Femi Falana, human rights lawyer, says the current administration might be plotting a third term agenda.

According to PUNCH, Falana said this in Lagos while speaking at the presentation of a book entitled: “Testimony to Courage”, written in honour of Dapo Olorunyomi, Premium Times publisher.

The lawyer said the country had “gone to the dogs” and only the media could save it.

“The media must not be silenced. You may have a third term campaign soon,” he said.

“Very soon, they will destroy all possible opponents. And by the time they bring in the third term agenda, the media would have been gone. But we are not going to allow it. No dictatorship can defeat the Nigerian people.”

The senior advocate of Nigeria (SAN) expressed dismay at the way Ijeoma Ojukwu, a judge of a federal high court in Abuja, is handling the case of Omoyele Sowore, convener of #RevolutionNow Movement.

“Nobody has been given the kind of bail (condition) Sowore was given. All those who looted the treasury have never had their movement restricted. Sowore has been granted bail, but his movement has been restricted to Abuja. His family is in America,” he said.

“He does not live in Abuja. He has no house in Abuja. Yet, he has been asked to stay in Abuja. The trial may last for 10 years, but he cannot leave Abuja. It has never happened in Nigeria before.

“Sowore has been banned as a journalist from speaking. As a politician, he cannot address a rally until the case is determined. We don’t know how long it will last.”

thecable

My dear Honourables, I hope you will excuse me for distracting you from your onerous duties, but I am a current sufferer – and I am not alone – from a persistent nightmare. That affliction has been induced by your most recent approach to addressing an acknowledged problem that affects, not only Nigerians but the entire global community. The nightmare consists of the fear of waking up one morning to discover that one’s name has been cited among those helpless victims on behalf of whom repellent legislation is about to be enacted.
The likelihood in my case is especially acute. Yes, indeed, it is no Fake News that I have denounced the purveyors of public lies and hate material as the very scum of the earth. I have called them names that come close to enrolling me among the very reprobates we all so fervently denounce.

From Abuja, through Paris, London, Sochi, Dar es Salaam, Chandrigah, etc. etc., I have utilized every available platform to highlight their perverse mentality and call for concerted action against their hyper-activism against humanity in general. I have singled out the Nigerian species of this criminal pursuit as an especially virulent breed, as a subhuman aberration without conscience, incapable of remorse, sustained by abnormal reserves of sadism.

I have closed down dozens of fake sites instituted over my name, and set in motion mechanisms for the pursuit of those who steal my identity, even where the content is quite harmless, even positive. Only recently, in Paris, I proposed that judicial mitigation under the recognition of crime passionnel should be considered for victims of Fake News who ‘lose control’ on physically encountering their violators. As you may have discerned so far, I again, and unapologetically, exploit this very development to reiterate my detestation and contempt for such pestilences that plague our humanity.

However, dear legislators, consider more deeply the path on which you have chosen to embark. I invite you to reflect quite objectively on the company into which you are about to throw yourselves and the consequences for the very nation you represent – including its social psyche. You are about to corrupt youthful impression, to join the brigade of closet psychopaths for whom the only solution to any social malaise from the trite to the profoundly affective is – Kill! Is this what humanity and society are all about?

You are psyching up your ranks to pronounce yourselves affiliates of inhuman aberrations such as Boko Haram, Isis (Da’esh), al Shabbab , nomadic cow herders etc. etc. for whom killing is the only response for real or imagined wrongs, perceptions of entitlement and/or deprivation, sense of righteousness and generally – concept of a thoroughly sanitized community of mortals. You are sending out applications to join the ranks of those inadequate males who believe that the only cure for adultery is to bury a woman up to her neck in the earth and reduce her head to a pulp under a rain of stones.

You affirm yourselves – not for the first time, alas! – allies of those who believe that death is the appropriate cure for that physiological conditioning which, through no fault of theirs, attract them to others of the same sex. You pronounce yourselves clones of demented rulers like Yahayah Jahmeh of Gambia who preached that we all cut off the heads of homosexuals and poison alleged witches -– and so on and on down a dismal list of silent, instinctive killers who have somehow managed to manipulate themselves into the corridors of ‘legitimatized’ – or illicit recesses of – Power and Force.

By the way, are you aware that a school of thought passionately believes that thieves such as Yahayah Jahmeh, formerly of Gambia, Omar Bashir of the Sudan etc in company of numerous members of African leadership elite, including this very Nigerian society, deserve no less than the death penalty for pilfering public resources, and on a scale that continues to stagger even the most inured in this nation?

Do you really, as presumably analytical minds believe that a facile and final recourse to the gallows or a fusillade of bullets at the stake, is the sole remedy to the phenomenon of the diffuse classifications possible under the abuse of communication and the sowing of hate among people? How precise is the definition of ‘hate’ when it becomes a yardstick for the extinction of even one human life? Haunting, hopefully, our collective conscience as a nation, even till today, is a recollection of a clique of social army reformers who instituted, and carried out the execution citizens under a retroactive law.

Yet others wiped out entire communities as collective punishment for the loss of members of their elite class, the military. And surely it is too soon to dismiss memory of the mass decimation of a religious group, the Shi’ites, for obstructing the passage of a motorcade of that same elite class. These are classic instances of murder, albeit under the immunity of power legitimation.

Your motivations are also spectacularly dubious. Silencing the voices of criticism is a perennial preoccupation of power, but we know that a far more penetrative form of death, spelling the end of social vitality and relevance is incurred when human voices are silenced. Try and imagine how many “deserved” executions would be taking place in this nation right now – beginning with nearly all of you in the exalted homes of legislation – if Boko Haram had succeeded in subjugating this nation under its creed.

Well, do not even bother with imagination, which is not as common a faculty as we tend to assume – simply check with neighbouring Mali how many, convicted of crimes against faith, Mr. Answar Dine eliminated during his brief sway in northern Mali. Or remain within this nation itself – check the statistics of death inflicted from indiscriminate bombings of the thriving concourses of humanity – schools, markets, motor parks, media houses, churches, mosques, shrines by believers in the doctrine of death as divine solution to the very crime of existence outside their narrow and perverted set of beliefs. Consider the fate of Uganda if Joseph Kony had indeed succeeded in his mission of converting Ugandans to his doctrine of – Salvation or Death!

These are not imaginary scenarios. That quick but facile option – killing – has become the current emblem of this very nation, effectively replacing the green-white-green! Something has collapsed. The carefully calibrated structures of fellow feeling, supposedly inculcated from infancy, lie in ruins. Life is now held cheap, casual, and trite. Students kill for the thrill of it, and for the assertion of cultic supremacy.

Kidnappers collect ransom yet kill. They kill even intermediary couriers. Fetishists kill in pursuit of illusions of instant wealth. Others, highly placed, kill for political office, and yet others to cover up criminalities by the deployment of killers. You cannot claim ignorance that there have been identified, over the past few decades, consortiums of killers who actually advertise their trade-in select circles and canvass for clients. Your businessmen – and women – have used them. So have politicians.

And now, you wish to add, to this culture of rampaging morbidity, the state empowered deaths of those dregs of society who titillate themselves with corrosive narratives from diseased minds, and boost their meaningless lives with the degradation of others? Are they even worth the cost of the hangman’s noose?

No. True, governance has a responsibility to protect its citizens, but social malefactors must be fought and neutralized through far more painstaking methods. Reformed if possible, exposed and publicly humiliated, punished and compelled to make restitution where their actions have caused pain, anguish, and destruction. That option, we know, is the more arduous path, but then, where did you obtain the notion that you were elected to occupy cushy, stress-free armchairs?

When a section of this national community wanted to execute a lady called Safiyat for alleged adultery some years ago- and through the singularly revolting means of stoning to death- the nation rose above religious partisanship in repudiation of this barbaric trivialization of human life. We continue to rail against the solution of death as penalty against those whose sexual orientation is different from ours, and thereby offends the sensibilities of others. I await persuasion, offered through objective, not emotive arguments, that this new extension of the homicidal imperative is fundamentally different from those other globally repudiated candidates for the killing route to social sanitation.

For now, may I passionately plead with you to consider that the coarsening and debasement of youth sensibility – already too far gone – through the trivialization of life – is a spectre that may return to haunt you if coming generations are taught that it is “cool to kill.”

Remember that example, especially by leadership, is a hundred times more explicit and enduring than the mere propagation of any counter-doctrine. Do not embrace the awful responsibility of impressing homicide as a way of life on the ethical template of the coming generations. The chickens have a way of coming home to roost. I may be wrong of course, but their droppings already foul the common air we all breathe. Just take a deep breath, look around you, and re-consider.

guardian

The Coalition of United Political Party, CUPP, has expressed shock at the reasons provided by the Supreme Court for dismissing the appeal filed by the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, and its candidate, Alhaji Atiku Abubakar ,challenging an earlier ruling by the Presidential Election Petition Tribunal which upheld the victory of President Muhammadu Buhari of the All Progressives Congress, APC.

CUPP said with the judgement, Nigeria’s democracy and electoral process have been set back to the dark age.

According to the political parties, the reasons given by the court on Friday were delivered outside the statutory 60 days, making it null and void.

In a statement signed by Ikenga Imo Ugochinyere, its National Publicity Secretary, and made available to DAILY POST on Friday, the Nigerian opposition coalition said it “is shocked at the reason the Supreme Court has given in the appeal filed by the consensus opposition candidate, Alhaji Atiku Abubakar.

“Nigerians are all aware when Justice Zainab Bulkachuwa failed and neglected to appoint a replacement into the Court of Appeal Panel when she recused herself until our candidate’s lawyers complained about the delay and the injury it would occasion.

“Nigerians are also aware that our candidate and his Party were also given only 10 days to call their witnesses to prove their case.

“Nigerians are aware that our candidate listed at least 400 witnesses but was only able to call 62 within the time allowed.

“Nigerians are also aware that even when INEC refused to summon any witnesses, our client applied to the Court to be allowed to use the time allotted to INEC to call more witnesses, the Appeal Court refused to grant this extra time.

“The Supreme Court also refused this application for extra time.

“Hence it is strange that the Supreme Court will declare that our candidate would have needed to call at least 250, 000 witnesses to prove his case. Has this pronouncement not set the bar for the minimum number of witnesses needed to prove a Presidential election in the Appeal Court?

“Can the Supreme Court look back soberly on the reasons it gave today just to keep a tyrant in office and be glad it delivered the judgment it did?

“Our nation’s democracy and electoral processes have been set back to the dark ages.

“The Constitution, Electoral Act and the Supreme Court had always been in agreement on the powers of the INEC to set guidelines and the need for the guidelines to be obeyed since the power to set such guidelines were constitutional, the Supreme Court has in the reasons given in the judgment by implication nullified the powers of INEC to make guidelines as the Form CF001 wherein a demand for producing credentials have been nullified by the Court. Indeed the Court has held that seeking the highest office in the land requires the least possible qualification in the land. How absurd.

“The judgment of the Court of Appeal was delivered on the 11th September 2019. The Supreme Court today the 15th November, 2019 gave reasons for its decision on 30th October, 2019. However, going by the judgment of the same Supreme Court delivered in the case of PDP V. ROCHAS OKOROCHA & ORS. (SC.17/2012) where the Supreme Court analyzed the position of the law on giving the reasons outside the stipulated 60 days provided by the Constitution, the judgment of the Supreme Court delivered today is null and void and of no effect.

“Today, 15th November, 2019 is the 64th day since the judgment of the Court of Appeal. How then can this be a valid judgment? In all their efforts, they could not still comply with the law.

“Interestingly, the current Chief Justice of Nigeria was on the panel in the case cited above and he agreed with it. Yet today he has presided over the violation of the same position.

“The Supreme Court has now by this action today, rewritten the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, 1999 as Amended.

“While we urge Nigerians to remain peaceful and law-abiding, we enjoin them to remain vigilant as we patiently watch out for this affliction that has befallen a nation. Power is ephemeral, it shall soon pass and Nigeria will return to the path of greatness again.”

dailypost

Ousted U.S Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch, has told Congress that she felt threatened by President Donald Trump.

Yovanovitch stated that Trump made disparaging comments about her in a July phone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.

She also described how she was recalled from Kiev in the middle of the night after being told by U.S officials they were no longer able to protect her, apparently under directions from the White House.

“It was terrible, it was not the way I wanted my career to end”, Dpa quoted her as saying.

When asked if she felt threatened by Trump telling Zelensky that she’s going to go through some things,’’ she says clearly: `I did.’

Yovanovitch recalled that she was shocked, appalled, devastated that the president of the U.S would talk about any ambassador like that to a foreign head of state.

“And it was me. I couldn’t believe it”, she added.

dailyposty

he Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) on Friday berated the All Progressives Congress (APC) for allegedly sending armed thugs to invade the venue of the meeting of its leaders, including Oyo State Governor, Seyi Makinde and its candidate, Engr. Musa Wada, in Lokoja.

PDP claimed that several “hooded APC thugs, armed with automatic rifles and other dangerous weapons, invaded the venue of the meeting which had Governor Makinde, Engr. Wada, his running mate, Hon. Samuel Aro, the PDP National Publicity Secretary, Kola Ologbondiyan, as well as other party chieftains in attendance.”

The opposition party stated this in a statement signed by its spokesperson, Kola Ologbondiyan.

According to the statement: “It took the resistance of the security personnel attached to Governor
Makinde to save the situation, which would have turned calamitous, as the people of Kogi who were around the venue were already poised for a stiff confrontation.

“APC ought to have known by now that their reliance on thugs and violence cannot thrive, as the people are ready to defend their state in this election.

“We urge the Inspector General of Police Mohammed Adamu to caution the APC as well as put every measure in place to check the activities of APC’s thugs so as to ensure a hitch-free, transparent and credible election on Saturday.”

PDP urged the people of Kogi State to remain alert and resolute in their determination to assert their will despite the machinations designed to undermine their spirit at the election.

“It also states that Nigerians should hold the APC and Governor Yahaya Bello responsible should any harm whatsoever befall any PDP member during the period of the election,” the statement added.

dailypost

In 2017, Florence Schechter discovered that Iceland had a penis museum, but that nowhere in the world could its female equivalent be found. And so, the science communicator decided to do something about it. This month, in London, the Vagina Museum will be born. In fact, it’s a pretty different proposition to the penis museum. “That’s kind of novelty, penises in jars,” Schechter explains. “We’re going to be much more thoughtful and actually explore the topic.”

More like this:

-       Why we should celebrate anger
-       Were these men Leonardo’s lovers?
-       The art that stereotyped the Arab world

First up, a note on the name. Schechter acknowledges the frustration at how the word “vagina” is often used when people are really talking about the external vulva (the labia, clitoris and vaginal opening) – but they needed a term people were already familiar with.“A lot of people don’t know the word vulva, and people are not going to engage with something they don’t know,” she says. A Vagina Museum is, frankly, more eye-catching and conversation starting.

The museum will look at the entire gynaecological anatomy – the inside (uterus, cervix, ovaries) as well as the outside – and consider its representation in culture and history. But the fact a Vagina Museum needs a bit of a glossary in the first place is proof of its purpose. “The gynaecological anatomy is a very stigmatised part of the body,” points out Schechter. “A museum is a place where conversations can happen – the best way to fight taboo and stigma is with knowledge.” We are still crushingly bad at talking about all the bits between women’s legs – often ignorant or euphemistic, vague or embarrassed, even if we have a vagina ourselves. And wider culture attitudes to them run the gamut of sniggering, censorious, disgusted, objectifying, or actively oppressive. 

A culture of fear
This inability to talk about female genitalia has certainly had its impact on Western art and culture. Taboos can make an image more powerful – but they can also lead to fearful depictions of the unknown, or to the erasure of a huge part of lived female experience. Let’s start at the beginning: birth. Where are the paintings of birth in Western art? They don’t exist, prior to the 20th Century. This curious lack has been pointed out by the novelist and essayist Siri Hustvedt. “It is a stunning absence,” she says, adding that the suppression of gestation and birth has to be “related to the suppression of women and the fear of women.”

It’s also surely to do with a religious tradition of painting where the female figure is a virgin: distaste for the visceral elements of reproduction have been coded into art right from the start... “It is an example of the vagina getting written out of a dominant cultural narrative,” agrees Emma EL Rees, Professor of English at the University of Chester.

As the author of The Vagina: A Literary and Cultural History, Rees literally wrote the book on the depiction of vaginas – and its chapter on birth shows that, even in modern times, public attitudes to seeing women’s private parts during childbirth are fraught.

In 1997, UK artist Jonathan Waller’s life-size paintings of women were apparently considered so distressing by the gallery who represented him that they removed one of them from a show; later, the images prompted the Independent on Sunday to ask ‘Is birth the last taboo subject in art?’ Rees shares another, more recent example: at a 2009 exhibition of the Birth Rites Collection – work dedicated to the artistic depiction of birth, first displayed at Salford University before moving to various galleries and science centres across the UK – a photograph by Hermione Wiltshire of midwife Ina May Gaskin called Therese in Ecstatic Childbirth, which shows a mother’s joyful expression at the moment of crowning, was apparently repeatedly covered up by visitors.

“There is still a cultural paradox and hypocrisy around vaginas,” Rees tells me. “The same people who will criticise seeing a baby crowning potentially consume porn – [then they are] perfectly happy with vaginas, but when they start doing stuff like pushing another human being out of them, that’s somehow obscene.”

Rees was drawn to documenting cultural depictions of vaginas for the same reason Schechter wanted to make a Vagina Museum: because there’s still so much silence and ignorance around them. One of the spurs was an encounter, outside a church in Kilpeck in Herefordshire, with a stone carving of a woman holding open her vulva – and the fact that a 19th-Century guide to the church claimed that it was a fool holding his chest open. “That’s not a fool, and that’s not a chest!” Rees recalls, laughing.

In fact, what she was looking at was a ‘sheela na gig’ – figurative carvings of naked women displaying an exaggerated vulva – the word for which is familiar to PJ Harvey fans thanks to her song of the same name (“Look at these, my child-bearing hips/Look at these, my ruby red ruby lips”, she sings – not the first or by any means the last time a pop song has capitalised on the dual meaning of lips). The carvings are found in Norman churches all over Europe, and while their purpose isn’t entirely understood, it may be to do with promoting fertility, healthy births, or warding off evil.

The autonomous vagina
Still, compared to male genitalia, depictions of the vulva are pretty rare until the 20th Century. Of course, female sexual organs are more hidden compared than their masculine counterparts – and this, combined with the lack of non-sexualised discussion of, and language for, the female genitals seems to have had a real impact on the depictions that do exist. I was struck, reading Rees’s fascinating book, how many examples present the vagina either as autonomous – rebellious, or oddly divorced from its owner – or as a terrifying, dangerous thing.
One mythic image goes way back: the vagina dentata – a vagina armed with teeth, that damages or castrates the male. “It’s a myth that has a history and currency in cultures and civilisations that could not have communicated with each other: in the Indian subcontinent and in south America we get the same stories emerging, at a time when there wasn’t any transatlantic travel,” says Rees. She adds that in many of these myths “the fear of the unknown-ness of the vagina becomes a rationale for acts of extreme brutality – knocking the teeth out through rape or serious sexual assault.” Rees also references several modern manifestations of this Freudian fear, not least US director Mitchell Lichtenstein’s film Teeth. In the 2007 horror, the young innocent Dawn’s crush Tobey tries to rape her, only for her vagina to chomp his penis off. Dawn goes on to learn how to use her vicious vagina to wreak revenge on sexually predatory men.

One reason why I show my cervix is to assure the misinformed that neither the vagina nor the cervix contains any teeth – Annie Sprinkles

The myth of the vagina dentata played a part in performance artist Annie Sprinkles’s droll work, Public Cervix Announcement. Performing it live during the 1990s, she’d open her vulva with a speculum, and invite audience members to shine a torch inside her and speak into a mic about what they found. You can now experience the work on her website – where she comments “One reason why I show my cervix is to assure the misinformed, who seem to be primarily of the male population, that neither the vagina nor the cervix contains any teeth. Maybe you’ll calm down and get a grip.”

Sprinkle let others speak about – for? – her genitals, but there’s also a long history of the chatty vagina: an organ that speaks a truth its owner can’t, won’t, or doesn’t want heard.
“The idea of the autonomous vagina was one I began to see a lot of [in my research],” says Rees, who believes that our general inability to discuss vaginas has led to women often feeling separated from their own anatomy. But there’s also a tradition in art and literature of men controlling women by forcing their vaginas to mutter… 
Rees’s examples go as far back as Medieval French poetry, and the story of Du Chevalier Qui fist les Cons Parler. After a magical power is bestowed on a knight by three witch-like women that allows him to address women’s private parts, he uses it to cause much mischief at a castle. The women have no control: whatever he asks, their vaginas will reply with the truth.

Truth-telling vaginas also appear in the 18th-Century French writer Denis Diderot’s Les Bijoux Indiscrets, in which a genie provides a sultan with a magic ring that can command “the most honest part” of women to speak the truth. He mostly uses it to question women’s fidelity – a clear instance of how male anxiety about women not being truthful has long been bound up with anxieties about their sexual appetites. And, of course, another example of a man forcibly controlling a woman’s body.

More recent examples of blabbing genitalia include the 1977 US film comedy Chatterbox, in which the heroine Penelope’s vagina – dubbed Virginia – starts to speak and even sing. Although Penelope worries her vagina is a “foul-mouthed little beast” who just wants to have sex all the time, Virginia soon becomes quite a star. Once again, there’s a disconnect between a woman and her vagina: the film riffs on the idea of it being more liberated and honest than its owner, while Penelope silently suffers shame. And it’ll surely come as no surprise that South Park has animated various talking lady parts, usually in order to undermine women of power. One episode saw Oprah Winfrey given an autonomous vagina that was dissatisfied and demanded more attention. Hillary Clinton, meanwhile, had a vagina dentata which ate a man’s head. Then again, the South Park movie, made in 1999, did feature a more benevolent talking organ: the mystical, near-mythical clitoris.

But vaginas can also speak for their owners, not against their wishes. Artist Carolee Schneemann’s infamous 1975 work Interior Scroll saw her undress, pull a scroll out of her vagina, and read it: the text recounted a discussion Schneemann had about her work with a patronising filmmaker who thought her work was too messy, too concerned with feelings. 

The pleasure principle
From the serious to the silly: Netflix’s Big Mouth is another cartoon about teenagers featuring plenty of chatty body parts. But in contrast to South Park, Nick Kroll’s comedy about middle schoolers going through puberty is good-hearted, level-headed, and actually full of sound advice. Pubic hairs, raging hormones, and vaginas all get personified. But it’s notable that the while female lead Jessi’s vagina is separate from her and very much its own character (as voiced by Kristen Wiig), when she talks to Jessi it’s to encourage her to discover how much fun they could have together. “It’s an honour to be a part of you,” she says, toasting Jessi after their first orgasm. This vagina is promoting unity through pleasure, not shame or separation.

Pleasure: a pretty important function for any owner of a vagina – and yet depressingly not that often the focus of art. With the vagina having been largely hidden, pornography aside, for centuries, just achieving visibility seems to have been a real challenge – and the most famous works have tended to attract virulent criticism from both men and women. Take two of the most famous examples: Judy Chicago’s 1979 installation The Dinner Party and Eve Ensler’s 1996 play The Vagina Monologues.

Chicago laid three tables for an imagined party of 39 women, among them goddesses, queens and 20th-Century icons including Virginia Woolf and Georgia O’Keeffe (whose own flower paintings have often been interpreted as evoking vulvae, although she denied that was her intention). Alongside gold chalices, embroidered napkins and runners, it features plates shaped as individual, abstracted, butterfly-like vulva.

It’s a monumental work, but attracted scorn from male art critics when it opened and for years after (the Los Angeles Times art critic called it “a lumbering mishmash of sleaze and cheese”; the New York Times later deemed it crass, vulgar, and didactic). The work also attracted the ire of some feminists who claimed it reduced women and their achievements by focusing on their genitals. Museums cancelled showings of it, Chicago struggled to find a home for the work (happily at the Brooklyn Museum since 2007), and its notoriety overwhelmed her career.

And yet the work has always been wildly popular with the gallery-visiting public, and especially women. Chicago was surely feeding a hunger, a need, with The Dinner Party. And you could argue the same for Ensler’s The Vagina Monologues, a work drawn from interviews Ensler conducted with women ranging from a six-year-old to a septuagenarian, from Bosnian war survivors to a sex worker for women, that touches on sex, periods, body image, rape and female genital mutilation (FGM).

It’s not all bleak: the monologues also feature joyful sex and multiple orgasms. Ensler’s show has become an international phenomenon, performed all over the world on 14 February each year, also known as V Day, an initiative started by Ensler raising money to end violence against women. It’s a feminist text that’s proved palatable to celebrities too: everyone from Alanis Morrissette to Glenn Close to Oprah Winfrey has had a go at appearing in it.

Still, the hyper-visibility of Ensler’s show has also drawn seemingly endless criticisms: it’s been deemed too smug, narrow in focus, insufficiently radical, essentialist, colonial, or maybe even simply – whisper it? –  too successful. But whatever swipes people take at Ensler, the play genuinely did help bring conversations about vaginas into the mainstream. And it does feel like we might be moving into an era where we’re seeing more depictions, not just of female sexual organs, but also female sexual pleasure. Artists in the 21st Century seem to be able to depict vaginas without it necessarily having to be traumatic or taboo-busting.

Take UK writer and actor Bella Heesom, who the Guardian suggests “might be considered Ensler’s millennial heir” thanks to her show Rejoicing at Her Wondrous Vulva the Young Woman Applauded Herself, which encourages women to love themselves too. Staged in London earlier this year, the show includes a light-up clitoris headdress, and puts the joy of masturbation and orgasms onstage.

In visual art, New York-based Ghada Amer uses embroidery in her colourful, outlined images of women masturbating; she hopes the needle-and-thread can bring a tenderness to such images that “simple objectification ignores”. Tschabalala Self’s bold, colourful work also blends collage and sewing, presenting powerful, confident black women, often opening exaggeratedly wide thighs or curvaceous buttocks to reveal their genitals – a colourful heart, perhaps, or a burst of rainbow.

Pop music has done its bit too: music videos have always been sexually suggestive, but more recently female artists have been playing with knowing visual innuendo to make it clear they’re singing about their own pleasure. Take Ariana Grande’s video for 2018 single God is a Woman, for instance, where she writhes around in various suggestive pools, flames, and (lady) caves – and is at one point backed by a choir of actual screaming beavers. No wonder the video is one of Schechter’s favourite pop-culture depictions: “it’s obvious enough for everyone to be like: that’s an ode to the vulva,” she says.

Why can’t vaginas be funny?
Or take Janelle Monae’s fantastic video for last year’s Pynk, her hymn to “self-love, sexuality and pussy power”. Monae and her female dancers perform in vulva-like trousers, and the video is loaded with pink visual stand-ins for vaginas: milkshakes, ice cream sundaes, oysters, and grapefruits. She’s not the only one getting fruity: LA-based artist Nevine Mahmoud makes gorgeous sculptures out of marble and alabaster that somehow look warm and sensual: peaches split to reveal a peek of stone, softly folding lilies (which Mahmoud deems “the most erotic flower”), and a cleft shape called Fig/Vagina.

The erotic potential of fruit is also brilliantly exploited in the videos of American multimedia artist Stephanie Sarley: she gently rubs halved pieces of fruit in a circular motion – then inserts her fingers till they squirt. They’re glorious and ridiculous, and yet reveal that, even now, the mere suggestion of female ejaculation can be controversial. In one month in 2016, Instagram suspended and restored Sarley’s account three times – a blood orange in particular attracted vitriol – although Sarley’s stated aim is to promote greater acceptance of female sexuality via humour.

But artists at least trying to say that women’s sexual bits can be funny – in the same way that penises certainly often are – is surely a cheering development. British performance artist Lucy McCormick has also garnered a reputation for eye-poppingly explicit, eye-wateringly funny shows, that send up the ridiculous expectations of performative female sexuality.

“Women’s bodies are so often offered as purely sexual, it can be a liberation to celebrate the grotesque, the weird and often hilarious functionality of the body,” she has said. Her current show Post-Popular, for example, sees her taking the idea of searching for a hero inside yourself very literally: she pulls a Cadbury’s Miniature Hero out of her vagina, and eats it.

Another visual artist who’s been explicit about using humour is Megumi Igarashi, best known as the maker of the “pussy boat”: a canoe modelled on a 3D scan of her vulva. But in 2014, when trying to raise funds to make it, she got in hot water: Igarashi was arrested in her native Japan after selling data enabling people to make 3D prints of her vagina. She was fined 400,000 yen – then about £2,575 – for distributing obscene images, despite insisting she was innocent. Her defence was spot on: she refused to accept that “artworks shaped like female genitals are obscene.” 

Such censorship proves we’re still far from being as comfortable with vaginas as we should be, even if creative depictions of vaginas and vulvas in all their varied glory – messy, silly, funny, sexy, beautiful, and empowered – do seem to increasingly be able to take a place at the table. Not to mention, at last, being given a museum all of their own.
 
The Vagina Museum opens in London on 16 November.

bbcworld

Professor Yemi Osinbajo, Nigeria’s Vice President no longer needs tutorials on the vagaries of the country’s treacherous politics. He is learning from experience, which has often been described as the best teacher.
What actually informed his decision to jump into the murky waters of Nigeria politics in 2014 to the extent of even accepting to serve as the running mate to President Muhammadu Buhari? That and other questions must be running through the mind of the law professor and Pastor of the populous Pentecostal Redeemed Christian Church of God (RCCG) daily as he remains at the centre of mischief and villainy of Aso Villa, the country’s seat of presidential power.

By now, the Vice President would have recognized that unlike the table in the household of God, where righteousness and holiness guarantee access, in the power game of presidential politics, there is no brother in the jungle of interests.

Did Osinbajo fail to realise on time that politics is the only ‘business’ that brings saints and sinners together on the same table?

Having spent the first four years filled with enthralling benefits associated with his high office, Osinbajo seems to be going through the valley of the shadow of presidential politics, which could be as harrowing as death.

The same vice president, whom his principal, Buhari, entrusted with so many tasks is now being vilified and degraded by the same source. A founding member of the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) described the unpalatable circumstances around the Vice President in an interaction with The Guardian recently.

The elderly APC chieftain said: “What Osinbajo is passing through might last throughout the tenure of this administration. It appears that he has fallen out of favour with powers that once embraced him.”

Barely a month after a subtle move was made in the Presidency to whittle down the influence wielded by his office, which stirred the hornets’ nest, the news of the sack of 35 aides in his office by the presidency has continued to generate wild conjectures across the country.

And coming just a few weeks after he was accused of corruption, which elicited his declaration that he was ready to waive his immunity to face trial, it was if the events were carefully planned to achieve a particular end.

Intriguingly, the two developments took place after the surprise directives from his principal to the effect that all correspondences from the newly appointed ministers should pass through the office of the Chief of Staff, Abba Kyari.

Most observers interpreted the directive to mean that the office of the vice president had been subsumed under that of the Chief of Staff, Mallam Kyari. And while these were going on, in the true character of APC, an organisation that could even engage in self-abnegation, both the Presidency and the party continued to deny the existence of any rift in the Buhari administration, especially between the President and the office of the Vice President.

Then came Buhari’s private visit to the United Kingdom, which was ostensibly for medical checks, without transmitting power to the VP as stipulated by the constitution. As if that was not enough, the President was seen signing a bill into law, which was ferried to him outside the shore of Nigeria.

It has become glaring to a miffed nation that despite attempts by Mallam Garba Shehu, the Senior Special Assistant, Media, and Publicity, to the President that there is no rancour between the two leaders, the contrary obtains.

Some observers have described the unfolding drama as the manifestation of the true nature of the ruling party, beginning from when it took over power in 2015.

However, the shocking aspect of the entire scenario is that none of the Southwest APC elders or leaders from which Osinbajo hails has made any statement in defense of the VP, despite the calculated attempts to embarrass his office.

Background to Osinbajo’s ordeal
A popular proverb has it that: ‘Eewu bę loko Longę, Longę fun ara rę eewu ni’, meaning there is a danger at Longę’s farm. But unfortunately for the Vice President, he does not seem to be extremely careful of situations that could portend danger in Nigerian politics.

Some political actors blamed the odds on the VP’s nonchalance, saying: “Osinbajo’s ordeal did not start today. He ought to have seen the handwritings long ago when his principal deliberately distanced from the National Leader, Bola Tinubu immediately after APC won the 2015 presidential election. And despite Tinubu’s commitment to Buhari’s victory, the former Lagos State governor stayed out of the Villa for almost three years until his services were needed for the second term. The vice president felt comfortable, while his godfather was forced to go on self-exile.

“Recalled that it took Senator Oluremi Tinubu, Asiwaju’s wife and Aisha Buhari to cry out in defense of the Jagaban. At a point the tension that surrounded the news of who nominated Osinbajo as Vice President was so tense that he (Osinbajo) had to come out to disclose how he got the job.

“The vice president went further to entangled himself in the issue of restructuring in a manner that portrayed him as speaking the interest of the north, which has been apprehensive of the subject, he eventually caught the wrath of several socio-cultural organisations, including Afenifere just as Nigerians did not take the explanation for the persistence of the alleged killings by the Fulani Herdsmen that became rampant at a point during the first term of Buhari lightly.”

However, signs of the danger ahead came up a few months to the 2019 general elections, when it was speculated that Buhari might replace Osinbajo as his running mate in the election. The insinuation then was that his ‘godfather’ and some cabals did not want him (Osinabjo) back as Vice President, but he scaled through and later became the face of Buhari’s 2019 reelection campaign trotting all over the country and adducing reasons the government should be given a second term.

Osinbajo must have also stepped on some powerful toes when he acted as President. A PRESclose source from the presidency told The Guardian that a major sin of Osinbajo happened when he acted as President.

Said the source, “The annoying aspect was the poor and puerile manner in which the Vice President’s media aides conducted themselves when he acted as President. Some of his decisions, which he may have taken innocently or in the best interest of Nigeria, did not go down well with some cabals, who decided to wait patiently until the second term was won to strike. But that does not justify what they are doing to him, because his loyalty to Buhari has been blind and unquestionable.”

The source pointed out further that the popularity Osinbajo garnered during the last general elections, especially as an average northerner sees him as a loyal ally of their idol, Buhari, and the way ‘TraderMoni’ was spread, endeared him to the masses across the country. This must have made those that didn’t want him to start his early denigration.”

Another campaign of calumny against the Vice President is that he was unduly favouring those from the same religion and ethnic background in most of the appointments he made while in office as Acting President.

The list of the sacked aides does not justify the arguments just as it has not been proved that the affected aides and others eased out of their jobs were engaged in acts of official corruption. But the insinuation is that some of them might be arrested and tried for corruption when Buhari returns from his medical trip.

Emir’s accolades
What the Emir of Daura, Alhaji Farouk Umar, did by commending the loyalty of Osinbajo to Buhari and their commitment to the transformation of Nigeria may have been one of the factors that trigger a quick response from the opposition. The Emir described Buhari, Osinbajo relationship as unequaled in the history of the country. This may be coupled with the fact that the vice president, being a Christian and from one of the strongest religious blocks in the country stands a better chance than other key Yoruba people in APC to take over from. For instance, the issue of religion may work against Tinubu and the incumbent Minister of Works and Housing, Babatunde Raji Fashola both Muslims to succeed the incumbent president. “Why not bring him down before it is too late,” one of Osinabjo’s loyalists lamented.

He added: “The allegation that Osinbajo favoured members of the Redeemed Church was a nullity. For instance, I can say authoritatively that the game playing out is politics at the dirtiest level as anything is good as a weapon. As for Osinbajo, his present ordeal is like a man walking through the valley of the shadow of death. Redeemed Church members are nursing grouse with him that they didn’t benefit from his position especially the parish he pastored. Yoruba leaders are vilifying him because of restructuring, he is being attacked across the South because of his comments on Ruga while faithful of other religions in the party want him down at all cost since he stands a good advantage on religion ground in 2023. Some northern cabals have their grouses against him. He is more or less like a lone ranger now except the Almighty advocates his matter.”

The question that must be asked in the first instance is would Osinbajo have employed such a number of aides without the approval of the presidency in the first instance?

However inside sources said the controversial sack of the 35 aides was part of the politics of the Villa to relegate Osinbajo. It was claimed that Buhari had already approved all the aides of Osinbajo and stipulated those to be in the villa, and those to be in the ministries. This was the initial arrangement that the Secretary to the Government of the Federation, Boss Mustapha was to execute until a counter directive came from Kyari. This eventually caused rancor between the two officers.

Sources said the SGF was prevailed upon after a shouting match between him and the Chief of Staff on the matter. The SGF is believed to have resisted for a few days since he was swayed. Meanwhile, Shehu’s statement must have resolved the area.

The ongoing travails of the Vice President demand that he must be very tactful, otherwise, his reputation and those of his fans could be at risk. Although he has gone to court to defend his integrity over corruption, he needs to do more to address the issue of ethnic and religious bigotry leveled against him, just as he must also explain to Nigerians at what point he changed his stance on the need to restructure Nigeria and true federalism or whether he was moved by political exigencies please the Fulani oligarchy.

For now, Nigerians are waiting with bated breath to see how the game ends.

guardian

The Minister of Communications and Digital Economy, Dr. Isa Pantami, has ordered the deactivation of Automatic Voice Mails (AVM), across all Mobile Network Operators (MNOs) in Nigeria. Pantami claimed that based on recent reports reaching his office, the practice has gained momentum in recent times.
   
The Minister in a statement yesterday said the latest trend of financial exploitation by MNOs in the country is through automatic activation of voicemail service on their platforms. According to him, the voicemail service should be accessed at the discretion of the subscriber and not by default. Pantami said the exercise is worrisome and totally unacceptable, as telecoms subscribers incur financial charges for a service they are compelled to use by default.
  
“Voicemail is not a popular service among mobile phone users in Nigeria, coupled with the language challenge among rural dwellers, who mostly do not understand the language deployed by these networks.‘‘It is apparent, that the recent clampdown on the exploitative activities of some MNOs in the country has beamed the searchlight on the sector properly, and some unpatriotic elements in the system are devising subtle, ingenious methods of defrauding Nigerians,” he stressed.      

Pantami said the current leadership will neither overlook any acts, regardless of how subtle, that undermine the anti-corruption crusade of President Muhammadu Buhari, nor condone any attempts to defraud Nigerians and indeed, all subscribers.
   
In the light of this, Pantami issued a broad policy directive to the sector regulator, Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC), to immediately ensure that issues regarding automatic voicemails are addressed on all existing phone lines, and the subscribers given the option of accessing the service via an activation code.
  
“It is our collective responsibility to ensure that the rights of consumers are protected, while providing a conducive business environment for MNOs, in line with global best practice,” Pantami stated.In response to the Minister’s directive, the President, Association of Telecommunications Companies of Nigeria (ATCON), Olusola Teniola, said the AVM should be an option for a subscriber to activate on hi/herr SIM card.
   
In an email chat with The Guardian, Teniola said: “It is usual that this service is not switched on by default so that a caller to the subscriber doesn’t incur any voice charges when a subscriber is not reachable or available for some reasons. In countries that are used to having a voice mail recording system on their home phone lines the activation of AVM on the mobile SIM card is just an extension of what is the norm.
  
“However, in Nigeria, the AVM is not a service that has gained acceptance and thus more customer awareness is required to fully understand the implications associated with using such service.”On how the AVM works, Teniola said typically, AVM provides a caller the option to leave a voice message if the called number is not available, and provides the subscriber an ability to access a voice mail system and retrieve a message, and return the call without losing important calls. This is useful for business calls and emergency situations.
    
On deactivation, Teniola said: “It is very easy and quick to do. In fact, the subscriber can switch this service off by dialing a telecoms operator defined USSD code to turn it off.”

guardian

A teenage boy gunned down fellow students at a California high school on his 16th birthday Thursday, killing two and wounding another three before turning the pistol on himself.
The gunman was taken into custody in “grave” condition, police said, as officers stormed Saugus High School in Santa Clarita the latest in a relentless cycle of classroom shootings that have left around 300 youngsters dead over two decades.

The chilling scene played out even as lawmakers in Washington were debating the latest attempt at gun control legislation that has stalled in Congress for months.

Terrified students described barricading themselves into classrooms while others fled as word rapidly spread of the unidentified Asian boy opening fire with a .45 caliber semiautomatic.

“Detectives reviewed the video at the scene, which clearly show the subject in the quad withdraw a handgun from his backpack, shoot and wound five people, and then shoot himself in the head,” homicide captain Kent Wegener told a news conference.

The teen was found among the wounded by first responders, said Los Angeles County Sheriff Alex Villanueva.

The dead were a 16-year-old girl and a 14-year-old boy. The other three wounded — one boy and two girls — were aged between 14 and 15.

The shooting at the school of 2,300 students was first reported shortly after 7:30 a.m. (1530 GMT).

The school 40 miles (65 kilometers) north of Los Angeles — was locked down, and witness descriptions and surveillance footage identified the suspect within an hour of the shooting.

Officers went to his home and his mother and girlfriend were at a local police station speaking with detectives.

No other suspects are currently being investigated.

‘Always been worried’

Seventeen-year-old student Andrei Mojica was in his government class when someone burst in and said there was a shooter on campus.

“That’s when my heart sank,” he told the Los Angeles Times.

The class of around 30 students followed their emergency drills and began barricading the doors with desks and tables, before waiting in silence, ready to wield a fire extinguisher as a weapon.

“We had no clue whether the shooter was on the opposite side of campus or right outside our door,” he told the newspaper. “That fear made it feel like we were waiting in silence forever.”

Finally they were escorted from the classroom by a SWAT team.

A tearful mother waiting beside a nearby church with other parents said she had dropped off her ninth-grader about a minute before the shooting started.

“I haven’t seen my son yet but I’ve talked to him. He’s okay … He just sounded numb,” she told an NBC affiliate.

“All he’s said is he was walking through the quad and somebody started shooting and he turned and he saw that it was real and ran into a classroom,” she added.

Students told CNN they had heard multiple loud bangs that “sounded like fireworks” and began to run.

Twenty-four ambulances, seven paramedic units and a helicopter were at the school campus, opposite a residential area, along with dozens of squad cars.

Agents from the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, as well as firefighters, were among those responding.

Gun debate 
The incident is the latest of more than 40 shootings at US schools since as recently as May 2018, when a 17-year-old killed 10 people, eight of them students, in Santa Fe, Texas.

Authorities said his shotgun and revolver were legally owned by his father.

Three months earlier a 19-year-old expelled from Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida returned and opened fire, killing 14 students and three staff members.

There is roughly one school shooting a week in the United States, according to Everytown for Gun Safety.

The perennial hot-button issue of arms control threatens to spill into next year’s election.

“Every day, our children and our communities are forced to endure horrendous acts of violence and bloodshed, while Republicans continue to obstruct meaningful, bipartisan solutions to end the epidemic of gun violence,” said Nancy Pelosi, the Democratic speaker of the House of Representatives.

News of the shooting broke during a debate on gun control legislation at the Senate in Washington.

Democrat Senator Richard Blumenthal was speaking as he was handed a piece of paper by an aide.

“On the floor right now there’s a school shooting in Santa Clarita, California,” he told the chamber.

“How can we turn the other way? How can we refuse to see that shooting in real time, demanding our attention, requiring our action? We are complicit if we fail to act.”

California senator Kamala Harris, a Democratic candidate for the 2020 election, said she was “heartbroken and praying for Santa Clarita.”

guardian

After 162 days at the Kaduna State Central Prisons, Steven Kefason on Wednesday shared the experience of the shocking things happening in the facility.
Kefason, a freelance journalist and hygiene management professional, told The Guardian in an exclusive interview that sodomy, bribery and corruption were rampant in the facility.

Kefason was jailed in the Kaduna prison by the Kaduna State government over a Facebook post.  He was arrested in Port Harcourt, Rivers State by operatives of the State Investigation Bureau of the Kaduna State Command of the Nigeria Police Force and was brought to Kaduna on May 10 after he was arrested in Port Harcourt.

His arrest was pursuant to many petitions written against him ranging from insulting persons and institutions, injurious falsehood, inciting disturbance, defamation, and cyberstalking, James Kanyip, Kaduna deputy chief of staff said in a statement.

Kefason was first arraigned before a Chief Magistrate’s Court on May 13 and was later arraigned at Kaduna High Court. The High Court sent him to Kaduna Central Prison to await trial on the case.

It was while in the prison that Kefason was acquainted with rot that pervades the Kaduna Prison.

Kaduna Prison was built to house 547 inmates. But Kefason said the prison held, at least, 1470 persons, majority of whom were awaiting trials.

Apart from being overcrowded, an unsurprising occurrence, Kefason said sodomy and use of narcotics thrive behind the bars.

Ordinarily a crime in Nigeria, those involved in the act, he said, while barely punished.

“They will just carry you from the cell where you are to another cell,” Kefason said, adding that “there is nothing special about the punishment, just to keep you there for some time and release you.”

“You see the set of people that were punished before, coming back do the same thing over and over again.”

Kefason blamed this vice on the “idleness and lack of counselling” for the inmates.

Homosexual acts are punishable by up to 14 years in jail in Nigeria. But the punishment in the twelve northern states, including Kaduna State, that have adopted Shari’a law is death by stoning.

On drugs being in the prison facility, Kefason alleged that “some eggs (prison officials)” engage in the trafficking of drugs inside the prison yard.

“Even as a visitor, the way they will search you, even a needle won’t be left on you,”

“But when you go into the prison, you see all manner of drugs, Indian hemp, Tramadol, just name them,” he added.

“The only way these drugs can find their way into the prison yard must be through the authority,” Kefason alleged.

Kefason said although he wasn’t tortured during his days in the prison, he said that life in the prison is “brutish”

Kefason’s account echoes the rot in the Nigerian prison system as reported by Fisayo Soyombo, an investigative journalist, who spent eight days as an inmate of Ikoyi Prison tracking corruption in the prison facility.

Fisayo also detailed his experiences on “drug abuse, sodomy, bribery, pimping and cash and carry operations” at the Ikoyi Prison facility.

The investigation generated widespread reactions on social media. On October 22, there were reports that Fisayo may be arrested by the Nigerian authorities.

While reacting to the Fisayo’s investigations the Comptroller General of the Correction Service, Ja’afaru Ahmed said a “high powered panel” has been set up “to immediately commence full investigations into the matter in order to establish the authenticity of the report, identify and bring the culprits to book if found guilty of the allegations.”

The statement by the service’s spokesman, OF Enobore, highlighted that the service is “willing to work” with the general public and relevant stakeholders in the justice to transform the Correctional Service into “a modern reformatory institution that operates in line with best international practices.”

guardian

[b]Know about the steps to book flight in Southwest Airlines[/b]


Southwest airlines, being the world's largest low-cost carrier airline, serve their passengers with the best possible services at reasonable fares. The facilities and services provided to the passengers are world-class and makes the travel more comfortable.

Booking tickets in Southwest Airlines

To avail the services offered by the airline, a passenger has to book a flight with them. The flight can either be booked online or offline. A passenger can contact travel agency, ticket counter at the airport or customer support. The steps of online booking are as follows:

• Initial step is to browse the official webpage of Southwest airlines.
  
• The Flight tab is then selected on the homepage.
  
• Then, the kind of trip among roundtrip or one-way is selected.
  
• Next step is to select the departure city and the destination city in respective fields from the available list of destinations.
  
• After that, the date of departure is selected in the date calendar. In case, the passenger is flexible with the dates, the cheapest day can be chosen.
  
• By selecting the total number of adults and seniors, Search button is clicked.
  
• On the next page, there will be a list of available flights in the airline. The passenger can select the suitable one according to timing and fare.
  
• Further, the personal details along with contact info is entered in the fields which is used for the itinerary.
  
• Once the details are submitted, the booking amount can be paid to confirm the booking.
  
• Finally, the confirmation email is sent by the airline to passengers which contains the e-ticket also.
  

To know more about the airline or its services, Southwest airlines reservations can be contacted. The representative of Southwest will serve the passengers with the best possible assistance to make their journey, a better experience. The details of contact are available on the official website of Southwest airlines.

Looking out for some good flight options on Delta Airlines to travel to your favorite destination? Well, it doesn't matter which country or city you want to go, Delta Airlines offers flights to almost every corner of the world. Besides, if you want to make the reservations but don't have any information about the booking process of business class flight. Then you would get all the details here in this post. All you need to follow the Delta airlines reservations steps to make business class flight bookings. So go thoroughly and perform the given steps.

How to Book Business Class Tickets on Delta Airlines?

• First and foremost, visit the website of Delta Airlines.
  
• On reaching the homepage of the website, choose the flight type and destinations for your Delta airlines reservations.
  
• Also, select the dates from the given calendar for departure and arrival.
  
• In addition, choose the number of passengers also you need to select the flight class (Business Class) and fare class to optimize the search and click on the Find Flights option.
  
• Thereafter, you will see the flight option for your destinations, choose a flight and click Continue.
  
• Further, you are required to fill in the passenger information .
  
• After that, you will see the payment option, by choosing a mode of transaction, you have to finish the payment by clicking the Complete Purchase option.
  

The moment you complete the purchase; you will get the confirmation on your email along with the booking reference number. This reference number will help you to access your flight later for check-in or managing the flight bookings.

Get Your Flight Booking Done on Delta Airlines Immediately

The above procedure of flight booking will surely help you to get flights on Delta Airlines that too without much of a stretch. On the off chance, you see any trouble during the booking process, you can get help from the experts at the delta airlines reservations support team. They offer around the clock and complete assistance for making flight reservations.


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Consul General of France, in Lagos, Mrs. Laurence Monmayrant, has stressed the need for Nigeria to improve on sectors like power, road and other infrastructure to make Nigeria a better place for businesses to thrive.

The consular, who commended the Nigerian government for reforms carried out by the Presidential Enabling Business Council (PEBC), said the country’s progression in the latest ease of doing business ranking is a good sign; adding that French companies are more willing to do business in Nigeria, whether for expectations or for investments.

Speaking at the Franco-Nigerian Chamber of Commerce and Industry (FNCCI), news conference, in Lagos, yesterday, Monmayrant said France-Nigeria relations have improved over the years, as Nigeria is the number one trade partner of France within the sub-Saharan African region, with trade figure of over €4 billion in 2018 from about €3.6 billion in 2017.

“We expect that 2019 would account for more as French companies continue to show interest in the Nigerian economy. The economic actors, which are Business France, AFD Propaco, FNCCI, the Economic section of the embassy have continued to engage and promote the Nigeria France relationship.”

According to her, the French Development Agency (AFD), since 2010, when it was setup in Nigeria, has financed over 30 projects with €1.5 billion in commitment, adding that President Emmanuel Macron’s visit to Nigeria in 2018, further reinforces the very strong bilateral relationship between both countries.

“Let me state that the Mouvement des Entreprises de France (MEDEF), who ranks today as the largest employer federation in France, will have a delegation visit Nigeria in the first week of December. The delegation will meet with key government functionaries and regulators in Nigeria with an objective to further promote Nigeria France business relationship.

“While we look at the growth of the France-Nigerian business relationship, you would agree with me that there is a lot to celebrate. That, I believe is the fundamental objective of the French week celebration holding in Lagos. This epic celebration will bring together business figures from France and Nigeria in an atmosphere at networking and business exchanges. I strongly believe the event will further enhance the relationship between France and Nigeria, as we are on the path to greater economic prosperity.

Economic Counsellor, French Embassy, Jan Gwenole, said France investments in Nigeria are worth about €9.4billion, saying that Nigeria is the second destination for French companies behind Morocco.”

He continued: “Nigeria is now the 23rd destination for French investment worldwide. It’s very interesting to mention that Nigeria is behind Hong Kong, and ahead of countries like Singapore or Canada, which deserve to be mentioned. We have today in Nigeria, more than 130 French companies locally-based, which is twice more than compared to 10 years ago, many of them are working on the strategic projects contributing to Nigeria infrastructure development and economic growth.

“As you know, in Africa, especially Nigeria, the migration to big cities is more and more important. Lagos for instance will probably be the first or the second most populated city in the world in 2050. So there is an urgent need to make the extension of the city more sustainable,” he said.

In his remarks, Chairman FNCCI, Eric Jeanneau, said the chamber is currently ranked as one of the most vibrant and dynamic bilateral business ecosystem in Nigeria.

This, he said, is premised on the fact that FNCCI work hand-in-hand with the economic department of the French Embassy, and in close partnership with France to help French companies establish in Nigeria.

guardian

Entrepreneurship is one of the factors of production; and the others are: land, labour, capital and technology. But the place of the entrepreneur is so critical that without him, the rest could practically lie fallow or may not even exist. His role is akin to that of a “net external force” in Isaac Newton’s First Law of Motion (in Physics), which says that “a body at rest tends to stay at rest…unless acted upon by a net external force.” This is to say that it is the ingenuity, vision, creativity and drive of the entrepreneur that puts the other factors of production to use, and through transformative processes, lead to industrialization. This has to happen in an enabling business environment anchored on a deliberate policy of the Government within the jurisdiction.

The industrial policy of government per time therefore provides the substratum or “pull factor”, among others, that moves the entrepreneur to bring his vision to reality, taking along all the risks. Let’s consider a bit of the Nigerian situation. In his Goodwill Message in a document titled “Industrial Policy of Nigeria” issued in 1988, the then President of the Manufacturers Association of Nigeria (MAN), Dr. Ismail Babatunde Jose had this to say: “For so long, industrial investors have been groping in the dark with no beacon to guide them. Most often, beautiful and viable investment projects embarked upon by investors have turned into failure because of frequent and unanticipated changes in government policies. Even where attempts have been made to chart a path and provide incentives, expectations have been frustrated by poor implementation.” Dr. Jose said further “…the procedures for setting up industries in the country have proved agonizingly tedious, involving as it were, a maze of regulations and permits that are administered by an array of slow and, often, indifferent bureaucratic machinery.” He however hoped that the document (Industrial Policy of Nigeria) would close a major void which had hampered industrial investment in the country, adding that private entrepreneurs would no doubt be forthcoming, if the climate was conducive.

In 2004, the National Economic Empowerment and Development Strategy (NEEDS) document observed that “overdependence on oil and traditional sectors, such as agriculture and services, is partly due to the hostile business environment,” stressing that “businesses wishing to operate in Nigeria face many constraints, including poor infrastructure, particularly road networks and electricity supply; inadequate physical security; corruption; weak enforcement of contracts, and the high cost of finance”. The document summed up that these factors have deterred foreign entrepreneurs from investing in Nigeria and induced many Nigerians to take their money and skills abroad. Unfortunately, fifteen years after these worrisome observations were made in the NEEDS document, the conditions have hardly improved.

However, government policies that are pivotal to entrepreneurship and industrialization are not all stories of woes. The communication policy that unleashed the Global System for Mobile Communication (GSM) in Nigeria in 2001, in all considerations, transformed not only the business landscape, but lives of the citizenry generally. From less than half a million connected telephone lines in 2001 in Nigeria, the number of active telephone lines in the country stands at over 175 million today; just as the number of Internet users has hit about 123 million (Nigeria Communications Commission, NCC, data). The revolutionary effect of all these on entrepreneurship and industrialization in Nigeria is really enormous. In Nigeria today, from the comfort of your bedroom, you can call and discuss with anybody in any part of the globe. So, you can run your “business at the speed of thought” as envisaged by Bill Gates.

The obverse side of this phenomenal development is that some businesses were put out of business; for example, most post offices and postal agencies across Nigeria are practically lying fallow today, with the buildings decrepit and overgrown by weeds. Many that went into ‘business-centre business,’ using fixed or landlines in the early days of the ‘telecom revolution’, soon went out of business, as virtually everyone got a mobile phone/line. Similarly, manufacturers and dealers in desktop computers have almost been driven out of business by those who produce more compact laptops, tablets and smart phones with wide-ranging functionalities.

Also, in the banking sector, the July 6, 2004 consolidation policy ended up making a revolutionary impact on the industry. In the policy, the minimum paid-up capital for banks was raised from Two Billion Naira to Twenty-five Billion Naira, with a deadline of 18 months (ending December 31, 2005) for each bank to meet the needed capital. By the close of the exercise, the number of banks had dropped to only 25, as against the 89 at the commencement of the consolidation.

The upside of the ‘revolution’ was that the 25 banks that emerged became ‘Mega Banks’, big enough to, either singly or in syndication, finance big ticket transactions in the country. Each of them commenced rapid branch network expansion, including setting up branches and wholly-owned subsidiaries offshore. In no time, most of them got listed among the “Top 1000 Banks” in the world by Financial Times of London. Also, many huge projects that hitherto depended on foreign/external funding got wholly financed by ‘local’ Nigerian banks. Thus, entrepreneurship and industrialization got some boost, as many local businesspeople and foreign investors took advantage of the new financial muscles of the banks.

However, on the downside, the consolidation saw the ‘death’ of some ‘financial empires’. Many entrepreneurial investors and shareholders literally lost their fortunes, as the number of banks shrank to only 25 within18 months. The multiplier effect of this reality also manifested in the bankruptcy of not a few businesses which had depended on the many ‘extinct banks.’ And for the next one decade or so (2005—2015), no new banks (especially Deposit Money Banks) were set up, either privately- or government-owned, because there was no more room for ‘starting small and growing big.’

However, it must be acknowledged that critical as the role of entrepreneurship is among the factors of production, technology remains a key driver of continuous change in every business environment. Again, the situation in the banking industry comes handy, where the use of financial technology (Fintech) has since put an end to ‘brick and mortar’ banking. Just as offices are going ‘paperless’, the entire Nigerian economy is going ‘cashless’.

Nobody carries bundles of bank notes any more, all the way from Onitsha (Anambra state) or Warri (Delta State) to Idumota (in Lagos) to buy some goods. Payment for such goods can now be made through Internet bankingand other e-channels, without the buyer travelling. Retail consumers of an assortment of goods nowadays procure them online, thereby boosting electronic commerce (e-commerce) within Nigeria and globally.

On the other hand, another victim of a changing business environment is the print media in Nigeria and elsewhere, where the ‘hard copy’ newspapers that we all know are badly hit, no thanks to the impact of information technology and/or social media. Almost everyone now reads the daily news online; more so, with what is now called “citizens journalism”. Virtually everyone today is a ‘journalist’ and a ‘photographer’ and in case of any incident, ‘live pictures’ are taken and in a matter of seconds, such pictures are made to go viral, with captions. And, although ICT makes newspaper production easier, but their ‘news’ are delayed. This is part of our changing business environment, where you read what is happening in every part of the world, almost ‘live’—minute-by-minute!

Without any doubt, ICT application in any business not only enhances efficiency of all processes, but also entrenches cost-effectiveness and good ‘bottom-line.’ Digital, as opposed to analogue has become the name of ‘the game’ in business. Every barrier is ‘pulled down’; and neither geography nor language poses limit or limitation to entrepreneurship anymore.

This is why the 21st century entrepreneur must, with all other attributes, possess above-average ICT-skills. Notwithstanding the traditional local constraints, such as poor infrastructure (as in Nigeria), leapfrogging digital opportunities and advantages remains a sure highway for an entrepreneur operating from wherever. The world is indeed, a ‘global village’, with barriers of distance and language already broken completely.

This is why whatever challenge is posed today by ‘Brexit’ in the UK, or President Donald Trump’s protectionist policies in the US, is impacting the entire world. For over three years (since June, 2016), the United Kingdom, following the outcome of a referendum, has been struggling to exit the European Union—where they have been a member for close to fifty years. Things have indeed gone awry in the UK, with two Prime Ministers (PMs) exiting in quick succession, and the incumbent facing very ‘cloudy days’ ahead. And for Trump of the US, his trade wars with China and others as well as anti-globalization stance, are fast defining a ‘New World Order’ that leaves the entire humanity in constant quandary.

And down here in Africa, the unfolding omen of the African Continental Free Trade Agreement (AfCFTA) on the entire continent is worrisome. In my article on this subject published in The Guardian(of Nigeria) on April 30, 2019, I said: “Already, the rising wave of nationalism and separatism across the African continent is manifesting in widespread xenophobic attacks, killings and looting of properties belonging to fellow Africans. Black Africans no longer want blacks from African countries on their soil. In South Africa, blacks from other countries of the continent are being killed in large numbers or pursued out of the country by ‘indigenous blacks’. In Ghana, on several occasions, Nigerians are being chased out of the country, and having their businesses destroyed by indigenous Ghanaians. In other countries such as Libya, Morocco, Sudan, etc., nationals of other African countries are being ‘bought and sold’ as slaves. Hardly is there a week that hordes of these Nigerian ‘slaves’ will not be repatriated and dumped at our major airports.” That my article is titled: ‘African Common Market, nationalism and xenophobia.’ The recent closure of Nigeria’s land borders has the capacity to worsen this already tension-soaked regional investment climate.

Globally, these uncertain business environments are further being complicated by the import of the ‘Fourth Industrial Revolution’ as adumbrated by Professor Schwab of the World Economic Forum. We already have with us some disruptive technologies and trends such as the Internet of Things (IoT), robotics, virtual reality (VR) and artificial intelligence (AI). With all these, and in all these, however, the entrepreneur, the ‘risk taker’, the inventor or innovator remains the pivot around which the industrialization process revolves. After all, technology, no matter the sophistication or complexity, is a creation of man.

Okeke, an economic analyst, lives in Lagos.

guardian

The rate at which many Nigerians are resorting to taking their own lives is appalling and utterly worrisome. Just as if the nation has suddenly entered the Era of suicide, news-making bold headlines in recent times is that of people who have hanged themselves, some leaving suicide notes behind while some never felt any compulsion for such.
While many adopt the old style of hanging themselves with their bodies dangling from the ceilings, a novel method of drinking some pest control liquid substance called sniper is fast gaining ground. The preponderance of such sad episodes in the nation’s history raises a lot of questions because before now, the popular belief was that the average Nigerian loves life and is never ready to die.

Such belief is advanced as the main reason why the people have never been known to be courageous enough to challenge successive bad governance to which they have been subjected since independence. So to a school of thought, the fact that Nigerians continue to tolerate whatever humiliation they face is a clear indication that they prefer suffering under whatever bad leader to putting up a protest that may lead to some forms of punishment or even death.

But the new trend where suicide seems to be in vogue tends to debunk the old thinking and shows more and more that many people may no longer consider the world as a place to stay by all means. Many are ready to die at the slightest provocation or because of problems that ordinarily are not known to defy solutions.

Indeed the world is passing through a phase that is quite difficult to understand. Many are losing interest in confiding in other people maybe because of the disappointment they had experienced and felt that there was nobody else to trust. Another problem is absence of people who are genuinely ready to offer some form of assistance to those in dire need of help. The usual belief by most people that rendering help can backfire or boomerang has led to a situation where people see their neighbors in deep suffering and simply look the other way.

The first response to suicide will always be that it is a result of bad governance and the harsh economic downturn the effects of which are being felt by everybody but mostly the poor. But if some of the reasons given in some of the suicide notes are anything to go by, then there appears to be more than meets the eye. How for instance does one explain a situation where someone decides to kill himself or herself just because of being jilted by an erstwhile lover? Or someone having a carryover in one of her courses in the university and then feels the next action to take is to end it all? Well, maybe it is difficult to exonerate the present-day government from the total loss of hope resulting in many people taking shocking decisions. Gone are the days when governance was about bringing happiness to the greatest number of people. Everything now revolves around those in government and their cronies while others are simply on their own.

Another tragedy that has hit Nigeria is that succour no longer exists in religious houses. Indeed in the modern age in Nigeria, all the religious or places of worship tend to do is promote fraud by honoring only the rich while ignoring the plight of the poor in their midst.

In the past, the popular injunction of being one’s brother’s keeper was upheld by worshippers and most of the well to do within the fold readily lent a helping hand to the needy. In modern times, the mad rush for wealth has overtaken every aspect of the houses of God. While even poor worshippers are continually cajoled into parting with whatever they have, there is usually little or no response whenever any of the poor members have any challenges. Again, most of the sermons often center around posterity which continually sends wrong signals to the youth many who are made to believe that not being rich at a certain age is a curse.

Worst still, no encouragement is coming from entertainment either. Sports, when provided some forms of hope for the youth, is not given the attention it deserves in the country. In the absence of local tournaments, sports lovers then pitch their tent with various foreign teams. The fanaticism that attends support for foreign teams has led to the death of some fans. Youth who follow all foreign matches and players readily know the worth of each player and the best paying teams. Being aware of how much footballers who are their age mates make weekly sometimes push some youth either into crimes or depression. To add insult to injury, all the lyrics of modern music are all about wealth and luxury.

In the past, there were artists who through their music cautioned the people about life and the need to keep hope alive no matter the circumstances under which one found himself. But with the absence of such encouragement through music, the downtrodden no longer have anywhere to turn and the next option for some is to decide to end it all.

guardian

The Centre for the Vulnerable and Underprivileged, CENTREP, in Delta State on Wednesday, said the “Hate Speech Bill” by members of the National Assembly, which proposes death sentences for offenders is “draconic”

Executive Director, Mr. Oghenejabor Ikimi Esq, who made the assertion in a telephone chat with DAILY POST, said some key cabinet members of President Muhammadu Buhari would not have been alive by now if such law was in existence before 2015.

Ikimi, a human rights activist said many of the senators and politicians in this present dispensation would have been hanged had Hate Speech Bill been passed into law since 2011/2012.

The legal practitioner stressed that, “They would have been dead by now. They’re the ones spreading hate speeches.”

Ikimi said the Hate Speech Bill is to silence opposition activists who are saying the truth and that’s why we are going to kick against it. The Hate Speech Bill is similar to Decree No.4.”

Ikimi said if they want the country to move forward, they should make corruption a death sentence and not hate speech.

According to Ikimi, “They want to use the bill to cage quality criticisms. It is madness. It will not solve problems of this country.

“There is corruption, looting of our resources, looting of our common wealth.

” The looting has resulted to insecurity in this country. It is the offshoot of the looting by politicians that caused the insecurity.

“Let their laws address these critical problems. Lai Mohammed, Rotimi Amaechi, Senate President, Deputy Senate President would not have been alive had the Bill been in existence.

“The Bill is against the masses. It is not pro-people. They just want to silent the masses.”

dailypost

A prominent civil rights advocacy group, Human Rights Writers Association of Nigeria, HURIWA, on Wednesday, insisted that the senate and the Presidency have rigged the Saturday’s governorship election in favour of the All Progressives Congress, APC.

HURIWA made the claim while lambasting the Senate President, Ahmed Lawan, for approving what it termed the N10 billion presidency’s largesse to Kogi State just few days to the election.

It wondered why only three days to the governorship election in Kogi State, the Senate went on to approve promissory notes and bond issuance of N10.069 billion to the state as a refund for projects executed on behalf of the federal government.

The approval on Wednesday was criticized by opposition lawmakers who asked that the approval be delayed till after the election.

The rights group said by delaying the release of the cash till the final hours to the election in which the All Progressives Congress incumbent Governor Alhaji Yahaya Bello is facing stiff opposition from the Peoples Democratic Party’s Musa Wada and SDP’s Miss Natasha Akpoti, the APC and President Muhammadu Buhari have inevitably interfered in the Kogi governorship poll in an unlawful way.

In a statement by the National Coordinator Comrade Emmanuel Onwubiko, HURIWA stated that aside the last minute’s interference by both the presidency and the Senate, the current hierarchy of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) has become “irredeemably damaged by the credibility crises occasioned by the compromised and unethical conduct of the 2019 general elections which generated over one thousand post-election litigation.”

HURIWA stated, “emphatically that there is now no level playing field for all the contestants because of the heavy financial inducements that may be occasioned by the late release of the huge N10 billion campaign largesse packaged dubiously as Federal government’s refund to Kogi State.”

The civil rights advocacy group argued that “ab initio there is no empirical evidence to support any claim that the administration of Yahaya Bello in the last four years executed any federal government’s projects within the state to justify the dubious refund from the Federal government of Muhammadu Buhari.”

The statement reads: “We absolutely condemn the senator Ahmed Lawan – led National Assembly for orchestrating the worst case of abuse of power which is what the approval of the N10 billion payment to an incumbent governor of same political affiliation facing a tough election, represents.

“We condemn once more the presidency for even coming up with such a dubious idea to reward the Kogi state governor who is yet to pay civil servants and teachers in Kogi state in the last four years with over a dozen of these unfortunate citizens committing suicide or collapsing to their deaths due to Kogi state government’s induced poverty, deprivation, want and impoverishment unleashed on Kogi working class. We do not repose any hope and trust on INEC to conduct a free and fair poll because it is not in the DNA of the current INEC to conduct transparent election.

“It would be recalled as we earlier stated Kogi, like the Senate and the federal government, is controlled by the All Progressives Congress (APC).The approval was a sequel to the adoption of the report of the Senate Committee on Local and Foreign Debts, which considered the promissory note programme and a bond issuance to settle inherited local debts and contractual obligations on the refund to state governments for projects executed on behalf of the federal government.

“This is a coup attempt against the people of Kogi state by the APC dominated Senate and the Presidency. We urge Kogi people not to mortgage their state to the whims and caprices of cash for votes bandits parading around in the Country as politicians especially the species that have direct access to the Presidency that is heavily partisan and sectional,” the statement added.

dailypost

The Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) in Edo state has expelled its former governorship candidate, Pastor Osagie Ize-Iyamu.

This was disclosed in a statement by the Publicity Secretary of the party, Chris Nehikhare .

Ize-Iyamu was expelled following his refusal to confirm or refute his rumoured defection to the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC).

He has been expelled from participating in any PDP related activities with immediate effect.

Nehikhare explained the expulsion will remain until Ize-Iyamu “acknowledges, accepts and addresses the issue of his decamping to APC.”

The statement reads: “In the last few days, the Edo State PDP has been inundated with calls and enquiries regarding the stories trending both in print and social media as it concerns one of our leaders, Pastor Osagie Ize-Iyamu.

“The party leadership has patiently waited to hear or read his reaction to confirm or deny the stories, but to no avail.

“We boast of being a party of men and women of integrity and high moral standing. It is a brand we have earned and wish to maintain.

“As a result of the “uneasy quiet” from our dear pastor and the impression our silence will send to our teeming supporters and followers, Edo PDP is left with no option but to announce the EXCLUSION of Pastor Osagie Ize-Iyamu from all PDP related activities with immediate effect, until he Acknowledges, Accepts and Addresses the issue of his decamping to APC.

“This decision has been taken without prejudice!”

dailypost

The All Progressives Congress (APC) in Edo State has suspended its national chairman, Adams Oshiomhole.

The State chairman, Anselm Ojezua, who made this known in a statement on a Tuesday night said
Oshiomhole‘s suspsension followed the vote of no confidence passed on him by the chairmen of the APC in the 18 local government areas (LGAs) of the state.

Recall that of the Deputy State Chairman of the APC in Edo State, Kenneth Asekomhe was earlier on Tuesday quoted as saying, “After the meeting of the State Executive Committee, in pursuant of Article 17, Section 5 of APC constitution of 2014, as amended, we the undersigned members passed a vote of no confidence on the State Secretary of the party, Mr Lawrence Okah. He is hereby removed from office.

“The committee also passed a vote of confidence on the State Chairman of APC, Mr Anselm Ojezua.

”The APC chairmen in the 18 LGAs of the state also reaffirmed their support for the second term bid of Governor Godwin Obaseki on account of his developmental strides.

”The chairmen passed a vote of no confidence on the National Chairman of the APC, Comrade Adams Oshiomhole.”

The statement reads, “Consequent on the development, the State Executive Committee has adopted the vote of no confidence passed on him and the subsisting suspension order from the organs of the party in the state.

“Comrade Adams Oshiomhole is the one behind the crisis in Edo APC. We have passed a vote of no confidence on him and he stands suspended from the party.”

“We don’t want what happened in Zamfara State or other parts of the country to happen in Edo State,” the Nation reports.

guardian

The Senate has reintroduced a bill it abandoned under pressure last year through which it sought to impose the death penalty on “any person found guilty of any form of hate speech that results in the death of another person.”
The upper legislative chamber was last year forced to drop its first attempt to enact the law, following massive public outcry that ensued after The Guardian, in March 2018, exclusively reported that the lawmakers were desperate to pass the bill.

Tagged “National Commission For the Prohibition of Hate Speeches”, the bill is sponsored by the Deputy Chief Whip of the Senate, Abdullahi Aliu Sabi (APC, Niger State).

It was the 12th item on the Order Paper yesterday and was granted automatic first reading on the floor of the Senate.

The death penalty is the most severe punishment provided by the bill which defines hate speech as a comment that insults people for their religion, ethnic and linguistic affiliation, among others.

It stipulates: “Any person who commits an offence under this section shall be liable to life imprisonment and where the act causes any loss of life, the person shall be punished with death by hanging.”

On offences like harassment on the basis of ethnicity, racial contempt, the bill proposes not less than five-year jail term or a fine of not less than N10 million or both.

“A person who uses, publishes, presents, produces, plays, provides, distributes and /or directs the performance of, any material, written and/or visual which is threatening, abusive or insulting or involves the use of threatening, abusive or insulting words or behaviour commits an offence if such a person intends thereby to stir up ethnic hatred, or having regard to all the circumstances, ethnic hatred is likely to be stirred up against any person or person from such an ethnic group in Nigeria.”

According to the bill, “Conduct shall be regarded as having the effect specified in subsection (1)(a) or (b) of this Section if, having regard to all the circumstances, including in particular the perception of that other person, it should reasonably be considered as having that effect.

“A person who subjects another to harassment on the basis of ethnicity commits an offence and shall be liable on conviction to an imprisonment fora term not less than five years, or to a fine of not less than ten million naira, or to both.”

The bill, according to its sponsor, is aimed at ensuring the elimination of all forms of hate speeches; promoting the elimination of all forms of hate speeches against persons or ethnic groups; as well as advising the Federal Government on the matter.

Other situations which the bill condemns are when “a person subjects another to harassment on the basis of ethnicity for the purposes of this Section where, on ethnic grounds, he unjustifiably engages in a conduct which has the purpose or effect of violating that other person’s dignity; or creating an intimidating, degrading, hostile, humiliating or offensive environment for the person subjected to the harassment.”

The commission will be headed by an executive chairperson to be appointed by the President on the recommendation of the National Council of State, subject to the confirmation of at least two-thirds majority of the National Assembly.

Other functions of the commission include discouraging persons, institutions, political parties and associations from advocating or promoting discrimination or discriminatory practices through the use of hate speeches; promoting tolerance, understanding and acceptance of diversity in all aspects of national life and encouraging full participation by all ethnic communities in social, economic, cultural and political life of other communities.

It is also to plan, supervise, coordinate and promote educational and training programmes to create public awareness, support, and advancement of peace and harmony among ethnic communities and racial groups.

But the planned law is already eliciting criticism from some quarters.

Former vice president and presidential candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) in the February 23, election, Atiku Abubakar, cautioned the Senate against promulgating the anti-hate speech bill into law.

In a statement by his media Adviser, Paul Ibe, yesterday evening, Atiku noted that those now toying with the idea of an anti-hate speech bill, with punishment by death should exercise much caution.

“The contemplation of such laws is in itself not just hate speech, but an abuse of the legislative process that will violate Nigerians’ constitutionally guaranteed right to freedom of speech.

“Those behind the bill should wake up to the fact that Nigeria’s democracy has survived its longest incarnation because those who governed this great nation between 1999 and 2015 never toyed with this most fundamental of freedoms. It is prudent to build upon the tolerance inherited from those years and not shrink the democratic space to satisfy personal and group interests” he advised.”

Chieftains of two socio-cultural groups particularly kicked against the plan to establish an agency for hate speech.

They urged Nigerians to resist every attempt by the Senate to aid the enclosure of the open space and turn Nigeria to a full-blown dictatorship.

Specifically, Yinka Odumakin, spokesman of the pan-Yoruba socio-cultural organization, Afenifere, said the Senate was aiding and abetting full-grown dictatorship in the country by wanting to take away the right of speech.

“The Senate is now behaving truly like a rubber stamp assembly. Of all the problems confronting Nigeria today, all they can be doing is to be thinking of establishing an agency for hate speech and the death penalty for offenders.

“What constitutes hate speech? It is a subjective interpretation according to the whims and caprices of those in power, so all they are trying to do with this bill is to cow people to submission and propose for execution those who disagree with the way the country is being run.

“The way our Senate is doing is making many of us who fought for democracy to ask: what did we fight against in the military rule that we are not witnessing in Nigeria today, especially with this kind of bill by the senate? Nigerians should resist this attempt to turn the country to a full-blown dictatorship.”

A Second Republic politician and chieftain of the Igbo socio-cultural group, Ohanaeze, Chief Guy Ikokwu, told The Guardian in a telephone interview that the law of libel and defamation was enough to handle hate speeches.

“They should define what hate speech means and judge themselves if they have never hated anyone in their lives and if they were found guilty. They should be the first to judge themselves.

“Our law of libel and defamation of character is very clear, so why would they want to fund an agency and even go ahead executing people.

“The law is enough under the dispensation of the rule of law and liberal development. Our laws guarantee freedom of expression, the Senate cannot make any law outside the constitution. We are not under a military regime, we are in a federal republic. If they want anarchy instead of liberal democracy, they should pass the bill and let everyone know where the country stands. This is getting too much, we cannot continue like this.”

A senior advocate of Nigeria, Chief Mike Ozekhome, said: “A bill sponsored by Senator Aliyu Sabi, who incidentally was the spokesman for the Senate in the 8th National Assembly, is said to have passed the first reading. Part of the bizarre provisions in the said bill is the prescription of death penalty for makers of hate speech. What is hate speech by the way and who defines it? What is the true test of determining it? Is the test that of a government in power or that of the traumatised people or that of the National Assembly or the courts or the executive? Just who?

“I have not yet had the opportunity to read the bill and so do not yet have the details of this unusual bill seeking the death penalty (by hanging) on alleged hate speech. I pray this provision is not true. I pray it is a mere moonlight tale.

“This bill should be deleted immediately. It should immediately be aborted and killed as a malformed embryo at its second reading gestation stage before it is allowed to be delivered as a societal monster. I quickly warn that this maverick and intolerant government cannot be trusted by any sane person to fairly operate such a draconian piece of legislation introduced under a law that carries the death penalty for alleged hate speech.”

Ozekhome further queried: “When has merely made a speech under section 39 of the 1999 Constitution which guarantees freedom of expression become, not just treasonable felony (life imprisonment) but treason itself that is punishable with death?

“Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights guarantees freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers. Nigeria is a signatory to this international instrument.”

According to the senior lawyer, “Article 9 of the African Charter on Human and Peoples Rights, also domesticated in Nigeria, reinforces this inalienable freedom that the NASS is attempting to derobe and destroy. The bill is an ill-intentioned, ill-conceived, ill-digested and dictatorial and absolutist piece of nonsensical legislation waiting to consume all of us.

“An obnoxious law such as this will further drive underground and into hiding, the opposition and genuine social critics who speak truth to power and criticise serial, opaque, anti-people, corrupt and high-handed polices of government. This government has been tested and known to be very allergic to constructive criticism.”

To him, “this is a government that listens to itself, sets its own examination questions, marks them by itself and awards marks to itself. Citizens’ opinion does not matter. That is why we have topmost government officials who shock the conscience of Nigerians and the world by saying, for example, that insecurity in Nigeria was exaggerated and that Nigerian roads were not as bad as we ‘falsely’ proclaimed. A government that incarcerates the Deji Adeyanjus, Omoyele Sowores and Chido Onumas of this world cannot be trusted to be a custodian and dispenser of justice under such an abhorrent law.”

Human rights lawyer, Chief Malcom Omirhobo, said: “The Senate introduction of a bill seeking to establish a Federal Government agency to check hate speech in the country shows how idle our lawmakers are and how they are prepared to waste public funds at the slightest opportunity.

“For crying out loud, we have enough agencies and laws in Nigeria to take care of hate speech. Our problem is not the availability of laws or agencies but the implementation and enforcement of the laws by the existing agencies.

“For whatever it is worth, the Senate had better know that the Nigerian constitution has a binding force on them and that any law they pass that is inconsistent with the provisions of the Nigerian constitution that guarantees freedom of speech and expression will be null and void to the extent of that inconsistency. We will not sit down mopping, we will challenge and resist it.”

A Kano-based lawyer, Abubakar Sani, however, said: “Much concern has been expressed about the prospect of curbing freedom of speech and expression by such a law, if enacted. The National Assembly has got that power because that fundamental right is not absolute, as it can be derogated from under Section 45 of the constitution. The only thing is that, if made by the National Assembly, it will be limited to Abuja in scope. Beyond the FCT, only state houses of Assembly are competent to enact such legislation. But, the key thing is that the right to freedom of speech is not absolute. It stops where the rights of others to their reputations start. “

guardian

A former Minister of Aviation, Femi Fani-Kayode, has reacted to the hate speech bill sponsored by
Senator Sabi Abdullahi on Tuesday

DAILY POST had reported that Senator Sabi Abdullahi representing Niger North Senatorial district on Tuesday sponsored a private bill to tackle hate speeches and other social media related contents, considered antagonistic to the interest of the Nigerian society.

The lawmaker, who was Senate Spokesman in the 8th Senate and now Deputy Chief Whip wants the National Assembly to establish a Commission with administrative structures to deal with hate speeches in Nigeria.

The bill titled: “National Commission for the Prohibition of Hate Speeches (Est., etc) bill, 2019 (SB. 154)” passed its first reading on Tuesday.

Reacting, Fani-Kayode on his Twitter page described the bill as “perverse sham and aberration seeking to silence opposition.”

He also accused the Buhari-led government of
planning to establish a totalitarian fascist state in Nigeria.

Fani-Kayode tweeted, “The #Antisocialmediabill is a perverse sham and aberration that seeks to stiffle opposing voices.@MBuhari wants everyone to be silent and to bow before him.He wants us all to be spineless cowards and quislings like his dogs @ProfOsinbajo and @FemAdesina. This will NEVER happen.

“They want to hang people for so-called hate speech and they want to regulate social media. These people are worse than Hitler’s Nazis and they seek to establish a totalitarian fascist state. After they silence everyone they will set up Nazi concentration camps for their enemies.

“If you want Nigeria to be like North Korea keep playing the fool. Support the death penalty for free speech and support the regulation of social media. Do so just to please Buhari and his cabal. By the time they come for you & yours there will be no-one left alive to defend you.”

dailypost

The five-day ultimatum issued to the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) to tackle illegal deductions by telecom operators and reduce the price of data is a welcome development, though belated. The Minister of Communications and Digital Economy, Isa Pantami, rightly moved to rein in the telecom operators, having received a pinch of a biting reality. There is no doubt that the operators of our general system of mobile (GSM) telecommunication have pushed their luck too far and their greed too hard not to draw the anger of a responsible regulator.
 
Since the dawn of the 21st Century and attendant innovations in Internet and digitalisation nurtured by digitisation, access to data has become synonymous with life globally. Every modern and information technology revolves around data. Nigeria is not an exception in the disruptive order. The most populous black nation on earth with the most vibrant youth population is fast and freely latching on to the digital world and its opportunities. By 2019, Nigeria has emerged the seventh highest Internet subscriber, ahead of Russia and Germany.
Findings have shown that there are over 110 million monthly subscribers in the country alone. Meanwhile, about 81 per cent of Internet traffic comes from mobile devices to support almost six million Twitter accounts and 5.7 million Instagram users in the country. The recent visits of Facebook and Twitter chief executive officers to Nigeria said as much about the importance of Nigeria to the global digital economy. What’s more, it is for this reality that even the name of the ministry in charge of this critical sector had to be changed recently to reflect this globalisation force. It is now Ministry of Communication and Digital Economy. 

But what have the consumers been getting in return? Something in the neighbourhood of epileptic supply and sheer rip-off by the operators. Clearly, every innovation has its teething stages. But strangely, telecom services in Nigeria have retained a crawling position contrary to perfected models in neighbouring African countries. At industry average of five to 10 megabytes (MB) per second, Internet access in many parts of the country performs even poorer with abysmally snail-pace data that burn faster than the expiry date. Meanwhile, the country sits on submarine cables with capacity to deliver 32.8 terabits-per-second of data.
 
More disturbing is that Nigerian users pay some of the most expensive data subscriptions per average income in the world. Mobile subscription of 1GB at N2000 a month readily costs 11 per cent of N18, 000 minimum wage or 6.6 per cent of the proposed N30, 000 benchmark. Some subscribers pay as much as N5, 000 for data that last only a couple of days. At any rate, the cost overshoots the concept of affordable data, which Alliance for Affordable Internet (A4AI) says should not cost more than two per cent of monthly income. Therefore, it amounts to double jeopardy to pay so highly for services that are not up to scratch, coupled with hidden reckless charges that have become a pastime among the operators.
 
It is against the backdrop of this daylight robbery that Pantami took up the gauntlet and for once, expressed the sentiments of longsuffering consumers. “The complaints from Nigerians are beyond what I can handle as it is today. People are complaining and it happened to me. You load your data but you barely use 20 per cent of it and the entire data is wiped off,” the minister said, as he gave five-working days ultimatum to NCC board to review the perennial infractions. 
 
He mentioned, and rightly too, the infrastructural challenges facing the operators, such as the preponderance of vandalism and Right of Way (RoW). Not mentioned, however, are the issues of multiple charges numbering over 40 that are levied on the operators. Others are irregular power supplies, blackouts, brownouts and high cost of diesel to keep the base stations running. These are all speed-bumps over which the operators have laid claims and should not be ignored. Yet, the operating environment does not justify poor services and overbearing effects on the consumers.
 
As a rule of thumb, whatever is of use can as well be abused. It is with this foresight that the Act of Assembly, which sets up the NCC made clear provisions of regulatory responsibilities. The organic role of the regulator is to protect the consumers and regulate the commercial interest of profit-seeking investors. At least, three sections of the Act are dedicated to consumer protection and quality of services. Section 104, for instance, mandates all service providers to (a) meet such minimum standards of quality of service as the commission may from time to time specify and publish; (b) deal reasonably with consumers and © adequately address consumer complaints. Section 105 (1) directs that, “the commission may use any of its powers under this Act in the resolution of complaints received from consumers in relation to matters of customer service and consumer protection including but not limited to quality of service or the failure by a licensee to comply with a consumer code prepared under this Chapter.” Similarly, the Federal Competition and Consumer Protection Act (FCCPA) 2019, seeks to protect the consumers in like manner. So, in principle, the consumer is protected, but not so in reality. 
 
Indeed, it is shocking and curiously so that the NCC had to be given a marching order to live up to its responsibilities to the Nigerian State. It smacks of dereliction of duty to have teeming consumers, the minister and senators inclusive, agonise about quality of service for years without a respite. The NCC should be told in clear terms that it has failed the people in this customer-centric business.    

Doubtless, the NCC board has the mandate of a regulator and must stop behaving like an operator in the industry. For how long would the NCC continue to push for higher charges for poor services? For how long too would NCC officials continue to stand as attorneys for operators to justify decrepit services and not how to ameliorate the pains of consumers? The image and perception of NCC are important. The moral question of its former Executive Vice Chairman and CEO cross-carpeting into the fold of operators is not lost on anyone. Under his watch at NCC did the operators, including the one he currently heads as chairman, get their licences. Such an inelegant dramatic turnaround that blurs the line between a regulator and operator will only earn the NCC more suspicions than a public trust.  
 
Apparently, the commission needs to tidy up its acts, be more transparent and for once represent the yearnings of the consumers for quality data services at a reasonable cost. The public demands value for money, wherever it is possible. Telecommunication firms should not continue to take Nigerians for granted. It also behoves on the authorities to prioritise Internet Service Provider (ISP) start-ups and support them to grow, as they take more efficient Internet services beyond phones to unlimited access in homes and at affordable rates.
 
It is a known fact that people-oriented reforms don’t happen overnight in Nigeria. But this one is a matter of urgent national importance. It is about common good. The new minister, who should be commended for his resourcefulness and proactivity, has given an order that the NCC board and telecom operators should not disrespect in public interest. 

guardian

The Court of Appeal sitting in Ibadan yesterday set aside the tribunal judgment that upheld Governor Seyi Makinde’s election last month, but declared that the election could not be nullified. The judgment has left many confused as supporters of both the All Progressives Congress (APC) and the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) trooped to the streets claiming victory.

The APC candidate, Chief Adebayo Adelabu, had challenged Makinde’s victory but the tribunal dismissed Adelabu’s case and upheld Makinde’s victory. Rather than dismiss the petitioner’s case or sack the incumbent governor, the Appeal Court judges said if not for the time limit, they would have ordered a retrial.

A source disclosed that Adelabu’s lawyers were already preparing to head for the Supreme Court for the interpretation of the judgement. Reacting to the judgment, a legal practitioner, Musibau Adetunbi, said: “It is not a victory for either of the parties. Certainly, it is going to lead to appeal and cross-appeal.”

Another legal practitioner, Mr. Fatai Akinsanmi, said the court ought to have evaluated the facts before delivering the judgment.“The Court of Appeal is of the opinion that there was miscarriage of justice at the tribunal while the appellant’s right to fair hearing was also breached and thus dismissed the tribunal judgement, but because of statute of limitations cannot order retrial or another election. The implication of this is that Makinde tenure continues until Adelabu approaches Supreme Court for further interpretation.

“I am of the opinion that the Court of Appeal ought to have evaluated the facts that led to the miscarriage of justice via a provision of the law and make a definite pronouncement,” Akinsanmi stated.But the APC in Oyo State lauded the court over its ruling, saying it reaffirmed its strong belief in the judiciary being the pillar of hope for the sustenance of democracy.

The Assistant Publicity Secretary of the party, Ayobami Adejumo, in a statement said: “The Court of Appeal found that the judgment of the lower tribunal which dismissed the petition of the APC’s candidate, Adelabu, challenging the election of Makinde as the governor of Oyo State in the election held on 9th March 2019 was perverse and, therefore, set it aside”.

But he expressed regret that “the good people of the state would still have to wait for the final adjudication on the case before the APC’s candidate could reclaim his mandate.“The verdict given on Monday was unambiguous, apt and sound enough to convince any informed mind about the genuineness of our claim that Makinde’s declaration as the winner of the March 9 poll was done by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) in error.”

Also yesterday, the Court of Appeal in Ibadan, dismissed the case brought before it by the candidate of the Allied Peoples Movement (APM), Abdulkabir Akinlade, against the election of the APC candidate, Dapo Abiodun, as governor of Ogun State.

Reading the lead judgment, Justice Muhammed Ambi-Usi Danjuma declared that the ten grounds filed by the APM challenging the victory of Abiodun had no merit and that the two respondents were overruled because of lack of merit.“The respective objections raised by the two respondents are overruled and the motions have no remit, answers to them are sustained and the two motions are dismissed,” the court ruled.

In his reaction, the state chairman of the APC, Chief Yemi Sanusi, said that the judgment had said it all.“The judgment says it all. In this part of the world, nobody accepts defeat. We will not be surprised if they move from here to the Supreme Court and we are ready. Anytime they want to see us, they will meet us there,” he said.

The lead counsel to the APC and the governor, Wale Habeeb Ajayi, appreciated the court for delivering the judgment in good time. He said the judgment had shown that Abiodun was declared the governor of Ogun State by lawful votes.In his reaction, Makinde declared that the mandate of the people of Oyo State given to him through the March 9, 2019, remained intact.

In a statement by his Chief Press Secretary, Mr. Taiwo Adisa, Makinde declared that the mandate given to him by the people of Oyo State could not be taken through the backdoor.The statement read: “There is no ambiguity as to the state of things in our Pacesetter State as far as the election of March 9, 2019, is concerned. Our party, the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) won the election.

“The victory was reaffirmed by a ruling of the Election Petitions Tribunal, sitting in Ibadan, the state capital.
“On Monday, the Court of Appeal, also sitting in Ibadan, delivered its judgement on the appeal by the candidate of the All Progressives Congress (APC), Adebayo Adelabu.

“In its ruling, the Appeal Court refused to grant any of the three key reliefs sought by the APC candidate.“The court refused to nullify the election; it refused to order a fresh election and it also refused to order the retrial of the petition.“With the above being the reality of the outcome of the Appeal Court ruling, the election of Engineer Seyi Makinde as the Governor of Oyo State has just been reaffirmed.

“There is nothing in the Appeal Court’s ruling that affects the returns made by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) and there is nothing that tampers with the mandate freely given to Engineer Seyi Makinde by the people of Oyo State.”

The statement added: “Governor Makinde hereby urges the good people of Oyo State to remain calm and refuse to be provoked by agents of disruption who are seeking to upturn the truth, which remains constant against all odds.
“We also wish to enjoin the people of Oyo State to ignore the doctored reports in some media outlets, which are merely quoting the judgement of the Court of Appeal out of context.“With a clear margin of Makinde’s 515,621 votes to Adelabu’s 357,982 votes, the preference of the people of Oyo State is as clear as day and night.”

While reassuring the people of Oyo State that he could not be deterred from taking the state to greater heights through the implementation of his four-point service agenda, Governor Makinde insisted that positive governance and unprecedented development will continue to be the portion of the people of Oyo state through his tenure.

guardian

Reno Omokri, a former aide of ex-president Goodluck Jonathan, says Femi Otedola, entrepreneur, has done what northern billionaires failed to do.

On Sunday, Otedola made a donation of N5 billion naira to Save the Children, a UK-based charity, to support the organisation’s intervention in the north-east.

Arguably the largest individual donation to charity in Nigeria’s history, Otedola made the donation to the organisation, through Cuppy Foundation, a non-profit organisation founded by his daughter, Florence Otedola (aka DJ Cuppy).

DJ Cuppy is a board ambassador for Save the Children and a member of the organisation’s Africa advisory board.

Reacting via Twitter, Omokri said northern billionaires would rather display their wealth in the midst of poverty instead of helping the poor in their region.

“Where are the Ndimis, Mai Deribes? They are in private jets marrying President’s children,” he tweeted.

“Displaying wealth while surrounded by poverty. It took a Good Samaritan stranger to do what the Northeast natives failed to do!”

Otedola has in the past donated to good causes.

He recently made life-saving interventions by footing the medical bills of Christian Chukwu, former coach of Super Eagles; Peter Fregene, former international goalkeeper; Majek Fashek, celebrated Reggae artiste as well as Sadiq Daba and Victor Olaotan, veteran actors.

thecable

A former Minister of Aviation, Femi Fani-Kayode, has revealed how Muslims from the Northern region plan to hold on to power in the Aso Rock Villa for the next 20 years.

President Muhammadu Buhari, who defeated another Northerner, Alhaji Atiku Abubakar, in the 2019 presidential election, will be completing his tenure in 2023.

Fani-Kayode believes that Buhari will handover to someone who is a Muslim from the North East after his tenure.

According to the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, chieftain, 8 years will go to another Muslim politician from the North Central.

The former Minister tweeted on Monday night, “There is a possibility that, if care is not taken and if all the voices of the opposition are successfully cowed and silenced, that the Muslim north may retain power for the next 20 years.

“4 years left for Buhari, 8 years for a NE [North East] Muslim and 8 years for a NC [North Central] Muslim.That is their plan.”

In an earlier tweet, Fani-Kayode had said that Buhari has no third term agenda but would push the “Northern agenda.”
He said this in reaction to activist lawyer, Femi Falana’s recent suggestion that Buhari has a third term agenda.

dailypost