Ijesha Lawanson Road, disrupting commercial activities and vehicular movements. Some hoodlums who hijacked the protest used the opportunity to snatch peoples mobile phones and handbags. The police eventually dispersed the protesters by firing tear gas canisters.

The Imam, Ganiyu Oyebanjo, expressed shock on how the woman managed to climb the minaret. “I think she was being controlled by a demonic force. She climbed the minaret at about midnight and was brought down around 11:00 am.”

 

He alleged that worshippers had prevailed on the deceased, Ikechukwu, to wait for the arrival of policemen and the fire fighters but he was adamant, probably because of the N1, 000, allegedly promised him by his colleagues.

 

Lagos State police spokesman, Mr. Frank Mba, who confirmed the death of Ikechukwu, said the quick intervention of the police saved the lady from being stoned to death by the mob. He said both the police and fire fighters rushed the woman in an ambulance to the police before taking her to the hospital.

He said the body of Ikechukwu had been taken by his family for burial. Mba advised members of the public to always report such incidents to the police rather than resort to jungle justice.

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For only $1,900 a month, you can rent an apartment President Obama lived in during his years at Columbia University.

The apartment itself is shabby, a one-bedroom, third-floor walk-up. And while living there is unlikely to shed any light on the issue, it’s interesting that so little is known about that era of Obama’s life.

Obama spent two years Occidental College in Los Angeles, transferring to Columbia University in New York City in 1981 and graduating two years later. Little is known about Obama’s time at Occidental, but even less is known about his time at Columbia.

The president did not release his transcripts from either school during his campaign for the presidency, as John McCain, John Kerry, George W. Bush and Al Gore did. Occidental and Columbia have said they are prevented by federal law from releasing the transcripts.

Obama’s thesis on nuclear disarmament, on which he spent a year at Columbia, has apparently been lost. Obama says he doesn’t have a copy and his professor at the time thinks he lost it when he moved a few years ago.

Obama barely mentions his years at Columbia in his two autobiographies. He has said he didn’t know many people at Columbia and that he spent most of his time in the library reading, “like a monk.” Indeed, Fox News contacted 400 of Obama’s former classmates – no one remembered him.

Some of Obama’s Columbia classmates have since come forward, saying they remembered Obama there. Both schools have confirmed Obama was their student.

Columbia is where Obama “stopped getting high,” he wrote, which his old roommate verified to reporters.

To the New York Times, Obama “declined repeated requests to talk about his New York years, release his Columbia transcript or identify even a single fellow student, co-worker, roommate or friend from those years.” A spokesman told the Times Obama “doesn’t remember the names of a lot of people in his life.”

At Occidental, Obama was better known by classmates. There, he gave what is thought to be his first public speech. In it, he urged his school to disinvest from South Africa because of apartheid.

In “Dreams From My Father,” Obama wrote he socialized with black students but also “the foreign students. The Chicanos. The Marxist professors and structural feminists and punk-rock performance poets … When we ground out our cigarettes in the hallway carpet or set our stereos so loud that the walls began to shake, we were resisting bourgeois society’s stifling constraints.”

A professor at Occidental, Roger Boesche, told the Los Angeles Times Obama was “a very thoughtful student and a very curious student … You didn’t take my European Modern class without wanting to think about deep ideas.”

The White House did not reply to a request for comment.



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Sauna Kawaji is a backside suburb situated on the road to Hadejia town, in the southern end of the ancient city of Kano. It has a number of tiny roads and interlocking lanes that network across a number of unevenly situated mud, and sometimes, block of residential buildings.The mystery goat and its new babiesadvertisementThe compounds host an expanding population of men, women and children.It is normal to see kids playing away in the early morning sun in this neighbourhood. Also, it is normal to see goats loitering or feeding on scattered grains, just as cows are regular feature here. Indeed, human population in this tiny town is intermixed with the population of other domestic species, such as fowls, goats, sheep and cows.However, it could be said that the innocence of the community was figuratively broken on Thursday, August 6, 2009 when a strange “August visitor” came. On that day, a mystery crept into the community and shook it to its very roots. It was the day a she -goat gave birth to a “child” with obvious human features.For the villagers, the story of a she-goat giving birth to a creature with some features of normal human being is incredible. Yet, right before their very eyes, this concrete reality, played out like a script from a horror film.According to a tailor in the community, Alhaji Bashir Haruna, (alias Soldier), 47, that Thursday, like any other day, he woke up with the normal bustling of a new day in a small town. He said that people went about their businesses without constraint or care. The hustling of the day was rather very alive, activated due to the delegate congress of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) in the state.He recalled that many people had come home from the city to be part of the congress. Then the news broke: A goat has delivered a semi-human being.Haruna, who resides just a stone throw from the scene of the episode told Saturday Sun that soon after the strange incident, the news to spread like wild fire. And before long, it was everywhere.The owner of the mystery goat, Hajia Amina Mohammed Sauna, confirmed the birth of the creature, which she quickly declared was dead at birth.She said that the unusual creature was delivered at about 12pm on that Thursday, adding that all her life she had never encountered such a strange happening.Being the guardian of the she-goat and the first witness of the rather strange recourse of nature, she recalled that the she-goat, through out her lifespan, had never had such a prolonged labour.She said: “For four days, she was very sick. We all had sleepless nights trying to fend for the goat, to cope with her trouble, night after night. And it was like it would never end. And on the night before that Thursday, it was worst, the tumbling stress of labour was severe on her and at about 12pm the following day, she finally came off it and delivered.“I was nearby at the time she delivered. I was the first to come face to face with the creature. I was shocked and I was shaken. I was afraid. I could not believe my eyes. Here I was, an old woman standing face to face, taking delivery of a human-like goat, a creature I had never imagined was possible in this world. I immediately screamed, partly out of fear and shock and thereafter I said a quick prayer (Muslims recitation) and then dashed out of the house to call for help.“Right before my eyes, I saw a creature with the following features: The face is that of a human being, but the ears are that of a goat. Its eyes were shut because it was lifeless at birth. It has a small tail, like a normal goat and both its two legs and hands have hoofs at the end. But from the chest to the hip, the body of the creature was that of a human being. Interestingly, it does have the usual hairy body of a normal goat, just light hairs in some part of the body.”According to her, when the people gathered, it was agreed that such a strange encounter must be reported to the village head of Sauna/Kawaji, Alhaji Ado Umar. So, she called two other relatives who were around and they took the creature to the village head, who advised that they should immediately report the matter to the Police in the state.Subsequently, they took the creature, accompanied by a mammoth crowd of curious onlookers to the Dakata Police Station, a division of the Police in the state. She revealed that the decision to report the matter to the police was out of the need to avoid a situation where they, the immediate owners of the goat, would be held for the failure to report matter to the police.Incidentally, while the creature was being taken to the police station, the mother goat, which was yet to finally come out of labour, completed her assignment. She delivered yet another set of babies, two of them in all. These additional babies were however, different from the creature that preceded their birth. They looked like the normal goats and had no features of a human being at all.Alhaji Mazzadeen Ibrahim, (alias Officer) said that the mammoth crowd that turned up with the strange creature to the police station, that afternoon, at about 3pm, was overwhelming.Mazzadeenn, who runs a mechanic workshop in front of the Dakata divisional police station, told Saturday Sun that the crowd overwhelmed the station by its size. He recalled that people poured in hundreds from Sauna and neighbouring towns, adding that while some people were inside the police station compound, others scaled the fence.“It was not easy, but I was lucky to have gone inside and I saw it. They brought it in cartoon, wrapped in an old black coat,” he said while confirming the earlier description of the features of the strange creature.He recalled that the creature had a human vagina, a human face and a goat-like hoof and ears. He summed up thus: “All my life, I have never seen anything close to this. The nearest that I have seen was a goat with eight legs at birth and that was five years ago.”The police DPO, it was gathered, was speechless and shocked by what he saw. After due consultation with his superiors at the Bompai headquarters of the command, he referred the matter to a vet clinic in Ugwar Ugwu area of the state.At the vet clinic, the doctor demanded to know the kind of food the goat eats and was told that it feeds by the way side, picking whatever it can. The doctor advised that in future, the goats should be fed with grains.Speaking further on her goat, Sauna said it was born in the village 10 years ago. She said that it grew up in the environment and had given birth to several young goats. Sauna said: “At least, I remember that she had delivered sets of young ones on eight occasions, some sets of twins, some triplets and on a few occasions, quadrates.“The mother goat belongs to my daughter, who resides in Lagos. The goat stays with us here; she sleeps in this house (pointing backwards to the stained-roofed, dilapidated structure that hosts their compound). When it is dawn, we let the goat wander into town in search of food to eat, and in the evening, she comes back home to sleep. At home, we cannot afford to buy her grains of food. As matter of practice, we don’t keep goats at home or restrict the movement of goats in this area. The goats roam to any area of convenience and get to feed themselves,” she declared.Sauna said that the mother goat has since returned to her normal life after the birth of the creature, adding: “Surprisingly, she is not sick and although I am not an a veterinary doctor, I know that she is well.”In his comment, the Kano State Police Public Relations Officer, SP Baba Mohammed, confirmed the incident and said the police had directed that the creature be sent to a vet hospital in the state for their further advice. He observed that, like every other person, policemen were shocked at the birth of a goat with dual features, some of which are human look. He however, concluded that only the experts in the field of animal medicine could explain what happened.The curious part of the story is that some people believe that a man may have violated the mother goat. Those in this school of thought say that since the mother goat wander about anything was possible.However, a veterinary doctor, Salisu Atiku and a senior livestock superintendent in the state, Abbas Ibrahim, who both commented on the development, are of a different views. For them, it is wrong to link the strange occurrence with a sexual relationship between a goat and a human being.
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