Uti Nwachukwu first came to limelight as a housemate on the third edition of international TV reality show, Big Brother Africa. After getting evicted, in that edition, the 28 year old was called back by the show producers to be part of the 2010 edition which was tagged ‘All Stars' .Despite having to deal with news of his father's death during the run of the show, Nwachukwu remained in the game and went on to win the $200,000 prize money. The actor, musician and TV personality tells us about the life lessons he gleaned from his experiences in the Big Brother House, controversies with other housemates, his romance with fellow ex-housemate Sheila Kwamboka and his latest projects.

Uti’s Big Brother Africa All Stars winning moment Photo: UTI

This is just the beginning

Tell us a bit about your background.

I'm the last child in a family of 4 girls and 2 boys. I grew up in Ughelli and Sapele (Delta state) and moved to Lagos in 2005. I attended Igbinedion Education Centre, got a Diploma from the University of Nigeria, Nsukka and a Bachelor of Science in Computer Science and Education from Benson Idahosa University, Benin City.

Prior to appearing on Big Brother Africa for the first time, what were you doing?

I was just a student with huge dreams of making a mark in the entertainment industry. I was into modelling and I featured in a few (TV) series. It was all about the entertainment hustle.

What inspired you to be part of the show and what did you hope to achieve from it?

I remember sitting at home one day with my sisters watching the daily high lights of Big Brother South Africa. I asked, what is this Big Brother all about? From then on, I was roped in. I had never seen such a platform where you could be exposed and air your views. I decided that if this ever came to Nigeria I would want to be part of it. It was a chance to launch my career in entertainment.

Going back the second time, was it a difficult choice to make?

Of course! I kept telling myself that after the controversy surrounding my participation in the last BBA it would be awful if I didn't win. I was so scared and unsure but made sure I kept a positive mind.

What were you doing in between the two editions?

After the first one, a lot of doors opened for me. I started anchoring events, I starred in two movies, anchored a TV show and toured some parts of Africa. I also graduated at the top of my class with a 3.9 GPA.

Was it a tough decision you made remaining in the show despite the news of your father's death?

It wasn't a tough decision. I was going to leave, plain and simple. The (show) producers gave me an option to leave when it was time for the funeral and to come back afterwards if I wanted to. My family called the producers to let them know.

We had a monitored conversation and all agreed on this. but nature was on our side. There was a bad case of flooding (back home) so the funeral was pushed forward to November which fell after the show.

How did you cope in the House from that time on?

It was God that got me through it. I guess being away made it seem like a dream so it was easier to shut my brain down as opposed to being back home mourning with the rest of the family. I broke down so many times but I prayed each time and managed to pull through.

Why did you attack Mimi so much in the BBA3?Was it part of the game or did you simply hate her guts?

(Laughs) Mimiii!!! She attacked me first. I'm like a boomerang. What you throw at me is what you get. It was part of the game, adding more fun and drama to it. I don't have hatred in me. No way! The good thing is that we are now great friends and she treats me really well anytime I am in Ghana. I love that girl. She is a strong woman and I admire her drive and courage.

Are you still in close contact with anyone from either of the editions?

Sheila, of course. Ricco, Mimi, Lucille, Lerato, Liz, Meryl, Mwisho, Jen, Kaone, Kweku T, etc! We are all still good friends.

Are you dating Sheila?

(Pauses) You all know by now that is the last thing I'm going to talk about to the press.(Laughs) Let's leave it at: we are very close friends, we keep in touch constantly and support each other.

Has your relationship been met with any opposition from friends and family based on her sexuality (she has claimed to be bisexual)? Also did her sexuality initially serve as a deterrent to you?

First of all, I do not come from a judgemental family. I do not judge people and most definitely do not hang around people that judge others so no one is going to chastise her because of her background. It's what is inside that counts and she is a wonderful human being. I always saw beyond her sexuality. And that goes for any other person I've known and come to respect.

Apart from the money and fame what else have you gained from the Big Brother experience?

Knowledge- especially about stereotypes and typical human behaviour. I have also grown spiritually. Faith is the strongest weapon ever and anyone that knows how to use it will surely excel.

What has been the downside of your fame so far?

No downs! I'm loving my life and I've never been so happy. Thank you God..

What are you currently into?

I'm a presenter for the newest and biggest show in Africa right now- JARA. It is an entertainment news show focused on Nollywood. My co-host Helen Paul makes the job really fun and easy. The response has been amazing. People have moved on from calling me Uti BBA to Uti JARA!! It's surprising how people accepted the show so quickly and we are entirely grateful for that. Apart from that, I have been offered movie roles and I still anchor shows. I was also made a tourism ambassador for Cross River state and youth ambassador for Delta state. So it has been work work work.

What about your foray into music? Is music a big thing for you, something you would like to parley into a career?

Music was my first love so yes it's big for me and that is why I'm not going to rush into it. I'm going to take my time so that I'll get the best. I'm eclectic so I'm into all genres as long as it sounds really good! I have currently have four singles out: ‘Go Down', ‘Once in my Life' (feat. Mtrill), ‘Nuwa' (feat. Ken Okolie) and ‘Teddybear' (Churchill Feat. Uti)

Who has been your inspiration?

My parents. They always made me know that I was special and expected the best without pressuring me. God knows I miss my father every hour of each day. I wish he was here to see all this. My mum is so proud. I speak to her as often as possible.

What more should we be expecting from you in the nearest future?

A lot! This is just the beginning of great things to come. Can't you see? Just when it seems like God is through with me, he shocks and inspires everyone once again with my life.I can't imagine the next thing God is going to use to shock and inspire people concerning me. I am so grateful for all He has done for me and I'll always put HIM first!

With $70 billion, Mubarak is world’s richest dictator




With anti-government protests entering the 13th day yesterday in the North African country, the embattled 82-year-old Egyptian strongman, Hosni Mubarak, has been revealed as the world’s richest dictator.

Last week, RepublicReport broke the news that Mubarak stole between $20 and $40 billion from Egypt’s national treasuries since 1981, when he succeeded the late Anwar Sadat.

New emerging reports have ridiculously put the figure higher. The New York Post yesterday reported a whopping $70 billion (N10.5 trillion), making Mubarak the richest man in the world.

According to Bob Fredericks and Jeanie Macintosh; “Egypt strongman is laughing all the way to the cash bank”, so much of corruption across continential Africa, aided by western  industrialised nations and their compromised multilateral corporations.

 

The teetering tyrant’s family fortune is worth about $70 billion — stashed away in Swiss and other foreign bank accounts and shadowy real estate holdings in Manhattan, London and Rodeo Drive in Beverly Hills. The Guardian also reported.

That puts the 82-year-old despot comfortably ahead of Mexican business magnate and New York Times sugar daddy, Carlos Slim Helu, who is worth about $53.5 billion, and Microsoft founder Bill Gates, the richest American with $53 billion, according to a list of the world’s richest men by Forbes.com.

“Mubarak! This is not your money. You must return back every penny to Egypt,” a poster named Hassan commented on the Web site of PressTV, a Mideast-based broadcast.

“Leaders in the Arab world are the richest men in the world, while their people are poor and oppressed. The only peace is knowing these people will face justice when they meet Allah,” added Nazir, another poster.

The whereabouts of Mubarak’s properties in New York are shrouded in secrecy. Neither the Egyptian Embassy in Washington, DC, nor the consulate in New York would shed any light yesterday.

But, the dictator’s three decades of iron-fist rule as president put him in a perfect spot to get a piece of any government action, with the profits he skimmed quickly deposited in secret bank accounts or invested in luxury homes and hotels.

“There was a lot of corruption in this regime and stifling of public resources for personal gain. This is the pattern of other Middle Eastern dictators,” Princeton political- science Professor Amaney Jamal told ABC News..

“This is the pattern of other Middle Eastern dictators so their wealth will not be taken during a transition, he added.”

joke:

Apple keeps on growing! Steve Jobs' empire set to become world's most valuable company

Apple is set to become the world’s most valuable company this year, financial analysts said yesterday.

It is predicted to leapfrog the current number one, oil giant Exxon Mobil, capping a remarkable rise for the gadget firm, which is thriving on sales of Mac computers, iPhones, iPods and now iPads.

Shares in Apple are predicted to rise a staggering 32 per cent over the next 12 months, driving the company’s market value up to £269.5billion.

Rising shares: Apple CEO Steve Jobs at the launch of the iPad last year. 14.8m of the devices have since been sold, pushing the company's value up to £269.5billion

That is tipped to be sufficient to overhaul Exxon, currently valued at £263billion, even taking into account that its value is also set to increase, with rising oil prices likely to drive up its profits.

The rest of the top ten is dominated by mining and energy heavyweights, along with Apple’s long-time rival Microsoft, now trailing behind a firm it used to beat easily.

Apple reported its best ever quarterly results last month, continuing its relentless rise up the list of the world’s biggest companies.

Where the magic happens: Apple, which is thriving on sales of Mac computers, iPhones, iPods and now iPads, is based in Cupertino, California

In the last three months of 2010 alone, it sold 3.89million Macintosh computers, 14.1million iPhones, 9.05million iPod music players and 4.19million iPad tablet computers.

The better-than-expected figures for iPhones – which benefited from an expansion of their U.S. network – and iPads caused many analysts to upgrade their 12-month
predictions for Apple’s share performance.

Although Apple suffered a momentary setback when shares plunged early last month after CEO Steve Jobs said he was taking a medical leave of absence, experts remain bullish over its prospects, saying it has only just begun to exploit the international market.

Cool and quirky image: Apple's iPod preceded the colourful iPod Minis and Nanos, which proved a hit with millions of customers

‘Analysts are as giddy as you can be, but Apple just keeps surpassing those numbers,’ said Pete Najarian, co-founder of stock market website TradeMonster.com.

Although it has long cultivated a unique reputation with a loyal customer base devoted to the ‘cool’, quirky brand and aesthetically pleasing design, it is only in recent years that Apple has transformed into a sales juggernaut.

Founded in California in 1976 by Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak, it grew in the shadow of Microsoft and was given up for dead a decade ago but surpassed the PC giant last May to become the world’s most valuable technology company.

Its rise is likely to be boosted with a thinner, lighter and souped-up version of its iPad tablet computer that is reportedly already in production.

Some experts expect the company to sell as many as 35million iPads this year, more than doubling last year’s 14.8million sales.

However, Apple’s latest success comes just months after it was accused of exploiting workers, with a spate of suicides among workers at manufacturing plants in China.

Fourteen workers at the Foxconn Technology Group factories, which make iPhones and iPads for Apple, killed themselves last year amid complaints of ill-treatment, causing Apple to launch an investigation.,,

• 'Unlicensed medical practitioner' sought for administering silicone injection which killed Claudia Aderotimi
• Transgender woman suspect 'well known' in Philadelphia and believed to have had similar procedure during sex change
• Tip off came after police raided home of 'fixer' in New Jersey who introduced student to 'doctor'
• 20-year-old believed to have met surgeon on chat forum for people interested in plastic surgery
• Injection was a ‘top up’ for previous procedure had in November
  

Detectives are hunting a transgender woman in connection with the death of a British student who died after a botched 'butt enhancement' operation.

Claudia Aderotimi, 20, is believed to have had the illegal procedure carried out by an unlicensed medical practioner in a hotel room in Philadelphia after meeting her in a plastic surgery chat room.

The transgender woman, in her 30s, had a similar procedure herself as part of a sex change operation to become a woman.

'Russian Roulette': Claudia Aderotimi, 20, is believed to have had silicone injected into her buttocks by an unlicensed medical practitioner

Sudden death: The London student had travelled to Philadelphia for a 'butt enhancement', which is illegal in the U.S. and UK

Police have established the identity of the suspect after raiding the home of a 'fixer' in New Jersey who had introduced the London-based student to the 'doctor'.

She is said to be well-known among the Africa-American community in Philadelphia, where 'butt enhancements' are popular.

A police source told the Evening Standard: 'There is a thriving trade in these sort of procedures and the injectors travel from state to state.'

Legitimate surgical techniques including silicone implants cost around £7,000, leading some to seek out cheaper injections. The procedure is illegal in the U.S. and UK.

If convicted, the suspect faces involuntary manslaughter charges which could lead to 10 years in jail.

Image conscious: Friends said Miss Aderotimi was desperate to obtain the perfect curvy figure and had been rejected from one Hip Hop video for wearing padded trousers

Aspiring dancer: Friends claimed Miss Aderotimi was the victim of social pressure to have a larger bottom

Miss Aderotimi have believed a 'bigger booty' would help her wish to appear in more music videos, according to her distraught friends.

The aspiring dancer - stagename Carmella London - was dropped from one shoot because directors discovered she had been wearing padded trousers to help enlarge her bottom.

Talent scout Tee Ali, who met the Thames Valley University student when she filmed a video, told The Sun: 'The problem was she didn't have no butt, and she wanted a butt.

'She went to audition for one video shoot wearing fake booty pants and she got all the attention.

'But when they found out it was fake she didn't get asked back.'

Miss Aderotimi developed chest pains and struggled for breath 12 hours after she had the illegal silicone injections at the budget hotel.

She was rushed to hospital, but could not be saved.

Aspirations: The student had hoped to become a Hip Hop star and had previously auditioned for parts in music videos

Botched: The 20-year-old died after the silicone leaked into her bloodstream, resulting in heart failure

A preliminary examination found the silicone filler had leaked into her bloodstream, leading to heart failure.

Detectives are investigating whether she was treated with cheaper 'industrial' silicone, normally used as a sealant, rather than the medical-grade material used in breast implants.

It was not the first time she had undergone the procedure. She is believed to have been treated in November and the latest injection on Monday may have been a 'top-up'.

Bootylicious: Nicki Minaj has become almost as famous for her posterior as for her voice

She had travelled from London to Philadelphia with three friends for the treatment, thought to have been an early present for her 21st birthday.

Buttock enhancement surgery is becoming popular in the U.S., among women who aspire to the shapely curves of Jennifer Lopez, Beyonce and singer Nicki Minaj.

Minaj has become almost as famous for her posterior as for her voice, and rumours have spread across the web that the Massive Attack singer underwent surgery or uses pads to boost her bum, especially on urban gossip sites such as Bossip and mediatakeout.com. She denies having had surgery.

The illusion of a larger backside has become increasingly more fashionable among young women since the rise of the 'Hip Hop Honey' phenomenon.

A bigger behind has become almost a prerequisite for any aspiring dancer wanting to make it on the music video scene.

But the hip hop industry has come under fire for objectifying women in music videos where dancers - or Hip Hop Honeys - chasing fame can often leave themselves open to financial and sexual exploitation.

And in their desperation to beat off the competition, many resort to surgery to get ahead.

'Top up' procedures are only legal when the silicone gel is contained and sealed within an implant. But illegal injections of the material are also widely available from unlicensed back-room medics.

Last night one expert said having a direct injection of silicone gel – long outlawed in the U.S. and Britain, even for breast surgery – is 'like playing Russian roulette'.

One of Miss Aderotimi's friends is said to have had the same procedure but survived. Experts warned the silicone could still prove lethal for her in the future if not removed.

Death: The woman died at the Hampton Inn in Philadelphia after having an injection in her buttocks

Investigation: A Philadelphia detective leaves the hotel where Claudia Aderotimi was staying, clutching an envelope with mugshots inside

Tragedy: One of Miss Aderotimi's friends also underwent a similar procedure, but survived

Last night more than a dozen distraught friends and family gathered at Miss Aderotimi's home in Hackney, East London.

Her sister Vivian was in tears as she said: 'We found out on Tuesday. We're still in shock. We need to think about what we have to do.'

Miss Aderotimi had the buttock injections on Monday – thought to have cost around £1,300 – while her friend had the same procedure along with a hip enhancement treatment.

The 'doctor' who injected the silicone left soon after and was not there when Miss Aderotimi began complaining of chest pains.

Yesterday detectives raided the home of a woman they believed set up the illegal operation.

Computer files, emails and telephone records were seized from the house in Bergen County, New Jersey.

Emails from Miss Aderotimi arranging the procedure were among the material seized, but police said no formal arrests had yet been made.

Dr Rajiv Grover, president-elect of the British Association of Aesthetic Plastic Surgeons, said: 'Buttock augmentation isn't a very commonly done procedure here, which is probably why these girls have resorted to going abroad.

'If correctly done, it involves implanting solid silicone implants into the buttock just like breast implants.

'The correct procedure would be done in a fully equipped, sterile surgical theatre in a hospital and the patient would be fully anaesthetised.'

A new Thai airline is hiring transsexuals as flight attendants, aiming at a unique identity to set itself apart from competitors as it sets out for the skies.

Known as 'katoeys' or 'ladyboys,' transgenders and transsexuals have greater visibility in Thailand than in many other nations, holding mainstream jobs in a variety of fields.

They are especially common in cosmetics shops or health stores, which almost always have a ladyboy shop assistant.

In demand: Four transsexual flight attendants were chosen by new airline PC Air after hundreds applied for the positions

PC Air, a charter airline set to start operations on Asian routes in April, originally planned only to hire male and female flight attendants.

But it changed its mind after receiving more than 100 job applications from transvestites and transsexuals.

Four were chosen, along with 19 female and 7 male flight attendants.

While the airline strives for equality, PC Air president Peter Chan, who chooses the transsexual cabin crew himself, said he needed to spend longer with interviews for such applicants.

'For male flight attendants, if I don't want to hire them, it's because of their attitude or their characters, like the way they walk and smile.

'When I knew that I got this job, I burst into tears because I'm very happy,' said 24-year-old Chayathisa Nakmai.

Instruction: PC Air flight attendants watch during a make-up training session in Bangkok

Training: Officials from PC Air said it had to be spend all day interview transsexual applications to make sure they had 'feminine character'

'I had sent many applications to different airlines.'

The airline said that the qualifications for the ladyboy flight attendants were the same as for female flight attendants, with the additional provisos that they be like women in how they walk and talk, and have a feminine voice and the right attitude.

Though there is very little discrimination against ladyboys in Thailand, they are not officially recognised as women and their identification cards will always say 'male'.

'For female flight attendants, if they have no patience and their character does not qualify, we won't hire them,' he added.

'For transsexuals, we can't just spend five or 10 minutes with them, we have to spend the whole day with them to make sure they have feminine characters.'

Taking off: The new airline will initially fly to South Korea, Singapore, Hong Kong and China

The airline said it may hire more flight attendants from the 'third gender' in the future since the Department of Civil Aviation has no objections.

Though excited by the opportunity, the transsexual flight attendants said they were aware they needed to prove themselves.

'People will keep their eyes on us... There will be more pressure,' said Dissanai Chitpraphachin, 23, who was crowned as Thailand's most beautiful transvestite in 2007.

'We have to prepare ourselves more than the women.'..

The airline is initially set to fly to South Korea, Hong Kong, Singapore and China.

Brit student Claudia Aderotimi dies in US after 'butt-boost' jab

STUDENT Claudia Aderotimi was prepared to risk everything for her dream of stardom.

The 20-year-old was convinced she needed a little surgical help to launch her showbiz career.

But she paid with her life after flying to America for a cut-price implant to enhance the shape of her bottom.

The aspiring actress and dancer had a heart attack after complaining of chest pains within hours of the bodged silicone jab in a cheap hotel room.

She died in hospital on Tuesday just two weeks before her 21st birthday.

Claudia had travelled to Philadelphia with three pals after arranging the £1,120 “butt boost” on the internet.

Yesterday it was revealed she had a similar operation in the States last November.

US medical experts suspect the cause of her death was silicone being injected into a vein rather than muscle tissue, causing a clot.

Detectives believe whoever carried out the illegal op may have used industrial-style silicone sealant rather than the proper medical kind.

Police yesterday raided the New Jersey home of the woman they believed set up the jab.

They also seized emails which could lead them to the person who carried out the procedure.

A source said possible charges could include negligent homicide – the same accusation facing Michael Jackson’s doctor, Conrad Murray.

Claudia and her three friends were staying at the Hampton Inn hotel in east Philadelphia after arriving on Saturday for a week-long stay.

One of them, aged 20, also had the operation but is said to be well and helping police with information.

In her last message on Twitter the day she had the jab Claudia tweeted: “I’m goooonneeeeee so faR away.” Popular Claudia, believed to be of Nigerian descent, had performed with hip-hop stars Akon and Sisqo.

She used the stage-name Claudiyah “Superstar” James, and said on a website: “I’m really interested in becoming a full-time actress and model. I also dance and write music.

“I truly believe I can take the world by storm – I just need an agent.” She also boasted that rap star 50 Cent had called her an “African princess”.

Claudia’s devastated family were still coming to terms with the tragedy at their home in Hackney, East London, as they arranged for her body to be flown home.

Her tearful sister Vivian said: “We’re still in shock. We need to think about what we have to do.” A relative added: “Her mother is inconsolable. She has had to be sedated. We are still trying to find out what exactly happened.”

A 17-year-old neighbour who did not want to be named said: “Claudia was a really pretty girl. I don’t know why she felt she had to have the treatment. It’s such a waste.” Friends posted dozens of messages on networking sites.

One read: “RIP Claudiyah.. i will never forget u.. gone too soon love u always – rest in perfect peace.”

Last night a leading consultant condemned the practice of travelling abroad for unlicensed cosmetic operations.

Rajiv Grover, President Elect of the British Association of Aesthetic Plastic Surgeons, said: “There must be some very desperate people around to organise on the internet to meet a stranger in a cheap hotel room near an airport and pay to have a dangerous illegal procedure.

“It seems she got away with it the first time around, and it’s true that you can get away with it sometimes.

“But it is like playing Russian roulette. Each time you have it done, you’re risking your life.”

People tell lies on your online community. They tell lies to get around your policies. They tell white lies that probably don’t hurt anyone. And then they tell lies that can.

Katie Baker, a contributor over at Gawker Media sports blog Deadspin, recently penned a fascinating piece on her experience using hockey-themed Usenet groups as a teenage girl in the late 90s. The title? “The Confessions Of A Former Adolescent Puck Tease: I Was Teenage Hockey Message Board Jailbait.” You had me at message board.

Baker has an interesting background. As a pre-teen, she participated in Apple’s eWorld community, which closed on March 31, 1996. But, some former Apple employees got together and launched Talk City. Baker moved to the site and, eventually, they hired her as a chat room moderator. She was even featured in a BusinessWeek article about the company.

She eventually moved from IRC chat rooms to Usenet newsgroups and, as a sports fan, jumped into some related sections – mostly targeted at hockey. At some point, she began to lie. It began with her adding two years to her age – from 15 to 17 – but lies piled on top of lies until she needed a system of documentation to remember all of the details of her fictional life. Eventually, it all comes crashing down.

Yes, people will lie on your online community. What can you do about it? Very little, or nothing.

In the realm of “very little,” you should do what you can to develop an environment where honesty is encouraged and where people are not ridiculed for holding a reasonable, if different, opinion. You can also set the example by being honest yourself, and ensuring that your staff is honest, in public and when dealing with members.

But, you can’t control people and you can’t verify many of the things people will say on your forums, especially when it comes to personal details that a member is sharing about themselves. Often times, these lies don’t end up hurting anyone. Sometimes they do.

That is nothing new. People have been lying about personal details long before the internet existed. And so, they lie on the internet, as well. There is nothing you can do to stop it. If, by some chance, a member is caught in a lie, you can definitely take it up with them, but your impact will certainly be limited.

One area of frustration for community managers is when kids lie to circumvent COPPA, The Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act of 1998. To be brief, COPPA is an internationally enforceable act that requires websites to receive permission from a parent or guardian before collecting personal information from children 12 or younger that live in the United States or its territories (and U.S.-based websites must do so when collecting information from children 12 or younger, regardless of where they live)...

Most websites that are COPPA complaint tie it in to a form where people will give them information, such as their e-mail address and location. For example, a registration form. They will usually ask the member to specify their age, date of birth or to certify that they were born before a certain date.

Of course, this relies on honesty. And not everyone is honest. Some kids just want to get in and post and it’s easy enough to lie, so why not? The problem: the act was designed to protect them and, potentially, a website owner can get in serious trouble if they knowingly collect information from pre-teens without consent from a parent or legal guardian.

What can you do? Again, very little. The only thing you can do – and can be expected to do – is to act as soon as you find out that someone has lied to circumvent your COPPA compliant registration system. If they let their age slip in a post (I’ve had this happen before), you should deactivate their account immediately and, if you want, send them an e-mail with your COPPA form, for their parent or guardian.

As you can see, the main thing you can do with lies is react once they are made clear. Otherwise, people are free willed and some will lie. You can’t stress about it or regard everyone in the world as a liar. Take what people say at face value and try to give them the benefit of the doubt, until they give you a reason not to.

The Confessions Of A Former Adolescent Puck Tease

Katie Baker — In 1999, Katie Baker was a thoroughly self-possessed, hockey-loving 18-year-old headed for Harvard. Or so the older men she met online — and offline — believed.

If you Google hard enough, you can locate a thread deep within the Internet that was posted to the alt.sports.hockey.nhl.phila-flyers Usenet newsgroup on March 22, 2000. "Where oh where is Katie Baker??" reads the subject line. "What the hell happened to her?" says the post.

The responses are mercifully cryptic. "Detention," wrote one man. "Isn't she trapped in Cambridge?" cracked another. "Harvard has a high school? :)" responded someone with the username Nastyflyersgirl.

"Wow," wrote one lady called Starr. "No one is safe with any secrets here. Like they say, the truth is bound to come out sooner or later."

At some point in like 1995, when I was 11 or so, I started agitating for a computer of my own, no longer satisfied with the lumbering DOS-driven heap we had in the den. I wanted a Mac because we had them in school, and finally one day I got one: a PowerPC, top of the line. It came pre-loaded with a program called eWorld, and I snuck down to the garage, pulled my dad's credit card out of the wallet he kept in the door of his car, and chose the name "SportsKate."

eWorld was basically AOL but owned by Apple and only for Macs. This meant that it was cheery and adorable — the landing page looked like a little town village, complete with a happy little mail truck that would chuggachugga right up and deliver your letters — and also that very few people used it.

I spent an enormous amount of time hanging out in the virtual village, mostly downloading zany screensavers and playing online chat-room games. But Apple stock was in trouble then, falling by half to a price of $6 on March 31, 1996, the day eWorld was officially shut down. The plug was pulled at midnight on the West Coast, and I stayed up 'til 3 a.m. on the East in a chat room overflowing with people gathered together to live out the final minutes, e-hugging and exchanging contact information as if it were the last night of camp.

"I haven't known all of you," wrote one chatter, "but I wanted to say good bye and to wish you well." "Goodbye, little red mail truck," wrote another.

Soon after the shuttering of eWorld, a gang of former employees began Talk City, an Internet Relay Chat-based network that aimed, in its words, to be a "clean, well-lighted place to chat." I spent so much time chatting on Talk City that they hired me.

I got paid $8 an hour to moderate chats — scolding people for bad words, explaining what it meant when someone typed a colon followed by a dash and a parenthesis, and generally being unfailingly perky. I got $12 an hour to run topical programming. I led hard-hitting discussions about bulimia and bullying, and I hosted a popular Sunday night game called Commercial Crazies that I prepared for, mostly, by writing down the commercial slogans I saw on the MSG network during Knicks and Rangers games. (Minolta and Nobody Beats The Wiz were in heavy rotation.) I signed a document informing me that I was protected by child labor laws, as if I were shoveling coal or sewing sequins in a factory.

"When it comes to live online chats," began a 1997 article in BusinessWeek magazine, "Katie Baker keeps conversations popping. As a moderator on the Talk City chat site run by LiveWorld Productions, Inc, she hosts a Youth Online chat three nights a week. Baker draws out participants, screens out bozos, and in the process forges a global community of teens. How does she know what they care about? Because she's one of them: a 13-year old from Pennington, NJ."

"Hey Bakes, Pukester's on!" my best friend Ashley announced from my desk, where she sat playing Snood on my computer. It was 1999, the fall of our junior year in high school, and as usual we were hanging out in my dorm room blasting Destiny's Child on repeat and avoiding our homework. I didn't respond.

"Pukester" was how she'd interpreted the screen name PUKSTPR31, one created in loving memory of the Philadelphia Flyers' Pelle Lindbergh, the first NHL goaltender to place his water bottle atop the net during games and also the first to kill himself by crashing his custom Porsche into a wall while driving with a blood alcohol content of .24.

I had added a special notification on my AOL Instant Messenger to alert me specifically whenever PUKSTPR31 signed online. The other thing I had added to my IM was a little marquee for the stock TCTY, the ticker with which Talk City had IPO'd earlier that year at somewhere around $12 a share. (It would climb to a high of $29 a few months later before falling to less than a dollar midway through 2000.) As an early employee, I had been granted restricted stock options with a strike price of 29 cents. My dad, reading over the letter I got in the mail informing me of my allocation, could barely believe it: "This could pay for college!" he said, not knowing that by the time the options finally would have vested, Talk City ceased to exist.

Besides watching the stock, though, I was basically done with Talk City by then, feeling I'd outgrown the place where everybody knew my screen name, which was "KatieCCC" when I was working and "Platypus" when I was just hanging out. (I still have a handful of Beanie Baby platypi that were sent to me by Internet friends.)

"Bakes, who's Pukester?" Ashley asked.

"Oh, just my friend from the summer," I mumbled, and she turned back to the screen, satisfied: She'd grown up spending all of her summers at her family's beach house and knew what it meant to have seasonal friends.

I wasn't really lying about Pukester. He basically was my friend from the summer, because it had been during that previous summer, technically, that I had asked my mom to drive me into Princeton — I didn't yet have my license — so I could meet up with friends. When she drove away I walked to the university train station, took the dinky to Princeton Junction, and hopped on the NJ Transit to the Metropark stop. There I was picked up by PUKSTPR31, otherwise known as some dude I had met on the Philadelphia Flyers Usenet group who believed me when I said I was 18 years old and had invited me to come spend the day with him at his house on the shore.

When I moved from IRC to Usenet, I was joining a conversation that had been going on for quite some time: the message-board system was one of the oldest on the Internet, with some of the earliest posts going back almost a decade. The first group I became active on was the one for the New York Knicks. Used to the quick and ephemeral banter of Talk City chat rooms, I lurked for quite some time, intimidated by the way certain bullying writers could turn an innocent observation into a rollicking flame war spanning dozens of paragraphs and available in perpetuity online. The people who posted on the Knicks group, starved even back then for a championship, had little time for jokes. But I ultimately dipped my toe in — to praise John Starks, natch.

The New York Rangers board, my next stop, was more affable — one user mailed me a carefully curated VHS tape of famous hockey fights through the years, and another said he would send me a copy of the Matteau! Matteau! Matteau! game, although I can't remember if he ever did. There was enough cross-pollination between the various metropolitan-area hockey teams' Usenet groups that about half a year later I began reading other teams boards too, defending the Blueshirts' honor against Devils fans, who were uniformly kind, polite, and informed, and Flyers fans, who were totally not. (The Fishsticks-era Islanders group was a particularly desolate place, populated mostly by sadsack crickets meeping "Fire Mike Milbury!" all through the night.)

If the Islanders thread was an abandoned lot, the Flyers newsgroup was the smutty swingers club down the street. The subject matter consisted of roughly 30 percent hockey talk and 70 percent cheesy banter. Women — called "chippies" – were periodically made the subjects of strange fantasy scenarios and beauty pageant-like rankings. It was virtually impossible to type anything that wasn't immediately twisted into a double entendre. One long-running gag, which preceded my appearance on the newsgroup and which I never fully understood, revolved around sex with Dana Plato's corpse. The newsgroup's official FAQ listed, among other acceptable discussion topics, "Comparisons between Ron Hextall's 5-hole and a prostitute's genitalia."

The Flyers newgroup was my favorite by far.

I'm not sure when I started to lie, but it seemed like no big deal. Upholding a cherished tradition among so many high-school-aged girls throughout history, I shrugged and added two years to my age. Fifteen became seventeen. The truth just sounds different.

But the more I lied, the more I lied more, creating extraneous backstories to flesh out the details of my fictional life. I was about to graduate, I blithely allowed, scattering fibs around various posts like so much confetti. I had Rangers season tickets. I had gone to the 1999 NHL Draft party, I reported in one post, and boy, had I been surprised by all the boos for Jamie Lundmark!

On and on, each lie more pathologically gratuitous than the last. I explained that I was taking a year off before going to college at, wait for it, Harvard. It remains a great embarrassment to me that I would be so unimaginative with the location of my faux matriculation, but I more than made up for it in conjuring a whole cadre of fake older brothers whom I credited for both my love of sports and, having been knocked around by them for years, my own physical toughness at the hockey rink. I did play hockey, at least. "The Chick with the Hockey Stick," my signature file read, one of the very few things that was actually true.

I'd been crushing for a while on PUKSTPR31 before I went out to meet him, and in the days leading up to our rendezvous I'd kind of forgotten that my entire persona was predicated on fiction. Our date was pleasant enough — I brought my rollerblades, natch, and we cruised down the boardwalk and hung out on the beach. He was probably in his late 20s, cute and athletic, not some cretin from the depths of the web. We went and saw American Pie in the theater, as I reported the next day to the group:

Had my first face-to-face get together with a NGer yesterday…PUKSTPR31 was the (un)lucky guy. ;-) Anyway, we caught American Pie and I don't know if any of you have seen it, but I noticed that movie reviews seem to be appreciated here.

The movie is DAMN funny! Lots of gross scenes but they all made me laugh. Great characters and hilarious predicaments make up the entire film. There's a bit of cheesiness but other than that it's a real laugher with some memorable lines. (To those who have seen it: What's my name? Say my name, bitch!!)

Despite the painful enthusiasm — "a real laugher," my god — I actually don't remember seeing the movie that day, one of many quirks of my half-repressed memories from this time in my life. (Going back and reading my newsgroup posts from those years has been half therapy and half further trauma.) But one thing I do clearly recall was discussing his job: He was a freelance graphic artist who was designing the sleeves for an adult video label, which I considered exotic and impossibly mature. After he dropped me off at the train station that night with a hug and a kiss on the cheek — the furthest that anything actually went — I rode home in delight, imagining us as a couple, the porno artiste and his of-legal-age girlfriend.

I was too young to be doing this, or maybe the problem was that I was too old. After all, I'd met tons of people IRL during my young tweenage days at Talk City, and none of them under false pretenses. They knew I was 13, but they treated me as if I were a peer.

One woman, The Sorceress, lived in New Hampshire and had a small business making and selling customized clothes for American Girl dolls. (The Kirsten doll in my childhood bedroom is still outfitted in a pink kimono that I purchased from her.)

There was Kevyn, an Apple engineer I met up with at a mid-'90s MacWorld who once walked me through installing extra RAM in my Mac, the first and last time I ever took screwdriver to hard drive. There was minivanner, a mother of three from Connecticut whom I once called while babysitting to ask how to cook potatoes. (When my own mother found out about my use of that particular lifeline, I was made to march right back to the house with a 10-dollar bill to reimburse for the long-distance call.)

And then there was JazzyEric, an 18-year-old Mormon who was my first cyber-boyfriend. Born without an ear on one side, he had endured numerous surgeries to create one from scratch; it worked well enough to allow him to pursue a career as a musician and symphony conductor. In early 1997 he mailed me a cassette tape of him playing the piano accompaniment to "Miss Otis Regrets." I sang along with the tape during my audition for the eighth-grade play, and I earned a lead role. I wrote about Eric's inspiring story in my application essay to boarding school, and I got in.

You can't respect someone and lie to them, too, so you're faced with a choice: you can disregard that they're people with feelings, basically, or you can start to believe your own lies. At various points I'm pretty sure I did both.

One of the most frequent posters on the Flyers newsgroup, and also one of the randiest, was a guy who went by the name Au Revoire. I noticed his posts early on mostly because I couldn't understand them at all. He had a quirky skip-a-step sense of humor flecked with non-sequiturs (a prehistoric form of hashtag humor, upon current reflection.) I didn't know anyone, online or off, who was so brilliantly twisted.

We began publicly flirting. When a "Miss Flyers Newsgroup 1999" thread appeared in the fall of that year, he nominated me: "for class, beauty, humor, and chippinessship." Many members objected, pointing out that it would not look good for a Rangers fan to win the Miss Flyers NG competition. He shot back:

This is going to sound ludicrous but I think a Rangers fan should win it. Over the years we've had some very intelligent posts by members of other team's fanbases, but none so bright as those of Katie Baker. If you want to squander your votes on female posters for simple attractive qualities with little hockey skill and posting that comes out of the faucet like a trickle, vote for anyone other than Kates, but know this: You're cheating yourselves and your children out of a golden opportunity. Somehow.

The dead Dana Plato won with over 40 percent of the vote, as it turned out, but by that point Au Revoire and I were exchanging several long multi-paragraph emails a day, about hockey and Jersey and Philly and literature and Halloween costumes and music and his kids and his marital problems and my however many fictional brothers. (By this point I'd created a dossier on my Mac's "Stickies" program to help keep all my lies straight, even going so far as to assign first and middle names to all the nieces and nephews who had never been born.)

He sent me care packages — I had given him my address, a P.O. Box whose address I felt to be sufficiently opaque. The parcels were meticulously assembled, full of seasonal tchotchkes, inside jokes, letters, poems, books, magazines, and CDs with detailed track explanations that spanned several pages. He composed and typed out a two-part essay comparing me to Lady Brett Ashley from The Sun Also Rises, which he titled "BrettKates." I hadn't read the book yet, so I checked it out from the school library and was mostly flattered by the comparison to such a cold-blooded heartbreaker lush.

My girlfriends and I would stop by the school mailroom on our way back from field hockey practice, faces flushed and ponytails bopping, and they'd crane their necks as I sliced open my wares. One box sent in October used real autumn leaves as makeshift packing peanuts. "Ooh, that's so creative!" my friend Lauren gushed. "Who's that from?"

"Oh, just a friend of mine," I said lightly. "Isn't it fun?"

Every morning I woke up to an email, and most days there was also one waiting for me when I got back to my room after practice or class. I'd respond, line by line. I could write about anything and he'd banter right back. He sent me a .wav file of one of his daughters chirping: "Hiya, Kates!"

I lapped up the attention and adored the indulgence. I felt so understood. I was a top student in high school, a tri-varsity athlete with plenty of friends, but I'd always been faintly off-kilter, a little bizarre. My friends were mildly weirded-out by my obsession with sports — I'd worked out a side deal with my housemaster to let me watch Knicks games in the TV lounge during study hall if I finished my work in advance — but they really couldn't quite wrap their minds around my strange online past. "So, you went in chat rooms?" they'd ask, their expressions polite but their voices edged with alarm. "You mean, like, AOL?"

My first phone conversation with Au Revoire lasted for hours. After that we would talk mostly on Sundays, which was really the only time I considered the coast clear: it was too risky to chat during the week, as my friends (or worse, the teachers on dorm duty) had a habit of popping into my room unannounced. On Saturdays I was busy with field hockey games, school dances, and stealth gatherings in the baseball dugout, where my friends and I would pass around a bottle of vodka followed by a pack of disgusting grape smoker's gum whose fumes were probably more telltale than the alcohol itself. But on Sundays most of my friends would hole up in the library or take the bus into Princeton, and the hallways outside my room were deserted and still.

Eventually he wanted to meet me, pointing out that I had, after all, spent a day with PUKSTPR31. But I knew that had been different — a last-minute lark, a breezy suggestion on IM one night that was carried out a day or two later. My email exchanges with PUKSTPR31 had always been functional, not meandering. He was aloof enough not to ask, or to care, about who I actually was. And after he dropped me off at the train station after my day at the shore, he became the first in what would become a long and distinguished list of men who have taken me out and not called me again. I'd been shaken up by the rejection, but it made everything simpler to manage.

Things with Au Revoire were more intense, the stakes higher, the web more tangled. Unlike with PUKSTPR31, I never set up a little IM notification to alert me when he was online. I didn't need to: He'd always write me right away. He liked me a lot. I was in pretty deep. So I strung him along. "Oh, next Wednesday sounds great," I would say, knowing full well I had classes and practice and no transportation besides. Then I'd email him Monday. "I'm so sorry," I'd say. "The date should have rung a bell. I completely forgot that I had other plans. How about two weeks from Sunday? Would that work for you?"

After one newsgroup meetup in Philly (I had "planned on attending," but sent my last-minute regrets) he mailed me a small album of photos, annotated with names. There were only a couple of him — camera shy but not unattractive, looking out cautiously from beneath a black Flyers hat — and I peered at them closely, curiosity banging away at the walls of my carefully compartmentalized impassivity.

Have you ever been caught in a lie? Or caught stealing or speeding or cheating? Maybe you've known the impossible weight of the hand on your shoulder, the blinding twirl of the lights in your rearview mirror, the razor-sharp voice of your teacher or wife. Maybe you've felt yourself melting, cold water pooling deep down in your gut, the icy clench of humiliation and fear and regret: regret for what you did, sure, but more so regret that you were caught, that now everything's changed. You wonder why didn't you, couldn't you, stop while ahead — or whether in fact you were always behind. It's hard to keep track as all the blood throbs out of your brain and collects in your cheeks.

You finish stretching, and tighten your skates. You look up into the stands of your school ice hockey rink, the same way you do before all of your games. You look into the stands, find your mom and your dad, find the boys that you like and the girls that you hate, taking note of who's there so that when your line rotates in you have someone to play for, someone to impress, someone to prove wrong.

Then it catches your eye — a black hat pulled down low on the head of a guy sitting offset from everyone else near the top of the stands. His posture is furtive, with none of the easy languor of the rest of the crowd. That, and the hat. A black Flyers hat. Him. Au Revoire. He is here, at your game, in the room, in the stands, in your life, in your real life, in the life that you haven't made up. He is sitting 3 feet from your babbling friends and about 15 from your parents, who smile and wave at you, their daughter, their athletic and whipsmart and promising daughter. They can tell that you're looking their way by the tilt of your helmet, but they can't see past it to the red in your face and the fear in your eyes.

I'd been careful, I thought. How had he possibly tracked me right down to the opening minutes of a high school hockey game? I assumed it was via the sleuthing of two women on the newsgroup, the ones going by Nastyflyersgirl and Starr. My theory was based on a mosaic of evidence: newsgroup messages I interpreted as undermining, the women's jealous-seeming friendship with PUKSTPR31, and something Au Revoire had mentioned in one of his letters. "[The girls] say I should stop talking to you," he wrote, grousing that he'd not yet met me in person. "They think you're just fucking around with my head."

I can't even faintly recall whom we were playing that January day. But the shock of seeing a name from my screen sitting up in the stands, the racing thoughts, the terror of what might come next — those memories remain crystal clear. And so does the darkly comic realization that I had while I stood, paralyzed: that perhaps I might end up protected by another one of my lies. I had always told him I wore No. 11 in homage to Mark Messier, when in truth another girl on my team wore that jersey. I had worn 10 all along. (Honoring Esa Tikkanen doesn't have quite the same oomph.) I wondered if he already knew about this gratuitous untruth as well, or whether he was watching No. 11 as she skated, seeing her long blond braids and assuming they were my own. He'd seen pictures of me, sure, but like so many digital representations they were so painstakingly curated as to be borderline worthless. I wondered if he'd confront her at the end of the game, and I wondered what I would do if he did.

But there was to be no life-changing climactic scene at my hockey game, no angry announcements by Au Revoire, no black roses thrown out on the ice, no outbursts or outings or murders. What happened was, when we came out from the locker room to start the third period he was simply, poof, gone from the stands, my friends and my coaches and my parents all none the wiser. I guess it makes sense — what could he have said, really, what could he have done, that wouldn't have made him look like the bad guy, the predator, the creep, when in fact the real villain was me?

A week later I lay in the backseat of my parents' Volvo, half pinned down by luggage, headed up I-91 to The Mountain School, a semester program for 45 high school juniors from around the U.S. who had one thing in common: We had all willingly chosen to spend 16 weeks doing chores in the snow on an organic farm in rural Vermont rather than, say, go "study in Spain."

The timing of my semester away was absurdly fortuitous and so were the logistics: The school was in possession of one lonely computer, which sat perched in what had once been a hay loft. It was an ancient machine with an Internet connection so slow that whenever anyone wanted to use it they'd climb up the stairs, activate the sign-in process, head back downstairs to study or go feed the chickens or wash out maple-syrup buckets, and return 30 minutes later to see if it had all finished loading. If they were lucky, it had.

For someone who'd had nonstop Internet access since the age of 11, this was like spending nine months at a convent after getting knocked up.

The first time I successfully signed on, a few days after arriving, I received an IM almost immediately from Nastyflyersgirl. Her screen name popped up first, with her message taking some more time to flow through. "You fucking liar," it finally said. "Everyone knows what you did."

I stared at the IM on the molasses computer, my cheeks hot with shame, and realized it would take ages to properly sign off. So I got on my hands and knees and yanked the entire surge protector cord right out of the wall, watching as the screen shriveled in on itself, growing smaller and smaller, until all that remained was a tiny white dot.

The Internet moves in mysterious ways. A few months ago, I received an email: "Au Revoire is now following you on Twitter!" it chirped, and my throat went dry. Could it be? I sleuthed his email — he still posts on the Usenet group, so it wasn't too hard — and sent him a tentative note. His response couldn't have been nicer, so I gracelessly took the liberty to ask if, um, by the way, had that maybe been him at my hockey game 10 years ago? He confirmed that it was. I bombarded him further. Were there signs I had been lying, I asked? And how was I ultimately found out?

It was New Year's Eve, he wrote back.

Was it while ringing in 2000 or 1999? After a great evening in the city, it was early in the morning and I had decided to sleep downtown. For some reason I got a forward of yours, via email, and I read this before falling asleep. It was one of those "fun" polls that asks you a zillion stupid questions and pretends to be cute, and this gets forwarded around to all friends, family, priest-friends of the family, and maybe even old or present classmates who happen to all go to the same school together. It didn't take more than a few lines before I got up and went to bed in an awkward yet enlightened manner. Like getting the indisputable evidence of a really good, yet finished, meal in the form of an expensive bill, written in front of me was "Age: 16." And then everything was clear.

Just as I had never been able to fully prevent random elements of my weird digital world — the IM buddy alerts, the care packages — from creeping into my real life, it was inevitable that the information would at some point flow the opposite way. But seriously, though: a novelty fun poll?! After so many months of intricate sidestepping and tap dancing, such a simple stumble was baffling. Even worse, it was lame. I felt like a bank robber who had sailed in on a zip line under the cloak of night, deactivated the fancy security system, and made off with millions — only to have left my ID behind on the floor of the vault.

And yet at the same time the sad-olescence of it all made a perverse kind of sense. Behind my careful facade I was just some dumb teenage girl, mindlessly filling out AOL surveys (oh god, I probably put down American Pie under "Favorite Movie") from my floral-quilted childhood bedroom before getting ready for, it appears, New Year's Eve, which I recall ringing in from my friend Rich's basement because his mom let us drink. It was the dawn of 2000, which means that while Au Revoire was getting blindsided by the contents of his inbox, I was sneaking out of a window to make out with some guy — and then getting caught by Rich's furious mom when I tried to sneak back in the morning. Age: 16, indeed.

I have never considered this my story; it has always been my secret. I told no one while it was happening, and for years afterward I never said a word. Why would I? Even the happiest-ending anecdotes about my Internet past had long been social suicide. (Friends seeing the BusinessWeek article for the first time tended towards the same reaction: "Oh my god, look at you!" they'd say. "You were such a little loser!") The thought of divulging all the darker details made me nauseous. It was a lonely silence. I had always gone online as a respite from life's dull and daily troubles, but as with any shameful vice — addiction, debt — the solution turned into its own problem somewhere along the way.

If there was anyone who might relate to this, I realized, it was probably the group of mostly bloggers crowded into a small bar on the Lower East Side last June for a reading series whose vague mandate was "stories about the Internet." So I stood up, drunk and terrified, on my 27th birthday, and explained everything that happened from beginning to end...

My hunch that I might find a sympathetic crowd here turned out to be true. Afterward, people came up to me to recall their own oddball histories, with GeoCities, or wArEz, or — of course — AOL. Others seemed glad to know they weren't the only creeps who had sent letters and packages to Internet friends, or even gone so far as to meet them offline. One or two just wanted to reminisce about eWorld, and the thrill of its little red mail truck. And it turned out I wasn't the only one to have played fast and loose with my identity: a few people cataloged some former online untruths of their own.

Isn't that the ultimate blessing of the Internet? Sure, it lets you lie and deceive. But it also lets you confess, and draw a small community to your confession, and find, eventually, a clean, well-lighted place for your real self.

Can you imagine this, these RICH Boss of Mohit record gave the Okada man N5,000 after boarding the man's bike to P-SQUARE villa, according to him, the man could not charge him because he recognized him, he then said he brought out N5,000  handed it over to the Okada man.

According to his followers on twitter, he is known to be a generous man, he is always giving out money, sometimes they say he gives away up to N20,000 of free recharge cards in a day and also surprise his fans and followers with phone calls and well wishes.

At least he is not making the news for doing something bad, everybody is saying something good about him, he also has chains of motherless babies homes that he gives hand to on a daily basis.

His twitter status Through Which People Got To know About This.

“So I took Okada yesterday after a veryyy long time. Brought back memories. But that shit is still dangerous sha. Guys pls be careful”, that’s how @DONJAZZYMOHITS began his story on Tuesday.

The funniest thing is that, he was so humble to the extent that he could board an Okada just like that, he is just a down to earth person.

PDP begs Daniel not to decamp OGD recieves Power Delegation

Team Goodluck Recants:

The presidency yesterday distanced President Goodluck Jonathan from reports that he had called governors of certain states ‘rascals’ when he said “the southwest is too important to be left in the hands of rascals”.

Presidential spokesman, Ima Niboro, said that “at no time did the president ascribe the ‘rascal’ he mentioned to anyone.

“Please note that the president didn’t call any names when he said the southwest is too important to be left in the hands of rascals,” he said. “So anyone who wants to appropriate the name to himself is welcome to do so.”

Mr. Jonathan had, on Tuesday, while flagging off his presidential campaign in the southwest geo-political zone in Ibadan, made comments about the PDP’s election chances in the southwest.

“We must take it over from them,” he said. “The ruling party must take over Lagos. We must also take over Osun and Ekiti states.”

Team Fashola Reply:

Governor Babatunde Fashola of Lagos State, yesterday, expressed disappointment with the statements credited to President Goodluck Jonathan during the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) campaign in Ibadan, Oyo State. Mr Jonathan had reportedly said: “We (PDP) must take over all the States in the Southwest. The zone is too important to be left in the hands of rascals.” Describing Mr Jonathan’s statements as one that is not worth coming from a president, Mr Fashola, speaking to journalists at the presidential wing of the Murtala Muhammed Airport, said that leaders seeking elective offices in Nigeria should refrain from using words that are offensive. “The office of the president of the Federal Republic of Nigeria is a very high office and I don’t think that the kind of language coming from the PDP presidential candidate is presidential,” he said. “But Lagosians will have to make the determination for we are beginning to see clearly the pattern of the candidacy of the PDP candidate who seeks to lead this country to poverty, inefficiency and to insecurity.” “But having said that, I think that I have asked myself whether the president is more concerned about who is governor of Lagos or becoming president. I think that if the PDP wants to swap candidates for the governorship of Lagos I will be ready to face him, because his candidate is not talking about what he wants to do in Lagos.

And I will leave our own presidential candidate, Mallam Nuhu Ribadu, to respond to the president on issues that are genuine to Nigerians; why the federal roads in Lagos have not been fixed, why Lagosians do not have electricity, why Lagosians have to pay all the cost of their own security in spite of the enormous votes every year by the federal government on security,” added the governor.

 The PDP versus the ACN Explaining that elections are meant to be won by men of integrity, Mr Fashola urged Nigerians not to vote based on sentiments, adding that he made to the office of the governor based on upright manifestos of the Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN). “Elections cannot be won by resulting to derogatory language, by claiming luck,” he said. “Elections require those who seek elective office to focus on the people over whom they plan to exercise authority and to communicate to them in a very clear and practical manner how you intend to improve their lot.

 Look, I think that the PDP led federal government has a lot of questions to answer in Lagos and it is interesting that these remarks are being made from outside Lagos. So I hope that when they come here, they will be able to call us rascals again; and if we are rascals, it means that some of the other governors he has been presiding over is a republic of rascals.”

Comparing the achievements of the ACN with those of the PDP in the state, the governor said that the later failed in the delivery of the dividends of democracy. “They spent ten years trying to build a 400m bridge in Otta; and on the day that they finally came to open that bridge, instead of apologizing to Lagosians, they were fighting themselves about who was to cut the tape,” he said. “Meanwhile the road that leads to the bridge is not finished. We built Okota link bridge in 18months and it is longer than that bridge over which they were fighting. So that is what we expect them to come and talk about. Apapa-Oshodi-Oworonshoki Expressway is their road and it is pothole ridden, the road to the biggest airport in this country. This is a national embarrassment.”

Ribadu reacts Also reacting to the Mr Jonathan’s comments, the Nuhu Ribadu Campaign Organisation described the statements as “unbecoming of a president” and “one that smacks of desperation.” In a statement signed by Ibrahim Modibbo, the Director of Media and Communications, the organisation said that Mr Jonathan had “finally shown Nigerians how desperate he is to remain in power by resorting to name calling and character assassination instead of addressing issues that bother on the welfare of Nigerians and the people of the south west in particular.”

 “We recognise the president’s dilemma,” the statement said. “Of course he knows that both he and his fellow PDP governors in the south west have no achievements to brandish. They have no alternative to proffer to the positive changes being witnessed by the people in Lagos, Ekiti and Osun. It is however unbecoming of the president that in his frustration at the failure of him and his party to provide good governance to the people of the region and all Nigerians, he would resort to name calling.”

One dead, two BRT buses burnt, as LASTMA, Okada riders clash

Some say the Fear of LASTMA is the beginning of wisdom but to okada is not erring alone but human.

As two elephants fight while lagosians suffer .

By Olasunkanmi Akoni, Evelyn Usman, Daniel Eteghe & Monsur Olowoopejo

Business activities at mile 12 area of Lagos, were, Wednesday, brought to a halt when a bus belonging to the Lagos Metropolitan Area Transportation Agency, LAMATA allegedly killed an Okada rider while trying to escape from being apprehended by the men of the Lagos State Transport Management Authority, LASTMA.

Lagbus on fire

Meanwhile Governor Babatunde Fashola, SAN of Lagos, yesterday, ordered investigation into the incident.
According to an eyewitness (name withheld), explained that the Okada rider had earlier escaped after violating a traffic law at Ojota axis of the state.

He said: “I do not know which traffic law he violated, but what I saw was that they (LASTMA officials) pursued him from Ojota towards mile 12.”

“On getting to Mile 12 at about 10: 30 am, the Okada rider still on the service lane, discovered that the LASTMA officer were still trailing him. while trying to connect the BRT lane in a rush, he was smack down by the bus and died after some few minutes.”

Another eyewitness said “as I was coming to the office this morning at about 10: 30 am, I saw an Okada man lying down helpless. And his colleagues and sympathisers were also on ground trying to rescue him.”

“I quickly call the two emergency lines-767 and 112, to come to the rescue. But it took the several minutes before arrive the spot,” he said.

The eyewitness added that if men of the LASAMBUS officials arrive on time, the okada rider would not have died.
He noted that after discovering that the Okada rider had lost his life, the LASTMA officer took to their hills and ran towards ketu axis for safety.

“On discovering that the LASTMA officers have escaped, other okada riders and irate youths at the scene vented their anger on the LAGBUS and the Bus Rapid Transport, BRT, and set the two empty buses ablaze,” the source added.

Meanwhile, Governor Fashola who spoke with airport correspondents, said “I have received a preliminary report of the incident and I have ordered an investigation and therefore I think it would prejudicial to come to any conclusions now without getting a detailed report. But I think what is important to be said here is that i doubt that any Okada man will leave his home in the morning with one sole mission to go and fight LAG bus and I also doubt that any LAGbus man will leave home with the sole mission to go and fight Okada man.

“And this is why I have consistently advocated peaceful co-existence, tolerance. Incidence will happen that will provoke our temper, I am human too and at every time I have find it in me to control temper and this is what all of us must do as a people.

I think it is important here to stress that violence and anger are not options for a people who want development. Violence and anger is not a strategy it is sign of weakness. It superior thinking that endures. And therefore I want to appeal to people, anger management is something that we must develop.

“The burning of 2 LAG buses if that is true, it means that those who participated in it have just also contributed in burning the assets that we acquired with their money. This is tax payers money it doesn’t belong to Fashola. It is collective asset for our benefit. So we bought those buses with your money and my money and somebody decide to set it ablaze, has he really contributed to our development?

Now those buses are not manufactured here, even if we have money now we can’t replace them today. Now, those buses serve 100s of Nigerians every day, so we are two buses short and we are 100s of Nigerians who are going into inconvenience and pain.

As long as you are able to keep yourself fairly active throughout the day, and stick to a healthy balanced diet, you can easily achieve the recommended 30 minutes of exercise a day and keep a great figure.

So here are some every day activities that you can do to keep yourself fit without having to exercise.

How To Lose Weight By Doing Housework

Even if you can’t get to the gym very often, housework can be a great way to burn some calories.

For example, washing the car burns about 300 calories, making the bed about 100 calories, ironing about 100 calories and cleaning the windows about 150 calories.

So if you are a busy parent who has a lot of chores to do throughout the day, you are probably already getting a very good workout.

But if you find that you are not losing the weight you want to lose, then you probably need to focus on what you are eating as this will likely be what’s holding you back.

Most housework will help to tone your arms and legs, but if you pull your tummy in while you are working you can help to tone that to.

Overall housework is a great way to keep in shape, because not only do you keep your house clean and tidy but you can also keep yourself fit and healthy.

Lose Weight By Shopping!

Shopping for a large family can be the equivalent of a long workout session at the gym.

First you have your aerobic exercise, which consists of you walking throughout the shop and up and down the aisles. This not only helps to tone up your leg muscles, but will also benefit your heart and lungs.

Then you have your anaerobic exercise. This consists of picking things up from the shelves, and then carrying your bags back to the car and then back into the house.

This helps to tone up your arm muscles, and strengthen your shoulders. However it is important to remember to always balance the weight you are carrying, so that you avoid injuring yourself.

To get an even better workout from shopping, take stairs instead of escalators and eat before you go so that you are not tempted to snack on junk food while you shop.

Start Gardening To Lose Weight

Gardening has the potential to provide you with a very good exercise session, providing you are willing to push yourself a bit so that you raise your heart rate and work up a sweat.

For example, digging will burn around 300 calories, raking leaves around 200 calories, weeding around 200 calories and mowing the lawn around 150 calories.

As well as being a good way of relieving stress, gardening will help you to get lots of fresh air and exposure to the sun which will help to raise your vitamin D levels.

In addition to this, touching the soil has been shown to be a natural antidepressant which means gardening can actually help to improve your mood.

Use Sex For Weight Loss

Providing you can make it last, regular sex is one of the most enjoyable forms of exercise you can do and can be very effective at helping you to lose weight.

A 30 minute session in the bedroom will help you to burn around 150 calories whilst also boosting your circulation, improving your mood and reducing stress levels.

However in order for you receive weight loss benefits from sex, it must last as long as possible. So if you can only go for a few minutes, then the health benefits you get will be relatively minor.

To maximise weight loss during sex, choose positions in which you have to do the majority of the work.

Other Ways To Lose Weight Without Exercise

• Instead of using the remote control to change the TV channel, get up and change it yourself and you can burn around 150 calories during an average viewing session.

• Instead of sending e-mails to your work colleagues whilst at work, walk over and talk to them yourself. The same applies to your friends or family who you could easily walk over to and speak with.

• Always take the stairs instead of taking the lift, and always walk up escalators.

• If you need to use the toilet whilst at work, use one that is further away from the one you normally use.

• Buy some fitness equipment that you can keep close by you, and then use it whenever you have a few minutes free. This will help to get you into the swing of exercising on a regular basis.

• If you are carrying things back into your house, such as your shopping from the car, carry one bag into the house at a time and you will burn double the amount of calories you normally do.