The Beatle's John Lennon: Naked Photo of Him Taken the Same Day he Was Shot

The famous picture is one you’ve probably seen before. If not, it’s pictured here. That picture was taken on the 8th of December 1980, the same day he was killed.

Photographer Annie Leibovitz met Lennon and his wife Yoko Ono at their apartment in The Dakota building in New York to do the shoot. Only five hours later, Lennon would be killed in the same place by Mark David Chapman.
It’s been said that the picture was meant to mimic the famous painting “The Kiss” by the Austrian artist Gustav Klimt. The photograph, obviously, was published after Lennon’s death.
The really haunting thing is the dark attire and somber look on Ono’s face, almost making it look like she was already grieving. It’s also been said that John Lennon’s nakedness and Yoko Ono’s lack of response to him could symbolize Lennon as an angel (or just dead), invisible to her.
Naij.com

NFF Yet To Pay Super Eagles Their Bonuses

Broke Nigeria Football Federation are yet to pay the Super Eagles a $30,000-a-man win bonus for beating Burkina Faso in the AFCON final.
However, the team is yet to receive what was promised them for winning the cup final, according to the Punch newspapers.
NFF general secretary Musa Amadu was not forthcoming when he was asked about this matter.
He said tersely, “I cannot confirm or deny it. That’s the much I can say about it.”
By Thursday many of the players had returned to their overseas bases without the pay.
Victor Moses and Efe Ambrose did not return to the country with the team as they joined their clubs in London and Glasgow respectively direct from South Africa.
Mikel Obi returned to Chelsea soon after President Goodluck Jonathan hosted them at the Presidential Villa in Abuja.
NFF president Aminu Maigari hinted during the Presidential reception for the victorious Eagles that the association face very hard times after the 700 million Naira (about $4.4 million) approved for the Nations Cup campaign will now be deducted from the NFF annual allocation, which was not the case in the past.
Rows over win bonuses have been frequent with the national teams, but that appeared to have stopped in the last three years until now.
  Saharareporters

Suicide Pact Between Author Lee Woodruff And Her Sisters Will Move You

In the February issue of "More" magazine, blogger Lee Woodruff wrote about a stunning suicide pact she made with her sisters. The story begins below.
My two sisters and I are driving to a family reunion when he calls. It’s serendipitous. We’d been trading phone messages for two weeks, and now, at the moment he finally catches up with me, we are all three of us in the car.
“This is a theoretical conversation, right?” my physician friend says over the speakerphone. “You are doing research for a novel?”
“Yes,” I reply. And my sisters and I nod knowingly to one another. The subject is taboo, fraught with tension. None of us wants to leave fingerprints. We don’t want to explore websites, write away for information or hold discussions in a doctor’s office. Now, to be extra careful, I am lying to my friend. I’m not researching a novel. I’m gathering information, planning for a disaster that could befall any or all of us.
We three sisters have made a pact, and we are one another’s best shot at carrying it out. In our case, blood is thicker than other ties, or at least more committed. Blood will ensure it gets done right.
Sibling relationships come in all forms of function and dysfunction, and in that regard I am extremely lucky. For me, my sisters are my bones, my best friends and confidantes. We have the kind of rapport that enables us to finish one another’s sentences and speak in a shorthand that goes back to childhood. I know when one of them is lying or being brave for my benefit, and I can detect the whisper of a hesitation in a tone over the phone. With just a look or a stray expression, we can parse a hidden meaning or savor an inside joke.
But right now we aren’t laughing. For the past several years, the three of us have joined forces on our most daunting task yet: navigating our parents’ end-of-life issues. As witnesses to our father’s advancing Alzheimer’s and the weight of that burden on our mother’s fragile health, we’ve put our heads together in endless conversations. We’ve combined wisdom, divvied up duties. And while watching it all go down before our eyes like a slow-motion car accident, we’ve decided to formulate our own exit strategy.
Like the witches around the cauldron in Macbeth, my sisters and I plan to accomplish what our other loved ones may ultimately find impossible to do for us. If we are robbed of dignity, comfort and the will to live, we aim to deliver one another from a prolonged and tortured ending. This is a deed that will most likely be too weighty for our children, too clouded by love and nostalgic memories for our husbands. So we have vowed to be there for one another. We just hope we will have the fortitude, the wisdom and the benevolence to see it through.
If existence should someday become unbearable, how can we end our own, or our sister’s, suffering? The man on the phone is about to tell us.
HuffingtonPost

Update: PDP chairmen shun meeting with Jonathan

Sani Tukur

Bamanga Tukur, troubled PDP chairman

True to their threats, chairmen of the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, in states governed by the party shunned a scheduled meeting on Thursday night with President Goodluck Jonathan.
The chairmen had threatened to boycott the meeting because they were embittered by the treatment meted out to them by the National Chairman of the party, Bamanga Tukur.

In a meeting on Thursday evening preparatory to the one with Mr. Jonathan, Mr. Tukur walked out all the chairmen from the PDP controlled states insisting he had time only for the party chairmen from states controlled by opposition parties.

This action greatly angered the party leaders who vowed that they would not attend the meeting with the president.

“The president can as well also meet with the thirteen (non PDP controlled state) chairmen,” one of the chairmen was quoted as saying.

PREMIUM TIMES contacted one of the chairmen, Friday morning, and he confirmed that the meeting did not hold.

“Well we just dispersed last night and no meeting held. They did not contact us again and we also did not make any effort,” he said. “As I speak with you now we are making arrangements to return to our bases states),” the party chairman who did not want his name disclosed, said.
Mr. Tukur is facing trying times in the PDP, especially with its governors. His fate in the party remains shaky and the move to exclude the party leaders of PDP controlled states is allegedly because he believes he cannot influence their actions as they are loyal to their governors.
Efforts to get the reaction of the PDP to yesterday nights incidents were unsuccessful as the party’s spokesperson, Olisa Metuh, did not return calls made to his phone. He did not reply text messages either.
Meanwhile, reports reaching us indicate that Vice President Namadi Sambo met with the G84 group last night at the presidential villa. The G84 are also members of the PDP National Executive Council, NEC
Details of what was discussed are still unclear, same as the reason why President Jonathan skipped the meeting.
The various meetings being held by the presidency and the party hierarchy are believed to be a way for President Goodluck Jonathan to secure enough support from members prior to a NEC meeting to be held very soon.
It is believed that many of the PDP state governors will demand Mr. Tukur’s removal at the NEC meeting.
PremiumTimes

INEC may not register APC

by By Osedebamen Isibor

Despite the euphoria that greeted merger of four opposition parties into the All Progressives Congress, APC, last week, there are indications that the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, may not register the party given unfolding events within and around it.
Last week, the Congress for Progressive Change, CPC, Action Congress of Nigeria, ACN, All Nigeria Peoples Party, ANPP and All Progressives Grand Alliance, APGA, announced a novel merger into the APC in what analysts saw was a bid to give the ruling Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, a fight come 2015.
However, according to investigations by Nigerian Pilot, INEC may not be disposed to register the new party should current inhibiting factors prevail.
While INEC had given a green light to APC stating that such merger of political parties is in line with the 2010 Electoral Act and that they are within the 90 days stipulated by the same Act, as amended, the commission insists that “all relevant provisions incidental to the registration of political parties must be complied with by APC” before the party could be registered.
For instance, no sooner had the merger announcement been made that APGA, one of the parties believed to be part of the new party, denounced the development arguing that Imo State governor, Rochas Anayo Okorocha was not officially designated to represent APGA at the talks that led to the merger.
Besides many party men who are opposed to the governor’s alignment with APC see his move as overly ambitious. “He wants to run for the presidency in 2015. So, he thinks he can use the new party as a platform to get there. We know his tricks. It is either he is plotting to do that or he is a mole for those opposed to the merger and just will tag along until the right time he will rock the boat,” said an aide to a former governor of Imo State.
As a divided party, APGA cannot be party to the merger, especially as the group’s meeting of last Wednesday was stalemated over the adoption of a logo and name sign over the matter.
To underscore the fear of non-registration, one principal actor in the build-up to the merger disclosed last night that “even with the personality of CPC’s Muhammadu Buhari and ACN’s Bola Tinubu, it will still be difficult.”
He said with the feelers they are getting from INEC, “once there is any signal about division or feud among or within us, there will be problem. And we fear that will soon come. Buhari will like to run for presidency in 2015; and Tinubu, though he has said to the contraqry, could just stand to run. Then when you consider others like Rochas, Oshiomhole, Fashola and some PDP strongmen who don’t want to be identified now, there will be crisis in the house. Then INEC will turn its back on us.”
One South West deputy governor spoken to on phone last night expressed the same fears, adding that “if we allow this looming division to befall the APC, we should forget any form of opposition against PDP for 2015 and even beyond.
NigerianPilot

NIGERIA: 2015 Presidency, Jonathan knows fate March 1

NIGERIA: 2015 Presidency, Jonathan knows fate March 1

Breaking News: Goldie (Susan Harvey) Is Dead

Goldie, the popular Nigerian singer and BBA house mate is dead. The singer who just got back from the US died today at Reddington hospital.

According to the popular blogger, Linda Ikeji:

I’m in shock. Just got a call from her best friend and my close friend, Denrele Edun. He told me Goldie died a few minutes ago in his arms at Reddington Hospital in Victoria Island. Goldie just came back from the US today he said, and was so full of life, then something went tragically wrong. Will get all the details from him in a bit, he was crying so much and had to switch off his phone. I’m shaking so bad. She and I had a conversation a few days ago while she was in the US. Oh dear Lord. Is this how people die? May her soul rest in peace..Amen.

More details soon, May her soul rest in peace.
Update: This has been confirmed by her management on Facebook and Twitter