Police Say Suspicious Abuja Box Not A Bomb

Frank Mba

Tile "Bomb"

By SaharaReporters, New York

The Nigerian police headquarters in Abuja has reacted to news of discovery of explosives near the Nigeria Postal Service in Abuja today as a hoax.
Nigerian Police spokesperson, Frank Mba told SaharaReporters via telephone that the package was a box containing sand, and ceramic tiles abandoned near NIPOST.
He stated that  after the suspicious box was brought to the attention of the Nigerian police, the area was cordoned off, and the Police Bomb Squad called into the area at exactly 11:00 am Nigerian time only to find that the package was not a bomb.
However, he said the bomb squad approached the box with a bomb testing equipment that made a pop sound which had been commonly mistaken to be a controlled detonation of a bomb by members of the public.
Mr. Mba said the police appreciates the interest and alertness of the Nigerian public regarding matters of security asking residents of the area to go about their normal businesses.
 

Ivory Coast deserve to lose – Oliseh

Former Super Eagles captain, Sunday Oliseh, is blaming the Elephants of Ivory Coast for their loss to Nigeria in the quarter-final match on Sunday, saying star players Yaya Toure and Didier Drogba were lackadaisical in their approach to the game.

The Ivorians were tournament favourites until they fell 2-1 to the Super Eagles who paraded eight players featuring in the tournament for the first time.

“People were calling them (Ivory Coast) the golden generation but if they had said to themselves that they are not golden until they win something, that could have made a difference,” Oliseh said in a post-match analysis on SuperSport.

“Ivory Coast didn’t come to the party; you could see Yaya Toure and Didier Drogba walking on the pitch.

“In the first half, Victor Moses had about 84 per cent completed passes while Drogba had 27 per cent. That showed that the Nigerians wanted the victory more than the Ivorians.”

He added, “I am happy Nigeria played well today. Nigerians must learn to support their country irrespective of who is the coach of the team. This was Nigeria playing and not (coach Stephen) Keshi or (Daniel) Amokachi. Even if you hate Keshi or Amokachi you have to put it aside and support your team. We have to love our team.”

Former Ghana international, Sammy Kuffour, who was co-analyst, added, “Mikel Obi didn’t play particularly well in the game but his last touch won the match for Nigeria (when he stopped the opponents from scoring a late goal).”

TalkOfNaija

Beyoncé’s Super Bowl Performance Inspires Conservative Freakout

By Alyssa Rosenberg

Beyoncé Knowles rocked the Super Bowl halftime show last night, and, pearls clenched firmly in fist, Kathryn Jean Lopez is on it, and the national cultural decline Ms. Knowles apparently represents:

I don’t want to linger on this, but last night’s Super Bowl half-time show was ridiculous — and gratuitously so. Watching Twitter, it was really no surprise that men made comments about stripper poles and putting dollar bills through their TV sets, was it? Why can’t we have a national entertainment moment that does not include a mother gyrating in a black teddy? The priceless moment was Destiny’s Child reuniting to ask that someone “put a ring on it.” As I mentioned on Twitter last night, perhaps that case might be best made in another outfit, perhaps without the crotch grabbing. It seems quite disappointing that Michelle Obama would feel the need to tweet about how “proud” she is of Beyoncé. The woman is talented, has a beautiful voice, and could be a role model. And she is on some levels — on others she is an example of cultural surrender, rather than leadership.

I’d venture that there’s more dignity in Beyoncé’s marvelously controlled, rigorously choreographed performance than in Bruce Springsteen’s sloppy slide and camera crotch-bump of a few years back. And as much as her very much post-baby body was on display, Beyoncé’s performance was less allusively sexual than Prince’s silhouetted guitar. In fact, almost everything about Beyoncé’s off-stage life pretty much seems to meet Lopez’s criteria, from her long courtship with Jay-Z, to the child the two of them had once they were firmly ensconced in wedlock. If I were Lopez, I might actually think about striking the Knowles-Carters a medal for defying the Hollywood trend of shotgun or infinitely-delayed post-baby weddings.
But all of this is beside the point. What Lopez appears to object to, and what overrides for her any other consideration of ways in which Beyoncé might be a role model—including her financial success and careful control of her image— is the sight of a woman living in and very much enjoying her body, without needing to secure anyone else’s approval or ensure anyone else’s enjoyment. One of the hallmarks of Beyoncé’s lyrics, both with Destiny’s Child, and as a solo artist, is that no one is entitled to access to her. “Move, groove, prove you can hang with me / By the looks I got you shook up and scared of me,” she sang in “Bootylicious,” with its famous chorus. She warned a loutish boyfriend “Don’t you ever for a second get to thinking you’re irreplaceable.” In “Countdown,” she describes a relationship of equals, where she’ll “Do whatever that it takes, he got a winner’s mind / Give it all to him, meet him at the finish line,” and where “Yup, I buy my own, if he deserve it, buy his shit too.” And in “Independent Women,” Beyoncé and Destiny’s Child warned women “If you’re gonna brag make sure it’s your money you flaunt / Depend on no one else to give you what you want.”
And I think that’s really what makes Lopez twitchy. In the 1994 script for Little Women, Robin Swicord wrote that “nothing provokes speculation more than the sight of a woman enjoying herself.” And in 2013, few things get conservatives twitchier than a woman who will take a ring from the right man—and in fact already has—but will do it because she wants it, not because she needs it.
TP

"You Come Here Pleading Poverty While We Pay Taxes, You A**holes!" - Nigerian Verbally Abused in UK

Suffolk, UK - A video emerged recently of a woman going on a rant to patients in a hospital waiting room. The two-minute clip, filmed on Saturday night at Ipswich Hospital in Suffolk, saw the woman shout abuse at students Gina Thompson, 23, of Nigeria, and her 21-year-old Spanish friend. The woman asked them where they came from before saying: "You're coming over here and you're pleading poverty. We are paying taxes, you a**holes, and we are going down in this crisis."



The incident took place at 7:30pm in the hospital's accident and emergency department waiting room, where Miss Thompson had gone with her friend who had sprained her ankle playing sports. Miss Thompson, of Port Harcourt, Nigeria, is a film and media student at University Campus Suffolk and has been in the UK for two years, while her friend from Seville, Spain, arrived last September.
The woman shouted in front of about 20 shocked patients and friends or relatives: "‘What has happened to this f*****g country?!", before directly abusing Miss Thompson. She asked her "Where do you come from?", to which Miss Thompson replied: "What does it matter where I'm from?" The woman then continued: "We are paying taxes you a**holes and we are going down in this crisis", before Miss Thompson replied: "Don't call me an a**hole".
But the woman wouldn't calm down: "I will, because you're coming over here and you're pleading poverty. I am not well." But Miss Thompson responded: "You won't call me an a**hole. I will not accept that. Don't call me an a**hole. Don't come to my face and insult me. You won't do that. Calling me an a**hole? Are you alright?"
The woman said back: "Don't accept it, you fat a**hole," before a voice off camera said the police had been called. The woman was then apprehended by a group of nurses, paramedics and security guards, saying: "There's a revolution going on here."
Miss Thompson told MailOnline after the incident: "I was so embarrassed and I couldn’t do anything because I was stuck in the situation, so we just had to laugh about it. All the attention was on us. She said I've come here to claim poverty. That's not true. I'm an international student and I pay £13,000 a year in tuition fees. My friend is a student here from Spain."
"It made me feel low of myself. I had to go back home and question why it was wrong I was here. My friend was surprised. She was scared, she was terrified. She kind of felt unsafe afterwards. She is Spanish and her English is not perfect, but she could sort of understand what the woman was saying. When she got back home, she said: "Are we in trouble?"
"This woman was a very normal-looking woman who you wouldn't think would abuse you. How many people are the same like that? I’m scared."
A Suffolk Constabulary spokesman told MailOnline: "We have arrested and charged somebody. She has been charged with assault on a police officer, two counts of racially aggravated assault and two charges of assault. So, five charges altogether. She is due to appear at Ipswich Magistrates' Court on the 20th February. She was arrested at the A&E department on Saturday evening and she was brought in. She was charged on Sunday night."
Naij

Jimmy Lee Dykes Dead: 5-Year-Old Hostage Rescued In Alabama Standoff

The standoff between law enforcement and an Alabama man who held a boy in a bunker for seven days ended with the suspect dead and the 5-year-old safely rescued.
Reports of an explosion at Jimmy Lee Dykes' Midland City property came first on Monday afternoon, followed by media reports of the 65-year-old's death.
At a hastily organized roadside press conference near the crime scene, FBI agent Steve Richardson said negotiations had deteriorated over the last 24 hours. He said they entered the bunker shortly after 3 p.m. fearing the child was "in imminent danger," because they'd seen Dykes carrying a firearm.
The boy, identified only as Ethan, was transported to a hospital, state Rep. Steve Clouse told CNN. He appeared physically unharmed, according to reports.
Witnesses said they heard a boom and gunfire. Ambulances arrived soon afterward.
The crisis began Jan. 29 when authorities say Dykes boarded a school bus and demanded that he take two boys between six and eight years old. The bus driver -- Charles Albert Poland, Jr. -- is hailed as a hero for putting himself between Dykes and the children. His valor cost him his life, as Dykes allegedly shot Poland several times before taking the 5-year-old boy from the bus.
"You didn't deserve to die but you died knowing you kept everyone safe," said a letter from a student on Poland's bus that was read aloud at the bus driver's funeral.
The bunker in which Dykes holed up was four feet underground. He equipped it with electricity and was said to possibly have weeks of supplies stored. Negotiators communicated to him through a ventilation pipe. Because of the risk of tornadoes in this part of Alabama, bunkers are a relative fixture on the landscape.
Authorities sent Ethan's prescription medicine as well as items the boy requested like Cheez-Its snacks and a red Hot Wheels toy car.
There was open communication with Dykes, according to authorities, but they said he'd made few demands, making it unclear what he hoped to accomplish.
Some neighbors believed Dykes timed the abduction to nearly coincide with a court appearance scheduled for the day after he shot Poland. In December, Dykes was arrested for allegedly shooting a gun to frighten a neighbor.
For that incident and others, people who lived near Dykes were leery of him long before he became a hostage-taker. They said that he once beat a dog to death with a lead pipe, that he warned children they'd be shot for crossing onto his land and that he guarded his property at night with a flashlight and gun.
He was a loner who allegedly lost contact with an adult daughter years ago, according to people who lived near him. The sounds of conservative talk radio filled his home and fed his anti-government attitudes, locals said.
Details about Dykes slowly emerged as negotiations failed to break the impasse. Dykes was a decorated Vietnam War veteran who'd served in the Navy. He'd grown up nearby, but later in life, he moved to Florida where he worked as a surveyor and truck driver. He returned to Alabama about two years ago, acquiring the rural property on a dirt road.
In 1995, he was arrested for improper exhibition of a weapon. That charge was dismissed. In 2000, he was booked on marijuana possession charges.
HuffingtonPost

[OPINION] Jibrin Ibrahim: State Protection for the Looters of Nigeria

In her Convocation Lecture to the University of Nigeria ten days ago, former Minister for Education, Oby Ezekwesili pointed out that “the more we earned from oil, the larger the population of poor citizens: 17.1 million in 1980, 34.5 million in 1985, 39.2 million in 1992, 67.1 million in 1996, 68.7 million in 2004 and 112.47 million in 2010!” Her core argument was that we are multiplying the percentage of the poor in our society because resources are being looted and are not invested in productive sectors of the economy, including higher education. Nigerian governments are displaying an incredibly high level of profligacy. To illustrate the second point, she drew attention to some interesting numbers such as “the squandering of the significant sum of $45 Billion in foreign reserve account and another $22 Billion in the Excess Crude Account being direct savings from increased earnings from oil that the Obasanjo administration handed over to the successor government in 2007. Six years after the administration I served handed over such humongous national wealth to another one; most Nigerians but especially the poor continue to suffer the effects of failing public health and education systems as well as decrepit infrastructure and battered institutions. One cannot but ask, what exactly does Nigeria seek to symbolize and convey with this level of brazen misappropriation of public resources?” This statement has earned her fury from the Jonathan Administration who appears to believe that Nigerians who had been previously in government have no right to speak truth to power. I do hope that Madam “Due Process” does not get intimidated and shuts up. I follow her tweets “Public Policy 101” where she campaigns for the importance of transparency and accountability as well as the importance of investments in the productive sectors of the economy. She has useful lessons to our nation and her right to speak should be protected.

Many countries that were in a similar position to Nigeria forty years ago are today economically advanced precisely because they have been able to invest surpluses that are generated in their societies and train the population through an emphasis on higher education. Any society that allows massive looting of the economy and in addition does not channel the surpluses generated to productive use can never develop. This week, it took massive protests from civil society and the bar to compel the Ministry of Justice to charge Honourable Farouk Lawan to court after the very open episode of offering and receiving bribery. Mr Otedola, the person who offered the bribe is yet to be charged in court. What this tells us that the administration of justice is wired to protect rather than sanction those who loot the national treasury.

Additional evidence for this view was also provided this week by the shocking and scandalous judgment delivered by Justice Abubakar Talba on Monday 28^thJanuary, 2013 when he sentenced a former Director of Police Pension Board Mr. John Yakubu Yusuf to a two-year sentence on each of the three-count charge with an option of paying a paltry fine N750, 000, a sum promptly paid by the convict to regain his freedom.
The development was sequel to the guilty plea entered into by Yusuf in admitting that he stole N23 billion from the police pension funds. For ruining the lives of tens of thousands of elderly Nigerians who have served the nation for decades and are dying from hunger and infirmity as their pension money has been looted, Mr Yusuf gets to keep 95% of the public money he has looted. Our judiciary might well be right in saying looters should not be punished and they should keep their loot because we have rewired our administration of justice to serve the interests of a ruling class composed of treasury looters from top to bottom.

Of course for us ordinary citizens, we consider this judgment to be appalling, regrettable, scandalous and irresponsible because that is precisely what it is. It is an elementary principle that a thief cannot be allowed to gain from his theft once he is caught. In addition to losing the loot, a thief must also be sanctioned. In China, someone who does this would suffer three sanctions. The money will be seized and invested for public good. The person will be short in the head and killed with a single bullet. Finally, his family will be asked to refund the cost of the bullet to the Chinese state for producing such an economic saboteur to lives of the Chinese people. I am a firm believer in human rights and will not recommend that we follow the Chinese example. I believe however that we must rewire our judicial system to break the complicity of the supposedly venerable institution in perpetuating corruption in the nation. We must try and regain the sanctity of the judiciary and the integrity of our judges. This however is no easy matter and the evidence we see is that things are going in the same direction.

We have gone through the shameful episode in which our judicial system was unable to successfully prosecute the former Delta State Governor, James Ibori who was convicted in the UK for the same offences for which he was acquitted by a Nigerian court. We have seen our judicial system accept that the former governor of Rivers State Dr. Peter Odili cannot be prosecuted for corruption just because a judge has said so. In any other system, a judge that says someone cannot be prosecuted for his crimes would himself be dealt with.

It is on record that no Nigerian official implicated in the $180 million (N27 billion) Halliburton bribery scam has been convicted. Two former executives of French engineering and construction company Technip have been jailed to giving bribes to Nigerian officials. Meanwhile, the series of Nigerian officials who were receiving the bribes over a ten-year period to secure the construction contract worth $6 billion (N900 billion) have been quietly enjoying their loot. It will be recalled that the company admitted paying $132 million (N9.8 billion) to a Gibraltar corporation controlled by London-based lawyer, Jeffrey Tesler, and $51 million (N7.65 billion) to Marubeni of Japan. The money was paid as bribes to Nigerian government officials. The bribe givers – Jeffery Tesler, the main go-between for the consortium, is serving a 21-month sentence in a United States prison while Jack Stanley, former Chief Executive Officer, is serving 30 months. Using the Federal Corrupt Practices Act, FCPA, the U.S. Department of Justice, and the Security and Exchange Commission has made the companies and individuals that paid the bribe to pay more than $1.7 billion in penalties and disgorgement.

Halliburton had in January 2009, paid a $559 million (N84 billion) fine to the U.S government after the company was found guilty of bribing Nigerian officials. While the bribe givers have all been convicted and fined, and in some cases jailed in their countries of origin and in the U.S., no Nigerian bribe recipient has been convicted or jailed. These cases are important as all the evidence of amounts paid and recipients in Nigeria have all been established through thorough judicial processes abroad. What is clear is that those in charge of the Nigerian state are abusing their powers to ensure that those who steal massive amounts of money must never be punished.

It is important to understand the reason for that. Thanks to these revelations from foreign courts, we now know that the beneficiaries of the bribes include three successive heads of state, former petroleum ministers, officials of the Nigerian oil company, the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation, and other government officials. It is in this context that Oby Ezekwesili touched a raw nerve by speaking of the responsibility at the very top of the political hierarchy.

In Nigerian prisons today, there are thousands of people who are in jail because they have stolen a chicken or a goat. They are jail because they have committed a crime against the state. Their theft was petty and they must suffer the punishment they deserve is the message. Those who steal in billions however are always protected by the same state. No wonder Nigerians believe we do not have the same justice for everybody. We cannot begin to fix the Nigerian problem until we have the same justice for everyone. Today, the confidence of Nigerians in the judiciary is at its lowest ebb and this does not augur well for our democracy. Indeed, it does not augur well for this nation of ours where the impact of public policy is the increase in the number of the poor and the astronomical wealth of the tiny cabal that are looting the resources of the nation.
PSN

Super Eagles On Way To Durban For AFCON Semi-Final

By SR Sports

The Super Eagles will leave Rustenburg today for Durban, venue of their Wednesday semi-final duel with the Eagles of Mali.
The match, at the Moses Mabhida Stadium, is among others an opportunity for the Super Eagles to make amends for disappointing Durbanites in particular, and South Africans in general, during the 2010 FIFA World Cup finals.
In that competition, after losing their first two matches against Argentina in Johannesburg and Greece in Bloemfontein, the Eagles still stood a chance to reach the Round of 16 if they defeated Korea Republic.
At the Moses Mabhida Stadium on June 22, 2010, the Nigerians, roared on by a capacity crowd, could only manage a 2-2 draw with the Koreans, characterized by a couple of horrendous misses, and crashed out of the first World Cup on African soil at group stage.
On Wednesday, the Eagles will have the same capacity crowd on their side as South Africans have switched allegiance to Nigeria following a gorgeous display against Cote d’Ivoire on Sunday, and the fact that their own Bafana Bafana were eliminated by the Malians.
Nigeria will welcome back midfield lynchpin Fegor Ogude, who missed Sunday’s clash after being suspended for earning two yellow cards in the group stage.
  Saharareporters