Donald Sterling Blasts Magic Johnson for Having 'AIDS'

Disgraced Clippers owner maliciously disparages NBA legend during interview.

It was supposed to be an apology interview where disgraced Los Angeles Clippers owner Donald Sterlingsaid sorry for making racist remarks against African-Americans.

However, the banned owner also dedicated a large portion of his interview with CNN’s Anderson Cooper to maliciously disparaging NBA Hall of Famer Magic Johnson.

"I think [Johnson] should be ashamed of himself," Sterling told Cooper during the interview, which aired Monday night. “I think he should go into the background. But what does he do for the black people? He doesn't do anything.” 

"He's got AIDS," Sterling added. "What has he done, big Magic Johnson, what has he done?”

When Cooper countered by saying Johnson is a successful businessman and clarified that the basketball legend is HIV-positive but does not have “full-blown AIDS,” Sterling retorted:

“He acts so holy. He made love to every girl in every city in America, and he had AIDS, and when he had those AIDS, I went to my synagogue and I prayed for him, I hope he could live and be well. I didn't criticize him. I could have. Is he an example for children?"

Sterling also used the interview to allege that Johnson had reached out to Sterling and advised him to “be patient” and “we’ll work it out.”

To that allegation, Johnson told TMZ that it was Sterling who called him, requesting that they sit down together in an interview with Barbara Walters. Johnson scoffed at Sterling's request, according to the celebrity news website. Johnson will surely provide more of a response Tuesday night, when his interview with Cooper airs on CNN.

Sterling’s lambasting of Johnson even drew a reaction from NBA commissioner Adam Silver.

"I just read a transcript of Donald Sterling's interview with Anderson Cooper and, while Magic Johnson doesn't need me to, I feel compelled on behalf of the NBA family to apologize to him that he continues to be dragged into this situation and be degraded by such a malicious and personal attack,” Silver said in a statement. "The NBA Board of Governors is continuing with its process to remove Mr. Sterling as expeditiously as possible."

If three-fourths of NBA owners vote against Sterling, he will be forced to sell the Clippers.

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KWANKWASO RESHUFFLES CABINET

Abubakar Salihi

Governor of Kano State, Rabiu Musa Kwankwaso yesterday made a minor cabinet reshuffle to further strengthen government machinery for better result.
The two new commissioners who were sworn in yesterday are Nasiru Yusuf Gawuna for the Ministry of Agriculture, and Alhaji Ali Ahmed Yako for the Ministry of Higher Education.
Speaking on the new commissioners, Kwankwaso said that the commissioner for commerce and industry, Dr. Nuhu Abubakar Danburam is now the commissioner for information, while that of information, Dr Farouk Jibril Umar will take charge of commerce ministry.Also, the commissioner for land and physical planning, Alhaji Muhammad Nadu Yahaya will take charge of the Ministry of Budget and Planning, while the commissioner of Budget and Planning, Yusuf Bello Danbatta was transferred to Ministry of Land, Physical Planning.

Leadership

'Jonathan Is Overwhelmed By Boko Haram' - Obasanjo

Former President Olusegun Obasanjo has said President Goodluck Jonathan is overwhelmed by Boko Haram and needs a new approach in handling the insurgents.

Olusegun Obasanjo

Speaking on a BBC programme, Focus on Africa, which aired a special edition on Nigeria’s insecurity yesterday night, Obasanjo said there's nothing wrong in trying a new approach to end the Boko Haram menace.

"If you had tried stick and stick alone and it has not worked, is there anything wrong to try something along with the stick," he said.

According to Obasanjo, in 2011, he took upon himself to investigate Boko Haram when they were getting out of hand in order to be a mediator and also find out if it was an organisation with aims and objectives and if they have foreign backing.

He said he met with people who knew the sect and he found out that Boko Haram has leaders and they had somebody acting as their lawyer.

"The lawyer, who was acting in proxy told me: ‘Mr President if you want to meet their leaders give me three hours. I will gather their leaders, not in Nigeria but outside Nigeria. Obviously, they have leaders," Obasanjo said.

Meanwhile, human rights activist Shehu Sani said Obasanjo has a list of the leaders of Boko Haram sect which has a theocratic agenda.

He warned the Federal government against using force to fight Boko Haram as it has not been able to yield any results.

He added that the federal government should first get the girls back home safely before using force on the Boko Haram insurgents.

Obasanjo had some days back condemned the President Goodluck Jonathan administration on how they handled the issue of the abducted Chibok School girls, saying they couldn't have acted immediately the news broke to save the girls but they didn't.

Naij.com

The Example of Kala-Balge Village in Borno State, By Choice Ekpekurede

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By Choice Ekpekurede

“Almost 200 suspected members of the Boko Haram were killed today by residents of Rann, the headquarters of Kala-Balge local government area in north eastern part of Borno State, officials and locals from the area said..” - Daily Trust, May 13, 2014

First of all, congratulations to the people of Rann in Kala-Balge LGA, Borno State! The latest report from Borno State has shown what difference ordinary civilians can make in the armed struggle to crush Boko Haram and other forces of insecurity in Nigeria.

I can easily understand the dangers associated with the call by ENDS for the government to give permission for the various civilian Joint Task Forces (JTFs) and vigilante groups in the Northeast to be armed with guns and other lethal weapons to enable them engage Boko Haram effectively. How do we eventually control these weapons and prevent use of these weapons for criminal activities? How do we ensure that these groups do not engage in gross human rights abuses and oppressive activities that have been characteristic of such groups as the defunct Bakassi Boys, MEND, Egbesu, OPC, and Ombatse. Our everyday experience and multiple studies, such as the research carried out by Arthur L. Kellermann et al, indicate, beyond reasonable doubt, that gun violence increases in a community with increase in the number of guns available to the civilian population. These are legitimate concerns and they are indeed very serious ones.

As serious as those concerns are, we cannot brush aside calls for civilian groups to defend their communities and their people with guns and other lethal weapons. What should ordinary Nigerians and our various communities do in light of the unacceptable level of insecurity in the country and the inability of our security forces to get it under control – to protect life and property? Should the people just fold their arms and wait to be slaughtered by criminals and terrorists?

Providing phone numbers and communication gadgets to the people in order for them to contact our security forces in case of an imminent or ongoing attack has undeniable merits in theory, but it has been shown to be almost useless in practical terms in Nigeria. Residents of Chibok and Amnesty International continue to insist that the military was warned of the recent Chibok attack, that has given rise to the #BringBackOurGirls global campaign, at least four hours before it happened. Testimonies from the Shehu of Bama, Alh. Kyari Ibrahim Ibn Elkanemi, and other residents of Bama indicated that it took eight hours for the military to respond to a cry for help from the people of Bama in Borno State. Eight long hours! And when the military arrived, it was already too late. Of this incident, Al Jazeera reported, “At least 115 people have been killed in Nigeria’s northeast, more than 1,500 buildings razed and some 400 vehicles destroyed.”

Narrating the ordeal to Premium Times, the Shehu lamented, “For now the morale of the people is down on the trust they have for the president, the governors, the local government chairmen, and even us, the traditional rulers, because a system that was designed to protect them failed them. I repeat, the confidence our people are having on the President down to the local council officers is nil!” He later added, “The government has failed; it is not protecting anything, and I have no reservation in saying this. It is constitutional responsibility of government to protect lives, but here lives are not protected at all. And the irony of the whole thing is that what is happening and being condoned by the government of Nigeria can bring down the entire country.” Other similar, heartbreaking examples abound.

The fact today is that Nigeria has become a state whose security lies primarily in the hands of ethnic militiamen and civilian vigilante groups. While Nigeria’s military must be commended for whatever successes it has recorded against Boko Haram and other marauding militant groups, it remains a reality that we cannot depend on the military alone. The military is either grossly incapable or unwilling to do what is necessary to protect ordinary citizens. Either way, our people and communities remain vulnerable. With what happened at Gamboru-Ngala a few days ago, just to give a very recent example, it seems foolish for us not to take steps to defend ourselves. We cannot afford to fold our arms and wait for the Nigerian military or the Nigerian Police Force. To do so, it appears, amounts to doing a dance macabre.

The risk posed by encouraging the formation and the arming of civilian vigilante groups can be dealt with with appropriate intervention and engagement by the government and the nation’s security forces.

To this end, the Federal Government should step up and step in to train and equip and give permission for duly registered nongovernmental organizations, following some due process, to equip our civilian JTFs and vigilante groups in order for our communities to engage Boko Haram and other security threats, including armed robbers, marauding Fulani herdsmen, kidnappers, and ritual killers. It is in the interest of the government and of orderliness in the country for the government to do this. This will give the government good control of the arming process and of the mode of operation of the various civil defense groups already in existence in the country. The government should also encourage the formation of such groups across the country in communities where they do not already exist.

Failure or refusal of the government to do this will not prevent the people from defending themselves. Failure or refusal of the government to do this will only heighten the chances that these JTFs and vigilante groups will spin out of control and the weapons they use deployed for criminal activities. Whatever the government decides to do, let us be rest assured that Nigeria is now a country whose security depends on the effectiveness of civil defense groups. Various armed militias already exist in the country, from the north to south, and they will be around for a long time. Until our military and security forces are willing and able to handle our security challenges, I believe this is the surest way of self-defense for our communities and for ordinary citizens.

Come to think of it, the Boko Haram insurgents, the marauding Fulani herdsmen, the armed robbers troubling our communities, kidnappers, ritual killers, and other sources of insecurity in our communities are not trained military men for the most part. We have had report of instances where trained soldiers or policemen were noted to be among these criminals, but generally, the bad guys are mere civilians who took up arms to commit crime and havoc. So why cannot ordinary citizens with basic, relevant training tackle these criminals to defend their people and their communities?

NewsRescue

Failure of Leadership: Nigeria’s President Blames Everyone But Himself for Terrorism

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By AZUBUIKE ISHIEKWENE

ABUJA, Nigeria — Regardless of what President Goodluck Jonathan’s government would have us believe, Nigeria is losing the war against Boko Haram.

Days after the chief of defense staff, Air Marshal Alex Badeh, took over in January, he vowed to end the Boko Haram onslaught by April. He had barely finished speaking when gunmen struck, killing more than 70 people in separate attacks in the northeastern states of Borno and Adamawa — two of the three states that have become the hotbed of recent violence. The defense chief ate the humble pie and promptly disavowed setting any deadline to end the killings.

Since then, Boko Haram has carried out a slew of other attacks, including two high-profile ones in the country’s capital, Abuja. The most outrageous attack yet, however, was the mass abduction of 276 schoolgirls who were taking their final high school exams in Chibok, Borno state, on April 14, hours after a bus station was attacked in Abuja, killing 75 people. At least 200 of those girls are still missing, and eight more were abducted in the same town last Tuesday. On Wednesday, Boko Haram insurgents attacked another Borno town, killing hundreds and displacing even more. Full-scale war doesn’t get much worse.

It’s no use asking what Jonathan is doing about it. It took him three weeks simply to speak up about the abducted girls. Jonathan has blamed everyone and everything for the escalating violence in the northeast except his own government. At a political rally in one of the northeastern states in March, he said governors in the region who were investing poorly in education were feeding the monster. His aides have accused influential northern politicians of stoking the violence to get even with Jonathan for betraying “a gentleman’s agreement” that would have permitted him only one term in office after the sudden 2010 death of Umaru Musa Yar’Adua, the immediate past president from the north.

But it’s nonsense to suggest that these politicians, whoever they are, would kill their kith and kin — and abduct their daughters on a mass scale — to prevent Jonathan from returning to power. The country has yet to recover from the shock that, while a distraught public was still trying to figure out the whereabouts of the abducted girls, the president was on the hustings, crowing for a second term.

NewsRescue

Boko Haram leader an 'obscenity'

Nigerian Nobel laureate Wole Soyinka has described Boko Haram's leader as an "obscenity" who is likely to be incapable of dialogue, as the government considers opening talks with the Islamists over the more than 200 abducted schoolgirls.

The winner of the 1986 Nobel Prize for Literature said by phone from Los Angeles that Boko Haram chief Abubakar Shekau was "high on religion and drugs".

"For me, we are dealing with a sub-human species," Soyinka said. "How do you dialogue with that kind of obscenity?"

Debate over the prospects of negotiating with Boko Haram and even Shekau himself has been a controversial issue in Nigeria throughout the extremist group's uprising which has killed thousands.

The issue resurfaced on Monday after Shekau released a video suggesting the girls kidnapped from a secondary school in the northeastern town of Chibok could be released in exchange for Islamist prisoners held by the government.

"It is a bind for the nation because the girls must be secured," Soyinka said, voicing sympathy for the officials who must assess the pros and cons of talking to Shekau.

The shocking mass abduction has drawn worldwide condemnation, partly thanks to a social media campaign supported by major world leaders and celebrities.

Nigeria's President Goodluck Jonathan has accepted military assistance from the United States, Britain, France, Israel and China to help with the rescue effort.

Some commentators have suggested that welcoming help from foreign militaries was an embarrassment for Nigeria, Africa's most populous country and top economy.

But Soyinka said such critics were showing a lack of compassion for the teenaged hostages.

"I don't know what they are talking about," he said. "This is a global crisis."

"In this situation, where we have these kind of killers, homicidal maniacs who can go into schools and kidnap hundreds of girls... all help is welcome," Soyinka said.

For the international community, given such horrifying violence, intervening is 'not a favour'," he added. "It is a duty."

Activists have organised daily protests in the capital Abuja demanding the girls' release and demonstrations have also been held in other cities across the country.

Civil activism is rare in Nigeria, with the prominent exception of massive demonstrations over the scrapping of a popular petrol subsidy that shut down the country in January 2012.

Nigeria has a track record of cracking down on protests and Soyinka warned Jonathan against suppressing public anger over the plight of the girls and the escalating Boko Haram violence.

Jonathan's administration "had better be very, very careful, because people are in pain and they have been in pain for a very, very long time" he cautioned.

A few protests have been disbanded by the police and there were disputed reports that Jonathan's wife, Patience, had ordered the arrest of one protest leader for falsely identifying herself as the mother of one of the hostages.

If the protests continue, Soyinka said, the government "had better get out of the way".

MSNNews

I’m not sure any child is missing in Borno – Jonathan

By Wole Oye 

The First Lady took the position after it was discovered that the leader of the protest on the abducted child was an impersonator, who is a deputy director in the National Directorate of Employment.

The First Lady, Dame Patience Jonathan, on Monday washed her hands off the reported arrest of the leader of #BringBackOurGirls campaign, Naomi Mutah.
Jonathan, however, insisted that having been identified as an impersonator, Mutah must be arrested and made to face the music.
Mutah, a Deputy Director of the National Directorate of Employment, had posed as one one the mothers of the abducted children in Chibok, Borno State and led a protest to the National Assembly alongside a former Minister of Education, Dr. Oby Ezekwesili.
However, the bubble burst when somebody identified her as a civil servant based in Abuja and who had no child in Chibok.
It was also discovered that she registered her name as Mrs. Grace when she attended a meeting with the First Lady at the Presidential Villa.
This infuriated the First Lady who ordered that she be handed over to the Inspector General of Police, Mohammed Abubakar, for coming to the Villa to impersonate.
The First lady had said: “When they said they have come to lay complain to the government and the National Assembly, I asked for the leader of the mothers whose children were abducted.
“This woman was the one that came forward and said that her child was abducted.
“I believed her and I asked the Women Affairs Minister to follow her to the National Assembly.
“This is the woman who went to National Assembly with the women in black and she claimed that her child was missing and that she is the leader of parents that their children are missing in Chibok.
“Senate President believed them, even me believed them.
“God is leading us to the truth.
“Our coming out is not in vain.
“She called people like Oby to follow her as they also believed her.
“Oby is innocent and I don’t blame her because even me as First Lady, I was moved.
“Today, when I sighted her, I said within myself that we will get to the conclusion today because one of those whose child is missing is here.
“But to my greatest surprise, when we asked her, she said she is a representative.
“She wrote down her name as Grace.
“A whole civil servant impersonating.
“She should be arrested for impersonation.”
Turning the Borno State Commissioner of Police, who was also at the meeting, the First Lady said: “You have to take this woman to IG and the President.”
Mutah was said to have admitted that she had no child among the abducted children after being quizzed.
She was said to have also disclosed that she was contacted to represent one of those persons expected to attend the meeting at the First Lady’s Conference Room.
The leader of the #BringBackourGirls said: “It was in the morning that somebody called me from Borno State, one Mrs. Grace.
“She said that she was supposed to come, but that since we are here as Chibok representatives, that we should come and represent her here.
“I have not gone to Chibok in the past one year.”
In the same vein, the Minister of Women Affairs, Zainab Maina, said she was deceived by Mutah, who did not disclose her identity.
According to Maina: “I saw this lady and two others on Tuesday.
“My deputy director came into my office and said you are talking about going to Chibok, mothers of those abducted girls from Chibok are here and they are in Eagles Square.
“When I asked them if they are mothers from Chibok, they said yes.
“I asked them where their destination is and they said National Assembly and Villa.
“I said no, you can’t come to Villa, may be National Assembly.
“I followed them to National Assembly to listen to what they wanted to tell the legislators.
“I sat to the end until they finished and I then asked them for the leader of the delegation.
“She came forward and I asked her where are the girls from Chibok, how many of them and if she could give me the names of the girls and she said that they were not from Chibok and that they are based in Abuja.”
“I shouted oh my God, you have killed me.
“If I know you are from Abuja, I won’t waste my time to come here and talk to you.
“Later on, somebody made enquiries and my Permanent Secretary took her phone number and name and she is a deputy director in NDE.
“I was really angry with them and walked out from the place.
“What surprised me again is the gut she has to come here (Presidential Villa) just by mere phone call from somebody in Borno State to represent her.
“This is not a market place.
“This meeting is a very official meeting aimed at resolving this problem of abduction.
“It is not for everybody to come.
“I don’t know who gave you the invitation.”
At this point, the First Lady wondered if truly the children are missing, saying: “So my sisters you can all see that within them they know what they are doing.
“With what is happening now, will you believe that any children got missing?
“So, we the Nigerian women are saying that no child is missing in Borno State.
“If any child is missing, let the governor go and look for them.
“There is nothing we can do again.
“We will now go spiritual.
“What we women should pray for now is the killings in Borno to stop.
“God will reveal them one by one.
“The blood of the innocent victims will come out and speak.”
A statement by Ayo Adewuyi, the Media Assistant to the First Lady, said she had no hand in the arrest of Mutah.
Adewuyi said: “We wish to state without any iota of equivocation that the First Lady did not order the arrest of any woman or any one for that matter before, during and after the meeting.
“The Naomi Mutah mentioned in one of the reports came to the meeting as part of Borno delegation.
“The women were alarmed when someone who knew her told the meeting that she was impersonating one of the mothers of the allegedly abducted children on the basis for which she attended the meeting.”

TheEagleOnLine