A Little, Humble Tribute to Late Chief Segun Okeowo

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A Little, Humble Tribute to Late Chief Segun Okeowo

Truly and indisputably, the last of the great student leaders of Nigeria

 

“Nigeria, March/April 1978: The Minister for Education, Col Ahmadu Ali under the Obasanjo Military administration, had just announced that the Federal Government of Nigeria intended to increase the cost of feeding for University and other tertiary institutions’ students. At the time also, students pay about 98 Naira per year to secure accommodation on campus. The room is shared with one or two or three other students, depending on the size of the room. Postgraduate students often have a room to themselves.

 

Previously, the cost of eating at the institutions’ cafeterias was as follows: Breakfast, 10 Kobo; Lunch, 20 Kobo and Dinner, 20 Kobo, making 50 Kobo in total to get a full three-square meal a day at our institutions of higher learning in those days.

 

Now Minister Ali wanted to increase it as thus: 20 Kobo for breakfast and 25 Kobo each for lunch and dinner, making a total of 70 Kobo per day. The National Unions of Students, under the leadership of one Comrade Segun Okeowo, a second year student at the University of Lagos, entered into negotiations with the government, but Obasanjo’s government was adamant, and later talks broke down.

 

The students took to the streets in protest shouting “Ali Must Go”. The protests, I believed started at the Universities of Ibadan, Lagos and Ife (now Obafemi Awolowo University) and spread to others, including Ibadan Polytechnic, and most other tertiary institutions in the South West and Bendel State.

 

I was at the forefront of the demonstrations at the University of Ibadan, although I was not a member of the Students Union Executive Committee. Those were the days. We fought running battles with the Mobile Police stationed outside the gates of the University. Throughout the over a week that we boycotted classes, throwing stones and taunting the “godo-godos”, as we called the ferocious mobile, anti-riot policemen, not once did they enter the University. I guess that was their orders. And not once did the students destroy any building inside the campuses.

 

After about a week of this standoff, the universities were closed by the Federal Government and every student advised to leave the campus. It was painful and inconvenient for students who came from afar to study at the various universities and polytechnics across Nigeria. At Ibadan, students from the South Eastern part of the country had to hurriedly charter luxury buses to take them back home to Aba, Enugu, Port Harcourt and the rest, leaving behind most of their belongings, because eventually the universities will be re-opened”. Culled from my article, Reminiscences of Nigeria, 10 June 2009 (http://www.nigeriavillagesquare.com/articles/akintokunbo-a-adejumo/reminiscences-of-nigeria-12.html)

 

 

 

Chief Segun Okeowo may be as old as 73 when he died earlier this week (Tuesday, 28 January 2014). He had already acquired NCE) National Certificate of Education) with some years of work experience before enrolling for his first degree at the University of Lagos. That was the basis of his maturity when he was the President of the National Union of Nigerian Students, NUNS (precursor of the NANS). He led Nigerian students in the “Ali Must Go” demonstrations in 1978, while I was in my second year at the University of Ibadan, and he was at University of Lagos, being the President of NUNS. I, and a lot of other ordinary, but politically-aware students and student leaders of the day, were very active in the “Ali Must Go” protest against Obasanjo's military government then,(Obasanjo and his military junta was very rattled by this famous students demonstration)  and interacted a bit with Chief Okeowo, mainly through meetings and liaisons. During the crisis, he refused to be cowed, intimidated, bribed, induced, despite all the pressure mounted on him to call off the strike.

 

For his role in the protest, Okeowo was expelled (we called it “rustication” in those days) from the University of Lagos where he was a second-year English major student. He finally completed his degree five years later at the University of Ife (now Obafemi Awolowo University) in 1982, graduating with a second class honours degree in Literature in English, much thanks to Professor Wole Soyinka and lots of other radical lecturers that made his obtaining a full degree possible for him at a time he was being treated as an 'outcast' by the then ruling military junta.

 

Mr Okeowo was a member of the 1976 Constitution Drafting Committee, CDC, constituted to write what later became the 1979 Constitution. He created a stir when he appeared for the inaugural meeting in an all-red overall suit with a Kangol classic hat to match. The CDC chairman, the legal luminary, late Chief FRA Rotimi-Williams screamed in dramatic outrage accusing Okeowo of “platform acting” than preparedness to help write a constitution.

 

The Obasanjo government subsequently took him out of the CDC. It was sweet revenge for Obasanjo after Okeowo had led the notable revolt of Nigerian students against the price hike on student’s feeding introduced by the Olusegun Obasanjo military regime in 1978. The protest was dubbed the “Ali Must Go” protest taking its name from the then minister of education, Col. Ahmadu Ali, a medical doctor and army colonel who himself had been NUNS president as a student at the University of Ibadan.

 

By1989, he was the Principal of Ogijo Community Grammar School, Ogijo, Ogun State (a secondary school near Ikorodu – at the border/boundary of Ogun and Lagos States).  He was transferred to RSS (Remo Secondary  School, Sagamu and was also a one-time President of All Nigeria Conference of Principals of Secondary Schools, ANCOPS, Ogun State branch.

 

He once honoured a colleague's (a classmate of mine, Kamaldeen Ekemode, former Provost, Lagos State College of Primary Education (LACOPED) invitation to him for a one-day lecture for the students of Lagos State Polytechnic, Ikorodu Campus and continued to interact with him thereafter until he (Chief Okeowo) was posted as a principal to Makun High School, another secondary school in Sagamu, Ogun State. The man will always put on the same uniform as his students; a disciplinarian, a teacher and great leader. You will see that he read Education, knew and was passionate about education and teaching all his life.

 

He was, I would say, the last of the truly great, sincere and focused student union leader in Nigeria. Not the half-baked, ill-educated and ill-disciplined, corrupt and avaricious types we have these days, running around the campuses and pledging and attaching their loyalties to unscrupulous leaders and politicians in return for positions and riches.

 

One of the great achievers of his time when education in Nigeria was all about making sure there were opportunities accessible for everyone who required it within Nigeria, there was passion and the quality in Segun Okeowo. He made his mark in this world; a modest and great man, in deed and indeed, and an unsung hero, a veritable Champion for the Nigerian masses.

 

Segun Okeowo was a celebrity and a true patriot both when alive and in death. He sincerely contributed his quota for the emancipation of the Nigerian students (including the generation yet unborn) and history is already made and prosperity will judge him right. This is at variance with what is obtainable in the Nigerian society of today of leaders in all strata sacrificing their subjects for financial gain or other form of compensation. I was a student and student union activist in those days and I can convincingly say that genuine service from the heart has since died and we are left with eye-service, sycophancy, lust for lucre and corruption.

 

In those days, it was “aluta continua” (the struggle continues) NOT “a-looting continues” as we have it today. God have mercy, everyone is guilty of one thing or the other that led this nation into complete MESS. Though the lives of those standing on the truth are being threatened by the day but it is not enough for you to “join them if you can't beat them”.

 

He remains, in my view, a true Nigerian that should be celebrated and even studied compared to all the leaders we have today ruining and running the country to the ground and who, despite all available evidence, still want to force themselves into the history book.

 

It behoves us to emulate the virtues Uncle Segun Okeowo left behind. He doesn't really need anybody’s prayers any more but wish above all things that you do something to make Nigeria a wonderful place to live in. Many Nigerians are forced out of the nation by the day. He is gone for good. May the Lord keep his family together in peace and grant them the fortitude to bear the great loss as He fills up the vacuum. Nigeria indeed miss you, people in genuine struggle also miss you.

 

Aluta continua and adieu!

 

May his soul rest in perfect peace. Amen

About Post Author

Anthony-Claret Ifeanyi Onwutalobi

Anthony-Claret is a software Engineer, entrepreneur and the founder of Codewit INC. Mr. Claret publishes and manages the content on Codewit Word News website and associated websites. He's a writer, IT Expert, great administrator, technology enthusiast, social media lover and all around digital guy.
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Gov. Okorocha And 84 Katsina Youths Deportation: The Matters Arising

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Read Time:3 Minute, 37 Second

On a more serious note and still on the gov Okorocha’s deportation of 84 youths of Hausa origin, Katsina state from our state, Imo as reported by Vanguard Newspaper of 28 January, 2014 edition, ever since I posted it and my recent condemnation of that very unlawful act, so many people had since gotten my postulations misconstrued as they had alleged me of double standard and speaking from the both sides of my mouth!

May I at this juncture correct some misconceived impressions emanating from the camps of the governor!

I am stating that:
1. I condemns the repatriation of bornifide Nigerians from a Nigerian state because it is illegal and unconstitutional as the constitution clearly guarantees the right of every Nigerian to live at any location in Nigeria, and hence, it is an infringement on the rights of the Katsina cum Nigerian youths .

2. I have never in any way supported the illegal acts of the governor but only supported and commended the proactive responsiveness of the Imo state police command in ascertaining if truly the suspects are true Boko harams as alleged because it is within the prerogative of the police to prosecute if they finds them to be true Boko haram and not the duty of the governor to repatriate anybody even if they were found guilty after the holistic investigations and other necessary procedures, as Nigerians, they were not meant to be deported from a Nigerian state but will serve whatever jail term in Imo state and not the other way round of deportation as gov Okorocha did.

3.for the governor to hastily repatriate the suspects back to their states of origin from Imo state spells out that there is some thing more in the offing. Why didn’t the governor allowed the security apparatus to carry out their investigation to ascertain if truly these youths are Boko haram as alleged? Our governor by deporting these youths from Imo state without investigation from the security officials means that he is hiding some thing from us and some how, the allegations that the youths were imported because of 2015 election might be true and on this note, am calling on our governor to allow the security officials to do their work without his interference and after if there’s nothing to it, our governor can then charge the Imo state PDP for raising a false alarm and until then, we demand that he allows the police to do their works.

This issue of the gov. Rochas Okorocha to hurriedly deporting the youths raises some genuine questions from discerning Imolites and the general public, because it would be very important to know if they were deported back home for their own safety or is it because of the fear that they might wreck havocs in the state? As Imo state government through ICAPS had claimed that these ones repatriated were in training and it brings in yet another question, Who recruited them for the training? Under what arrangement did they come?. These are few out of the many pertinent questions in the lips of Ndi-Imo begging for answers. I am against every move to forcefully move a Nigerian away from his/her place of residence or a place of schooling to his/her state of origin.

What if the Imo state PDP hadn’t had raised an alarm over the in flocks of suspected Boko-haram members into Imo state, would the governor had left the suspected boko-haram members? And what was the actual crime of the Katsina youths? By repatriating them back to their state is not only witty, but also very suspicious and our governor must come out and clear all these genuine suspicion out of Imolites and also produce the remaining members of the suspected boko haram members as the Imo state PDP had claimed in their allegation that they were more than 600 and gov Rochas only provided 84 people, where are then the remaining people?
As the governor has started fetching them out, let him provide them all and hand them over to the law enforcement agencies this time and not deporting them back to their state because we the Imolites wants to know who imported them in the first place and for what reason/s they were imported.

About Post Author

Anthony-Claret Ifeanyi Onwutalobi

Anthony-Claret is a software Engineer, entrepreneur and the founder of Codewit INC. Mr. Claret publishes and manages the content on Codewit Word News website and associated websites. He's a writer, IT Expert, great administrator, technology enthusiast, social media lover and all around digital guy.
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Imo govt deports 84 Boko Haram suspects to Katsina

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OWERRI — For fears that they might be members of the dreaded Boko Haram, Imo State government, weekend, sent back to Katsina about 84 persons.

The deportees, mainly youths, had been in Imo State for eight days under-going skill acquisition training when the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, in the state raised an alarm that they might be Boko Haram insurgents.

The young Muslims, who had spent about eight days in the state, were quartered in the premises of Imo Newspapers Limited, on Egbu Road, Owerri, which is now renamed “Imo College of Advanced Professional Studies, ICAPS.”

A security man on guard in the premises, who spoke on strict grounds of anonymity, explained that government had no other option than to send them safely back home.

“The alarm by PDP raised palpable fears that people could descend on the innocent students. Government had to cut short their training and sent them back to their state,” the man said.

Speaking to inquisitive journalists in Owerri, the Director General of ICAPS, Mr. David Day, confirmed that the establishment trained youths on skills and leadership programmes.

“We do not train miscreants, criminals and members of Boko Haram in ICAPS. We had to cut short the training of 84 literate youths from Katsina State, as a result of the alarm, which obviously put their lives in danger,” Mr. Day said.

About Post Author

Anthony-Claret Ifeanyi Onwutalobi

Anthony-Claret is a software Engineer, entrepreneur and the founder of Codewit INC. Mr. Claret publishes and manages the content on Codewit Word News website and associated websites. He's a writer, IT Expert, great administrator, technology enthusiast, social media lover and all around digital guy.
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Gay Rights: When 99% of the Nigerian People Are Wrong

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Read Time:11 Minute, 39 Second

It’s funny watching the contrail that goes up in the sky when 99% of the people are wrong.
 
From the reaction to the anti-gay marriage bill passed by the senate, it is safe, the Nigerian way, to say that 99% of Nigerians are in support of it. (By the way, one way of knowing that you are a Nigerian is if you take delight in throwing abstract figures around.)

 
I have no problem with the large number of Nigerians who support the bill. I do not begrudge them either. Unlike those pissed off by the multitude of people in support, I actually understood why.
 
But that does not make the bill right.
 
I wouldn’t have bothered to squeeze myself into a debate that has no space for rational thinking if I had not read a pedestrian editorial on the bill by the Guardian newspaper of Nigeria. When the so-called Nigeria’s flagship newspaper shows no interest in expanding and elevating the discourse, it troubles me.
 
To begin with, I can bet anyone N10,000 that President Goodluck Jonathan will not sign the bill. No president of a dependent country like Nigeria will sign such a bill and survive in today’s world. So, on that basis, opponents of the bill can relax. It is dead on arrival at the president’s desk. Unless (and that is a big unless) the president can trade signing the bill with quelling the crises that will follow the removal of oil subsidy.
 
Having said that, it is important to point out the fallacies that emerged in discussions surrounding the bill. Those are more troubling to me than the bill itself.
 
To begin with, I did not know that gays in Nigeria were planning to get married. The chief sponsor of the bill, Senator Domingo Obende said that, “Same sex marriage is spreading and spreading around the whole world just like pornography and terrorism which will become the order of the day if not arrested on time.” I wish he and his colleagues in the senate can apply such foresight in dealing with real threats already devastating Nigeria.
 
The first fallacy I want us to discard is the idea that homosexuality is not African culture but part of Western culture. Little research (wink wink- google search) will show anyone that the West reacted exactly the same way Africans are reacting today when homosexuality first became pronounced in their society.
 
In 1779, the liberal Thomas Jefferson, who insisted in the separation of Church and State, proposed a law calling for the castration of gays. Jefferson’s law was considered an improvement from the predominant law in the books then that called for death.
 
In 1895, one of the greatest Irish writers, Oscar Wilde, was arrested and jailed for engaging in homosexual activities. He died soon after he served his sentence.
 
The first national gay rights movement in America, the Mattachine Society, was founded in 1951.
 
In 1961, sodomy law was repealed in Illinois.  Connecticut followed in 1969. Meanwhile other states continued to sentence those caught in consensual gay sex to prison for up to 20 years.
 
In June of 1969, riot broke out after New York City police stormed Stonewall Inn, a gay bar in Greenwich Village. After three days of riots during which over 2000 people came out in support of lesbians, gays and transgender, the gay rights movement officially kicked off. Since then, every June, cities across America hold gay pride parade.
 
In 1973, the American Psychiatric Association, which once classified homosexuality as a mental illness, recanted and came out in defense of homosexuality.
 
On November 27, 1978, Harvey Milk, an openly gay San Francisco Supervisor was assassinated.
 
At the 1980 Democratic National Convention, the Democratic Party inserted in its platform a “protection of all groups from discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation.”
 
In 1982, the General Synod of the Church of England voted to refuse to condemn homosexuality.
 
In 1993, Hawaii Supreme Court ruled in favor of same-sex marriage. The Hawaii state lawmakers immediately amended the state constitution to overrule the court. In 1996, President Clinton signed the Defense of Marriage Act that was aimed at stopping gay marriage approved by any state from being enforceable in other states.
 
In Iran, Mauritania, Saudi Arabia, Sudan and Yemen, the punishment for homosexual activity is death. Since 1979, Iran has executed over 4000 people for committing homosexual acts. Despite the killings, gays still exist in Iran. More importantly, Iran has not been transformed into a model society where anti-gay men and women around the world can call home.
 
In 1998, Mathew Wayne Sheppard, a student of the University of Wyoming was murdered because he was gay.
 
Many Nigerians do not know that it was only in 2003 that the US Supreme Court ended a law that made it a crime for same-sex couple to have intercourse.
 
In July of this year, Peter Lucas Moses, a 27-year old leader of the Black Hebrew Israelites, shot and killed a 4year-old son of his girlfriend in North Carolina. His reason was that he thought the boy was gay because he slapped another boy’s behind.
 
According to polls, in 1996, when the Defense of Marriage Act was passed, only 25% of the American public supported same-sex marriage. By 2011, Gallop, CNN, ABC News/Washington Post polls all noted that majority of Americans approve same-sex marriage.
 
In America today, majority of those who oppose same-sax marriage are older Americans, those who attend religious services, members of the Republican Party and Americans who call the South and the Midwest home. Another block in opposition is African-Americans, our cousins.
 
So homosexuality is not a Western culture being forced on Africans. It is a worldwide wind that finally got to Africa.
 
The funny thing is that as far as I know, there was no gay rights movement in Nigeria. But all of a sudden, the Nigerian Senate gathered Nigerians together and dumped them inside a truck for a bungee jump.
 
At issue is this: Two people meet. They fall in love. They get married. They become respectable members of the society. They care for each other. They have children. They grow old together. One inherits what the first to die leaves behind.
 
That is the standard marriage life for a man and a woman.
 
Now, gay couples want to partake in that institution. It has triggered the gay rights movement all over the world. The movement seeks social equality and an end to discrimination based on sexual orientation.
 
For many opponents, it is a return to Sodom and Gomorrah.
 
In 2001, the Netherlands became the first country to legalize gay marriage. It has since been followed by Argentina, Belgium, Canada, Iceland, Norway, Portugal, Spain, South Africa, and Sweden. In the United States, six states have legalized gay marriage. They are Connecticut, Iowa, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New York, Vermont and the District of Columbia.
 
In the debate on gay rights, Africans invoke the African exceptionalism. African exceptionalism says that what happens in other parts of the world matters not to us because we are different.
 
In fact, for most Africans, gay lifestyle is an abomination. It is seen as being against God’s will and against tradition. The existence of gays in Africa is hardly acknowledged. There is a fear that mere acknowledgment disrupts the social order. There is a greater fear that granting any right to gays will only encourage homosexual behaviors.
 
South Africa is the only African country that allows gay marriage. For many Africans, gay rights movement is something foreign. Countries like Zimbabwe and Uganda are the headquarters of the anti-gay movement. Last January in Uganda, David Kato, a leading Ugandan gay rights activist was beaten to death.
 
With this bill, Nigeria has joined the team of anti-gay African countries.
 
In a debate on the floor of the Nigerian Senate, the senate president, David Mark said, “It’s incomprehensible to contemplate same sex marriage. I cannot be a party to it. There are enough men and women to marry one another. The whole idea is importation of foreign culture but this one would be a freedom too many. We cannot allow our tradition and value system to be eroded.”
 
This is not the first time the world has confronted a challenge like this. The fight to stop the trade in African slaves passed through the same moral dilemma. Some Christians and Muslims strongly believed that Africans slaves were sub-humans and did not deserve equal rights as the rest of humanity.
 
It happened again in the debate as to whether black people would be allowed to marry white people. Here, well-intended white people feared that black people marrying white would bring an end to the white race. That was when they came up with the slogan, ‘once you go black you don’t go back.’ There is a similar fear that once the gays are allowed to live we will all end up as gays.
 
In each of these kinds of challenges, the tough question is what do you do when each side’s idea of justice is at war? What do you do when there is no moral harmony? What do you do when change is unsettling? What do you do when doing nothing is not an option?
 
One of the most disarming arguments around the Nigerian question is that God, not the British, put Nigerians together in one country for a reason. What is the reason why God created gays?
 
Some will say that God has nothing to do with it. Which raises the question, Is it by nature or by nurture? If it is by nurture, why do some young gay kids commit suicide when faced with the bulling associated with being gay? Why wouldn’t they just switch over?
 
If you want to frighten an anti-gay African, tell him that his son or daughter may become gay. Watch him curse you out as if those parents whose children turned gay fired a missile at God. The fascinating thing is that these conservatives often have one gay child, as if life is saying to them ‘deal with it.’ Conservatives like Dick Cheney and Alan Keyes have had to contend with their children turning out to be gays. While Dick Cheney accepted her daughter, Alan Keyes banished his.
 
Every society is measured not by the way it treats its strong and privileged but how it treats its weak and disadvantaged. You do not have to hug the gay. You just have to give room in your heart for the dove and for the eagle to be.
 
Africa has scores of serious problems. Gay rights movement is not one of them. Anyone who tells you it is, is deceiving you.
 
If I hear the opponents of gay rights well, gay is a lifestyle and not an inherent sexual orientation. And as such, gays deserve discrimination from true sons and daughters of Africa. But what about the Igbo Osu Caste system? That lifestyle or is it orientation, is home grown. It cannot in any way be called a choice. Here Africans sanction discrimination against a group of people who have done nothing to be what they are labeled.
 
By the way, what is African about today’s crop of Africans? Is it the language that we speak? Is it the indomie that we eat? Is it the blue-eyed Jesus that we worship or the Arabic Mohammed that we bow to? Could it be that the only thing that is unAfrican is tolerance? The people who made Africans to burn up the symbols of the gods of their forefathers and to carry the cross and the crescent as replacements have said that you have to accept gay marriages and Africans are crying foul. Which God will protect you now? Your God or their God?
 
Guess what? The head of the African has long been chopped off like that of a captured fowl. What we are doing now is simply flapping our wings and splashing blood all around. It has long been over for us.
 
When Barack Obama, Hilary Clinton and David Cameron spoke about the need for Africans to respect gay rights, they made the classic mistake of not deploying George H. Bush’s ‘kinder and gentler’ tone. Like George H. Bush, they should have said to our divided African souls troubled by yet another change: “This is not a threat; this is not a boast. This is just the way things gonna be.”
 
Gays are here to stay. We can make all the noise that we want. Just like the West, we will eventually learn to accept it and live with it. It is the way of the world. Those who cannot stand it have one option: they can stop the world and jump out. The rest can look at the bright side – it is not the end of the world.
 
It may be the end of the world as we know it, but it is not the ultimate end of the world. If not for anything else, I trust the 99% of people who are for this anti-gay rights bill will hold fast to their sexuality. The world will only end when we all become gays. And that is not what gay rights is all about. If it were, I would have joined the 99% in saying, Tufiakwa!

About Post Author

Anthony-Claret Ifeanyi Onwutalobi

Anthony-Claret is a software Engineer, entrepreneur and the founder of Codewit INC. Mr. Claret publishes and manages the content on Codewit Word News website and associated websites. He's a writer, IT Expert, great administrator, technology enthusiast, social media lover and all around digital guy.
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CHAN 2014: Ghana vrs Nigeria: Ghana Must Go, Eagles Boast

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Read Time:3 Minute, 1 Second

Eternal West African foes, Nigeria and Ghana have another opportunity today to revive their rivalry as the home-based Eagles take on the Black Stars in the second semi-final of the 2014 African Nations Championship in South Africa.

Before the top-of-the-billing clash at the Free State Stadium in Bloemfontein, Libya and Zimbabwe will battle for the other ticket at stake.

Since last Saturday when both Nigeria and Ghana secured the semi final tickets, aficionados of the game in the continent knew that memories of this edition of CHAN will be one to treasure.

Despite this showdown devoid of high-profile foreign-based player  the mind-game being played by both sub-regional rivals has helped to add quality to the competition.

The player who played a major role in  reviving Eagles when Morocco was three goals up in the quarter final, Ejike Uzoenyi, insists Nigerians have nothing to worry about today.

“At this point we don't fear (Ghana); we can only respect them for reaching this stage because it's not easy.”

He however admitted that football fans in the country should not look forward to an easy match.

“One fact remains, nobody should expect an easy match but my belief is that having eliminated South Africa and Morocco, we can't hope for anything less than the cup,” stressed the petit- bomber.

His captain and first choice goal keeper of the team, Chigozie Agbim also re-echoes Uzoenyi's desire to play in the final after overcoming the Ghanaians today.

“Our desire in every game is to win and I believe in the semifinal, we will win by the grace of God.

“We came to compete. So, any day we can play against any country. We are not afraid of any country, including Ghana,” stressed Agbim.

Agbim assured Nigerians that Eagles would strive not to repeat the kind of mistakes they made against Morocco when they were trailing 3-0 at half time.

“We have learnt our lessons and it will not happen again,“ he further assured.

Eagles coaching crew led by Stephen Keshi should be happy now that right-back, Solomon Kwambe, is now available for selection after serving a one-match ban.

How the Black Stars will survive their goal scoring problem remains an uphill task for Coach Maxwell Konadu and his colleague.

They have just a miserly four goals to show so far as against the 12 that the Eagles have pumped into opponents' goals.

“Our attack has been such that we only manage one goal per match but we have been defending very well. That for me is a sign of a team that is progressing and I don't think it is a bad thing to defend very well,” coach Konadu admitted on Monday.

“It is also important to score goals but in cases when you score one goal in a match and manage to defend it, that means you will win.”

Luckily for him, the trio of Michael Akuffo, Abeiku Ainooson and Kwabena Adusei, who picked up knocks in the quarter-final clash against DR Congo are now available for selection.

Right-back Godfred Saka, who picked up a foot injury in the second Group C match against Libya, is now ready for the clash with Nigeria.

Nigeria has not defeated Ghana since 2006 when Eagles nicked a 1-0 win in the group stage of the Africa Cup of Nations in Egypt.

For more Ghana football news visit GHANAsoccernet.com

About Post Author

Anthony-Claret Ifeanyi Onwutalobi

Anthony-Claret is a software Engineer, entrepreneur and the founder of Codewit INC. Mr. Claret publishes and manages the content on Codewit Word News website and associated websites. He's a writer, IT Expert, great administrator, technology enthusiast, social media lover and all around digital guy.
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ARE HOMOSEXUALS HUMAN BEINGS?

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Read Time:7 Minute, 1 Second

The theme of the 1993 United Nations world conference on human rights in Vienna was Women’s Rights Are Human Rights. I was with the Civil Liberties Organisation then and attended the conference. Why was it necessary, you might ask, to state that incontestable fact 45 years after the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the very first article of which asserts unequivocally that “All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights?” Aren’t women human beings? Funny as it may sound, the status of woman as human wasn’t always “settled.” Indeed, a much earlier conference is believed to have been convened in France, circa 586 A.D., to resolve the question whether or not women were human! It was my former colleague at the CLO, Chidi Anselm Odnkalu, now chairman of the National Human Rights Commission, who first mentioned this outrageous outcome of prejudice born of the fear of difference—whether it be racial, gender, religious, sexual, or even plainly ideological.

In having her humanity doubted, woman, the primal Other of history, the first to embody difference (ab-normal-ity, deviance from the perceived norm), shared a common fate with Africans, other so-called persons of colour, and many oppressed groups. Thus, as the great white men behind the American Declaration of Independence proclaimed the fact that “all men are born equal” to be a “self-evident” truth, their diction betrayed the exclusion of women from equal humanity. And it was not until 1920 that the 19th Amendment ensured political equality for American women by making them voting citizens in the self-vaunted land of freedom.

One of the disingenuous yet appealing justifications for the frightful antipathy to gays and lesbians in Nigeria is that same sex relations are foreign to African culture. Those who bay for the blood of homosexuals, who would have them jailed for 14 years even when billion-dollar thieves in government and business are awarded national honours—not to mention election riggers, wife beaters, child deserters and abusers, rapists, paedophiles, Daddy Overseers who fleece their flock and sleep with their female congregants (married and unmarried), etc.—justify their lack of Christian love, charity, or plain fellow feeling by resort to a cheap and convenient cultural nationalism. Respect for the equal humanity of gay persons, they say, is a foreign concept being imposed on us by the imperialistic West. And then without batting an eyelid, they quote from the Bible or the Koran—as if Christianity and Islam were African religions! But they fail to cite one African religious or cultural practice that punishes homosexuals with the force of law. Or an African jurisprudence that sanctions imprisonment as a form of penal justice.

In a series of essays published in December 2011 and January 2012 on the dangerous tide of homophobia in our land—see “Homosexuality and Nigeria’s Enochs and Josephs,” “Homosexuality, Biology and the Bible,” and “Sex and the Church’s Missionary Position” (The Guardian, 19 and 28 December 2011 and 9 and 10 January 2012), as well as “Ekwe and the Raging Army of God’s Protectors” (Vanguard, 23 January 2013); also available online, particularly at http://saharareporters.com/columnist/ogaga-ifowodo—I asked the venerable Rev. Jasper Akinola, the spiritual-cum-political leader of the anti-gay movement, why, if he was the über-cultural nationalist that he claims to be, he scorned the Church of Orunmila and chose to be a priest of the Church of England? An Anglican congregation, if he needs to be reminded, founded and headed by King Henry VIII in protest against the Roman Catholic Church’s refusal to indulge his appetite for adultery.

A church, moreover, that was the ideological bulwark in Britain’s imperialist mission of colonial conquest through the “wiping out of the tribal (read cultural) memory” of the natives (to adapt Major Pilkings’s apt rebuke, in Wole Soyinka’s Death and the King’s Horseman, of Joseph, his native houseboy who, converted yesterday, had become the next day an unwilling native informer on the “primitive,” unchristian, ways of his recently colonised Yoruba people). I am yet to receive an answer from the retired primate of King Henry’s Nigerian converts. We know, however, that the purported defence of African values (defined by whom?) is only a fig leaf to cover an onerous legacy of the Abrahamic faiths: making a sin of sexual desire, whether it be hetero- or homo-social in nature. Not even after marriage—a social undertaking not to be confused with the natural, hormone-driven, impulse of sexual orientation—was sanctioned as an inconvenient solution was the problem solved.

But in blaming the West for something that has been present in every human society and in the animal world as well from the origin of time, the self-righteous army of God forgets that the West persecuted homosexuals until quite recently. Now more Catholic than the pope, they cannot bear to hear the same West that brought them the bible change its mind about any of its creeds and catechisms. “How dare you admit,” they shout, foaming at the mouth and wagging a finger at the Archbishop of Canterbury, “that gay people do not choose their sexuality any more than heterosexuals choose theirs, and then proceed to treat them as human beings equal to us virtuous heterosexuals? How dare you ordain a gay bishop in OUR church?”

The zealotry of Nigeria’s army of the faithful fits perfectly the ungovernable fervour of the reformed sinner who, once converted, must prove him- or herself more devoted to the cross or crescent than his pastor or imam. Thus, if Pope Francis, reminded of Christ’s admonition, “Judge not that ye may not be judged,” can say in response to the question of gay priests, “Who am I to judge?”, Nigeria and Africa’s religious leaders say, “We are the ones to judge and punish. God is too merciful and his judgement too long in coming.” This is the sort of holy frenzy that makes full-grown African men and women sing with all pious sincerity, “Wash me [Lord Jesus] and I shall be whiter than snow!”

But the question is inescapable: are homosexuals human beings? If the answer is yes, then they must be accorded their human rights and dignity. Sexual relations among consenting adults are no more harmful to society in same sex relations than in opposite sex relationships. If there be any harm, it is the mad rush in the name of a strange and false notion of African values and the dictates of foreign religious doctrines imposed by conquest, to erode the laws of privacy and civilised behaviour to criminalise what is at worst a sin, as if God cannot be trusted to punish that among other sins on judgement day. Yet, by pandering to the prejudices of a majority closed to reason, that cannot be persuaded by logic—recall that it was the majority that freed Barabbas the murderer and crucified Jesus—or scientific evidence such as is changing the mind of the West that once thought homosexuality was a disease, the result of a psychiatric disorder, to authorise the draconian re-criminalisation of same-sex relations, President Jonathan may have unwittingly done the gay and lesbian community, all of rational humanity, a favour.

For the law will not make homosexuals disappear from, or cease to be born in, Nigeria. After all, where do homosexuals come from, if not from heterosexual parents? Persecuting them will only make that barbaric stance solidify Nigeria’s reputation as a country quick to descend on the weak, poor and vulnerable while straining every muscle to protect and honour the rich and powerful. Yet, it is invariably the case that whenever power has to resort to maximum force to have its way, it has lost the moral ground and is very close to defeat. And so to our brothers and sisters persecuted for being gay, I say take courage: the darkest hour of night is just before midnight.

omoliho@gmail.com

About Post Author

Anthony-Claret Ifeanyi Onwutalobi

Anthony-Claret is a software Engineer, entrepreneur and the founder of Codewit INC. Mr. Claret publishes and manages the content on Codewit Word News website and associated websites. He's a writer, IT Expert, great administrator, technology enthusiast, social media lover and all around digital guy.
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Deadlier than AIDS: Scientists discover new STD that kills within days

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.There is a new sexually transmitted super-bug officially called H041 that experts say may be more deadly that AIDS.

This strain of STD which is resistant to antibiotic, reportedly kills half of those exposed and infects one in 20 hospital patients—which raises the threat of an outbreak to emergency levels.

According to a CNBC report, an antibiotic-resistant strain of gonorrhea is more aggressive than the HIV virus, which means the potential to infect the public will be greater.

Like most STDs, gonorrhea is usually transmitted through unprotected sexual contact and if left untreated, can cause severe medical complications, such as infertility in women, debilitating pain, sterility in men and life threatening heart infections.

Alan Christianson, a doctor of naturopathic medicine, thinks this new strain has the power to rack up more fatalities than AIDS. To date, more than the 30 million people have already died worldwide from AIDS-related complications

About Post Author

Anthony-Claret Ifeanyi Onwutalobi

Anthony-Claret is a software Engineer, entrepreneur and the founder of Codewit INC. Mr. Claret publishes and manages the content on Codewit Word News website and associated websites. He's a writer, IT Expert, great administrator, technology enthusiast, social media lover and all around digital guy.
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Chief Akunwata Ozoemena Nsugbe (Ayaka Igbo Nine) is died.

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Chief Akunwata Ozoemena Nsugbe (Ayaka Igbo Nine) is died. He just passed away tonight in Lagos state.

It is unfortunate that some of us do not know this great Igbo musician nor listen go his inspirational songs.

Some of his songs are:

power to Nigerian Jews.

June 12.

Uzu Awka special.

Tribute to Osadebe.

Onwu Ali Chukwuma.

Miracle water.e.t.c.

LAST RESECT: PLEASE TYPE RIP

About Post Author

Anthony-Claret Ifeanyi Onwutalobi

Anthony-Claret is a software Engineer, entrepreneur and the founder of Codewit INC. Mr. Claret publishes and manages the content on Codewit Word News website and associated websites. He's a writer, IT Expert, great administrator, technology enthusiast, social media lover and all around digital guy.
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Michael Schumacher shows slight improvement, doctors say

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Grenoble, France (CNN) — Former Formula 1 driver Michael Schumacher, who suffered a serious head injury in a skiing accident, is showing a "slight improvement" in his condition, doctors in France said Tuesday.

On Monday night, doctors carried out a surgical intervention on Schumacher that allowed for some pressure to be relieved on his brain in a way that was "gradual and effective," said Jean-Francois Payen, head of anesthesiology at the University Hospital Center of Grenoble.

The surgery, which took about two hours, involved the removal of a large hematoma, he said. Schumacher remains in a medically induced coma.

"The situation is better under control than yesterday," Payen told reporters. "We cannot say that he is out of danger, but we've gained a little time in his development. But the hours to come are hours that are crucial in our strategy."

The surgery came after a scan showed a surprising improvement in Schumacher's condition Monday afternoon, Payen said.

After consulting with the driver's family, Schumacher's doctors decided to seize the "window of opportunity" and operate, he said.

But Payen warned that it was too soon to speculate on Schumacher's prognosis. "There is still a long way to go," he said. The driver is still in too fragile a state to be moved to another hospital.

Schumacher, the most successful driver in Formula 1 history, suffered severe head trauma after falling while skiing Sunday in Meribel, in the French Alps.

'Catapulted onto his head'

His manager, Sabine Kehm, recounted more details Tuesday of how the accident happened, gleaned from friends and family members who were present at the time.

The party was skiing in an area of deep snow when Schumacher helped a friend who had fallen, she said. As he set off again and went to make a turn, he seems to have hit a rock hidden under the snow.

This catapulted him into the air and he fell head down with all his weight onto another rock, she said, resulting in severe injuries to his head.

Schumacher was not traveling fast at the time, Kehm said, so those with him were initially shocked by how badly he was hurt. "It's not a question of speed but of the angle that you hit the rock," she said.

Kehm also cautioned against reading too much into the doctors' latest report.

"They made it very clear that they are not optimistic, that … there was a slight improvement compared to the situation yesterday, which doesn't mean we can be optimistic yet," she said. "It's much too early to say."

Kehm declined to comment on the emotional state of Schumacher's family.

But she said "heartwarming" messages of support have come flooding in via e-mails, text messages and letters from people around the world.

In a statement released Tuesday, Schumacher's family expressed thanks for the outpouring.

"They are giving us great support. We all know he is a fighter and will not give up," the statement said.

Kehm said a journalist tried to sneak into Schumacher's hospital room disguised as a priest.

World titles

The accident happened while Schumacher was off-piste — meaning he was on unmarked slopes — in the mountains between Georges Bauduis Piste and La Biche Piste, resort director Christophe Gernignon-Lecomte said. The driver was wearing a helmet at the time.

Schumacher, who turns 45 Friday, won a record seven world titles in his spectacular Formula 1 career and "also holds nearly every scoring record in the book by a considerable margin," according to the motorsport's official website.

He dominated the competition for the best part of a decade, winning five world championships in a row between 2000 and 2004. He retired for the first time at the end of the 2006 championship.

He returned to the Formula 1 track with the revived Mercedes team in 2010 but struggled to repeat his earlier glories. His best finish was third place at last year's European Grand Prix in Valencia, his only podium position in three seasons with the German manufacturer.

He retired from the sport for a second time in 2012.

Schumacher suffered a serious injury once during his career in the high-speed sport, breaking his leg in a crash at the British Grand Prix in 1999.

About Post Author

Anthony-Claret Ifeanyi Onwutalobi

Anthony-Claret is a software Engineer, entrepreneur and the founder of Codewit INC. Mr. Claret publishes and manages the content on Codewit Word News website and associated websites. He's a writer, IT Expert, great administrator, technology enthusiast, social media lover and all around digital guy.
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Could Justin Bieber be deported?

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(CNN) — Are criminal charges just the beginning of Justin Bieber's legal troubles?

Depending on how things play out, the Canadian citizen could also have an immigration case to worry about.

#DeportBieber trended on Twitter last week, with critics pushing authorities to send the teen pop star north of the border after he was arrested in Miami Beach, Florida, on suspicion of drunk driving, resisting arrest and driving without a valid license.

It's not likely Bieber will be kicked out of the United States, immigration law experts say. But even so, criminal charges could complicate things for the 19-year-old singer — and if he's charged with and convicted of any drug offenses, that could change the equation.

What crimes lead to deportation?

In addition to the charges he faces in Florida, investigators in California are also weighing whether Bieber will face a felony vandalism charge tied to an egg attack there.

Immigration lawyers say convictions on those charges wouldn't generally lead to deportation for someone like Bieber, who has a visa allowing him to legally live in the United States because of his "extraordinary ability" in the arts.

That's because those charges aren't considered to be aggravated felonies or crimes of moral turpitude — the two types of crimes that federal law defines as grounds for the deportation of non-citizen immigrants.

And according to federal law, only violent crimes and sentences longer than one year result in a re-evaluation of a person's visa status.

Translation for those of you who aren't legal eagles: Bieber's probably not going anywhere.

But when it comes to deportation proceedings, it's not a simple matter.

"It's a very complex area of immigration law," said Annaluisa Padilla, a California immigration lawyer.

An "aggravated felony" sounds severe. And often they are; crimes like murder, rape or sexual abuse are among the violations that fit that description.

But crimes that might sound less serious to the average person can also be considered aggravated felonies.

In 2000, for example, a federal appeals court determined that a man with a green card was an aggravated felon after a misdemeanor conviction for stealing Tylenol and cigarettes, according to the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse Immigration project at Syracuse University, which follows immigration trends and statistics.

Sometimes, Padilla said, a crime considered a misdemeanor at the state level is viewed as a felony by federal immigration officials.

The bottom line: Until investigators finish weighing their options and the criminal case against Bieber proceeds, it's impossible to predict how his immigration status could be impacted.

Drugs could change the equation

After his arrest in Florida last week, Bieber "made some statements that he had consumed some alcohol, and that he had been smoking marijuana and consumed some prescription medication," Miami Beach Police Chief Raymond Martinez said.

Since then, breathalyzer tests have suggested Bieber was not too drunk to legally drive when he was pulled over by Miami Beach police early Thursday. But it could be two or three weeks before tests that should give a more accurate blood-alcohol reading and could tell if he was high on pot are back from the lab.

When authorities searched Bieber's California home earlier this month, a deputy found suspected illegal drugs at the bedside of Bieber house guest Lil Za, who now faces a felony drug charge. But a detective who searched other parts of the home told CNN last week that he saw "no sign of drugs" there.

Bieber hasn't been charged with any drug-related crimes in connection with either case.

But if drugs were involved, that could change the equation when it comes to immigration issues, experts say.

"He may have a difficult time returning to the U.S. after traveling," Padilla said. "If there is a conviction on the use of marijuana, he may run into some issues when renewing his visa or even attempting to apply for residency."

And if authorities add a drug charge into the mix, that could eventually put deportation on the table, said Ira Kurzban, an attorney in Miami who wrote a widely used reference book on immigration law.

"Deportation grounds for drug-related crimes are broadly defined," Kurzban said. But a drunk-driving charge that isn't drug-related, he said, "is not a basis to deport somebody."

Decision near on Bieber's egging charge; singer takes it easy in Panama

A double standard?

Bieber was released Thursday from a Miami jail an hour after he made a brief appearance through a video link before a judge, who set a $2,500 bond that afternoon.

Since his arrest, some critics have wondered whether Bieber wouldn't be deported for reasons that have little to do with the law.

In a CNN.com opinion column last week, CNN contributor Ruben Navarrette suggested the wealthy singer's star status might be getting him special treatment.

"Bieber has an estimated net worth of about $130 million," Navarrette wrote. "I bet that, right about now, many of those Mexican immigrants who were deported because they came to the attention of local police officers for a burned-out taillight, or for not making a complete stop at an intersection, are wishing that they had been a rich, white kid with marginal music ability and too much money. If so, things might have gone differently for them."

But Padilla says there's a key difference between such examples and Bieber's case: He has a visa.

"The reason an individual who had failed to stop at a stop sign or is driving without a license comes in contact with immigration authorities is because they're undocumented," Padilla said. "You're not comparing apples to apples.

About Post Author

Anthony-Claret Ifeanyi Onwutalobi

Anthony-Claret is a software Engineer, entrepreneur and the founder of Codewit INC. Mr. Claret publishes and manages the content on Codewit Word News website and associated websites. He's a writer, IT Expert, great administrator, technology enthusiast, social media lover and all around digital guy.
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