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General Buhari's take on general elections postponement.

(Below is a press statement from the All Progressive Congress Party regarding General Muhammadu Buhari’s take on the postponement of general elections in Nigeria.)
We Must Remain Calm But Resolute. Following the decision by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) to postpone the 2015 general elections by six weeks, I wish to appeal for utmost restraint and calm by all Nigerians, especially the teeming supporters of our great party, the All Progressives Congress (APC).
This postponement, which comes on the heels of  the bogey of the National Security Adviser that half of the registered voters were being disenfranchised was exposed as a crude and fraudulent attempt to subvert the electoral process.
The PDP administration has now engineered a postponement using the threat that security will not be guaranteed across the length and breadth  of Nigeria because of military engagement in some states in the North East.  
It  is important to note that although INEC acted within its constitutional powers, it is clear that it has been boxed into a situation where it has had to bow to pressure. Thus, the independence of INEC has been gravely compromised.
As a Nigerian and a presidential candidate in the elections, I share in the disappointment and frustration of this decision. This postponement coming a week to the first election has raised so many questions, many of which shall be asked in the days ahead.
However, we must not allow ourselves to be tempted into taking actions that could further endanger the democratic process.  
Our country is going through a difficult time in the hands of terrorists. Any act of violence can only complicate the security challenges in the country and provide further justification to those who would want to exploit every situation to frustrate the democratic process in the face of certain defeat at the polls.
If anything, this postponement should strengthen our resolve and commitment to rescue our country from the current economic and social collapse from this desperate band. Our desire for change must surpass their desperation to hold on to power at all cost.  We are clearly dealing with people who feel they can get away with placing their personal interest over those of our nation and its citizens.
What is at stake is the very survival of our country. We must not allow this temporary delay to abort this great opportunity.   While I share the pains and frustrations of my fellow citizens over this development, my deep faith in the democratic process assures me that this country, with your support, will overcome.
We must remain resolute and rise above all provocations. We must continue to trust in the entire democratic process and in INEC, which has been brought under so much pressure in the last few days. Our trust can only serve to encourage the electoral body to remain steadfast and remain committed to the rule of law. 
 I wish to state strongly that our  party will not tolerate any further interference with the electoral process. The rescheduled elections of March 28thand April 11th, 2015 must be sacrosanct.
Nigeria is definitely greater than any of us, and much more important than our individual ambitions. Before us there was Nigeria, and long after we are gone there will still be Nigeria. Let  us continue to do our part to make it thegreat  country that it should be. We must rescue our dear country. God  being on our side, we shall salvage Nigeria together.
God Bless Nigeria! 
Gen. Muhammadu Buhari, GCFR
Presidential Candidate of the All Progressives Party, APC.
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Entertainment

US disappointed over postponement of Nigeria’s general elections.

The United States Secretary of State, Mr. John Kerry, has expressed ‎his disappointment over Nigeria’s decision to postpone her general elections.

Recall that the elections which were scheduled for Feb 14th to Feb 28th for the Presidency , State and Local Government elections  will now hold from March 23rd 2015 and April 11.



Kerry, who paid a visit to the country few weeks back stressed that, “Political interference with the Independent National Electoral Commission is unacceptable, and it is critical that the government do not use security concerns as a pretext for impeding the democratic process.”

He continued, “As I reaffirmed when I visited Lagos last month, we support a free, transparent, and credible electoral process in Nigeria and renew our calls on all candidates, their supporters, and Nigerian citizens to maintain calm and reject election-related violence.”

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Entertainment

INEC officially announces postponement of elections.

The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) Chairman Prof Attahiru Jega in a press briefing has  announced that the 2015 elections that was scheduled for Feb 14th to Feb 28th for the Presidency , State and Local Government elections  will now hold from March 23rd 2015 and April 11.
The chief reason for the postponement is  to give a new multinational force time to secure north-eastern areas under the sway of Boko Haram.‎
“We call on all stakeholders to accept this decision in good faith and ensure the maintenance of peace.” – He added
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Entertainment

Unveiling Mrs Agbaje and Mrs Ambode.

Prett‎y women! Mrs Abiola Agbaje and Mrs Bola Patience Ambode pictured exchanging hugs at the Guber candidates interactive session held in Lagos recently. One of them would emerge the first lady of Lagos State in a matter of weeks.
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Entertainment

Buhari has attended more church services than many Christians in the past weeks- Etcetera

The growing speculation that the elections might be postponed speaks volumes of someone’s election jitters. But who will it benefit most between Maj. Gen. Muhammadu Buhari (retd.) and President Goodluck Jonathan if the elections are postponed?
The Independent National Electoral Commission had four years to prepare for February elections. How come it waited till the 11th hour to start distributing PVCs? Nawa ooo.
People should know that no amount of scheming and manoeuvring can stop Nigerians now. The much clamoured change must be achieved, especially now that the masses have become more politically conscious and every discuss around the country over the past few weeks has been centred on politics.
Politicians who have been blinded to the plight of the people should realise that mere rhetoric won’t cut it for them anymore. Nigerians are demanding for a change. The people are not smiling anymore. Whether it is a new regime taking over or a return of the incumbent, whoever takes the seat better know that a better Nigeria is non negotiable anymore.
It is a shame it took us this long to realise the power we have as a people. But it will be the funeral of any politician who’s dumb not to realise that it won’t be business as usual and that their campaign for re-election is by providing the dividends of democracy from the very minute they are sworn into office.
I guess if someone told President Jonathan that Buhari is going to have a huge support from the masses, he would have done more to secure his place for another term by providing the basic amenities demanded by the people. Getting re-elected shouldn’t be difficult for any public office holder who has the interest of the people at heart.
Elections are zero-sum affairs. The more the Nigerian people perceive the incumbent as successful the less likely they are to vote for the opposition in the next election. And delivering democratic dividends (not just on billboards or on pages of newspapers), undercuts the whole logic of the opposition’s campaign against any incumbent or the incumbent’s party’s continuation in office.
Is Governor Babatunde Fashola of Lagos State the Director General of Buhari and Akin Ambode’s campaign group. As governor, he is the father of everyone in the state including Jimi Agbaje, Ambode and every other contestant. He shouldn’t be replying or throwing jabs at any contestant no matter the political parties they represent.
With Agbaje’s tax issue, the governor should have directed the Lagos State Inland Revenue Service to look into the matter and if Agbaje is found wanting, he should be referred to INEC for appropriate sanctions.
Whoever is in charge of Ambode’s campaign team should be given a raise. A couple of weeks back, a lot of lagosians including myself didn’t know who Ambode is. In fact, I had to call friends in Alausa to inquire about him. But judging from the awareness his campaign has generated in just a few weeks, if the governorship election of Lagos State is decided by that, your guess is as good as mine.
Lagos State is officially looking like one big political photo album or the living room of a wall paper merchant. Every wall or fence in the state is covered with campaign posters of all sort. I thought Lagos State government placed a ban on pasting of posters in the state.
Or is the ban meant for only entertainers? Well, now I guess those guys pasting those white tacky A4 size posters with “House-girl or Plumber needed” have gotten all the encouragement they need.
I think Buhari has attended more church services than many Christians in the past weeks. Is he not trying too hard to convince us that he is not a religious fanatic? At this age and time, we should be discouraging sentiments in politics. Using the church for political campaigns is not exactly doing that.
One question is, is Buhari or Jonathan going to church to give their lives to Christ and be born again? Should the church be allowed for political campaigns? If a pastor chooses to hire out his church auditorium for campaigns, is the congregation supposed to be included as part of the deal? We attend church on Sundays to hear the unadulterated word of God and not to listen to manifesto recitals.
Did Buhari pull out of the presidential debate for the same reasons given by his party? Well, we are not buying all that gist. I think it is the soldier in Buhari that took that decision. Being a good soldier goes beyond matching to war. It is also knowing when to go to war and when to sit at home.
Buhari’s decision was smart indeed and I would have done the same if I was in his position. As weird as it sounds, he doesn’t seem like someone who can beat Jonathan in a debate.
I have already pictured Jonathan entering the debate with a confident grin on his face like a kid strolling to receive his report card in front of his parents, knowing he had come first in class.
A debate between Jonathan and Buhari would have been like a boxing bout between Mike Tyson and Bash Ali. There’s only one outcome. TKO!
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Entertainment

Love, Lies, Blackmail and Murder – A Marxist Analysis of Windeck | By : Lolade Adewuyi

For several months, Anglophone Africa has stayed glued to television screens watching the intrigues and suspense unfold in the runaway success Angolan telenovela Windeck.
Such is the addiction that the drama has held its viewers hostage to.
While my family and I have been huge fans, it’s important not to lose the messages inherent in the novela.
While Nigeria, Ghana, South Africa and Kenya have been known for the power of their film and television industries, it’s certainly the first time that viewers have had such access into Lusophone life and culture as presented by the Angolan drama.
Well, some questions have arisen in my mind thus far: Are all Angolans really that pretty? Are all Angolan men very easy to manipulate by their women? Are all Angolans always scheming to become rich?
Several questions but the one I would attempt to answer in this short piece is the third above.
I attempt a definition of Marxism for the lay reader as a study of the relationship between the owners of property and means of production and the workers and the poor. Marxism explores the battle between the haves and have-nots.
While the story of Windeck looks like a love story on the surface, a closer look reveals that it is a story of the economically powerful and the workers who attempt to get ahead by all means.
The Vosses are the owners of the means of production while the Victoria Kajibangas and Hendas are the forces struggling against the powerful in order to come into their own wealth whether by hook or crook.
While the struggle between the classes is always a classic tale, in Windeck we find that the lower classes are never successful in their aspirations and schemes
Lowly Ofelia got into the Voss lineage via marriage. Victoria is unsuccessful but Ana Maria moves up via eventual marriage to Kiluanji.
In the reverse, Xavier is eventually outed as a non-Voss by his wife to show his failure at pretending to be part of the upper class. Even though he multiplied the fortune he illegally inherited, his legacy is left in tatters when he is revealed as an adopted child.
Windeck states that one can only be a part of the upper classes by virtue of birth or acceptance by marriage. In capitalist societies, we know that this is wrong and that the poor have been known to work their way into great wealth.
In the society of the novella, we encounter scheming workers who continually fail as they attempt to rise above their circumstances of birth.
Even though the Vosses live in splendour and look like victims of schemes, in truth they represent the perpetrators of inequality which leads to every scheme against them.
Due to their wealth in a society where most are poor, they have become the centre of attention and are left open to envy.
As we have found out, the Vosses are not as perfect as they pretend. Xavier is adopted, Wilson is plain and easily runaround by his wife, Kiluanji is clueless and unable to decipher his being manipulated while Lukeni wants so much to become a Kuduro artist and be free like the commoners.
The Voss women are not so different: Isaura is cold, classy but scheming, Ofelia is afraid of her past and is racist, Luwena is a lesbian and goes on to have a child out of wedlock with a man who she has no relationship with while Luweji hopes to escape the stranglehold of her mother and hopes that love will rescue her.
Among the workers, Rosa wants to get ahead by sacrificing her daughter’s happiness. Kassia has been raised in faux-bourgeois conditions and expects marriage to improve her destiny.
Ana Maria, hard working and independent, cannot reason without emotion clouding her judgment while her psychopathic sister Victoria takes advantage of everyone’s trust as she attempts to cross the border between rich and poor.
Artur is gay, focused but is unable to rein in the monsters living his roof, Henda and Sebastiao, both scheming characters who have found devious ways to lay their hands on the “Angolan dream”.
Sebastiao employs Karl Marxes opium of the masses, religion, as his way to reach higher than his calling in life.
Perhaps the people who the story was most kind to were the hardworking men and women of Mofete.
Even they get entangled in the filth left around by the Vosses.
In Windeck the rich and poor clash not on the basis of ideology but as a result of material conditions.
The scheming is not really due to love, but in the ambition to get ahead and become a part of the owners of the economic production as depicted in the magazine house Divo.
Divo is the land, the scene of the battles told by the brilliant script writers. However, even though there were many twists and turns, Windeck is not much different from the many novellas we have seen: Cuando Seas Mia (When You Are Mine), The Rich Also Cry, Second Chance, etc.
They are classic tales of rich boy, poor girl, scheming in-laws and secretaries, etc.
However, what they all boil down to is the continued fight between the upper and lower classes for access to wealth.
While the lower classes always scheme to move higher, the upper class would only accept them in on strict terms.
Usually this is by marriage.
These novellas continue to tell one side of the story.
And we would be hard-pressed to ask, are there no genuine ways that poor people have climbed out of poverty into the monied class?
In Windeck we are told that this is impossible. Xavier is exposed for being a fraud and Wilson takes everything by virtue of his blood.
Victoria and Kassia are denied marriage into upper society.
Only Ana Maria is able to move up – by marriage.
Windeck perpetuates the long held views that the only way young women can make it in life is to marry rich.
It cements the Kate Middleton story: The working class girl who marries the Prince.
Windeck is a feudal classic draped in beautiful characters and pretty actors. Despite its pretenses at love, its lies and blackmails with a tinge of murder, it is fails as a Marxist tale as the poor in the story remain where they are, downtrodden, punished and disgraced.
Still, it is a story that has captured our imagination.

 ==============================================
Lolade Adewuyi is a writer/blogger, sports journalist. He’s also the Chief Editor of Goal.com Nigeria. He blogs at visionofthefuture.blogspot.com

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Entertainment, Opinion

Nollywood cannot afford to lose Goodluck- Charles Novia writes

Let us admit it – we have never seen any President so besotted with entertainment like Dr. Goodluck Ebele Jonathan, especially the movie-making sector. And this is not a satire. Yes, his detractors may point at “weakness” for entertainment as a signpost of an unserious mind frittering the commonwealth on ‘joli-joli’ matters!
Even the opposition may grumble loudly that the lively engagement with the Nollywood is essentially exploitative and window-dressing – to the detriment of more important and critical sectors of the national economy.

However, no one is in doubt that the life and essence the Creative wayfarers was initially ignited by Bayelsa governor, the much maligned Diepreye Alamieyeseigha, immediate boss of GEJ around year 2000. With dizzying state support and elaborate razzmatazz, the duo of Alams and GEJ wallowed in the sudden euphoria of showbiz and the attendant media opulence only comparable to IBB’s romance with PMAN’s ding-a-long of 1989 – 1992 when Tony Okoroji was the majordomo.

It was no surprise GEJ flowed with the momentum when fortune made him supplant Alams as Gov. of Bayelsa in December 2005. Yet, for all his enthusiasm for professional revelries, the make-believe could not have believed their luck when good ol’ providence thrusted GEJ, again, into greater prominence.
In quick succession, he moved from Vice-President to Acting President and eventually President within years! By 2011 when he assumed office, on his own stamina, the Nollywood romance had blown out of the creek waters. The two lovebirds were careering giddily on a thoroughfare peopled with great thespians, gifted producers, immaculate directors and of course a coterie of charlatans and ‘waka-pass’.
With technocrats within the federal service and the movie industry, different modules of foundational interventions were crafted – and cash-backed like never before. Millions of naira were mentioned, which ballooned, to the consternation of nay-sayers, to billions of naira in creative “stimulus packages”.
In the past ten years of GEJ’s unstinted romance with a powerful sector of the entertainment community, it is very uncharitable (even for inveterate detractors) to say that Jonathan has not “performed”. You may quarrel with the impact or management of his interventions; you may yap him and his people for mystifying the process and access to the several GEJ interventions in the Artsworld.
You may claim he has lost similar interest or attention to details in other critical sectors of the Nigerian state. However, no ONE can simply dismiss his unprecedented regard, affinity and seeming devotion to the people, practice and promise of Nigeria’s movie-making community and allied sectors. In his six years as President, GEJ has arguably awarded more national honours to our artistes than all the past regimes rolled together!
So, when you hear and see leading lights of Nollywood rooting aggressively for GEJ; when you read famed voices shouting on the roof of their cyper-pages and declaring the ceaseless glory of GEJ; when you read otherwise quiet prima-donnas spit fire and engage in internet-‘gra-gra’ with many of their tele-fans…for the sake of their beloved Moses (Jonathan) – you really must understand and appreciate their position – enlightened self-interest (a completely natural instinct).

They are not ‘bought’, ‘turn-coats’ or ‘ass-licking’ – against their will or legacy. They simply are paying good back to the man who has brought them a load of luck – and thus enhancing their means of livelihood, and embellishing their relevance. No pun intended.

This 2015 presidential election is a watershed for Nollywood. They cannot see anything in the “Change”-troopers to indicate that their groovy-train will go on; GMB has not even for once coughed about any plans for Nollywood, one of the major revelations of the 2014 rebasing parameters! It does appear that GMB does not even know that Nollywood exists – beyond gyrations at campaign rallies!
So, stop yakking at Nollywooders if they have little or no sympathies for GMB – he is disconnected from them in the past decade, at least. And within that same period, GMB’s main opponent has been their God-sent. Most assuredly I say to you: a good friend is difficult to find – and keep; Nollywood can’t afford to lose this Goodluck. God forbid!!

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Entertainment

Morocco banned from 2017&2019 AFCON tournaments.

‎The Confederation of African Football (CAF)‎ has banned Morocco from the 2017 and 2019 Africa Cup of ‎Nations tournaments for pulling out of hosting AFCON 2014 due to Ebola fears.
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Morocco’s reasons for pulling out of the event was not tenable to the governing body. ‎The North African country was also fined $1 million (€8.8m) and ordered to pay €8 million ($9m) in compensation.
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An official statement from CAF reads, “The CAF executive committee considered that, contrary to what the Royal Moroccan Football Federation cited, force majeure cannot be accepted for the benefit of the federation.

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“CAF decided to suspend the national team of Morocco from the next two editions of the Africa Cup of Nations, 2017 and 2019,
and to impose on the federation the regulatory fine of $1 million.
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“…they decided by a separate measure to be borne by the Royal
Moroccan Football Federation the sum of eight million and fifty
thousand euros in compensation for all material damage
sustained.”‎

Meanwhile, Equatorial Guinea, the new host of the tournament  has been fined $100,000 (£65,000) for violent behaviour during their 3-0 semi-final defeat to Ghana. They’ve also been ordered to pay medical costs of injured spectators.
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Entertainment

Olamide hosts Governor Babatunde Fashola, Dare Art Alade, others at son's christening ceremony

Rave of the moment artiste, Olamide Adedeji christened his son, ‘Batifeori Maximiliano Adedeji’ today, February 6, 2015. The ceremony was attended by Governor Babatunde Fashola, Dare Art Alade and many others.

“I’m so honoured to have his Excellency..Governor Babatunde Fashola in my house, thanks for the surprise visit..May God continue to strengthen U and uphold U.. God bless u sir”. The proud dad wrote on his instagram page.
The next time you see Olamide, remember to address him as Daddy Milano.
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Entertainment, Sports

Canadian University now running a course on Cristiano Ronaldo

Would you pursue a degree or hire a graduate in Cristiano Ronaldo studies? This may actually work for an intern or fresh graduate seeking a position in a football company but then the chances are very slim.


Staffordshire University, UK once offered a degree in David Beckham. Now, the University of British Columbia Okanagan in Canada is offering a sociologyu course on 3-time world best footballer, Cristiano Ronaldo. The course is titled “The Commodification of Cristiano Ronaldo.”‎

Adducing reasons for creating the course, Luis Aguiar, the professor behind it explained that, “Ronaldo is the center and every discussion, class meeting revolves around Ronaldo initially. And then we explore, we broaden out to larger themes. So it starts with Ronaldo but Ronaldo is almost like a springboard to talk about larger issues that are much more sociologically significant than just a biography of Ronaldo.”


The Portuguese legend doesn’t even know about it. “I don’t know if Ronaldo knows about the course. I haven’t heard from Ronaldo, I haven’t heard from his entourage. I would love to hear from either one, and I would love to have Ronaldo maybe”. He added.‎
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