Are local jesters replacing the masquerades?

 

What is your opinion?

Family marks Christy Essien-Igbokwe’s 2nd posthumous birthday

FOR two years running after Christy Essien-Igbokwe’s death, the family last Sunday continued with the good works she was noted for on earth, when after marking her 52nd birthday anniversary and 2nd posthumous birthday church thanksgiving service, they visited two charity homes with loads of items including her birthday cake for the less privileged.
The church service which was held at the Arch Bishop Vining Memorial Church, GRA, Ikeja, on Sunday November 11, 2012 attracted a lot of attention by other worshippers, her fans and other family members who joined in the procession to the altar as the church choir rendered one of her popular numbers Seun Rere.
The officiating priest, also touched by the family’s kind gesture, praised them for keeping the fire burning, noting that life does not end after death especially for those who lived well and left a lot of legacies.
However, that was not the end of the ceremony as the train headed to Yaba, first to the Red Cross Motherless and Modupe Cole Handicapped Home, Akoka to donate foods and other items to them.
Excited Mrs Juliana Obanife, Home Matron of the Red Cross, could not hide her feelings when the team arrived. “Everyone here, including the children, remember her and would always celebrate her. Our prayer is that her soul continues to rest perfectly in the hands of the Lord.”
A high point of it was the cutting of the posthumous birthday cake which the children ate with joy.

And it was the same sweet song and prayer at Modupe Cole where both the staff and inmates rushed out to receive the august visitors and their gifts. Group photographs were also taken before the team bade them bye-bye for the day.

culled from http://thenationonlineng.net

Farewell Nneyin Allison Attah!

Think Akwa Ibom! condoles with former governor of Akwa Ibom State, Arc. (Obong) Victor Attah over the passing away of his dear wife, Nneyin Allison Attah. May the good Lord comfort you, your family and the people of Akwa Ibom State in this moment of grief.

My Akwa Ibom Story

Like the renowned motivational speaker and preacher, Myles Munroe said of Akwa Ibom during one of his visits here, God has been so generous in blessing this state, our state, with good hearted people, lush green vegetation and abundant of water, wherever there's water, there's life! I love my state! That's my Akwa Ibom story.

– Dikans, Musicia/Consultant, Akwa Ibom State.

Outrageous! 20 Nigerian Ladies Slaughtered for Wearing Mini-skirt

 A report published in Vanguard says “20 ladies who wore mini-skirts and trousers were Friday (23 Nov,) slaughtered in their separate homes in Maiduguri Metropolis by yet to be identified gunmen.” The paper went on to say “The slaughtering of about twenty different ladies our Correspondent gathered took place in the early hours of Friday precisely at about 1 to 2am when most of residents were still asleep in their houses due to Curfew imposed on the state in the past five months.”

Nigerians – men and women – how do we cry out, what words can we use to condemn this kind of senseless killing of our women?

Fabulous Papa: Meet the 72-year-old man who models clothes for young women (PHOTOS)

 

Liu Xianping, a grandfather from China took modelling to a whole new level after he fitted himself into clothes for young girls and posed like a supermodel for the cameras.
Immediately his granddaughter posted them on China’s largest retail website, the photos went viral.
72-year-old granddad started out as a silly joke but now it’s turned into a massive advertising campaign for her store.

In an interview with Chinese media, his granddaughter said one day he came into the store she owns with four other graduates and picked up one piece then tried to give some advice on how to mix and match. “We thought it was fun so we started shooting.”
Apparently many of the combinations in the fashion photos are her grandfather’s ideas. He put on short skirts, long stockings, dresses and sometimes even wore wigs to get that genuine teen girl look.

The strange thing is that even though the clothes feature rosy shades, laces and ribbons, granddad Xianping totally pulled it off. He looked comfortable in front of the camera, his slim physique and long skinny legs could give Victoria Secret girls a run for their money.
“Why unacceptable (for someone like me to wear women’s clothes? Modeling for the store is helping my granddaughter and I have nothing to lose. We were very happy on the day of the shooting. I’m very old and all that I care about is to be happy,” Xianping told reporters.

Reports claim since the photos went viral online, his granddaughter’s store sales have increased 5 times since his pictures went viral.Surely he’s one hot granddad who dresses well in little girl’s clothes, what’s wrong with that?

 culled from http://www.ynaija.com

Close To A Thousand In Akwa Ibom Demand Compensation From ExxonMobil After Massive New Spill

Close to a thousand residents of the Esit Eket local government area of Akwa Ibom on Monday staged a protest following a new oil spill reported at the Qua Iboe Oil fields.

A spokesman for the protestors described the damage: “The oil spill was so massive that the entire fishing gear we were using was soaked in crude oil and some of our members who were using small canoes in fishing had their boats capsized as they hurried away from the currents carrying the oil.

“With the waters contaminated, you can no long have any reasonable catch and even when you catch anything the fish would be oil contaminated and poisonous for consumption so the reasonable thing to do is to leave the waters for a while,” he said.

National Oil Spills Detection and Response Agency (NOSDRA) confirmed a spill at the oil field operated by ExxonMobil at Ibeno in Akwa Ibom state of the Niger Delta region. Number of barrels spilled on Nov. 9 was unspecified.

Peasants, youths, women and farmers took part in the protest. They carried placards, marched to the palace of the Paramount and later to the official residence of the council chairman in Uquo, Esit Eket.

Chanting solidarity songs, the protestors were met by Paramount Ruler of Esit Eket, Chief Ubong Assam who pledged to convey their grievances to the oil firm.

At the residence of the local government chairman, the protesters displayed oil-stained fishing nets and gear damaged by the spill.

Speaking for the protesters, Mr. Ayanga Jonathan-Esibe laid out the grievances of the group to Chief Ibanga Etang, Chairman of the council area and lamented that frequent oil spills had crippled fishing in the area.

Jonathan-Esibe urged the leadership of the council to prevail on Mobil officials to take full responsibility for the spills.

“Mobil should immediately come to our aid and bring relief materials because the anguish the spill has inflicted on the fishing population along the coastline is unimaginable.”

In a response, the Chairman explained he had been briefed of the development by officials of Mobil and urged that protesters remain peaceful as the leadership of the local government would take up the matter with the appropriate authorities at the state level.

Etang promised that the local government would seek the means to assist the impacted people while it would engage the management of Mobil to assist those impacted by the spill.

He commended the peaceful disposition of the protesters and advised them to abstain from lawlessness as dialogue remained the best option in conflict resolution.

Culled from http://saharareporters.com

Holy Hashtags! The Pope Will Soon Join the Tweeting Masses

Pope Benedict XVI is gearing up to accept millions of new followers — in the virtual world, at least. The holiest man in the Catholic Church will soon be tweeting, the Vatican revealed last week.
The spiritual leader of 1.1 billion Catholics is due to join Twitter as soon as the end of the year, a Vatican spokesperson told the Associated Press on Friday.
“It’s doubtful Benedict himself will wrestle down his encyclicals, apostolic exhortations and other papal pronouncements into 140-character bites,” the news agency explained. The 85-year old pope doesn’t normally use a computer and will most likely simply sign off on tweets written for him. Many details, including the crucial curiosity surrounding the Holy Father’s handle, are still shrouded in mystery. The handle @PopeBenedict seems to include relevant information about the pope, including his coat of arms, and notes that “@PopeBenedict hasn’t tweeted yet.” But Twitter is rife with such fake accounts, and this one remains unconfirmed by the social network.
And certainly many questions have arisen with this collision of the religious and technological worlds. Does papal infallibility extend to tweets? Are his re-tweets, by default, endorsements?
The pope has previously warned of the dangers of becoming too engrossed in the online world. “Entering cyberspace can be a sign of an authentic search for personal encounters with others,” the Pope wrote in a message last year, “provided that attention is paid to avoiding dangers such as enclosing oneself in a sort of parallel existence, or excessive exposure to the virtual world.”
Benedict XVI also warned that truth can’t be measured in followers. “We must be aware that the truth which we long to share does not derive its worth from its ‘popularity’ or from the amount of attention it receives,” he wrote. The Holy Father has sent his first and so far history’s only pontifical tweet last year when he launched the Vatican’s news information portal. But it’s clear that when Benedict launches his own handle, he’s in for a rapid surge of followers eager to tune into his 140-character spirituality.

On Facebook, the pope’s most popular fan page has attracted almost 38,000 ‘Likes’, dwarfing Iran’s spiritual and temporal leader Grand Ayatollah al-Khamenei‘s fan base of 10,340 and the 710 people keeping virtual tabs on the new Coptic pope Tawadros II. Yet, Benedict XVI has no official, sanctioned page of his own on the social network and his Facebook popularity is no match to the Iraqi Shi’ite Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani (44,000 likes) and the Tibetan spiritual leader in exile, the 14th Dalai Lama (4.5 million likes). His Holiness, evidently seeking to be the religious world’s social media head honcho, also has 4.5 million followers on Twitter.
In June, the New York Times reported that the followings of religious leaders on Twitter in the U.S. had even surprised those managing the social network. Tweets by Christian author Joyce Meyer, televangelist Joel Osteen or the Dalai Lama were retweeted more often than those of pop-culture icons Lady Gaga or Justin Bieber.
The Vatican had set up its first website in 1995. Its YouTube channel was first announced in a press conference in 2009. It also launched the online platform Pope2you linking to an iPhone application and its YouTube channel. Unlike the Dalai Lama, Benedict hasn’t yet moved on to Pinterest.
The Google+ account for Pope Benedict XVI is in all likelihood an impostor’s — or at the very least, a placeholder. “Pope hasn’t shared anything with you,” the profile reads. Perhaps a turn to Google’s social network will come after his Twitter transition.

culled from http://newsfeed.time.com

Third Oil Spill In 3 Months At Mobil’s Qua Iboe Field

Mobil Producing Nigeria, MPN, has reported an oil spill from its Qua Iboe oil fields, in Akwa Ibom State.
Director in charge of oil spills in the National Oil Spills Detection and Response Agency, NOSDRA, Mr. Idris Musa told News Agency of Nigeria, yesterday, that the agency had received a report of the incident.
“We received a report from Mobil that there was a spill at their field and we have dispatched our officers from our Uyo office to the spill site to assess the impact.
“They are estimating that the spilled volume is between 50 and 100 barrels, but that is a mere estimate because the investigation would determine precisely the quantity of oil discharged into the environment,” Musa said.
Two spills had earlier occurred within the Qua Iboe oil fields operated by Mobil on August 13 and 23, 2012.
Mr. Paul Arinze, the General Manager, Public and Inter-Governmental Affairs, said in a response statement on the incident yesteray, that an investigation was underway.
“Mobil Producing Nigeria Unlimited, MPN, operator of the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation, NNPC/MPN, Joint Venture, confirms that on November 9, an oil release occurred offshore Akwa Ibom State.
“The source of the leak was identified and the pipeline was isolated and shut down. Emergency response personnel and equipment have been deployed.
“Regulatory and community representatives have been notified.
“MPN also arranged for representatives of Department of Petroleum Resources, DPR; NOSDRA, Akwa Ibom State Ministry of Environment and local community to overfly the area,” Arinze said.
The oil firm regretted the incident and reiterated its commitment to maintain high safety, health and environmental standards within its operations.

Culled from http://www.informationnigeria.org

EXCLUSIVE: Real reasons Governor Akpabio forced his deputy to step down

The ousted deputy governor of Akwa Ibom State, Nsima Ekere, and his successor, Valerie Ebe have both made it into the history book of the 25-year old state. With only 17 months and two days in office, Mr. Ekere has had the shortest tenure as deputy governor in Akwa Ibom’s history while Ebe is the first female deputy governor in the state.
Mr. Ekere hurriedly resigned from office on Wednesday, October 31, to beat his planned impeachment by the Akwa Ibom State House of Assembly.
After the former deputy governor resigned, words like loyalty and obedience  popped up in the air as citizens speculated on what really went wrong between him and his former boss, Governor Godswill Akpabio, and at what point their relationship go bad.  But a segment of the people in Akwa Ibom, carried away by the emotions of 2015 politics saw it differently – that a powerful aspirant from the Eket Senatorial District had been ‘forced out of the race for 2015 governorship election’.

GOVERNOR AKPABIO CONDOLES OBONG ATTAH

Akwa Ibom State Governor, Chief Godswill Akpabio has commiserated with
the former Governor of the state, Arc (Obong) Victor Bassey Attah on
the demise of his dear wife and former First Lady of the state,
Nnenyin Alison Attah.

Chief Akpabio, at swearing-in of the new Deputy Governor of the state
in Uyo at the weekend expressed shock at the death of Nneyin Alison
Attah, whom he described as “a gallant and virtuous woman who worked
for the development of the state.” He said Mrs. Attah was “a great
mother who served the state and humanity for eight years in her
capacity as a First Lady”. Governor Akpabio called for a minute’s
silence and prayed for the repose of the soul of the departed.

The Governor’s condolence message, contained in a statement by the
Commissioner for Information and Communications, Mr. Aniekan Umanah,
said the Government and the good people of Akwa Ibom State share in
the pains the family of Obong Attah is passing through, especially as
the late former First Lady has left a vacuum in the family.

The statement condoled to the former Governor and members of his
family and prayed the Almighty God to grant them the fortitude to bear
the irreparable loss.

“It’s not your size, but what you put on the table that matters” – Osita Iheme, alias Paw Paw

“Everybody must not be the same. Everybody does not have the same height. Some people are tall, while others are short…. There is no need for me to be worried about my size or to feel inferior. I know that my height doesn’t have anything to do with my brain. I believe that it is not by size, but what you can do and what you can put on the table. I don’t allow my size to bother me. In fact, I don’t even believe I am small. To me, I am normal and I am a big man.”

-          Nollywood star, Osita Iheme, alia ‘Paw Paw’.

Source: Punch newspaper, Nov. 3, 2012.