It is not clear yet if any of the four passengers are dead.

In Port Harcourt, pregnant widow of slain policeman begs Police, Army authorities to arrest her husband’s killers THIRTY-YEAR –OLD Peter Okeke, a Police Constable with the Rivers State Criminal Investigation Department (CID) had left home to supervise an on-going filling station project located at Onne in Onne Local Council of the state. As he hugged his sons and kissed his pregnant wife, Beatrice, goodbye, there was nothing whatsoever to suggest the enormity of the tragedy that would befall the young family before the day was over.

Constable Okeke was allegedly shot dead by a soldier, a few hours later, following an argument over a roadblock. Sources told The Guardian the road had been barricaded by RCC, a construction company doing major rehabilitation work on the road. A group of soldiers drove onto the barricaded road and assumed that Constable Okeke had blocked it, ordered him to dismantle the barricade. An argument ensued when Okeke told the soldiers he did not barricade the road and if it would be opened, then the workers of the construction company were in a better position to do so.

The soldiers became angry and jumped down from their Hillux truck and started beating the Constable. “As they were beating him, he was shouting, telling them he was a policeman and that they should please not kill him. “But it was of no use as one of the soldiers shot him at close range and they drove off.” Okeke died while being rushed to hospital. According to an eyewitness who pleaded anonymity: “The filling station where Constable Okeke was, was close to a road under construction by RCC. “When the soldiers arrived and found the road blocked because of the on-going reconstruction by RCC, they o

ABUJA (AFP) - Bomb blasts at a beer garden and eatery at a Nigerian military barracks killed at least 10 people hours after President Goodluck Jonathan was inaugurated, an emergency source said. Three bomb blasts hit a "mammy market" -- commonly found at Nigerian military barracks and open to civilians -- in the northern city of Bauchi, located in one of the states hard hit by post-poll riots last month. The attacks at the market were caused by "locally made devices", Bauchi state police commissioner Abdulkadir Indabawa said. Authorities gave varying death tolls as is often the case in Nigeria, with officials frequently seeking to downplay the number of victims. An emergency source who declined to be named said at least 10 people were killed, calling the incident "devastating," while Indabawa said four were dead and some 20 people

Last week a friend  wrote about Computer Village, on techcrunch  where many of the gadget-hounds in Lagos go to get their gadgety fix. But what about new technology being developed in the country? The city’s tech entrepreneur scene is small, but several people are working on changing that.

Oo Nwoye–  or @oothenigerian as he’s known on Twitter– is one of the more enthusiastic champions of this nascent scene. (That’s him on the left.) I met him two years ago in London, where he cornered me at an event and made a case for me going to Nigeria, so he was one of the first people I contacted when I finally did.

Since then, he’d moved back home. He’s working on a to-be-determined startup and spending the meantime trying to galvanize a startup community. He organized a fantastic demo day to give me a taste of what people are working on.

In the days leading up to the pitches, I spoke with half a dozen tech entrepreneurs in Nigeria who had a lot of complaints about the ecosystem. There was the ever-present emerging market complaint of not enough venture capital, but the entrepreneurs also complained about the extremely high costs of doing business in Nigeria given how small the online market is so far, the spotty infrastructure, and the lack of enough developers who want to work for startups instead of the big oil companies.

Victor Asemota (pictured at Demo Day with me to the left) moved to back to Nigeria after starting his mobile technology services company in Ghana, lured by the juicy 150 million person population. He pays the same amount for his office space in Nigeria that he used to pay for a house and a comparable office space in Ghana. More galling: Because the infrastructure is so poor in Nigeria, he also has to provided his own power and water backups. “I have to build my own city just to live here,” he said, exasperated.

Asemota also talked about a bigger challenge to building a tech company in Nigeria: The stigma of illicit 419 scams. He’d negotiated a deal with a customer in Florida one time and was wrapping up the meeting by handing the man his business card. Simply seeing that he was from Nigeria killed the deal instantly, Asemota says. The man wouldn’t even keep his business card. I noticed at the end of our dinner, when Asemota handed me his card it listed his company as located in Ghana. And, he says, ground down by the frustrations of doing business in Nigeria, he’ll probably move back there.

So I entered Demo Day halfway through my trip, desperately looking for some hope. I found the first glimpse of it, appropriately, in a guy wearing an Obama Hope T-Shirt. His name was Gbenga Sesan, and he runs a organization called Paradigm Initiative of Nigeria. It takes small delegations of Lagos’s techies into less developed and frequently more violent parts of Nigeria to convince 13-year-olds to get interested in computers. “If you don’t start at 13, they can’t be millionaires by the time they are thirty,” he says.

Another group called Co-Creation Hub immediately caught my attention. It is building an incubator to help entrepreneurs with business advice, funding and mentoring. Their focus is using technology to solve real problems Nigeria faces, not just copying what people read on TechCrunch. It welcomes more than just coders, but teachers, doctors, or anyone from any background that has a dramatic idea of how to make life in Nigeria better. A new co-working space to be opened later this year will operate like an open living lab for social change.

I love that strategy. I always advise entrepreneurs if they want to build a Western-facing consumer Internet company to move for the Valley; it will just be easier. But if they want to be pioneers in their own markets, focus on the problems and endemic strengths there. (And probably read sites like TechCrunch a little less too.)

So right away between Nwoye’s evangelism, Paradigm Initiative of Nigeria’s efforts to build a young generation of coders and Co-Creation Hub’s cushy nest for social change, there was a pretty impressive mix of people actively working to foster an ecosystem. Things were looking up for Nigerian entrepreneurs. The demos started, and I was impressed by many of the companies too. They ran a tight ship doing pitches of no more than five minutes, and there were only a few copy-cat Western Web ideas in the bunch. My favorites are below. I should mention there was also a Garage48 hacker event over the weekend in Lagos that I wasn’t able to attend. The demos from that day are here.

Gyst: This was one of two truly long-term, big-idea, swing-for-the-fences startups I saw in the country. (I’ll write about the other one on Saturday.) Sim Shagaya (pictured to the left) has a Harvard MBA, but don’t hold that against him. After studying in the US and bouncing around the tech and banking world, he returned home to build a traditional old media billboard business.

He’s now leveraging the cash-flow of that to build two exciting new media companies. One is a daily deal site called DealDey. The other is super exciting. It’s called Gyst, and it’s a very local business directory search engine. He hires a bunch of kids throughout the country and gives them each a smart phone with a camera. They go door-to-door, manually getting information and GPS coordinates on every small businesses in the city, gathering the information in a database. Amazingly, nothing like this exists in Nigeria– no Yellow Pages, no local search engines, no 411 service. Like most emerging markets, many cities in West Africa don’t even have a formal system of streets and addresses or a working postal system.

This is an insanely expensive and ambitious project, and it’s 100% bootstrapped by the parent company. The opportunity is huge. It’s Google on a local level combined with Yelp, JustDial,SMSOne, Gigwalk, and a bunch of other exciting companies who rethink cost effective ways to amass huge amounts of local data in one easy-to-access place. “It will take a long time to show the true value of this business, but we’re willing to wait,” Shagaya says. Right now the company has 20,000 business listings, and its ultimate ambition is to index every city in West Africa with more than one million people. And the company will make all that information completely free for users. Whoa.

There are obviously huge synergies between these three businesses. A daily deal site that is tied to billboards and the region’s onlycomprehensive small business directory is a lot more powerful and exciting than a run-of-the-mill Groupon clone. It’s a textbook example of how industries develop in parallel, not serial, in emerging markets, utterly transforming how they develop. Imagine if Clear Channel, Google and Groupon were all the same company. And I love the ambition: Shagaya said he is focused on building nothing less than the Naspers of Nigeria.

Naspers– the South African media conglomerate– is not only one of the most dominant new media companies in Africa, it’s investing in the most important new media companies in the emerging world. One of their companies, DealFish, was even a sponsor of this Demo Day. It’s about time a continent as big as Africa has more than one new media powerhouse. This company is one to watch.

Skoola: This company has taken several years of Nigeria and Western Africa’s standardized tests and converted them into a basic test prep app that can run on any mobile phone, smart or dumb. I asked how big the market is and the whole room laughed. This is the test everyone takes if they have any ambition of higher education.

The business– which is so clear that the entrepreneur pitched in under three minutes– is a no brainer on a lot of levels. More people have phones in the developing world than toilets so it’s the ideal medium, and it’s a way to kill time sitting in traffic and further your education at the same time. It’s a perfect example of how to build a mass market product in a country like Nigeria: It’s distributed on the broadest possible platform, solving a problem a huge percentage of the population has, and priced for volume at less than $.30 per test. The company is working on French translations so neighboring West African countries can use the product too. I’m amazed I haven’t seen something like this in India. I’m sure it already exists. If it doesn’t, it should.

Traffic Nigeria: Speaking of the need to kill time in traffic, this company uses crowd-sourcing to monitor the traffic in Lagos, delivering results over the Web or SMS. 

Also not featured on The Techcrunch Article we have 

9jabook.com a nigerian social network powered site who are presently offering members partnership options

9jax.net a link sharing and advert partnership site 

9jamovies.com a youtube embedding website 

http://ojoojoo.com  a search nigeria site powered by google search modified greatly for nigerian websites ! 

Businessman stabs female student in the eye …Victim risks blindness, cries for justice 
By  

Miss Goodness Moses has just finished the Ordinary National Diploma (OND) at the Institute of Management Technology (IMT), Enugu and came to Lagos for her one year Industrial Training (IT). The 26-year-old lady had actually approached Nestle Foods Plc for the training and was hopeful of being given the opportunity to serve in the multinational company, for her practical experience, before going back for her Higher National Diploma (HND).

Miss Goodness Moses


Miss Goodness Moses has just finished the Ordinary National Diploma (OND) at the Institute of Management Technology (IMT), Enugu and came to Lagos for her one year Industrial Training (IT). The 26-year-old lady had actually approached Nestle Foods Plc for the training and was hopeful of being given the opportunity to serve in the multinational company, for her practical experience, before going back for her Higher National Diploma (HND).

Miss Goodness Moses

Presently, verifications are going on in the school to know those who qualify for the HND. But the Marketing student may not have the opportunity again, at least, not for now. She is battling to ensure she doesn’t go blind, after she was allegedly hit and stabbed in the eyes by a businessman, Uzoma Nwezie. The incident occurred on Sunday, March 13, 2011, at 6, Ajayi Street, Catholic Road, Ipaye, Iba Town, Ojo, Lagos.


Trouble started for Goodness, when she was trekking to Ipaye bus-stop that fateful day alongside one of her sisters. According to her, Nwezie, who was driving, almost ran over her if not that she ran into the bush where she fell flat.

The victim, who said it was the fall inside the bush that saved her from being crushed by Nwezie’s car told Daily Sun how she got up, cleaned herself and they continued their journey, only for him to reverse and challenged her for allegedly calling him devil.


“I didn’t call him devil, I only said, ‘it would not be well with the devil’. I even apologized to him and he still used sharp object to hit me in the jaw and I started seeing stars. My eyes later went blank and I started screaming for help. People tried to stop him from further torturing me but he refused. He tore my clothes and bra. The incident occurred between 7.30 and 8 pm. I lost my purse, money and the torn dress,” she said.


According to her, the businessman, his wife and group of boys stormed their compound, fuming with rage.

“He resumed the attack on me and even extended it to my father. That was the time he stabbed me in one of my eyes. Because of the hitting and the stab, I started vomiting blood and was quickly rushed to the El-Shaddai Hospital, Iba Town, but the doctors referred me to the Lagos University Teaching Hospital (LUTH). At LUTH, I was referred to St. Edmund Clinic and Eye Hospital, which later referred me to Eye Foundation, Ikeja, where they performed Rectinal detachment.”


After the operation, Goodness said she couldn’t see with one of the eyes, while the other one is getting worse.

“Pus is also gushing out from one of my ears,” she lamented. She was supposed to be going for medical check-ups and further treatment, but her alleged attackers have refused to take responsibility for that and refuse to show up.

Businessman stabs female student in the eye …Victim risks blindness, cries for justice 
By  

Miss Goodness Moses has just finished the Ordinary National Diploma (OND) at the Institute of Management Technology (IMT), Enugu and came to Lagos for her one year Industrial Training (IT). The 26-year-old lady had actually approached Nestle Foods Plc for the training and was hopeful of being given the opportunity to serve in the multinational company, for her practical experience, before going back for her Higher National Diploma (HND).

Miss Goodness Moses


Miss Goodness Moses has just finished the Ordinary National Diploma (OND) at the Institute of Management Technology (IMT), Enugu and came to Lagos for her one year Industrial Training (IT). The 26-year-old lady had actually approached Nestle Foods Plc for the training and was hopeful of being given the opportunity to serve in the multinational company, for her practical experience, before going back for her Higher National Diploma (HND).

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Funeral Thieves Nabbed: As you mourn they Steal

Army clashes with militants in oil delta..after months of "vacation"

Man kills mother in Church Premises

Naija Mayor Dies In UK

Previously:

Meet Genevieve "Junior" Could this be her Daughter ? http://bit.ly/lV5dhV

Ten Murdered Corpers Families get Ten Million Naira each.Photos Late Obinna & Ukeoma http://bit.ly/kfdYbE

Bridgette Radebe kissing Graca Machel When it comes to big money, men still call the shots in Africa – just like in the rest of the world. While there is no single African lady today who can lay claim to a $1 billion fortune, there are about 2 or 3 African women who possess legit nine-figure fortunes. Here are nine African women, all worth at least $50 million:

Isabel Dos Santos Nationality: Angola Source: Investments The eldest daughter of Angola’s President, Jose Eduardo dos Santos, Isabel dos Santos got her start in business at age 24 by using her father’s influence to corner lucrative state contracts. Keeps close ties with Portugal. Kento Holding, a Maltese-registered investment firm she fully owns, holds a 10% stake in Zon Multimedia, a Portuguese media conglomerate. She acquired the stake for 164 million Euros in 2010. Also owns major stakes in Portuguese banks Banco Espírito Santo and Banco Português de Investimento, and in Energias de Portugal, which generates and distributes electricity.

Bridgette Radebe Nationality: South Africa Source: Mining The elder sister to South African billionaire Patrice Motsepe, Bridgette Radebe started out as a contract miner in the 80s, managing shafts and procuring for the larger mining houses. Went on to found Mmakau mining, an immensely successful mining firm with assets in platinum, gold, uranium, coal, chrome, exploration and mining interests. Also serves as president of the South African Mining Development Association. Married to South Africa’s Justice Minister, Jeff Radebe.

Irene Charnley Nationality: South Africa Source: MTN Former trade unionist made first mark as a shrewd negotiator for the National Union of Mineworkers in South Africa. Went on to take up a job as an Executive Director at MTN, Africa’s largest telecoms group, where she led the company’s successful foray into several African countries. Was instrumental in negotiating for and acquiring one of four GSM licenses in Nigeria. She also helped MTN secure the second GSM license in the Islamic Republic of Iran. In return, was rewarded with huge chunk of MTN stock valued at over US$150 million. Left MTN in 2007 under controversial circumstances. Now serves as CEO of Smile Telecoms, a low-cost telecommunications operator based in Mauritius.

Pam Golding Nationality: South Africa Source: Real Estate One of South Africa’s most well known real estate icons, she founded Pam Golding Properties in 1976 with no start-up capital and a sales assistant. The company is now one of South Africa’s largest independent property trading companies. 2010 turnover: US$1.7 billion (11 billion rand). Has retired from active management; still remains chairperson. Now devotes energy to philanthropy.

Wendy Appelbaum Nationality: South Africa Source: Insurance The only daughter of former South African billionaire Donald Gordon, Wendy was a director at Liberty Investors, the previously listed holding company of the Liberty Group – the insurance and real estate concern her father founded. Sold off her stakes; became cash rich. Together with husband, Hylton Appelbaum, purchased DeMorgenzon, a wine estate in Stellenbosch. Has donated US$23 million (R150 million) to create the Gordon Institute of Business Science (Gibs), and the Donald Gordon Medical Center. Wendy chairs the South African Women’s Professional Golfers’ Association.

Elisabeth Bradley Nationality: South Africa Source: Investments Elisabeth Bradley’s father Albert Wessels brought Toyota (TM) to South Africa in 1961. In 2008, Wesco Investments, a South African holding company which she controls, sold off its 25% stake in Toyota South-Africa to Toyota Motor Corp. in Japan for US$320 million (R2.1 billion). She walked away with at least US$150 million (R1 billion). Bradley has served on the boards of blue chip companies such as Standard Bank Group, Hilton Hotel and Roseback Inn.

Mamphela Ramphele Nationality: South Africa Source: Investments The one-time man

Photo: Panairjdde

Hold your breath. You are about to witness some very severe historical penalties. Though our ancient cultures were said to be verycivilized, there is evidence of their having used a wide variety ofhideous torture methods throughout history to end the lives of criminalsand traitors.

10. Death by Boiling Photo: unknown

Can you imagine boiling someone alive in large pot? Though not common, this was an unusually cruel method of execution. There is plentyof evidence that it was practiced throughout human history.Archeologists have found human bones in cooking pots and hearths in China which were found to be around 500,000 years old.

In England in the 1500s this was the legal method of punishment. The victim was immersed in boiling water, oil or tar until dead. Imagine thefear the prisoner felt when they were taken to this deadly big pot tosuffer their horrible fate.

9. Crucifixion
Photo: Baptiste Marcel

Crucifixion was among the most gruesome and painful of ancient execution methods and was practiced from about the 6th century BC untilthe 4th century AD, mainly among the Seleucids, Carthaginians, Persiansand Romans. The condemned person was tied (or nailed) to a large woodencross and left to hang till dead. Their dead body was then left ondisplay as a warning. Sometimes, the victim was ordered to carry theirown crossbeam – which weighed about 75-125 pounds (35-60 kg) – on theirshoulders to the place of execution. Not only this, but to humiliatethem, they were ordered to be hung up naked.

There is evidence of a practice much like crucifixion having taken place during World War I and II. A punishment known as ‘Field PunishmentNumber One' was very similar – although it involved the victim beingflogged rather than executed. In the British Army, especially duringWorld War I, soldiers were punished for crimes such as refusal of ordersand disobedience.

Nowadays, versions of crucifixion are practiced as a devotional ceremony in some part of New Mexico and the Philippines. Though thechurch greatly discourages this practice, followers of Jesus stillimitate the suffering of Christ by being 'crucified' for a limited timeon Good Friday. It has been seen in the town of Iztapalapa, just outsideMexico City, and also in San Pedro Cutud, during the ‘Passion WeekCelebration’ of 2007.

8. Flaying
Photo: Michelangelo Buonarroti

In this author's opinion, this was the most uncivilized method of torture and punishment practiced during the Middle Ages. Brutal to thebone, it involved removing the skin from the body of a still livingprisoner.

Flaying was an ancient practice, inflicted on criminals, captured soldiers and 'witches' around a thousand years ago in places such as theMiddle East and Africa. The victim was flayed alive as part of a publicexecution, after which the skin was nailed to the wall as a warning, sothat others would heed the lesson and never ever dare to defy the law...........

7. Disembowelment
Photo: Kunikazu Utagawa

Disembowelment was among the most severe forms of punishments ever heard of or seen. This method was used to punish thieves and thoseaccused of adultery. Some or all the vital organs were removed one byone from the body, mainly from the abdomen. Sources say it was practicedin England, the Netherlands, Belgium and in Japan.

In Japan, it was a ritualized suicide method for Samurai, referred as “seppuku”, in which two cuts across the abdomen were made. In anotherversion, a fine cut was made in the victim’s gut, leaving him to ca

In the fourth of a series of articles looking at policing in Nigeria, the BBC's Andrew Walker asks what happened to the "Apo Six", the most infamous case of extra-judicial killing in Nigeria's history:

The pictures are truly gruesome - we cannot publish them.

Lawyer Amobi Nzelu spreads the glossy prints out on his desk, covering it with horror.

There is nowhere else to look except at the bodies.

There is a close-up of a face, gaping exit-wound at the temple.

Limbs and torsos covered in blood.

Dead eyes stare upward.

"This is a human being," he says.

"Look what they did."

Apology

The bodies belong to six young Nigerians killed by the police.

Ekene Isaac Mgbe, Ifeanyin Ozor, Chinedu Meniru, Paulinus Ogbonna and Anthony and Augustina Arebu were killed on 7 and 8 June, 2005.

My friend was going to the bush, to go to the toilet, when he saw the police digging a hole and preparing to bury some people Elvis Ozor Younger brother of Ifeanyin

The police tried to say they were armed robbers who had opened fire first.

But a judicial panel of inquiry set up by former President Olusegun Obasanjo rejected the police's story and the government apologised on behalf of the police for their killings.

The government paid $20,300 (£13,800) compensation to each of the families.

It recommended the officers be arrested and face a criminal trial.

But nearly four years since the night the Apo Six were killed, the trial has got nowhere.

The public has almost forgotten the case is still going on.

Danjuma Ibrahim, the senior police officer accused of ordering the killings, lives free on medical bail.

And the families of the dead have all but given up on justice.

Tight-knit

Elvis Ozor is the younger brother of Ifeanyin Ozor.

Like his brother, he works as a spare car parts merchant in the Apo mechanics' village, south of the capital, Abuja.

It is a kind of shanty-town of sea crates and workshops where five of the Apo Six worked.

This is a tight-knit community, mostly of ethnic Igbos from Nigeria's south-east.

On 8 June 2005 the Apo mechanics found the police burying their friends in a cemetery that, by chance, was near their workshops.

"My friend was going to the bush, to go to the toilet, when he saw the police digging a hole and preparing to bury some people," Elvis says.

"They recognised my brother. When the police said they were armed robbers, no-one believed them - they knew my brother was not like that."

"When I arrived at work, word had spread, but I didn't know. I arrived and everyone was looking at me," he says.

The story was out, and an angry mob gathered.

There was a riot in Apo and the police shot two more people dead.

Unlike any other case of suspected extra-judicial killing in Nigeria, some of the police broke ranks and turned on the senior officer involved.

The other five officers accused of the murders and eight more police witnesses have testified that Danjuma Ibrahim ordered the killings.

During the judicial panel hearings, some Igbo police officers fed information to Mr Nzelu, who represented the families of the Apo Six.

The panel heard that the six were at a nightclub in Abuja's Area 11 when Mr Ibrahim - then off duty - propositioned Augustina.

She turned him down, according to the testimony of Ifeanyin Ozor's friends.

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