The three members of the House of Representatives who were accused of sexually harassing some hotel waitresses and soliciting for sex in United States of America last year have filed $1billion suit against the US government.
The Representatives members were exonerated of sexual misconduct allegations leveled against them by the United States Embassy in Nigeria.
Their lawyers filed the suit in the US while the plaintiffs will continue to reach them through electronic means from Nigeria, since they are barred for now from entering the US.
The affected lawmakers are House Deputy Chairman of the Committee on Petroleum Resources ( Upstream ), Terse Mark-Gbillah of All Progressives Congress (APC) from Benue; Samuel Ikon of the Peoples Democratic Party, Akwa Ibom and Mohammed Garba-Gololo of the APC from Bauchi State.
A former US ambassador to Nigeria, James Entwistle had alleged that the three honourable members failed to comport themselves during a visit to the US last year April, prompting the Nigerian legislature to call for an investigation.
In October 2016, the House exonerated the members after a report by its Joint Committees on Ethics/Privileges and Foreign Relations, found no wrongdoing on their part.
Mark -Gbillah, who spoke for the accused lawmakers, told the Punch that the lawyers had been identified and that efforts were on to finalise consultations on the suit. He added that the lawmakers’ US visas revoked in the wake of the allegations were yet to be restored.
Mark -Gbillah said: “We have identified lawyers willing to take the case and are currently planning for the required funds to initiate the action.
“We will communicate with our lawyers via other media for now , but we can be granted entry by the court if we are required to appear in person . We won’t be willing to disclose the costs at this time.” [myad]
Senior Specials Assistant to President Muhammadu Buhari on media and publicity, Malam Garba Shehu has made it clear that the President is not on admission in hospital and that he will return to Nigeria from London any moment from now.
“I just spoke to the President’s personal doctor, and he told me that President Buhari is not in any serious condition as to worry about. He is not in hospital. He is in the residence at the Nigerian High Commission.”
Garba Shehu, in a statement, said that the President is ready to return with his delegation but for the delayed test results, which he said has since arrived. “He and his delegation were ready to come home today but for the delayed test result which came in today which necessitated that he delays his return. “There is nothing to worry about as far as his condition is concerned.” The position of the Presidential spokesman came hours after the president wrote to the National Assembly to inform lawmakers of his intention to extend his medical vacation in London and was silent on the new date of his return. Astatement by his special adviser n media and publicity, Femi Adesina said: “President Muhammadu Buhari has written to the National Assembly today, February 5, 2017, informing it of his desire to extend his leave in order to complete and receive the results of a series of tests recommended by his doctors.
“The president had planned to return to Abuja this evening but was advised to complete the test cycle before returning. The notice has since been dispatched to the Senate President, and Speaker, House of Representatives. “Mr. President expresses his sincere gratitude to Nigerians for their concern, prayers and kind wishes.” [myad]
The Indomitable Lions of Cameroon have beaten the Pharaohs of Egypt to win the 2017 Edition of the African Cup of Nations.
Mohammed Salah gave Egypt the lead in the first half. Salah on the right played an excellent angled pass to find him in space in the box. There wasn’t much on, so he decided to sidefoot a rising shot that beat Ondoa at the near post.
Cameroons Equalizer came from the substitute centre-back Nkoulou. A corner was half-cleared and fed back out to Moukandjo on the left.
With no pace on the ball, he coaxed a superb dipping cross towards the six-yard line, where Nkoulou towered above Hegazy to plant a downward header into the corner. El Hadary dived but missed.
Vincent Aboubakar won it for Cameroon with a sensational goal in the 88th minute.
Siani drove a long pass to find him on the edge of the box, all on his own against three defenders. He took it down with his shoulder, flipped it over the head of Gabr and then contorted his body to hit a bouncing volley across the motionless, El Hadary and into the corner. [myad]
Every time I saw Innocent Okparadike, he reminded me of Gabriel, an Ibo man and our village photographer. I never get tired of telling the tragic story of Gabriel, who was consumed by the national crisis of 1966.
I never told Innocent Okparadike this story; maybe he read the many newspaper accounts I have given of Gabriel. If he did, we never discussed it. Innocent Okparadike like Gabriel were embodiments of the contradictions of our postcolonial history.
I grew up knowing Gabriel as an Ibo man in the midst of predominantly Tiv speaking people in the middle belt of Nigeria. He spoke Tiv fluently, like any Tiv man. Born in the north to a photographer father, he inherited his father’s trade. If his father taught him the art of photography, he never showed him the way to their village in eastern Nigeria. By the time of the 1966 crisis, his father was long dead and Gabriel was left on his own.
My maternal grandfather, a reverend gentleman, working with two American missionaries – Reverend Ralph Baker and Eugene Rubing – tried his best, ferrying Gabriel through Takum into Cameroon, like he did with many other Ibo men who sought refuge in our home. While the other Ibo men successfully made the trip to the east through Cameroon, Gabriel always found his way back to our village with a cock and bull story to tell. On one of such ill-advised trips to the north at the heat of the crisis, he ran into a prowling mob of murderers who were in search of Ibo men to kill. Of course they did not waste a minute in hacking him to death.
I first met Okparadike in 1983 at the Press Center in Kaduna. It was a popular spot for journalist to unwind in those days. I joined the table he sat with some other friends. As I was introduced, he asked whether I was the columnist at the New Nigerian. I said yes, expressing surprise that he could know a relatively junior journalist like me. He replied that those of them in the south take the New Nigerian and it’s writers rather seriously. Okparadike – then with the Concord newspapers – was already a big name in the Nigerian media at the time.
But it was at the News Agency of Nigeria I first heard of him. He and some other journalists were the foundation staff of the News Agency. By the time I joined NAN a few years after its take off, he had already left but he was always a reference point at in-house discussions at NAN. At the Concord, he was a big gun, one of the leading columnists in the paper who displayed incisive minds.
From the Concord, he moved over as Editor to the Democrat which made its debut in Kaduna in 1983. But the Democrat itself was faced with a heavy storm after the military capsized democracy in the evening hours of 1983. He bailed himself over to the New Nigerian as Deputy Editor. By his body language and movement, Okparadike was clearly offering a handshake across the Niger – to paraphrase OdumegwuOjukwu.
Then the big surprise: President Ibrahim Babangida in one of his great Maradonic moves appointed Innocent Okparadike as Editor of the New Nigerian. Very few expected the appointment. The New Nigerian was a paper set up by the Sardauna of Sokoto, Sir Ahmadu Bello, for the Northern Region when he was its Premier. He made it clear from inception that it was a newspaper for the north. Even when the military forcefully appropriated it in 1975 and made it a Federal Government newspaper, the traditions and conventions of the newspaper were left intact. Positions like that of Editor were a natural preserve for northerners. The appointment of Okparadike, a southerner as Editor was novel, out of convention and historic.
By the time he came to the New Nigerian, I had moved on. When in 1987 Group Captain David Jang appointed me into his government in Gongola State, he sent me a moving congratulatory letter in his own hand writing. I was so moved by the contents of that letter that on a visit to Kaduna, I went to his office to thank him for his kind words and prayers for me. I still keep that letter to date.
But the contradictions of a southerner editing a newspaper set up to fight for the north soon caught up with him. The forces ranged against him were formidable. Whatever were his good intentions were soon neutralized by those who did not want him in that office in the first instance and went the extra mile to sabotage his tenure as Editor of the newspaper. His fall was only a question of time and when it came, it was no surprise at all. But the military government conscious of the fact that he was a victim of circumstances found a soft landing for him; taking him to MAMSER and then to the Daily Times.
The last time I saw him was in Kaduna after he left the Daily Times as MD. I saw him standing by the road in the scorching sun, waiting to pick a taxi. I stopped immediately and offered him a ride to wherever he was going. He was happy to meet me, only regretting that he searched for me all over Nigeria in vain when he was the MD of Daily Times and wanted me there as an editor. He sounded real and I have never doubted him.
We became friends on one of the social media networks last year. When I sent him a message that the Nigerian media missed him, he said he still wished to come back. “I hope to come back very soon as an editorial board member and columnist” he wrote to me last year. Alas, this will never be.
Innocent Okparadike lived a remarkable life as a Nigeria journalist. His strides as a journalism scholar and practitioner will be a reference point for a long, long time. He was not an innocent man though his first name proclaimed him so. Those who worked with him and were closer to him than me know his shortcomings. None of us is an angel anyway. Still, he will certainly be remembered as a man who tried to break away from his tribal cocoon and join hands with Nigerians of different backgrounds to make our country work. [myad]
Former Military President, General Ibrahim Badamasi Babangida (IBB), has returned to Nigeria after a 7-week medical vacation in the Switzerland.
He arrived in Minna International Airport on Saturday evening at 6.45 pm.
General Babangida expressed gratitude for prayers and goodwill messages from different quarters during his vacation.
He said: “I am feeling stronger and better now. I must thank Nigerians immensely for the prayers and concerns over my health. I must use this opportunity to also call on Nigerians to continue to pray for the leaders and the country to move forward in positive direction.
“We should remain united and work collectively towards the progress of our nation by thinking positively about the leaders and providing constructive criticisms and solutions to any challenge we may face.”
On the situation in the country, IBB said that the current economic recession is not peculiar to Nigeria.
“I am aware that other countries face different political, social and economic challenges. I believe the current government is working assiduously towards addressing some of the issues. We need to support all arms and tiers of government in their efforts to ensure economic recovery and political stability.”
General Babangida left the country for medical vacation in Europe on December 18, 2016. [myad]
A former Federal Commissioner of Information, Chief Edwin Clark, has said that he has no comment to make on the return of a former Governor of Delta State, Chief James Ibori to Nigeria.
“No comment. I say no comment” was the only thing Chief Edwin Clark told news men when the news filtered in that Ibori had arrived.
The former governor arrived at his Oghara country home, headquarters of Ethiope West Local Government of Delta state today, Saturday, wearing dark ash long sleeve shirt and navy blue jean trouser. He was welcomed by his kinsmen, politicians, friends and top functionaries of the state government.
Human movement literally stood still at Oghara shortly after his arrival from Benin Airport in company of a litany of politicians, including his long-standing All Progressives Congress (APC), Chieftain Ally, Chief Ayiri Emami.
His entourage could not disembark on arrival because of the mammoth crowd as the villagers and political associates and friends flooded his country home Chief Edwin Clark, who was one of the antagonists of the ex-convict former governor, said he would not make any comment on his release and return to Nigeria from the United Kingdom where he served a jail term for corruption.
It would be recalled that Clark and other elders from the state wrote a petition to the Economic and Financial Crime Commission (EFCC) on alleged looting of resources of the state when the former governor was at the helm of affairs in the state. [myad]
A 106 Brazilian pensioner, Valdemira Rodrigues de Oliveira, is set to get married to her 66-year-old lover, Aparecido Dias Jacob.
The two lovers exchanged engagement rings in a betrothal service, organized by volunteers under an initiative called the Project of Dreams, despite an advice by physicians not to go ahead with it.
Speaking about her love for her future husband, the centenarian said: “I fell in love with him. I like him a lot. If he dies, I die too.”
Medical doctors assessed their health and age and warned the duo, known affectionately as Valda and Jaco, would not be able to cope with living on their own.
The smitten seniors have separate rooms at Nossa Senhora Fatima retirement home in Pirassununga, south east Brazil, and were determined to prove it’s never too late to be with your soulmate after three years together.
Governor of Ekiti State, Ayodele Fayose, has narrated how he was personally in the premises of the Ado-Ekiti branch of Zenith Bank to cash some money but was denied access to his account, suspecting that it was the handiwork of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC).
“If I sent somebody with a cheque, they could give excuse but I was there myself and acts of impunity such as this cannot continue. We will challenge them. This is the impunity we are condemning. The bank and the EFCC got all the judgments of the court, but the agency still harassed the bank to act against the law.”
Governor Fayose, who spoke to news men when he emerged from the bank’s premises in Ado-Ekiti today, Saturday, regretted that he was denied access to his account despite the court ruling that directed the EFCC to unfreeze the accounts. [myad]
Director of the Department of State Services (DSS), the Nigeria version of secret police, in Kano state, Nigeria, Abdullahi Charanchi, is dead. He was aged 56.
The Kano state commissioner of police, Rabiu Yusuf, who confirmed the death of Abdullahi today, Saturday, said: “it is confirmed that the state DSS Director is dead. We are now on our way to his home town, Charanci, Katsina state.
“He was rushed to the hospital on Friday night but died in the early hours of today (Saturday),” he said
The deceased was admitted at Aminu Kano teaching hospital, Kano, after complaining of stomach ache.
Abdullahi Charanci died at the age of 56, leaving behind a wife and many children. [myad]
The All Progressives Congress (APC) has described 2face Idibia, who planned to stage a nation-wide protest against the government of President Muhammadu Buhari between tomorrow, Sunday and Monday, as a hypocritical character, with satanic agenda.
In a statement today, Saturday, the National Secretary of the APC Youths Renaissance, Mr. Collins Edwin said that the party had a better information that the so-called ‘Tuface-Protest’ is a self-serving protest with Satanic agenda other than national interest as he has made some gullible Nigerians to believe.
“We are therefore compelled to expose the hypocritical nature of 2face Idibia, a man who has never sacrificed anything for Nigeria and the nation’s entertainment industry which he has destroyed.
“Tuface Idibia has been in the entertainment industry since 1997 making all the money and fame without bothering to help the younger ones to rise to fortunes.
“Tuface Idibia was of the Plantation Boys, formed and financed by Black Face, but when luck smiled on him, 2face Idibia betrayed both Black Face and Faze, the two remaining groups that were members of the Plantation Boys.
“Even at the trying times of Black Face to the extent that he could not pay his rent in Lagos, 2face Idibia with all his wealth never cared and refused to help his first benefactor.
“Tuface has never raised his voice against unhealthy and immoral practices in the entertainment industry which is his immediate environment; instead, he kept quiet and benefited from it without minding its moral and economic burden.
“With many illegitimate children all over the country, Tuface as the image carrier of sexual immorality and greed has inflicted psychological and moral pains on many homes in Nigeria without anybody protesting against him.
“If the so-called protest against Buhari government is the idea of Tuface Idibia, we challenge him to a live debate on National TV to tell Nigerians the area of our party’s policy he is not comfortable with.
“We therefore call on all Nigerians, especially the youths, not to participate in the so-called National Protest.” [myad]
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