Perhaps the most outlandish thing I have heard this year, other than the fact that one set of President Buhari's aides told us he was not sick while another set simultaneously asked us to pray for his recovery, is the claim by the All Progressive Congress governor of Zamfara state that the outbreak of meningitis in Nigeria is as a result of our sins. His exact words were as follows:
“What we used to know as far as meningitis is concerned is the type A virus. The World Health Organization, WHO, has carried out vaccinations against this type A virus not just in Zamfara, but many other states. However, because people refused to stop their nefarious activities, God now decided to send Type C virus, which has no vaccination. People have turned away from God and he has promised that ‘if you do anyhow, you see anyhow’ that is just the cause of this outbreak as far as I am concerned. There is no way fornication will be so rampant and God will not send a disease that cannot be cured.”
The above quote from Governor Abdul’aziz Abubakar Yari is not only silly and nonsensical, it is also blatantly untrue.
First of all, it is not true for that there is no vaccine against meningitis C. There is one and it has existed for almost two decades. In the year 1999 alone, 15 million children in the United Kingdom were vaccinated against meningitis C. Why a Governor of a state prone to meningitis does not know this beats my imagination. If he is ignorant of this, I wonder how many more things he will be ignorant of!
When the Ebola Virus struck in Nigeria in 2014, the Goodluck Jonathan administration wasted no time in mobilizing against the disease alongside the affected state governments. Preventive measures were put in our airports and those affected were quarantined. Those who escaped quarantine were traced, apprehended and sent back to quarantine. Nigeria made international headlines for all the right reasons, becoming one of the first nations in the world to defeat Ebola even before advanced nations like the United States and the United Kingdom.
However, in 2017, when meningitis has reached epidemic proportions in Nigeria with 336 deaths and counting, the ever blame ready APC government blames our sins instead of attacking the scourge!
The annoying thing about Governor Yari's statement is that he said this immediately after a meeting with President Muhammadu Buhari. Who knows what the two of them must have discussed in secret that emboldened the Governor to say what he says right after the meeting.
The APC administration's response to the meningitis epidemic can be summarized thus: Repent of your sins and your meningitis will depart from you!
We never experienced these deaths from meningitis in the five years preceding this administration. One wonders if Nigerians were not committing sins during the years that Jonathan governed Nigeria.
If Nigerian Governors have any shame left, they will ask Governor Abdulaziz Yari to step down as the Chairman of the Nigerian Governors Forum. What type of leadership can he provide for the NGF? Over 200 people died from meningitis in his state and he is blaming the sin of fornication? This is a man who boasted of spending ₦1 billion in 2013 to host a Qur’anic Memorisation Competition, at that time equivalent to $7 million. If he had used that money to pay for meningitis C vaccines for the people of Zamfara, at least 200 of them would have still been alive to memorize the Qur'an today! That is the real sin that causes meningitis, not the sin of fornication.
But rather than dissociate from him, the equally shameless Governor of Kaduna state, Malam Nasir El-Rufai invited Governor Yari to have the seat of honour at the Kaduna Investment Summit which held on Thursday the 6th of April, 2017.
Seated at the seat of honoring at the summit tagged #KadInvest was El-Rufai, a Governor who admitted paying Fulani herdsmen not to kill his citizens (they took the money and the killings continued) and on the right was Abdul'aziz Yari, a Governor who believes the sin of fornication causes meningitis. It was definitely not a successful Summit! Google the pictures from the summit and you will notice the empty hall. It seems herdsmen killings and or death by meningitis affected attendance!
If, according to Governor Yari, illnesses are the result of sins, then pray, can he tell us what sin is responsible for President Muhammadu Buhari's ill health? And while he is at it perhaps he can tell us what sin is responsible for his own illness of diarrhea of the mouth?
The fact remains that it is not sins, but lack of leadership that has caused the meningitis outbreak currently plaguing Nigeria. Our leaders have refused to spend the wealth of the Nigerian nation on the welfare and wellbeing of the Nigerian nation. More money is spent by states like Kano and Zamfara on sending their elites on pilgrimage to Mecca at public expense, or on organizing mass weddings for people that are ill prepared for marriage than is spent on defeating the meningitis scourge.
If at all sin caused this meningitis outbreak, then it is the sin that Nigeria has enough money to pay for President Muhammadu Buhari's London treatment but not enough money to give citizens in vulnerable areas the meningitis C vaccines!
Could this be the reason why the Presidency has refused to reveal how much of our money President Buhari spent on his medical tourism visit, also known as 'vacation', to London?
But the more I think of it, the more I am convinced that If at all sins cause diseases, it would not be the sins of Nigerians, it would be the sins of their leaders.
President Muhammadu Buhari alone has committed more than enough sins to saddle us with enough plagues.
Do we have to talk about the sin of his hypocritical letter to the Senate of the National Assembly in which he made excuses for his own Secretary to the Government of the Federation who had been caught, red handed, in a contract scam?
The President's actions were made even more hypocritical by the fact that he recently fired a Permanent Secretary for doing the exact thing that grass-cutter Babachir Lawal did.
By sacking the Permanent Secretary and retaining and defending Babachir, President Buhari proved the truism in George Orwell's words from his seminal work, Animal Farm, that 'all animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others'.
Going back to the President's sins that may have ignited the meningitis outbreak, could it have been his sin of failing to take any disciplinary actions against those involved in the killings of over three hundred Shiites in Zaria including defenseless babies, women and children?
Or perhaps it is failing to bring anyone to book for the bombing of hundreds of innocent Internally Displaced Persons and the medical officers who were helping them at the Rann IDP camp in Borno state?
It could even have been the fact that the President condemned Dr. Goodluck Jonathan for allowing the Naira lose value to the extent that it exchanged for 199 Naira to a dollar only to watch, almost helplessly, as it devalued to as high as 500 Naira to one dollar during his watch.
The fact remains that the President has committed enough sins, including relegating women to the 'other room' and calling Nigerians 'criminals' (to the Telegraph of London) that Nigerians do not have to have sinned to bring this plague on us. Our President has committed enough sins to pay the price of our plagues!
To those who believed President Muhammadu Buhari's allegation that Dr. Goodluck Jonathan looted, do you also believe his statement that 'Abacha did not loot'? To those who believe the President's allegations that Jonathan's cabinet was corrupt, do you also believe that Babachir Lawal, Rotimi Amaechi, Fashola and others in the current cabinet are angels? To those who believed the APC's allegations that Jonathan was training snipers to kill opposition members, ask yourself how many opposition members were killed under Jonathan and how many are being killed now. Finally, if you believed Jonathan was clueless, how come your economic situation has deteriorated since the clueless one left the scene for the clueful Buhari?
Life in Nigeria is already a hardscrabble and Nigerians do not need insults added to their injury by this infantile talk from the Zamfara state governor. If Governor Yari wants to make himself useful he should stop misrepresenting God and appeal to President Muhammadu Buhari to tell us how much of our money he spent on his London medical tourism.
I mean, this President is just too secretive to hold a public post. He spends our money to treat himself and he will not tell us how much of it he has spent. Even something as elementary as his School Leaving Certificate is a mystery!
A corruption fighter who hides behind thirteen Senior Advocates of Nigeria instead of showing his WASSCE certificate and behind National Security instead of revealing how much of our money he spent on his London doctors, and writes a letter defending his appointee caught red handed in corruption, is that one a corruption fighter?
In June of 1975, Dr. Goodluck Jonathan sat for his West African School Certificate Examinations and made the following results.
A2 economics
A2 biology
A2 chemistry
A2 Geography
A3 CRK
C6 English
C5 physics
Mathematics was canceled, so the next year he wrote GCE in November and got A3 in mathematics. So before you call Dr. Jonathan 'clueless', please show me your own champion's School Certificate result.
Former President Goodluck Jonathan made 6 As and 2 Cs in his WASC School Leaving Examinations. I have Dr. Jonathan's original certificates! If you want to see it I can show it to you without you having to pay thirteen SANs to raise objections and 'gift' a judge ₦500,000. That is transparency. That is integrity. That is straightforwardness. Dr. Jonathan signed the Freedom of Information Act into law so that all Nigerians have a right to know vital information which those in government want to keep from them. President Buhari, prove that you have integrity. Prove that you are transparent. Sack your thirteen SANs and show us your certificate! You have been pointing one finger at others, now your own four fingers are pointing at you!
In the year of our Lord, 1981, Dr. Goodluck Jonathan graduated with a Second Class Upper degree in Zoology from the University of Port Harcourt, Rivers State. At that time, there was nothing like 'blocking' in Nigeria. If you were not intelligent you could not graduate with such high scores. And yet, a Senator who has been exposed as having graduated with a Third Class degree and a former (?) dictator whose School Certificate status is yet to be determined had the temerity to once call such a man 'clueless'. Yet in less than a year they turned the prosperity Jonathan gave us to recession. Now, who is really clueless?
On January 25, 2011 the Arab Spring began in Egypt. In less than a week after that date, then President Goodluck Jonathan issued an Executive Order for Nigerians to be evacuated from Egypt. On the 1st of February, 2011, Nigeria became the First Nation to evacuate her citizens out of Egypt. When the Arab Spring spread to Libya in February of 2011, President Jonathan ordered evacuations there which began on Thursday, February 24, 2011.
Recently, there have been consistent xenophobic attacks on the life of Nigerians in South Africa and India. What has the reaction of the Muhammadu Buhari administration been? Criticize Buhari and the Nigerian government reacts, but going by the reaction of the Buhari led administration to South Africa and India, it is almost as if nothing is happening to Nigerian citizens in those nations. Yet, this is a government that called the Jonathan administration clueless.
They have failed to stop the deaths of Nigerians at home by being responsive to the meningitis outbreak or the rising cases of mass killings by Fulani herdsmen and they have also failed to arrest the ugly trend of xenophobic killings of Nigerians abroad. What then is this government good for?
I admire the enthusiasm Nigerians have shown in voting for #BBNaija. Eleven million votes in one week is no joke. Now, all that remains is for Nigerians to use that same enthusiasm to vote out the man who called us 'criminals' in his February 5, 2016 The Telegraph of U.K. interview. In case you are a criminal and you do not feel offended that President Muhammadu Buhari defined you as such, then you should go ahead and confirm your criminality by voting for him!
Thankfully, I conducted a poll on Twitter which was well covered by the media. My question was simple: If an election is held for president of Nigeria today, who would you vote for between Efe and President Muhammadu Buhari? Needless to say that Efe won the vote by a landslide margin of over 80%.
And why have Nigerians rejected the President so soon? It is because he is being unraveled by his actions and by his kitchen cabinet.
Look at the kerfuffle between El-Rufai and the cabal? Look at how the so called anti-corruption war is being exposed as a sham.
First Orubebe, now Justice Ademola and finally Dame Patience Jonathan. In one week, all three of them have been vindicated by the courts! The courts are dismissing trumped up charges.
Until Babachir Lawal, Buhari's grass cutter Secretary to the Government of the Federation is charged, the anti corruption war is a sham! How can the President wine and dine with Babachir Lawal, a man caught red handed in corruption and unleash the EFCC on opposition figures like Orubebe and the judge trying his certificate scandal? Perhaps President Buhari will now instruct EFCC to charge Kola Awodein, one of the thirteen SANs defending him from showing his WASSCE certificate. After all, Awodein admitted giving Ademola a 'gift' of ₦500k while President Buhari's matter was before Justice Ademola!
Let me at this point conclude by again quoting from Orwell's Animal Farm:
"The creatures outside looked from pig to man, and from man to pig, and from pig to man again; but already it was impossible to say which was which."
Reno's Nuggets:
As I promised last week, I will give my readers a bit of the Nuggets I use in my teachings to my mentees as a pastor. Today's nuggets appear below:
Any woman who expects a man to look after her or give her money because he is dating her should not look down on prostitutes. Women, emancipate yourselves from this mentality that boyfriends are meant to foot your bills. Once money is involved, it ceases to be a relationship and becomes a transaction. In today's world, women do not need men financially. Men and women need each other emotionally and biologically. They complete each other. They do not contract each other. Start a business if you want a financial partner instead of getting a boyfriend. Boyfriends aren't poverty alleviation schemes. Poverty is a painful cancer. A job is like a pain killer to reduce pain. Having a business is like surgery to remove the pain. Do I offend you with my truth? The highest ignorance is to reject truth because it came from your enemy and accepting a lie because it came from your friend #RenosNuggets
Reno Omokri is the Founder of the Mind of Christ Christian Center and author of Shunpiking: No Shortcuts to God, Why Jesus Wept and his latest book, Apples of Gold.
Nigerian singer and nude queen Maheeda is currently in Lagos and ready to make a return to music after a 3 year break. In an exclusive interview with LIB, Maheeda explains her going away was to be with her daughter who needed her attention as she entered college in Holland.
We asked her about her viral nude videos and photos and she simply said, 'I'm addicted to nudity and entertainment'.
She continued to say, 'for me I felt like daring it, it's been what I wanted for a while but I always chickened out so I just took the bold step and I know that nudity is not evil so I just started doing it'. When asked if she has stopped she said, 'I haven't stopped, why will I stop. If I have to do it in a musical video I'll do it'.
She says she's also open to acting nude in a movie
When asked by LIB if she would act nude in a movie, she said, 'Yes I will, If I have to go nude in a movie I'll do it, but the pay has go be right'.
How much will be fair enough to get you nude on set, 'I really don;t know, but we can start with 50million naira (laughs)' she said.
Maheeda however insisted she'll never do pornography, 'no, no, no, I won't do that she said. I can act a sex scene but not showing me in the actually act. I want to keep that for my man'.
Music executive and video director, Jude Okoye turned a year older on Monday. He celebrated with his wife, Ifeoma and others at a restaurant in Victoria Island, Lagos, later in the day. See more photos after the cut...
The police in Lagos are currently on the trail of a man identified as Omolaja Shodipo who allegedly murdered his wife and fled their home in Ikorodu yesterday April 24th.
According to neighbors, Omolaja had a disagreement with his wife on Sunday April 23rd and the disagreement continued into yesterday and he physically attacked her killing her in the process.
The man upon seeing his wife had died, began to cry, scream and roll on the floor. As his neighbors moved to his house to inquire why he was crying, he fled the scene and has not been seen or heard from.
When the neighbors went into his house, they found his wife and mother of his four children on the floor in the pool of her blood. They also found an axe close to the deceased. However the axe had no blood stain on it.
The police men at Owutu police station were invited and the remains of the woman was taken away and deposited at the General hospital morgue in Ikorodu. Confirming the incident, the Lagos state command spokesperson, Olarinde Famous-Cole, said the police is currently in search of the man.
The Kebbi State Government has setup a committee to investigate a newborn baby who lost a limb apparently due to a medical error as claimed in a video making waves online.
It will be recalled that a doctor amputated the baby's arm since, according to him, the baby had died in the womb hence the need to save the mother's life. He later realised that the baby was alive and healthy.
A statement issued yesterday by Aisha Augie-Kuta, the Senior Special Assistant on New Media, said that Governor Abubakar Atiku Bagudu gave the order immediately after viewing the worrisome photographs and video interview of a man who claims to be a relative to the child online on Sunday 23rd April, 2017.
The relative says that the error occurred at General Hospital in Zuru, Kebbi State during a birth delivery procedure. The committee includes high level medical doctors, legal and security personnel charged with getting the full information on the story for further action.
The investigation is to ensure that any issues of medical malpractice is ascertained and if that being the case prosecuted to ensure that it does not happen again in the future.
Medical malpractice is professional negligence by act or omission by a health care provider in which the treatment provided falls below the accepted standard of practice in the medical community and causes injury or death to the patient, with most cases involving medical error.
The Governor strongly believes that the primary responsibility of any government is to protect the lives and property of its citizens and says it is disheartening to see the photographs of a newborn in such a manner.
Yesterday, former president Barack Obama made his first public appearance since leaving office when he hosted a discussion at the University of Chicago with students from across the city.
At the event, he said the work he did in Chicago as a community organizer laid the groundwork for his life in politics. Reed the full text below...
Thank you. Hey! Thank you. Everybody have a seat. Have a seat. So what's been going on while I've been gone?
It is wonderful to be home. It is wonderful to be at the University of Chicago. It is wonderful to be on the south side of Chicago. And it is wonderful to be with these young people here. And what I want to do is just maybe speak very briefly at the top about why we're here and then I want to spend most of the time that we're together hearing from these remarkable young people who are I think representative of some amazing young people who are in the audience as well. I was telling these guys that it was a little over 30 years ago that I came to Chicago.
I was 25 years old. I had gotten out of college filled with idealism and absolutely certain that somehow I was going to change the world. But I had no idea how or where or what I was going to be doing. And so I worked first to pay off some student loans. And then I went to work at the City Colleges of New York on their Harlem campus with some student organizing. And then there were a group of churches out on the south side who had come together to try to deal with the steel plants that had closed in the area and the economic devastation that had been taking place, but also the racial tensions and turnover that was happening.
They formed an organization and hired me as a community organizer. I did not really know what that meant or how to do it. But I accepted the job. And for the next three years I lived right here in Hyde Park but I worked in communities like Roseland and Pullman. Working class neighborhoods. Many of which had changed rapidly from white to black in the late '60s, '70s. And full of wonderful people who were proud of their communities, proud of the steps they had taken to try to move into the middle class, but were also worried about their futures, because in some cases their kids weren't doing as well as they had. In some cases these communities have been badly neglected for a very long time. The distribution of city services were unequal. Schools were underfunded. There was a lack of opportunity. And for three years I tried to do something about it. And I am the first to acknowledge that I did not set the world on fire. Nor did I transform these communities in any significant way, although we did some good things. But it did change me.
This community gave me a lot more than I was able to give in return, because this community taught me that ordinary people, when working together, can do extraordinary things. This community taught me that everybody has a story to tell. That is important. This experience taught me that beneath the surface differences of people that there were common hopes and common dreams and common aspirations. Common values. That stitched us together as Americans. And so even though I, after three years, left for law school, the lessons that had been taught to me here as an organizer are ones that stayed with me. And effectively gave me the foundation for my subsequent political career and the themes that I would talk about as a state legislator and as a U.S. Senator and ultimately as president of the United States.
Now, I tell you that history because on the back end now of my presidency, now that it's completed, I'm spending a lot of time thinking about what is the most important thing I can do for my next job? And what I'm convinced of is that although there are all kinds of issues that I care about and all kinds of issues that I intend to work on, the single most important thing I can do is to help in any way I can prepare the next generation of leadership to take up the baton and to take their own crack at changing the world. Because the one thing that I'm absolutely convinced of is that yes, we confront a whole range of challenges from economic inequality and lack of opportunity to a criminal justice system that too often is skewed in ways that are unproductive to climate change to, you know, issues related to violence. All those problems are serious. They're daunting. But they're not insolvable.
What is preventing us from tackling them and making more progress really has to do with our politics and our civic life. It has to do with the fact that because of things like political gerrymandering our parties have moved further and further apart and it's harder and harder to find common ground. Because of money and politics. Special interests dominate the debates in Washington in ways that don't match up with what the broad majority of Americans feel. Because of changes in the media, we now have a situation in which everybody's listening to people who already agree with them and are further and further reinforcing their own realities to the neglect of a common reality that allows us to have a healthy debate and then try to find common ground and actually move solutions forward.
And so when I said in 2004 that red states or blue states, they're the United States of America, that was aspirational comment, but I think it's―and it's one that I still believe, that when you talk to individuals one-on-one, people, there's a lot more people that have in common than divides them. But honestly it's not true when it comes to our politics and civic life. Maybe more pernicious is people are not involved and they give up. As a consequence, we have some of the lowest voting rates of any democracy and low participation rates than translate into a further gap between who's governing us and what we believe. The only folks who are going to be able to solve that problem are going to be young people, the next generation.
And I have been encouraged everywhere I go in the United States, but also everywhere around the world to see how sharp and astute and tolerant and thoughtful and entrepreneurial our young people are. A lot more sophisticated than I was at their age. And so the question then becomes what are the ways in which we can create pathways for them to take leadership, for them to get involved? Are there ways in which we can knock down some of the barriers that are discouraging young people about a life of service? And if there are, I want to work with them to knock down those barriers. And to get this next generation and to accelerate their move towards leadership. Because if that happens, I think we're going to be just fine.
Nigerian male Barbie took to his IG page to list his achievements at only age 25. He wants his haters to know he is succeeding in life. Read his post after the cut...
"Yes I'm gay or straight how is it u guys problem ? I have over 11 visas in my passport, I live in 5bedrooms duplex alone in lekki well furnished u can check my snap for enough videos not with friends 😂haters will say is not my house 🏡 that I rented it. At least I pay rent I have access to it whenever I want 😝😝😝. I drive 2012 benz I also own a Lexus and a Toyota Camry. Abeg wat other achievements can I have at 25yrs and more still coming. So continue hating 😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂 na u sabi. If na my bleach dey pain u Abeg go bleach urs too cos na light skin dey market now 😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂"
These are unretouched photos of Kim Kardashian at the beach. It was released yesterday and it got tongues wagging, with many saying she's not as perfect as she likes to display on social media with her edited photos..
Elton John, 70, was left in intensive care after being struck down by a 'potentially deadly' bacterial infection he contracted in South America this month and has subsequently cancelled his Las Vegas shows in April and May. According to the statement from his reps, Rogers and Cowan, after his South American tour, John contracted a bacterial infection, and became “violently ill” on his flight home from Chile. He was admitted to the hospital when he returned home to the U.K.. He spent a total of 12 days in hospital, he reportedly spent two nights in intensive care.
He was released from the hospital on Saturday, and is now “comfortably resting at home per doctor’s advice.” He is expected to make a full recovery, and is set to resume performing in Twickenham, England, on June 3.
The statement released by his representative reads:
'During a recent, successful tour of South America, Elton contracted a harmful and unusual bacterial infection.
'During his return flight home from Santiago, Chile he became violently ill. Upon returning to the UK, Elton's Doctors admitted him to hospital, where he underwent immediate treatment to remove the infection.
'Infections of this nature are rare and potentially deadly. Thankfully, Elton's medical team identified this quickly and treated it successfully. He is expected to make a full and complete recovery.'
Elton John added:
'I am so fortunate to have the most incredible and loyal fans and apologize for disappointing them.
'I am extremely grateful to the medical team for their excellence in looking after me so well.'
The Presidency has recalled the State House correspondent of Punch newspaper, Olalekan Adetayo, who was expelled from the villa by President Buhari's Chief Security Officer CSO, Bashir Abubakar over a report he wrote on President Buhari's failing health which was published last Sunday
Senior Special Assistant to President Buhari on Media and Publicity, Femi Adesina, who reacted to the news via his twitter handle, said the President's media office was not consulted before Adetayo was expelled.
According to Adesina, President Buhari believes in Freedom of Speech and would not support press suppression.
Bashir Ahmad who is President Buhari's Personal Assistant on New Media, announced the recall of Adetayo on twitter.
This Wednesday, April 12 St Remy powered Industry Nite kicks the Easter celebration off with a Mainland special featuring Harrysong of Fivestar music.
Harrysong whose many hits have featured the likes of Olamide, Timaya, Iyanya, KCee, Orezi and most recently Dbanj will take the center stage at the Afrikan Shrine performing live belting his hits as well new songs from his coming album.
DJ Consequence will also be hand to give the fans a good time as he mans the turntables with hypeman Spanky Manolo keeping the vibe charged as the party goes all night.
Date: April 12, 2016
Time: 7 pm
Venue: Afrikan Shrine, Ikeja
Gate fee: N 1000
This event is sponsored by St-Remy Authentic brand and is only open to persons aged 18 and over.
A young woman simply identified as Huzaifatu gave birth to a set of quadruplets in Azare, Bauchi State on March 31.
Th children are still in incubators at the Federal Medical Centre, Azare, as they were born prematurely. More photos after the cut.
Mothers, can you relate?
Aaaaaargh! If you have children, I’m sure you’ve screamed like this more times than you can remember. I’m a mum of two bubbly, energetic, six-year-old boys, and this used to be my soundtrack every time my kids tried to climb trees or play football in the house or wrestle each other and forget it’s a game.
Every time they played rough, I went into straight panic mode and that was the end of play time for them. My husband would say let them be boys but what’s my own? How about let them be alive first?
Of course as a mum, I wanted my children to play and be happy but my fear of them getting hurt was too much, so I didn’t until I found Dettol Antiseptic Liquid. Now, my children play freely and I don’t ever worry because whenever any of them gets hurt, I use one capful of Dettol antiseptic liquid for first aid. It kills germs and helps stop the wound from getting infected.
I switched from panic mode to protect mode with Dettol Antiseptic Liquid. I am a powerful Naija mum and I rely on the power of Dettol’s 1 capful to protect my family from up to 100 illness causing germs.
Are you a powerful Naija mum?Dettol wants to celebrate you!
As a reward for all your efforts to keep healthy homes and families, Dettol plans to celebrate powerful Naija mums. This means some of you lucky mothers will get to hang out with your favorite celebrities in Nigeria at the end of the search for Powerful Naija Mums!
Each week, mums with the highest likes get to win a Dettol Power Pack filled with exciting prizes including a smartphone and at the end of the campaign, a final draw will be done to select the top mums with the highest engagement. These mums will be part of Dettol’s Powerful Naija Mum photo shoot with the celebrities. The shoot will also be featured on top blogs and websites with many exciting gifts to be won!https://youtu.be/fSoOe8VK2r0
An 11 year old boy, Tysen Benz, was at home when he saw social media posts indicating that his 13-year-old girlfriend had committed suicide. The posts were a prank, but the 11-year-old boy apparently believed them and thought his girlfriend had really died. Using a cellphone he had bought without his mother's knowledge, Tysen on March 14, read texts and other messages about the fake suicide of his and decided he would end his life too, his mother Katrina Goss said.
After seeing the posts about his girlfriend, Tysen replied over social media that he was going to kill himself, yet no one involved in the prank told an adult or even told Benz that it was a joke, not even the supposed girlfriend, Goss said. Moments later, his mother found him hanging by his neck in his room in Marquette, Michigan.
Now a prosecutor is pursuing criminal charges against one of the juveniles accused of being involved in the prank, which Goss described as "a twisted, sick joke." Goss described her son as appearing "fine" just 40 minutes before she found him.
"I just want it be exposed and be addressed," Goss said of school bullying in general and cyberbullying in particular. "I don't want it be ignored."
Authorities would not release the age of the juvenile charged or comment on what relationship the person had with Tysen. The juvenile is being charged with malicious use of telecommunication services and using a computer to commit a crime.
After Goss found her son hanging, she cut the rope and immediately called 911. They were able to resuscitate him and rushed him to a Detroit hospital where he was placed on a life support.
Doctors informed his parents that he was brain damaged and most likely would never recover from the coma. His parents decided to take him off life support. The boy died Tuesday at a Detroit-area hospital.
The girlfriend whose death was faked and friends who were in on the prank attended the same school as Tysen, Goss said. Even though the prank occurred outside of school, she said, the school should have done more to protect her son. She said:
"The principal, the assistant principal — that's their job, especially for little kids," she said. "Kids take things to heart."
In a statement released Thursday, Marquette Area Public Schools Superintendent William Saunders agreed with Goss's concerns about the dangers of social media. He said the district has been educating students and parents through its health curriculum, health fairs, community forums and other efforts.
"After the gut-wrenching loss of a student, we ask ourselves, 'How can we do more?'" Saunders wrote.
Most states in the US, including Michigan, have enacted legislation designed to protect children from bullies.
Michigan's anti-bullying act, signed in 2011 by Gov. Rick Snyder, requires school districts to have anti-bullying policies on the books. It was known as "Matt's Safe School Law" after Matt Epling, a 14-year-old who killed himself after a 2002 hazing incident.
The law was updated two years ago to direct school districts to add language to those policies that address cyberbullying.
Former Republican state Rep. Phil Potvin, who sponsored the original bill, said schools have a responsibility to do more than include anti-cyberbullying rules in their written policies.
"They have to have a person — spelled out — to make sure that policy is followed," said Potvin, of Cadillac in northern Michigan. "Some schools have failed to do that. They may have put something in, but there is no follow-up. There is no checking up on these things."
The Nigeria Centre for Disease Control (NCDC) on Friday confirmed that two people have died in Lagos following the outbreak of Cerebro Spinal Meningitis, CSM as the death rises to 438.
In the statistics released by NCDC, a total of 3,959 cases with 438 deaths have been reported, with 181 laboratory-confirmed cases so far.
The statistics show that as at April 5, 2017, three cases of Meningitis were recorded in Lagos out of which two people died while the other is being treated at the hospital.
In a statement attached to the statistics, it revealed that Meningitis is currently being reported in 19 states.
'Meningitis outbreaks are currently reported in 19 States with five States mostly affected (Zamfara, Katsina, Kebbi and Sokoto in the North-West zone and Niger in the North-Central zone of Nigeria),'
However, the agency also disclosed that reactive vaccination campaign has commenced in Zamfara State which has the highest number of death since the outbreak of the disease.
The Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, Lagos zone, yesterday evening, uncovered yet another large sum of suspected laundered money to the tune of N448,850,000 (Four hundred and forty eight million, eight hundred and fifty thousand naira) hidden in a shop at LEGICO Shopping Plaza, Ahmadu Bello Way, Victoria Island, Lagos.
The money stashed in several Ghana Must Go bags were in N500 and N1000 denominations, hidden in a shop awaiting conversion into foreign currency. Relying on information provided by a concerned whistle blower, operatives of the Commision swooped on the shopping complex and sought the identity of the owners of two shops, LS 64 and LS 67 which were under locks and keys.
The shops had signages of Bureau de Change. Inquries about the owner of shop 64 indicated he had not been seen for a long time, as they claimed the shop had not been opened for business for close to two years. Several calls were put to the owner of shop 67 but there was no response.
The attention of the plaza's chairman and some traders were drawn in order to force the shops open. There was no money found in shop 67, but in shop 64, heaps of "Ghana Must Go" bags were found loaded on the floor of the shop. When the bags were unzipped they were found to contain bundles of naira notes totalling N448,850,000.
Traders interviewed at the premises claimed they were not aware such money was housed in there, as the place hardly opens for business. The Commission is investigating the matter in order to unravel the owner and source of the money.
Andrea Cristea, the Romanian woman who plunged into the Thames during Wednesday, March 22, Westminster terror attack died on Thursday, April 6th, confirms Metropolitan Police.
The 31-year-old who had been receiving medical treatment in a hospital following the attack, was taken off life support on Thursday.
Andrea had been visiting London with her boyfriend, Andrei Burnaz, who also suffered a broken foot in the attack. It 's believed he was going to propose during their trip.
Next of kin have been informed and are being supported by specially trained family liaison officers.Andrea's death brings the number of victims of the attack to five.
A statement from the family of Andreea Cristea, together with Andrei Burnaz, said:
"After fighting for her life for over two weeks, our beloved and irreplaceable Andreea - wonderful daughter, sister, partner, dedicated friend and the most unique and life loving person you can imagine - was cruelly and brutally ripped away from our lives in the most heartless and spiritless way.
"She will always be remembered as our shining ray of light that will forever keep on shining in our hearts. Andreea is now unfortunately not able to have part of the money that was raised for her recovery, so we would like to donate it to charity. She would not have it any other way.
"There are no words to even begin to describe the crushing pain and emptiness that is left in our hearts. Our family, together with Andrei, are deeply touched and eternally grateful for the unimaginable efforts and never-ending dedication provided to her and us by the entire medical personnel of each and every hospital involved. Their kindness and empathy are beyond compare.
"We would not have been able to live through these trying and tragically hurtful weeks without the support of the Metropolitan Police, the UK Government and every department involved. Our hearts and love go out to our two Family Liaison Officers, Detective Sergeants Tony De-Wilde and Geraint Jones, who stood beside us every single step of the way. You were our lifeline and we will never be able to thank you enough"
Comedian, Bovi took to his snapchat to preach on the importance of healthy living and how difficult it was for him to give up cigar, fanta and bread. More screenshots after the cut..
