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http://ift.tt/2rtzntA Barcelona's Argentinian forward Lionel Messi celebrates a goal during the UEFA Champions League football match FC Barcelona vs Manchester City at the Camp Nou stadium in Barcelona on October 19, 2016. / AFP PHOTO / PAU BARRENA Barcelona fans have many more years to enjoy Lionel Messi, assured outgoing coach Luis Enrique after the Argentine handed his boss a successful send-off in a 3-1 Copa del Rey final win over Alaves. Messi opened the scoring and helped set up goals from Neymar and Paco Alcacer just before half-time as Alaves slumped to defeat in their first Spanish Cup final despite Theo Hernandez’s stunning free-kick to level at 1-1. “He is extraordinary, an extraterrestrial,” Enrique said of Messi after he lifted his 30th trophy at Barca a month ahead of his 30th birthday. “To be the number one you don’t just have to be the chosen one in all the technical aspects of the game, but you have to be very strong physically. “Leo Messi is a very st...

http://ift.tt/eA8V8J By Clement Udegbe Accept the challenges, so that you may feel the exhilaration of victory. — General George .S. Patton. A DESPERATE situation they say, often demands for desperate action to be resolved, but Nigeria has continued to avoid the desperation of the challenges of the Fulani herdsmen, which in 2014 was named the fourth deadliest terrorist group in the world by the Global Terrorism Index. What started initially as sporadic crises or clashes between farmers and the Fulani cattle rearers continued to develop in style and spread, and even though this crisis is getting worse, there’s almost no coverage in the international media, or it’s misattributed “clashes” between farmers and herders for scarce resources. The Fulani herdsmen, a predominantly Muslim group, have no green lands, and green grasses for their cattle. Thus, they chose to fight, kill and take over farm lands through violence.While our government looked the other way. Herdsmen metamorpho...

http://ift.tt/2qaOdBP One of the unpainted buses The Lagos State Traffic Management Agency (LASTMA) has commenced a major clampdown against traffic felons in the state. The agency kicked off massive arrest of offenders on Ikorodu Road, where over a dozen lawbreakers and users of unpainted and unmarked commercial buses were arrested.   The suspects were immediately charged to a mobile court where they were fined for their various crimes.General Manager of LASTMA, Olawale Musa, who led the operation, noted that the exercise would be sustained in order to sanitise Lagos roads. Some of the suspects arrested put up a fight against LASTMA and military police officials. They were eventually arrested and made to face the mobile court. “The joint operations with our brothers from the military is to show motorists how serious we are about enforcing traffic laws. “It is no longer business as usual. You could see that we arrested military and police personnel flouting the BRT law...

http://ift.tt/2oZIob7 Dele Alli The victory of Anthony Olaseni Oluwafemi Joshua over Ukranian veteran world champion, Vladimir Klitschko, which saw to his retention of the International Boxing Federation (IBF) heavyweight title, as well as the addition of the World Boxing Association (WBA) belt to his medal chest came as good and bad news to Nigeria and Nigerians. It was good news for Nigeria because an athlete whose origin is traced to her just earned another diadem in boxing’s most glamourous division, (the heavyweight category), while it was bad news because the honour is going to Britain, which nurtured the dude to stardom, after Nigerian officials and the system rejected him, as they almost, always do. As a country, Nigeria is heavily endowed with world-beaters as far as sports is concerned. Sadly, the country renowned for losing her homegrown sportsmen/women to other countries, is also famed for her failure/inability to attract world-class athletes of Nigerian origin in the...

http://ift.tt/eA8V8J ‘By Henry Boyo AS I speak to you, our    external reserves stand above $31bn and that provides us with enough fire power to be able to defend the Naira” Godwin Emefiele (CBN Governor, April 25, 2017).  However, the question is: Is the CBN actually defending the Naira? This question is examined in the above title, which was first published in Punch and Vanguard Newspapers on January 12, 2015. Please read on: “Evidently, the serial devaluation of the Naira from stronger than N1=$1 to an abysmal low of about N70=$1 at that time, was probably, the most significant instigator of the oppressive economic challenges induced by the IMF imposed Structural Adjustment Programme(SAP).   Nigeria’s once pulsating industrial base soon became almost silent, with increasing idle capacity, which threw many Nigerians into a famished job market. Worse still, those lucky Nigerians who were still employed, regrettably earned wages which were reduced to ‘peanuts...

http://ift.tt/eA8V8J “Having power destroys the sanity of the powerful. It allows their irrationalities to leave the sphere of dream and come to the real world.” Saul Bellow. (VANGUARD BOOK OF QUOTATIONS, VBQ, p 195). FOR any economist worthy of the name it must have appeared like fiction or fairy tales. Who would have thought that a President of any nation, even a Banana Republic, said to be a Ph.D holder would in one day sign off N289 million to a security outfit without authority from the National Assembly, NASS, and have the funds withdrawn illegally from a government agency? Saul Bellow has pointed to how power destroys the sanity of most people. But, power allied with stupidity amounts to a double curse on the people led by such individuals.   As German philosopher Frederick Von Schiller, 1759-1805 (VBQ p 235) has advised us “Against stupidity [of the leaders] the gods themselves struggle in vain.” Let us place the $289 million in its true perspective starting with th...

http://ift.tt/2lULSLN ..Move to probe job losses, tax compliance in telecoms sector By Emman Ovuakporie & Johnbosco Agbakwuru ABUJA —THERE are indications that the Senate and the House of Representatives are working at cross-purposes on the passage of the Petroleum Industry Bill, PIB, pending in both chambers. Though the Senate said recently it would soon pass the PIB into law, the House is yet to commence work on the Bill, which it passed in the last session. This is even as the House has commenced a probe of telecommunications to determine whether there were irregularities in the employment status and conditions of Nigerians at home and abroad, with special attention on job losses, non-remittance of tax deductions and lopsided expatriate representation. It was gathered that the oil industry bill in the Senate is silent on how to make the entire sector transparent, fuelling suspicion that some of the elements from the north that frustrated its passage in the 7th Senate are n...