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Nigeria should be divided into two nations to avoid further bloodshed between Muslims and Christians, said Muammar Gaddafi, the Libyan leader, according to a BBC report.
He made this call in a speech to students, where he praised the example of India and Pakistan in 1947 saying the “partition saved the lives of millions of Hindus and Muslims.”
According to the Libyan leader, splitting Nigeria “would stop the bloodshed and burning of places of worship,” Jana, the Libyan news agency quoted him as saying.
Mr. Gaddafi, former chairman of the African Union, described the recent Jos violence as a “deep conflict of religious nature” caused by the federal state, “which was made and imposed by the British, in spite of the people’s resistance to it.”
He described the partition of India as a “historic and radical solution.” Old India nation split in 1947 into a Muslim Pakistan and Hindu-India.
The Libyan leader has a history of making such boisterous calls as he called for the abolishment of Switzerland last year, saying the Swiss land should be divided among Italy, Germany and France.
The BBC also reported that a senior Nigerian diplomat said he was not taking the suggestion seriously.
Beef and tomatoes became scarce since early last week as the transporters, who brought them in from the northern part of the country, stopped transporting the commodities into the markets in the South-West region due to what they called the ‘exorbitant taxes and levies' imposed on them by the state officials. Although the Lagos State governor, Babatunde Fashola, on Wednesday, attempted to persuade the striking cattle transporters to resume their trade immediately, the strike stretched into the weekend, causing residents to resort to alternative options.
Comeback beef
However, it was a welcome cacophony of meat hacking and price haggling as hundreds of cattle were slaughtered at the Oko-Oba Abattoir, even if it was still above the usual price. This place had been devoid of activities since last Tuesday as no cattle was killed there. The northern cattle traders allowed the sales because, as We gathered, it was becoming too expensive to feed them, while the negotiations continued.
"The cattle owners said they didn't want the cows they brought in to die for nothing," a butcher, Akeem Alake, said in Yoruba. "They said the money they were using to feed them was too much so they are selling them off." The butchers, however, complained that they were buying for far above the normal market price.
The pace of work at the meat market was markedly higher than normal, as butchers, porters, knife carvers, and drivers of meat delivery vans tried to make up for lost time. However, an old hand in the market, Mumeni Ashipa, called for caution.
"With the rate at which people are buying and killing these cows, the whole thing may finish before night, because, as I'm talking to you right now, no truck has entered Lagos yet. All cattle you are seeing here are those brought in before the strike and they cannot last more than today," he said.
We found very few tomatoes, pepper or beef for sale over the weekend and Monday at the markets in the Agege Local Government Area. When found, the price was too high for consumers.
"The tomato seller said two (fruits) for fifty naira," a bachelor, Ayo Oriola, said. "I couldn't buy it, so I'm going to buy tin tomatoes and turkey wings now."
Paying too much
A cattle trader, Quaseem Olushola, who brings in his animals from Gombe, said he supported the strike. He said it costs him more than 300% to pay officials for his cargo to pass through states in the south than in the north.
"A trailer will carry maybe 30 to 50 cows and the state will collect N10,000 as ‘Veterinary money" from us, no matter how many is in the trailer," he said. "In the north, they collect about N1, 500 but once we get to Kwara (State) we begin to pay big money."
Reports say the state government is currently trying to meet the demands of the traders to forestall a repeat of the action
culled from NEXT
Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak is recovering well after undergoing gallbladder surgery 10 days ago, a spokeswoman for the German hospital where he is receiving treatment said on Tuesday.
Mubarak, 81, who has ruled Egypt for almost three decades, had surgery on March 6, treatment that has sparked rumours about the seriousness of his condition and weighed on Egyptian market share prices.
"The recovery is going well. Everything is fine," the hospital spokeswoman said.
Mubarak has not said whether he will run again for a sixth six-year term in the 2011 presidential election. Many Egyptians believe that if he does not, he will try to hand power to his politician son, Gamal, 46. Both Mubaraks deny any such plan.
Egypt's al-Shorouk newspaper said an Egyptian television crew was heading to Germany to film Mubarak. Traders in Egypt had said the market was likely to stay under pressure until the president was seen on television.
Mubarak, who has never appointed a vice president since he took over in 1981, handed powers temporarily to his prime minister, Ahmed Nazif, before the operation.
The money was allegedly paid directly to the producer himself by Cyril Emiko son of Surveyor G.T Emiko for special guest appearance at Cyril’s graduation party which held on the 29th of January this year. In addition to the performance fee, Terry allegedly collected money for five return tickets for his travel party.
The party was publicised all over the campus. Hotel rooms were allegedly booked and vehicles made available to convey the artiste and his crew when he arrived. Cyril was disappointed and aghast when the artiste refused to show up without reason and has received no refund ( as at press time).
Hence, it was a furious father who called up Dele Abiodun; the president of Performing Musicians Association of Nigeria (PMAN), this week, to lodge complain.
Unfortunately, Terry G is not a member of PMAN and the aggrieved father, Surveyor Emiko – who sponsored the party with the sum of N750, 000, is threatening to get the police involved and possibly go to court over the loss.
When a call was placed through to the artiste’s mobile phone, the receiver who said he was Terry G’s Personal Assistant said, ‘Are you the only one that does not know that Terry G is out of the country? Have a good day, gentleman’. And the line went dead.
While we await the controversial singer and producer’s return to hear his side of the story- if he will comment, friends of Terry G are urged to wade into the matter and seek a calm resolve
TOBECHI ENYINNA ONWUHARA |
The United States Federal Bureau of Investigation, FBI has added a Nigerian, Mr. Tobechukwu Enyinna Onwuhara, 30, to its list of ‘Most Wanted Fugitives.’
According to a report on America’s Most Wanted, the Bureau said ‘Tobechi Onwuhara is a criminal mastermind’ who in less than three years stole $44 million dollars from banks in the United States using sophisticated methods including stealing bank customer’s personal information, Home Equity Lines of Credit details and account numbers.
FBI agents say Onwuhara was born in Houston and sent to live with his wealthy Nigerian father, Prince Doris Onwuhara who the Bureau say is a ‘well-known con man who made a fortune from the notorious Nigerian 419 scheme’ before returning to the United States when he reached his teenage years in 1999.
Having settled in the southern state of Texas, he got a job with US lender, Capital One Financial Corporation where authorities believe he gained insider knowledge on how to work the US financial system.
His first brush with the law happened in April 2002 when he was arrested by Lewisville city police in Lewisville, Texas after police got a tipoff that he may be using stolen identification to steal money from credit card accounts. When police raided his apartment, they found stolen credit card account numbers, fake driver’s licenses and materials used to forge identification.
Same year in December in the western state of Seattle, FBI said ‘Onwuhara walked into a local bank and tried to max out the cash withdrawal limit on a stolen credit card’ but fled the bank when he sensed trouble. He was said to have jumped into a waiting car driven by a friend of his, Abel Nnabue and they led Seattle police on a high-speed chase but were eventually caught when they tried to flee on foot.
Both men were charged, convicted and sentenced to two years in a Seattle prison but spent only eight months of their sentence for good behaviour.
After their release, they relocated to Texas and went low for a while until sometime in 2005 when the real estate market was at an all time high and Home Equity Lines Of Credit loans became available. Though it was harder to steal from Home Equity Lines of Credit, Onwuhara and his co-conspirators found a way around it.
FBI say Onwuhara painstakingly researched home owners credit reports to see if they opened home lines of credit accounts and how much they had available. At this time in the real estate market, it was very common to find homeowners with $300, 000 - $ 400, 000 in home equity.
Onwuhara impersonated such homeowners after learning their passwords and home phone numbers through extensive research.
The Nigerian acquired multiple prepaid phone lines and wireless internet cards to prevent anyone from successfully tracing their numbers. He then also signed up to a spoofing service which allowed a home owner’s number appear on the bank representative’s caller ID when he called a bank to request a wire transfer from the account to a home owner’s regular checking account before the funds are eventually wired to accounts in Asia and then the monies would go to a Hawala in Africa.
‘Hawalas’ are funds transfer systems that are not regulated instead, they operate on trust. ‘Brokers or Hawalanders would take a cut and then transfer the money to an African Bank, eventually returning to a US bank,’ according to America’s Most Wanted.
Most of the funds returning to the United States came through accounts belonging to Precious Matthews or one of the other conspirators.
Investigators say Onwuhara made most of the calls himself but when an account belonged to a female, he would get his girlfriend, Precious Matthews to make the call while other co-conspirators would be delegated other duties including finding new home owners with equity in their homes.
According to FBI records, Onwuhara and his crew had stolen more than $20 million dollars before the bureau were notified of the scam and by the time the FBI penetrated their well-organized syndicate and learned their identity, they had stolen an additional $20 million dollars.
To learn their identity, the FBI contacted Verizon Wireless, a prepaid wireless company after it learned they were using prepaid internet services provided by the company to log into bank accounts and were able to obtain surveillance videos of three men paying for the service at one of the provider’s stores.
In the spring of 2008, the FBI got a break when they also found out that Onwuhara was using a spoofing service and they contacted the provider who made more than 1500 audio recordings available to them. As expected, most of the recordings were conversations between Onwuhara and various bank representatives, but unfortunately for Onwuhara someone from his crew had also used the phone to call a pharmacy pretending to be a doctor and ordered a prescription for Tobechi Onwuhara. This was a huge lead for the FBI. When they ran Onwuhara’s name, there was a match in their database where they found out he had been arrested before for bank fraud.
When they matched his photo with the surveillance videos obtained from the telecommunications company, they believed they had their man.
Gradually, they started their investigations and tried to learn the identity of his co-conspirators. This was when they discovered that Onwuhara had left Miami for Nigeria with a brief stopover in New York.
The FBI waited for Onwuhara and his travelling companions to return to the country and decided to stop him at the airport after he had rerouted his ticket several times.
The Bureau said they wanted him to believe he was being questioned as a possible terrorist and he fell for it by giving them information that eventually linked him to the fraud.
Before August 1, 2008, FBI agents already knew Onwuhara and his girlfriend, Matthews lived in their $5000 a month mansion near Miami in Florida. As they were making their way to a Florida casino with their crew on that day, agents and local police decided they had enough evidence to take them in. While they were effecting their arrest, agents realized that Onwuhara had entered the casino and believed Matthews sent a text message to him that they were being arrested and he managed to get away.
Authorities say they have not been able to track him down since.
FBI said before they took the gang down, Onwuhara would spend about $50, 000 a night in a strip club up to three times in a week and usually stayed at various five star hotels whenever he made his frequent travels.
Onwuhara according to the Bureau has stashed cash abroad and also shipped many luxury cars to Nigeria- all paid for in cash.
They believe he is hiding in either Canada; Miami, Florida; Atlanta, Georgia; or New Jersey.
His co-conspirators have been sentenced to various jail terms:
Henry ‘Uche’ Obilo, 30, Miami: Sentenced to 88 months in prison.
Abel Nnabule, 34, Dallas: Sentenced to 54 months on Jan. 30, 2009.
Precious Matthews (Onwuhara’s girlfriend): Sentenced to 51 months on Feb. 13, 2009.
Brandy Anderson, 31, Dallas, Sentenced to two years of supervised probation and 40 days of community confinement on Feb. 20, 2009..
Ezenwa Onyedebelu, 21, Dallas, Sentenced to 37 months on Feb. 27, 2009.
Daniel Orjinta, 43, Nigeria: Sentenced to 42 months on March 06, 2009.
Paula Gipson, 34, Dallas, Sentenced to 15 months on September 04, 2009.
DESCRIPTION
CAUTIONTobechi Enyinna Onwuhara, a convicted felon, is wanted for his alleged involvement in an elaborate scheme that defrauded the financial industry out of tens of millions of dollars. Onwuhara is a key member of a group of Nigerians who allegedly have been conducting fraudulent banking activities from Florida and Texas, since 2005. It is alleged that the group has been using online Internet databases to steal victims' identities. Once acquired, they allegedly use the victims' information to gain access to the victims' Home Equity Line of Credit accounts and wire transfer the money to accounts mainly located overseas, some in the United States. Some of Onwuhara's alleged co-conspirators have been arrested, inside and outside of the United States, however, Onwuhara remains at large. Onwuhara was charged federally with conspiracy to commit bank fraud, and a federal warrant was issued for his arrest by the United States District Court, Eastern District of Virginia, on August 1, 2008. IF YOU HAVE ANY INFORMATION CONCERNING THIS CASE, PLEASE CONTACT YOUR LOCAL FBI OFFICE OR THE NEAREST AMERICAN EMBASSY OR CONSULATE. |
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Explosion rocks amnesty talks
Acting President Goodluck Jonathan had a baptism of fire yesterday as the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND) detonated two bombs at the post amnesty dialogue organised by Vanguard Media Limited, the publishers of Vanguard newspapers in Warri, Delta State, that left one person dead.
The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) quoted Charles Muka, the Delta State Police Command spokesperson, that one person died in the explosion. Mr. Muka said that the police headquarters in Asaba, the state capital, had received the report of the death of a woman in the explosion, which also injured a number of other persons. He could not ascertain the number of those who were injured in the blast, which twice rocked the venue of the meeting.
The explosions caused the postponement of the meeting hosted by the Delta State government.
It was gathered that the first bomb exploded at 11 a.m. as governor Emmanuel Uduaghan of Delta was walking into the hall with his colleagues from Imo and Delta, Ikedi Ohakim and Adams Oshiomhole.
The Niger Delta Minister, Ufot Ekaette, who represented Mr. Jonathan, was also behind the governors, witnesses said.
Eyewitness account
Daniel Orji, a staff of the Delta Broadcasting Corporation, who was at the scene of the explosions said in a phone interview, “There was a bomb explosion while the programme was on.
“After about 30 minutes, the second one exploded. The initial report was that three people were injured. Two cars exploded but altogether four cars were affected; two other cars that w ere beside the second car were affected.”
Mr. Orji added that immediately after the second explosion everybody scampered away for safety, unlike the first explosion when people still stayed at the venue.
Also, MEND in an e-mail message signed by its usual signatory, Jomo Gbomo, to journalists confirmed the attacks:
“The Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta salutes all its operatives who at great risk, successfully planted and detonated two car bombs at the venue of the Vanguard Post Amnesty Conference in Warri,” the statement said.
“Three such bombs, of varying strength, were planted at this venue. It was unnecessary to detonate the third and most powerful bomb as our operatives noticed the participants at this jamboree fled towards the direction of the last bomb.
“Any attempt to detonate this bomb would have resulted in great loss of lives. This bomb is being preserved for future use.
“All who participated in this operation safely returned to their respective bases.”
Oma Djebah, the Delta State information commissioner, had earlier in the day confirmed the explosion.
“Yes, there was an explosion about 200 meters away from the conference venue,” Mr. Djebah said in a phone interview.
Contrary to agency reports which indicated that the device went off near the main hall of the event, Mr. Djebah claimed that the explosion went off in a car parked away from the venue.
“The explosion happened while Sam Amuka-Pemu - the Vanguard Publisher - was giving his address after the chairman, Patrick Aziza, had given his opening remarks,” said a source who was at the conference.
We’re no media creation
However, the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND) said in an e-mailed statement to journalists that it had planted three explosive devices in and around Delta State Government House in Warri to debunk the state governor’s claim that “MEND is a media creation.” “After receiving the baton of ignorance from his Bayelsa State counterpart, the governor of Delta State declared in the Vanguard newspaper of February 22, 2010 that “the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND) is a media creation,” the statement said and promised that it would detonate the first bomb remotely at 11:30 hours Nigerian time, which it did.
The use of car bombs marks a significant change in the tactics adopted by MEND, which had maintained a tenuous peace since the federal government amnesty programme commenced last June. The deal, brokered with the aid of the then Vice President Goddluck Jonathan, has been touted as the greatest achievement of the Yar’Adua administration till date.
MEND also disputed insinuations that the attack was targeted against specific individuals saying, “It was not targeted to harm anyone and that is why the cars were not filled with bolts, nuts and nails which in the event of a blast become deadly projectiles. Our aim was to stop the jamboree and pass a message to Uduaghan.”
Amnesty on course
Meanwhile at Abuja, the Federal Government reinstated its commitment to pursue the post amnesty programme, the explosions notwithstanding.
“We’re on top of the situation in Niger Delta,” Mr. Jonathan said at the State House while receiving Kenneth Yellowe, the chairman and chief executive of Global Gas and Refining Limited.
“The problems in the region, being human and development-related, are such that require time to be addressed. I encourage the Niger Delta people and major companies in the region to keep faith with government, as we are determined to reinvigorate post-amnesty plans and programmes for the region.”
According to Plutarch, Caesar was warned by a seer to be on his guard against a great peril on the Ides of March. On his way to the Theatre of Pompey (where he would be assassinated), Caesar saw the seer and joked "Well, the Ides of March have come," to which the seer replied "Ay, they have come, but they are not gone."[2] This meeting is famously dramatized in William Shakespeare's play Julius Caesar, when Caesar is warned to "beware the Ides of March".[3][4]
The topic of divorce is no longer new; it has remained a subject of discussion for some time now. But a celebrity divorce rings a bell. There is a belief that if a very well known spouse manage to succeed in marriage for at least five of marriage, they’ve arrived at very important event in their marriage. Anytime, famous people or celebrities make current event in media headlines with their quarrelsome attitude with continuous public outrage, no doubt that the public is excited with the close relationship being disclosed. Apart from that, why those couple colored like gold divorce nearly after honeymoon remains unanswered.
The Type of Job
Majority of notorious marriage in Nollywood appear to be those that begun on the assigned films. Going on for a lengthy period of time, from elsewhere and closeness that foster close relationship. Most people in ordinary jobs always agree how simple it is to relate with colleagues who share a common interest or profession.
The reason is understandable: if you are a celebrity having paid jobs in a little or no personal privacy of category brings the needed environment for involving in sexual relation with someone other than your married partner. Functioning intimately at work with others on any task that needs much bodily contact and emotionally inspired ability that frequently attracts fellow celebrities. Two people with common goals have the tendency of being separated from one’s husband or wife (on regular basis) --- and divorce appears to be irresistible.
The News
You and I understands that dangerous love affair in Nollywood on the headline news attracts almost every reader. The scandal seeking media is always on the lookout for shocking or scandalous news to make their living. As soon as celebrities embrace each other, the pictures are almost automatically published or later on, on the internet! A welcoming embrace, light kiss on the cheek, any unusually greetings can speak volume as deadly love affair to the public and freelance photographer. They just repeat somebody’s statement within and a succulent title for newspaper article is begun. Only a fraction of those stories will go round and it is enough to trigger off crisis for married celebrities. When the marriage is not promising as they initially believed, the spouse is usually divorced, or become irreconcilable.
From http://lovergist.com
Not so with the fifteen sites here. These sites changed the Internet, mostly for good, in substantial ways. Included here is everything from Geocities (which could probably be blamed
entirely, either directly or indirectly, for every ugly web design
“trend” that’s ever been) to Wikipedia (which has made
information almost universally accessible) to Google (which has
changed or influenced virtually everything online)..
1. Wikipedia
Changed the way we find information. Before Wikipedia, most online encyclopedias were either sorely lacking in information, or required you to have a paid subscription to access their content. Wikipedia
changed all that by not only allowing anyone to view the content for
free, but also by allowing individual users to review and update
content, making it more complete and accurate overall. Wikipedia also
brought crowdsourcing and user-generated content to the mainstream
online, making both much more viable and valuable.
2. Amazon.com
Changed the way we shop. Prior to Amazon.com, online shopping wasn’t much different than shopping out of a mail-order catalog, except it wasn’t nearly as popular. While Amazon started out selling just books
and related items, it has expanded to sell virtually anything you can
think of, either directly or through partner sites large and small.
Amazon also made free shipping a standard on orders over a certain
dollar value, which has impacted the shipping rates and policies of many
other online retailers.
3. Hotmail
Changed the way we use email. Before Hotmail came along, email was basically tethered to a single computer. When you checked your email, it was pulled and deleted from the remote server, meaning the only place
you could view it was at your computer. Need an email at home that you
received at work? Too bad. There was no way to access it unless you went
back to the office. Hotmail changed all that by providing webmail that
could be accessed from any computer with an Internet connection. Now,
web-based email is widely used and provided by a huge variety of
providers. Even though Hotmail is no longer the primary provider of
webmail (and is now owned by Microsoft), they were still pioneers in the
technology.
4. Facebook
Changed the way friends connected. While Facebook wasn’t the first social network, it has definitely become the most popular and has really changed the way friends interact with one another. Sure, people use FB to talk
online, but they’re also increasingly using it as a way to plan
get-togethers offline. They’re using it to follow and interact
with their favorite bands, actors, and other personalities. People use
it to keep in touch with business contacts, friends, family, and
acquaintances. Facebook has made social networking mainstream, across a
variety of demographics and virtually worldwide.
5. Project Gutenberg
Changed the way we read. Project Gutenberg has a much longer history than most people realize. They created the first ebooks, and gave them away for free. You can now read virtually every major book in
the public domain, sometimes in multiple languages on their site.
Without the pioneering steps the founders of Project Gutenberg took,
ebooks would not be where they are today.
6. Twitter
Changed the way we communicate. Twitter has made one of the biggest impacts on the Internet in recent memory. The idea that 140-character messages, broadcast publicly (for the most part), would change the way
people communicate with one another would have been hard to believe ten
years ago. But Twitter has become not just a powerhouse in the way
individual communicate with one another, but also in the way businesses
communicate with their customers. Complaining about poor customer
service on Twitter can often result in almost instant messages from the
company in question, and often results in a satisfactory resolution.
Twitter has also made celebrities more accessible, with hundreds of
celebs now using the service to interact with their fans.
7. Pandora
Changed the way we find new music. Before Pandora, if you wanted to listen to music online, you usually turned to a streaming radio station with pre-programmed content. Sure, you might get lucky and find a station
that had mostly music you liked, but maybe it wasn’t diverse enough, or
it still kept playing that one song you HATED. Pandora changed all that.
Now, you can program your own radio station by just entering the name
or a song or artist and then giving the thumbs up or down to music
played. With a minimal amount of user input, Pandora has gotten
surprisingly good at creating playlists that reflect one’s musical
taste. The bonus is that songs or artists you might not have heard of
are often thrown into the mix, based on what you already like.
8. Apple
Made minimalist web design cool. Apple had one of the first corporate websites designed with a minimalist aesthetic. As far back as the late 90s, Apple was starting to show a more minimalist take on web design
than many other corporate sites, and by early 2000, they’d adopted the
white and gray color scheme and top navigation they still employ today.
9. YouTube
Changed entertainment. Before YouTube, there weren’t many options if you wanted to watch a video online. You could sometimes find a video here or there, but with bandwidth costs, they were few and far between.
Website owners just didn’t want to pay the extra costs associated with
video content. Then YouTube came along and made it free to post any
video you wanted (as long as it wasn’t copyrighted or over ten minutes
long). Web users now had a centralized place to go to watch video
online. And because of YouTube’s pioneering effort, online video is now
enjoyed by millions every day.
10. Craigslist
Changed classifieds. Online classified sites used to be nearly unusable. Between the huge number of spam postings and the fact there were few if any local listings in most areas, there wasn’t
much point in using them. But then Craigslist
caught on and suddenly there was an online classifieds site that
rivaled most local newspaper classifieds. Now you can use Craigslist to
find almost anything, no matter where you live.
11. The Drudge Report
Changed the stature of online news. When the Monica Lewinsky/President Clinton story broke in 1998, it wasn’t a mainstream news source that first reported it. Instead, The Drudge Report held those
honors, forever changing the standing of online news sources. Now,
online news sources break stories on a regular basis, and are considered
by most to be just as reliable as television or print news sources.
12. GeoCities
Made the web more accessible. In the early days of the Internet, the only people online (for the most part) were scientists, academics, and those involved in technology. It wasn’t a
very exciting place. Then came GeoCities, and
suddenly anyone could set up their own webpage for free. Sure, GeoCities
spawned a legion of horrifically ugly websites, but it also got a lot
of regular people involved in the Internet for the first time and was
likely the first design experience of many early web designers.
13. Digg
Changed the way we find and share news. Digg was originally set up as an experiment, but it has completely changed the way many people find news online. The idea of users determining which news was important, relevant, and
interesting rather than editors or executives at big news organizations
was revolutionary. Now, user-generated news sites are all over the
place, both for mainstream news and for individual industries and
niches.
14. LiveJournal
Hooked millions on blogging. Blogging wasn’t invented by LiveJournal, but they were the first site to offer free blogs to their members. Millions now
use LiveJournal, and tens of millions more blog elsewhere, either
through other blog hosts or on their own websites. If it weren’t for
LiveJournal and similar free blogs hosts that came later, blogging might
not have caught on as the global phenomenon it has become.
15. Google
Changed everything. This one might seem a bit dramatic, but it really is true. Google has invaded virtually every aspect of the Internet. No matter what you
do online, you probably interact with one Google service or another
multiple times every day. And most people use at least one Google
product or service one a regular basis personally. Whether it’s a
Blogger blog, a Picasa photo album, a Google search, or even a YouTube
video (or any of the dozens of other services Google owns),
Google-controlled sites are everywhere.
About Author – Cameron Chapman is a professional Web and graphic designer with over 7 years of experience. She writes for a number of blogs, including her own, Cameron Chapman On Writing. She’s
also the author of Internet
Famous: A Practical Guide to Becoming an Online Celebrity.
Ning CEO Gina Bianchini min-width: 0px; min-height: 0px; padding: 1px 0pt 0pt; border: 0pt none;font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; font-family: "trebuchetms",arial,helvetica,sans-serif; float: none; position: static;left: auto; top: auto; line-height: normal; background-image:url("http://i.ixnp.com/images/v6.22/theme/silver/palette.gif";);background-color: transparent; visibility: visible; width: 14px;height: 12px; background-position: -1128px 0pt; background-repeat:no-repeat; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: top; display: inline;" src="http://i.ixnp.com/images/v6.22/t.gif"> is being replaced asthe CEO of Ning 0pt ! important; max-height: 2000px; max-width: 2000px; min-width: 0px;min-height: 0px; padding: 1px 0pt 0pt; border: 0pt none; font-style:normal; font-weight: normal; font-family: "trebuchetms",arial,helvetica,sans-serif; float: none; position: static;left: auto; top: auto; line-height: normal; background-image:url("http://i.ixnp.com/images/v6.22/theme/silver/palette.gif";);background-color: transparent; visibility: visible; width: 14px;height: 12px; background-position: -1128px 0pt; background-repeat:no-repeat; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: top; display: inline;" src="http://i.ixnp.com/images/v6.22/t.gif"> by COO Jason Rosenthal 0pt ! important; max-height: 2000px; max-width: 2000px; min-width: 0px;min-height: 0px; padding: 1px 0pt 0pt; border: 0pt none; font-style:normal; font-weight: normal; font-family: "trebuchetms",arial,helvetica,sans-serif; float: none; position: static;left: auto; top: auto; line-height: normal; background-image:url("http://i.ixnp.com/images/v6.22/theme/silver/palette.gif";);background-color: transparent; visibility: visible; width: 14px;height: 12px; background-position: -1128px 0pt; background-repeat:no-repeat; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: top; display: inline;" src="http://i.ixnp.com/images/v6.22/t.gif">. Bianchini founded theDIY network of social networks with Marc Andreessen. But after fiveand half years at the helm, she is ready to try something new. She willtransition to an entrepreneur in residence role at Andreessen Horowitz,the venture capital firm started by Andreessen.
In a blog post min-width: 0px; min-height: 0px; padding: 1px 0pt 0pt; border: 0pt none;font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; font-family: "trebuchetms",arial,helvetica,sans-serif; float: none; position: static;left: auto; top: auto; line-height: normal; background-image:url("http://i.ixnp.com/images/v6.22/theme/silver/palette.gif";);background-color: transparent; visibility: visible; width: 14px;height: 12px; background-position: -1128px 0pt; background-repeat:no-repeat; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: top; display: inline;" src="http://i.ixnp.com/images/v6.22/t.gif">, Andreessen (whoremains chairman of Ning) notes:
Ning today is one of the world’s top social networking properties, with more than 2.3 million user-created Ning Networks andmore than 45 million registered users, and is far and away the marketleading social platform for interests and passions. Ning Networks spanevery area of human endeavor, from the arts to business, politics tosocial activism, and every other field you can think of. Over 5,000 newNing Networks are created every day, and we’re adding a million newregistered users every 12 days
Over the past year, Ning’s unique worldwide visitors have doubled to 20.7 million, according to comScore, which is still much smaller thanother social networks such as Hi5 (46.5 million) or LinkedIn (42.8million). But at least it’s bigger than Friendster’s 15 million.Andreessen notes that Ning will continue on the same course underRosenthal.
Bianchini appeared min-height: 0px; padding: 1px 0pt 0pt; border: 0pt none; font-style:normal; font-weight: normal; font-family: "trebuchetms",arial,helvetica,sans-serif; float: none; position: static;left: auto; top: auto; line-height: normal; background-image:url("http://i.ixnp.com/images/v6.22/theme/silver/palette.gif";);background-color: transparent; visibility: visible; width: 14px;height: 12px; background-position: -1128px 0pt; background-repeat:no-repeat; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: top; display: inline;" src="http://i.ixnp.com/images/v6.22/t.gif"> earlier this week on CharlieRose, and we caught up with here recently atDavos where Mike interviewedher on video.
| Website: | ning.com |
| Companies: | Ning, Goldman Sachs |
Gina Bianchini is the co-founder and former CEO of Ning, an online platform for creating your own social network for anything. She… More"">Learn More
| Companies: | Ning, Ning, HP Software, Opsware, Netscape, Ning |
Jason Rosenthal is the Chief Executive Officer at Ning. He worked as the COO at Ning from November 2009 until March 2010, andas the Senior Vice President of Business Operations until the beginningof November, 2009.
Previously,… Learn More
Supersize Donna Simpson has found a bizarre way to turn her passion for food into money. Hundreds of men pay to watch online as 45st Donna scoffs vast amounts of burgers, pizza, crisps and cakes in an attempt to hit her target weight of 1,000lbs, or 72st.
Since setting up her website last November, Donna, who squeezes into size 40 clothes, has already attracted 260 subscribers and their fees net her an impressive £2,000 a month – which she spends on food.
Donna, who’s 39 and 5ft 4, hopes to become one of the world’s heaviest women by consuming up to 12,000 calories a day. To reach her target, ex-carer Donna, who already suffers from diabetes and high-blood pressure, needs to gain another 27st and predicts it will take her until 2012 at her current weight gain of 7st a year.
“I don’t know why my target is 1,000lbs – it’s just the weight I believe I was born to be,” she says. Donna has been obese since childhood. By nine, she weighed 13st – she was bullied at school and dubbed “Fatty four-eyes.”
"He liked me supersized"
At the age of 24 Donna married Robert Simpson, a chef who encouraged her eating by bringing home leftovers from work to feed her. “He’d come home with steak and desserts,” she recalls. “He liked me supersized.”
Robert – who was already a dad to son Sean, now 18 – and Donna had a child together, Devin, now 12, but divorced shortly after. By then Donna weighed 43st. For the first time ever she went on a diet, urged on by her father who was concerned for her health, and lost 5st in six months.
But she soon lapsed when she met fat-lover Philippe Gouamba, 47, in an online chat room for oversized women in 2006. “When I ate enough for five people on our first date, it really impressed him,” says Donna, from New Jersey, USA. Philippe, who counts watching his girlfriend eat as one of his favourite hobbies, says: “I’ve always been attracted to big women, but Donna is my fantasy. The more she weighs, the sexier she is.”
Extreme health risks
The couple, who plan to marry next year, say that Donna’s size makes their sex life even better. “Philippe goes on top so he can play with my fat belly,” says Donna. Regular gym-goer Philippe, who is 13st and 6ft 4, also gets aroused by helping Donna, who is a bra size 56E, wash her rolls of fat in the shower.
Although doctors had said her 38st frame would make it almost impossible to conceive, Donna fell pregnant within three months of dating Phillipe. But she developed diabetes and high-blood pressure during pregnancy and needed a team of 19 doctors and nurses to get through the high-risk Caesarean birth.
When baby Jacqueline was born weighing 8lbs 14oz in February 2007, Donna became the world’s fattest woman to give birth – the previous largest had weighed 34st. But she admits she struggles to care for her daughter, as she can barely walk 20ft without needing to sit down. “It’s difficult keeping up with Jacqueline, but we’re very closely bonded,” says Donna. “Fortunately, anything I can’t do with her, her dad can, so I don’t feel guilty.”
It was six months after giving birth that Donna resolved to become one of the world’s heaviest women by weighing 1,000lbs. “I decided that if I was healthy enough to have a baby, then my body could cope with an extra 34st,” says Donna. “It will be a great achievement – not many other people have reached that weight.”
And despite initial worries for Donna’s health, Philippe supports his fiancée. He says: “Gaining weight makes
Donna happy and seeing her happy makes me happy.”
"My food costs £400 a week"
But Donna’s ambition proved expensive, so she decided to set up a website after discovering that there were men willing to pay to watch large women eat. “My food costs £400 a week,” says Donna. “In a typical day I’ll eat four burgers and fries, a loaf of bread with peanut butter and jam, four servings of meatloaf and mashed potato, a large pizza, a chocolate cake with ice cream and cream, 12 cupcakes, two cheesecakes and fizzy drinks. And I don’t want Philippe to foot the bill just because I’m too big to go out and work.”
Donna charges £8 a month for access to photos of her body and videos of her feasting and measuring her ever-expanding waistline. She has 260 “fat admirers” from as far away as Japan and Australia and their ages range from 20 to 68. She spends between six and 10 hours a day responding to emails or doing live chats online. And although she admits to getting some sexual requests, these are firmly ignored.
Human resources executive Philippe is supportive of Donna’s venture. He says: “I don’t mind other men looking at her because I’m the only one who touches her.”
Since launching her site, Donna has gained 7st. Incredibly, she doesn’t care that reaching 72st will probably confine her to a wheelchair and could kill her, leaving her daughter – who she feeds a healthy diet – motherless.
“I’m well enough to cope with my target weight,” she says defiantly.
The immediate past governor of Delta State, James Ibori, who was recently acquitted of a 170-count corruption charges brought against him by Nigeria’s anti-graft agency, the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), is not home free, as the agency has launched a fresh round of investigations on the activities of the former governor..
Double trouble
In addition to the fact that the EFCC has, since December 2009, filed a notice of appeal against the December 17, 2009 judgement which absolved Mr. Ibori of all wrong doing, the commission has begun this new round of investigations on the former governor following a petition by members of the Delta State Elders, Leaders and Stakeholders Forum, which was made available to the public last week.
Last week, the chairman of the EFCC, Farida Waziri, held a meeting with the acting president, Goodluck Jonathan, during which Mr. Jonathan re-emphasised the determination of the federal government to wage a vibrant anti-corruption campaign.
The latest petition against Mr. Ibori, signed by 10 leading citizens of Delta State headed by a former minister of information, Edwin Clark, includes a demand for a probe of the former governor over alleged illegal disposal of 528 million shares belonging to Delta State, in Oceanic Bank. The shares were said to have been disposed of in 2007 by government officials.
In the petition, which was also published in some national dailies, the group asked the anti- corruption agency to hold Mr. Ibori liable for the disposal of the shares. Mr. Ibori was alleged to have unlawfully used the 528.01 million units as “a collateral for a loan from Intercontinental Bank for his private company, Ascot Offshore Nigeria Ltd.”
Officials of the EFCC, who declined to be named, confirmed over the weekend that the agency has launched fresh investigations into several allegations against Mr. Ibori made by Mr. Clark, a delta chief and head of the Elders Committee of the ruling Peoples Democratic Party (PDP).
“The EFCC has initiated investigations into some other allegations, including the ones made by Clark and co,” an operative of the agency told NEXT over the weekend.
However, the spokesman of the EFCC, Femi Babafemi, declined to speak on ongoing investigations against the former governor. “We are looking into the petition,” he said.
Old and new charges
Mr. Babafemi however confirmed that the commission was eager to go on with the earlier case, but that the appeal court was yet to fix a date for hearing on the matter.
“After the December 17th judgement, the EFCC on December 23rd filled a notice of appeal at the appeal court in Benin. We are just waiting for the appeal court to fix a date for the hearing,” Mr. Babafemi said.
The EFCC had slammed a 170-count charge of corruption on Mr. Ibori in 2007. After two years, a trial judge, Marcel Awokulehin, ruled the case in favour of the former governor in a Federal High Court sitting in Asaba, Delta State.
Mr. Ibori, however, still faces money laundering charges brought against him and some of his associates by the Metropolitan Police in London. The case is being heard at the Southwark County Court, Londo
An Italian TV reporter said Beckham told the physios: Its broken, its broken as he was taken off on a stretcher in tears.
He was preparing to kick a ball unchallenged when he frantically signalled to the bench something was wrong, The Sun reports.
He will have an operation in Finland tomorrow and faces three to four months of rehabilitation, ruling him out of the 2010 World Cup in South Africa.
Milan coach Leonardo said: Beckhams injury makes us feel terrible. He is an extraordinary guy and todays game proves it yet again.
I cannot enjoy this evening considering this serious injury. David understood immediately that he had torn his Achilles tendon, he said.
Three Lions boss Fabio Capell, who called Beckham after the game, now needs a serious rethink, with Becks rival for the right midfield berth, Aaron Lennon, also struggling with a groin problem.
And left-back Ashley Cole is in a race against time to make the finals as he recovers from a broken ankle.
I slept with an average of 7 men in a day
![pix201003133272250[1].jpg](http://odili.net/news/source/2010/mar/13/punch/images/pix201003133272250%5B1%5D.jpg)
When 33 strip dancers were arrested in Lagos recently and their half-nude pictures splashed on the pages of an evening newspaper, not a few people condemned the dancers and the operators of the night club in which they operated.
Agatha
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But many people seemed to have failed to reckon that the business could not have thriven without patronage from members of the public, or that many of the dancers were forced into the trade by circumstances.
For instance 17-year-old Agatha found herself in prostitution as a result of circumstances beyond her control and she is now full of regrets for the unseemly experience. ''My father had three wives and my mum had three daughters for him. I am the last of the three girls,'' said the Enugu State born girl. ''I lived with my maternal grandmother. Sometime in March last year, I was on my way to my father's house when I was accosted by a lady from my village. She asked me why I wasn't in school.''
The lady, called Mama Ify, lived a distance away from Agatha's father. Believing that Mama Ify was genuinely concerned about her welfare, Agatha explained that she had to stop going to school for lack of funds. ''I didn't go back to school after my JSS III exams because my father had no money. When I said so, she told me she had a sister in Ibadan who sold provisions, and the sister was in need of a sales girl.''
Agatha was overjoyed at the opportunity to escape her life of poverty. After all, there was nothing left for her back at the village except a life of penury and obscurity. ''I couldn't tell my father anything. I knew he would object to my leaving the village, more so when I had to go with someone he didn't know. I just made up my mind that I would leave without telling them.''
On the morning of March 25, 2009, left for Ibadan. ''My grandmother was at home on that day. She asked me where I was going with my clothes, and I told her I was leaving without any plan to come back. She pleaded with me to stay back but I refused.'' Agatha went to meet her new found benefactor at home, anxious to begin a new life. ''Mama Ify told me to go down to the expressway and wait for her there. She said she would join me after a few minutes.''
The motive, of course, was that Agatha's disappearance would never be traced to her. But if Agatha noticed the implication, she certainly wasn't cautious. Leaving the village was uppermost in her mind. ''We boarded a bus to Enugu Park. From there, we took another bus to Onitsha. It was at Onitsha that we took a luxury bus to Ijebu Ode.''
All through the journey, Agatha harboured no fear. For some reason, she implicitly trusted Mama Ify's intentions. ''I asked Mama Ify for her number just in case her sister misbehaved and I wanted to return to my village. She obliged me and confided that her daughter was ill and badly in need of a surgical operation. She said she was actually going to get some money from her sister and decided to get her a sales girl in return.
"When we got to Ijebu Ode, Mama Ify called her sister to tell her that we were around. They arranged to meet us. We took another bus and stopped under a bridge.''
It was at that location that Mama ify's sister came to meet them in company with a man in his forties. Agatha's new guardian was introduced as Madam Best. She was to learn later that her male companion was called Akin, Madam Best's boyfriend. Almost as soon as introductions were over, Mama Ify excused herself, claiming she had to travel back to the village immediately, because her sick daughter needed her. ''She assured me I was in safe hands and to call her if anything went wrong,'' Agatha said.
Agatha parted ways with Mama Ify unaware that the money supposedly borrowed from Madam Best was in fact payment for slave labour. ''I took a bike with my new boss while Mama Ify boarded a bus back to Enugu. At a point, we stopped, took a bus and alighted at one filling station in Ibadan. I couldn't really say exactly where we were because that was my first time of travelling to Ibadan," she said.
The trio walked a short distance to a hotel that was being renovated. The hotel was in a bushy area. It was quite isolated. ''Madam Best and her male companion asked me what I wanted for lunch. I told them I wasn't hungry. They later went away to get a room.''
Minutes later, Agatha was ushered into what would be her new home. ''They called me into a room and said I would live there. I was so surprised. I asked Madam Best if she herself lived in the hotel.''
It was at that point that Agatha learnt the ugly truth. ''She (Madam Best) asked me if Mama Ify didn't tell me what I would be doing in Ibadan. I told her she said I would work as a sales girl in Madam Best's provision store. It was then Madam Best told me I was in Ibadan to work as a prostitute.''
Terrified, Agatha broke down in tears and pleaded with her captors to call Mama Ify on the phone. Her request was declined and instead, she was told to repay the money that was used in transporting her from Enugu to Ibadan. ''When I kept crying, Akin threatened to kill me with a knife. I was locked up for three days. I was given neither food nor drink. Madam best said if I so much wanted to eat, I should sell my body and feed myself.'' On March 28, 2009, desperate for food, the terrified teenager gave in to her captors' demand. Even at that, she had to be beaten with a shoe into final submission. ''I had to sleep with about six or seven men every day. I was never paid anything. All the men paid the money to Madam Best. I was only fed thrice daily.'' With the increasing scourge of HIV sweeping across society, one wonders if Agatha had not contacted any STD. Fortunately, she was able to allay fears on that matter. "All the men that slept with me used protection." Agatha continued in her despised profession for about a month and a half. She couldn't leave her room, so she remained a prisoner there. None of her male patrons ever saw in her the reluctant and terrified child yearning for freedom. She was simply a thing of entertainment.
It wasn't until May 23, 2009 that respite finally came from the most unlikely person. ''There was a boy called Saidi who played music at the hotel every Sunday. One day, he came in with his friend Wale, who demanded for me. When we were alone in my room, I started crying.''
It was the 23-year-old man who eventually offered Agatha a ray of hope. ''He asked me what the problem was and I told him everything. He was really sympathetic and promised to help. He left and came back with a trouser and a top.'' The young man went further to speak with the hotel manager, Alashe. ''Wale told Alashe that he would be spending the night with me.''
Alashe threatened to harm Wale if Agatha should disappear overnight. Perhaps the unscrupulous businessman had smelt a rat. Recalling that eventful night, Agatha said, ''We both couldn't sleep that night. I was very scared, even Wale was scared too. Later, I dozed off. At about 3am, Wale woke me up. He said he had to start going.''
Luckily for both of them, no one stirred while they made good their escape. There was even no fence; just the eeriness of the surrounding bushes. ''We ran until we came to a music studio close to the road and waited there till 5 am. We flagged down the first bike that came our way. The bike took us to Ekiti bus stop. From there, we took a bus to lloro, Ekiti State. It was around 12 mid day when we got there.''
To avoid being tracked by Alashe, Wale took Agatha to his father's house instead of going straight to his brother's home where he normally lived. On their way, they stopped by a stream so Agatha could wash her clothes. ''I had just finished with my washing when Wale's sister- in -law came to inform us that Saidi was with a friend at Wale's brother's house. Both men had come from Ibadan.'' Understandably, Wale was scared to go back. And even when Agatha urged him to do so, he refused. While they were still debating the issue, Wale's brother sent another person to call them. ''I told Wale that I wasn't scared. Since I was no more in that hotel, I knew I could confront whoever it was that had come for me. I was finally able to convince Wale that we should go back.''
They discovered on their arrival that it was Akin that had been sent to bring back Agatha to Ibadan. ''They quarreled for a while in Yoruba. I didn't understand a word of what they were saying. When they had reached an agreement, Akin told everyone that had gathered that I was his sister and Madam Best my mother. He told them Wale had taken me without permission from my mother.''
Seeing her chance at freedom fleeing before her very eyes, Agatha wept profusely, denying Akin's claims. Unfortunately, instead of investigating the matter further, those gathered urged Agatha to go back home with Akin. ''They were all telling me to go back to Ibadan and settle with Akin, that I could come back to lloro after I had done that.'' All this while, Wale did not say a word. He had been sufficiently threatened by Akin.
At this point, Agatha made up her mind to frustrate Akin. ''I decided I wasn't going to make it easy for him to ruin me. When we got to the bus stop, Akin negotiated the price while Wale looked on. When I saw Akin was distracted, I ran. Akin ran after me and caught me. He warned me not to attempt an escape.'' No onlooker bothered to question Agatha on why she tried to run away from Akin. ''Akin got another bus and started haggling afresh. When his eyes were not on me, I ran again. This time, I ran across the street straight into a provision store.''
Agatha held on to the lady store keeper, begging her for help. ''The woman was alarmed and by the time Akin ran into the store, she was terrified." The lady fled her store with Agatha holding on to her for dear life. The struggle continued until the storekeeper's husband stopped them all. ''When he started questioning us all, I burst into tears. Akin quickly intervened and gave his already prepared story of me being his sister. He said all this in Yoruba.'' Fortunately for Agatha, the storekeeper's husband took more than a passing interest in the whole drama. ''He asked me what the problem was and I told him everything. Luckily for me, he was also from Enugu State.''
They were invited back into the store, presumably to settle the matter but unknown to them the police had been notified. ''Two men came in some minutes later and asked us all to explain ourselves. When I finished my tale, they mentioned trafficking and held on to Akin. It was at that point I realised they were policemen.''
They were all taken to Iloro police station. The police tried to mediate in the matter but the store keeper's husband was adamant that Akin and his accomplices be prosecuted. On June 1, 2009, they were moved to the state CID in Ekiti State. ''We spent 10 days there. After our first week there, the police raided the hotel where I used to live. All the girls were taken away. Madam Best usually stayed at Queen's Rema Hotel but I couldn't direct the police there. I only knew the name. It was an Okada operator that directed us there. The police had to check each hotel on that street one after the other because I couldn't identify the particular one.''
As it turned out, Madam Best was not around, so the hotel owner's wife was arrested. ''We couldn't get the owner of the hotel. He was called Alhaji. The police told his boys that if Alhaji wanted his wife out of police custody, he should aid them in tracking down Madam Best. '' Madam Best was caught on the day she tried to flee the town to Benin, Edo state.
Head of the Lagos Zonal office of NAPTIP Godwin Morka said the matter was in court and efforts were being made to reunite Agatha with her family through the NAPTIP zonal office in the East. ''It was the Ekiti state CID that brought Agatha to NAPTIP. She was very much traumatised when she was handed over to us. We had to put her through counselling and some medical treatments.
"Parents have to be more careful and watchful of their children. Young girls can be so easily deceived and recruited into prostitution, especially when they are not highly enlightened
By Olusola Balogun
Sunday, March 14, 2010
The Presidency of acting President Goodluck Jonathan seems to be getting more international acceptance and support as American President, Barrack Obama, is reported to have invited the Nigerian leader to an international summit scheduled for next month..
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Although the agenda of the said summit is still very sketchy, it was gathered that Obama personally called up the former Bayelsa governor asking him to attend the conference.
According to a source at the Presidency who confirmed the development, “it is true that the acting President will be going to the US in April and he will be attending a summit. They called it a nuclear summit.
He was personally and specially invited by Obama to attend the meeting.”
He disclosed that Jonathan is already making arrangements to attend the meeting, hinting that the acting President might use the opportunity to further press for the issue of delisting Nigeria from the list of terror nations that it was included soon after Farouk Abdulmutallab’s attempted suicide bombing on American soil.
Political analysts view the development as a major boost for the Jonathan administration that is facing some acceptability challenges from some quarters in the country.
It is also seem as a clear departure from the era of ailing President Umaru Yar’Adua who seldomly attend international summits and is in the habit of sending representatives to such meetings even before he took ill in November 2009.
Why am I getting married again – Charly Boy
Saturday, March 13, 2010
…For 32 years I lived in sin with lady Diana
Charly Boy
![charlyboy11[1].jpg](http://odili.net/news/source/2010/mar/13/vanguard/images/charlyboy11%5B1%5D.jpg)
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What possibly could be said of Charles Oputa a.k.a Charly Boy today that would make an astounding headlines, you may ask?
But on a day this musician, revolutionary activist, a general of the people’s army and an acclaimed area father stormed Vanguard’s corporate office, in Apapa, Lagos, it was with a pinch of salt that the Showtime crew gave him audience.
Soon, Charly Boy settled down to unwrap yet another bag of his mythic life. He astounded the crew when he announced his plans to marry again. Charly Boy admitted that for 32 years, he had lived in sin with his American born Lady Diane. Who is he taking to the altar? Why the sudden realization of the fact that he had been living in sin for the past 32 years with belovest Lady D? Find out this and more as we bring to you, Charely Boy uncensored for your weekend delight..
We read you’re separated from your wife. Is it true it?
Eeh! I’ve not heard about it. I never read am too. I’m yet to be informed about it.
Are you saying that your marriage is intact?
No be dis issue we come talk about….
Na part of am. We can’t talk about you and not mention your wife…
Yes, okay. I’m getting married again on May 25th.
What happened to your marriage?
Nothing happened.
Are you tired of her?
How can I be tired of her when we’re the best of friends?
So are you still married to her?
Well, spiritually, yes.
Romantically?
Yes.
So, is she going back to her country?
I’ve not said she’s going back to her country. After staying in Nigeria for 28 years, I mean she has no other country.
So, who are you getting married to and where is she from?
Whether she’s from Jamaica or Imo State, doesn’t count. All that matters is that I’m getting married again. I’m happy.
So, are you going to keep your first marriage intact?
I’m an African man and polygamy is allowed here.
Were you married to Diane in the Christian way? Did you wed her in the church?
No, we weren’t even married in the first place. There was no marriage certificate. We’ve just been living together for 32 years in sin because if you’re married but not wedded in the church, you’re living in sin.
You’re talking like a man who just woke up to realise that he’s been living in sin…
(Laughs) Is this why I’m here?
Living with Diane helped to stabilise the man called Charly Boy because behind every successful man is a woman. So, it’s heart breaking to hear that you’re separated from her…..
If I hear that it will be heart breaking for me too, so I can understand why it is so for you.
Where exactly is she now?
She’s in Lagos now. If you go to my house, you’ll find her there.
What about your kids?
Most of my kids are abroad, except the last one who’s still in school.
How does she feel about the next marriage?
You can ask her when you see her. And the truth is that we are not living together. She lives in Lagos and I stay in Abuja, but we visit each other. Sometimes, we equally arrange to meet in a hotel for short or long time. It doesn’t really matter.
I know that you have really come a long way with your wife. So it’s sad that you’re separating.
I know that there are some married people who are living together but they don’t talk to themselves, which is a crime. I also know there are so many women who’ve been battered by very irresponsible men but they still live together, and that for me is a crime. And I also know that the friendship which I share with Diane cannot be compared to all the rubbish I hear out there.
You said both of you arrange to meet for short and long time. Do you still have sexual intercourse?
Laughs. Wetin you think say we dey do for short time and long time? You think say we dey go there go look ourselves? We’ll keep having that because she’s my friend. That was the kind of friendship I had with Tina but it wasn’t anything sexual. You know friendship is misused in this country. People meet today and begin to introduce themselves as friends, which is wrong, or you see people who are in no way related and they call themselves brothers. I’ve grown past intercourse. I can have sex without penetration.
What does that mean?
Well, if you don’t understand then you’re analog. That means you’ve been going about things the old fashion way. For me, I’ve gone digital now.
Is this gold ring you are wearing a wedding ring?
Which one?
This one. (Pointing to the gold wedding ring among many others on his fingers)
Yes.
With Diane or the new woman?
No comment.
Why would you want to leave Lady D for another? Is the new one digital and Lady D analog?
No, Lady D is very digital.
Is she not sexually creative anymore?
How can? It’s just like saying I’m not creative anymore. She’ll always be creative till she dies. At 56 years, I’m still very creative.
You have been everything from the street boy, the musician, the writer, the photographer, a music director and most recently a publisher. And this is the first time in this country a man would decide to publish a magazine in his own name…
I’m always the first. But, I’m not interested in how much it will sell. It’s like when I go into the studio and produce a song and someone is asking how much it sold. It doesn’t matter to me. The connect is that each time I set a target for myself, I go out and achieve it, thanks to God Almighty. My joy is that I have fun doing these things and they give me fulfilment, I also learn from doing it. So, by the time I finish doing it, if you like, you buy. If you like o no buy. My joy is that I did it. Anything I set out to do, I do it. Like right now, I want to build a centre that can house 10, 000 disenfranchised youths. And I know it will cost mega bucks and I don’t know how it will happen. But I’m a dreamer, even the concept of Charly Boy started by dreaming. So, I don’t calculate my gains before doing things.
One thing I’m confident of is that the brand, Charly Boy, can never be ignored. It’s either you like it or you hate it so profusely. Some people will definitely pick up the magazine just to see wetin this craze person wants to say. I’ve equally tried to go round and ask other publishers how they’re doing theirs and I’ve learnt a lot from that.
I’ve always told people that I’m really not a musician but an intellectual, an entertainer. But people are just too busy looking at gimmicks that they miss the point. You can’t see Charles Chukwuemeka Oputa until you can see past the piercing, the rings and all the ratzzmatazz. And that is not what Charley Boy is all about. He’s about consistency. I urge every youth to go after their dreams and whatever that makes them happy.
Do you know that I am a soul winner. Do you know how many youths that come to me for inspiration? Just for hope, just because somebody like me was able to walk into that bush and come out successful.
It means nobody should have any excuse for failure because as long as you believe in your dreams and follow it with aggression…. I chase my dreams without minding anybody, therefore, no one can stop me and nothing can discourage me. Whether your papa is poor or rich doesn’t really matter. What matters is whether you believe in yourself.
Charly Boy is really difficult and confusing because, like you were talking about the youths, So, I still wonder what the youths will learn from you?
What have all these got to do with the man Charles Oputa? I ask you. What has the shape of Coca-Cola got to do with the liquid content? Will you eat the bottle?
But that forms the whole character of the person.
If you recall in the beginning, I said this concept was created for dumb and shallow minded Nigerians who’re timid and myopic. I represent the things that I stand for and the things that I’ve fought for. That is why we have the kind of government we have sitting for too long in power. Is it the agbada or tie that we’re interested in or what that person can offer this country?
When you emerged during the military in a rebellious way, it was acceptable. Are those things you were known for still part of you?
My dressing is all about style. I wasn’t rebelling against anything. My take is that every human being should be a free thinker as long as it doesn’t affect others negatively. Tying your tie around your head instead of your head doesn’t make you a bad person. It’s all about style. And I won’t judge you by that; remember never to judge a book by its cover.
What are we expecting from your publication? What sense will it make to the common man?
I’ve never done anything that didn’t make sense. In fact, my problem is too much sense that some people don’t understand. You have to have depth to be able to understand what I do. The things I do are not for Standard six or WAEC people. I wanted to do something like Readers Digest. I didn’t want something that would limit me in anyway. I wanted to do something that can be published in January and still remain fresh in December. I wanted to do something that will motivate and inspire people, something that can talk about other peoples life in the way that it will inspire people.
My reason for existence is to ginger people and make them understand that everything is possible.
The magazine represents the values that we have forgotten- hard work. I want to interview someone who can tell me where he’s coming and he’s success story so that I can learn from the story. At the same time, we’ll try to build new role models and also entertain people.
You’ve spent about 17-18 years of your life in Lagos. One now wonders why you decided to relocate to Abuja? Is it because that is where the money is?
No, that is another misconception. I remember those days it used to bother me a lot about how I’m going to make my own name because everywhere I went, people talked about my father and I was wondering, can’t they see me as ‘Charly Boy?’ They should talk about me when they see me and not my father. In fact, I thank God so much that I didn’t study Law. I would never have been able to leave that shadow because people would have trailed my success back to my father, Oputa.
I don’t want to be tied down in the shackles of competition. I don’t want to buy hummer jeep because people are buying it and na im make I dey ride motor bike, nothing spoil. I’m comfortable as long as I have enough to pay my rents, children fees and other bills.
What drove you into music?
I didn’t know what I wanted to do with myself, simple. So, after youth service, I didn’t want to work for any establishment, having to do a 9-5 work hours. I had too many creative things in me that wanted to burst out and there was no other place to be than in entertainment business which will also afford me so many excuses as regards my style.
Again, I wanted to be famous. But not too long after I became famous, I found out that I didn’t have respect and money. You can imagine someone as famous as myself that time jumping from bus to bus. Not because I wanted to but because I didn’t have money. I couldn’t even penetrate the corporate organisations because they had no respect for me.
Which was why I consistently involved myself in continuous metamorphosis and rebranding. From Charly Boy Show, which had a lot of civic message then but people missed the message because they were looking at the ratzamattazz. I did it for 12 years and discovered that these Nigerians are really…. o!
Then I rebranded and gave them Zoom Time, bringing Babangida, different ministers to the show. That was when I started gaining some kind of respect because it wasn’t easy to put up all those people on stage. People started wondering why all these people opened doors for me.
Maybe because of your father….
Who’s my father? My father is retired, he’s become my baby.
In fact, he doesn’t even recognise one person from another. He’s out of the generation.
Maybe his name….
No, I have a bigger name because my father is known by people in the judiciary and the elite class but I am known by all. There’s hardly anybody who doesn’t know me. From truck pusher, militant, children and so on.
You went through a lot of difficulties in life. Can you share some of them with us?
When I came back from America, I had to do my youth service and when I finished, there was a job waiting for me. A PR job in Mobil Oil company but my father was scandalized when I rejected the offer and said I wanted to be an entertainer.
He asked, ‘ how can you go to school and come out to be an entertainer? There’s no future in that and that was where our problem started from. That was the time he was made the Supreme Court judge. So he moved to Lagos and I moved down to the village. Initially, when I moved to the village, it wasn’t too bad because I had to put some few things together and called it a studio. So, people were coming and patronising. But after one year, everything closed. I was in the village with Lady D, a place where there’s no light, no water.
The passengers, comprising journalists, officials of the National Emergency Management Agency as well as other agencies responsible for rescue operations in the country, ironically, were taking part in a simulated exercise to demonstrate the responsiveness of the relevant agencies to emergency situations.
Although no death was recorded from the incident, 10 of the passengers on board the flight sustained injuries, eyewitnesses who emerged from the crash said
Mr. Onyebuchi Ezigbo, the THISDAY Abuja Bureau correspondent, who emerged from the crash unscathed but traumatized, confirmed that only one of the passengers sustained a fracture to his hand and was immediately rushed to Teme Clinic, Port Harcourt for medical attention.
The fuselage of the Air Force plane, he said, was damaged beyond recognition and was left inside the bush where it skidded to a halt in the mud.
The passengers, most of them officials of the Nigerian Air Force, Federal Fire Service, N.igerian Police Force, National Security and Civil Defence Corps, Federal Road Safety Commission and journalists were flown to Port Harcourt from Abuja aboard an Air Force Plane 950 of the G888 series.
Ezigbo explained that the plane landed safely but instead of decelerating a few seconds after hitting the tarmac, it kept accelerating at terrific speed until it overshot the runway.
Ezigbo and other passengers were thankful that the plane did not burst into flames, disclosing that the fire fighters at the airport responded promptly to the accident.
The Port Harcourt airport, located in the Omagwa community, some 30 kilometres away from the city, was immediately closed to traffic.
An Arik Airline aircraft from Abuja that wanted to land was turned back midair, however another Arik aircraft a few hours later was given clearance to land and take off from the airport.
Only last month, an Augusta reconnaissance helicopter belonging to the Ni.gerian Navy crashed at Isiokpo in Ikwerre Local Government, Rivers State, killing all the occupants.
NEMA’s director, Search and Rescue Operations, Air Commodore Yomi Bankole who later addressed the press at the airport said the exercise was meant to be a simulated one as they set out hoping to take steps to move from the textbook approach by getting some practical experience before the unfortunate incident occurred yesterday.
“It was an unfortunate incident. A plane we used veered off the runway,” he said, but promptly refused to speculate on the cause of the accident.
“In the aviation industry, we do not run into hasty conclusions until after investigations,” but he assured that a team of investigators from the Air Force has already taken over investigations and at the appropriate time the Air Force would provide insight into what caused the incident.
The director general of NEMA, Alhaji Audu Bida who was billed to be in Port Harcourt but had to go to Kano due to a fire incident in the northern city, when called on the phone said, “it is a sad event but we are only happy that no one lost his life.
“This is why we should all be very proactive. Incidents like this can never be predicted but it is always good that the country prepares very well to handle them whenever they occur.”
According to him, it was due to events like this that prompted NEMA into planning the exercise which was interrupted by the near mishap and led to the cancellation of the exercise. He promised that NEMA would review the entire incident and plug the loop holes.
Senate Committee chairman on NEMA and other search and rescue agencies, Senator Smart Adeyemi who was at the airport after the accident said the incident has “exposed how unprepared we are given the equipment on the ground.
“It is unbecoming that we have only fire fighting vehicles in the airport. Our only luck was that the plane did not burst into flames, otherwise, the equipment on the ground would not have contained the disaster.”
All 47 civilian passengers flew back to Abuja yesterday on board a 6.30pm Arik Airways flight, while the five-man Air Force crew was flown aboard a helicopter to the military hospital at the Air Force base, Port Harcourt.
The 20-year-old singer-dancer, who plead guilty to felony assault and is on probation for five years, recorded an audio message Wednesday on Say Now asking his fans to "bring [him] back." A humbled Brown said he needs his fans' help. "Some radio stations aren't playing my records," he said. "They're not being that supportive and I wouldn't expect them to. But it's on the fans...It's in your power to bring me back.".Brown said he is doing everything he can do. He refers to himself as a "better person" and said he is doing his music for the love, but added that his career is in jeopardy.
"It won't be possible for me to be an artist if I don't have support from people who give me an artist outlet," Brown said. "I can't be an underground mixtape artist."
Brown sounds stressed out. After releasing two previously successful albums, it has got to be tough experiencing such a decline in support for his current album, Graffiti.
I know it's been a year since the incident, he has accepted his sentence, and was previously praised by the judge for following through with his community service, but he needs to relax. It is going to take some time for him to repair his reputation. He needs to be patient. He just re-emerged on Twitter at @ChrisBrown and is keeping it positive so far. He Tweeted about reading to 3rd grade students at a school in Harlem. This feels like a better plan. Releasing a new album just eight months after the altercation was just too soon.
