British House of lords

A Nigerian who worked in the British House of Lords without valid documents for six months  has been jailed four months  for illegally staying and working  in the united Kingdom. She had allegedly stayed in Britain for about 16 years.

Modupelola Fatoyinbo before her jail was working in the British house of Lords for about six months using fake documentation.

For six months she was serving lunch at House of Lords after using a fake passport to get the job, a court heard.

Modupe, 41, was employed as a casual catering assistant in the Palace of Westminster.

When she was invited to apply for a permanent job she produced a fake passport, prosecutors told Southwark Crown Court in the London Southeast.

Prosecutor Peter Zinner said the defendant had been able to find work at the Houses of Parliament with ease.

He said: ‘It seems that for a number of months, probably about six, Mrs Fatoyinbo had been working as a casual worker in the catering department at the House of Lords in the Palace of Westminster.

‘To gain access to the relevant department, she had been issued with a visitor’s pass, and she would be met by a member of catering staff, who would escort her to the department.

‘The result of this was that she was working in a secure area without being security checked.’

When Fatoyinbo was eventually invited to apply for the role formally, she produced a fake Nigerian passport.

Mr Zinner said: ‘It was found to be a false, counterfeit document, containing a counterfeit Home Office leave to remain in the UK and permission to do work.’

Fatoyinbo was arrested and admitted she knew the passport was fake, telling police that she had bought it for £170 from a friend.

Home Office records subsequently showed that she had legally arrived in the UK in 2000, and had applied to stay in the country on the grounds of long residence, but that application was refused in May 2006.

Mr Zinner added that there was no ’sinister’ motive for Fatoyinbo having worked in Parliament.

Jailing Fatoyinbo for four months, Judge Andrew Goymer told her: ‘These are serious offences, which undermine confidence in the management and identity control systems of this country.

‘People must expect to go to prison for such offences.

‘I bear in mind that you are of previous good character, and have two young children.

‘I have also been told that you pose no security or terrorist threat, and as far as I’m aware, you did not present a security risk to the Palace of Westminster.’

House of parliment

The court heard Fatoyinbo, has lived in the UK for 16 years without any right to do so.

Victor Onipede, defending, said she is currently seeking asylum and claims her two young daughters will apparently face forcible female circumcision if she has to return to Nigeria.

He said that although she accepts having worked illegally since arriving in this country, she has never claimed benefits and is not a burden on the state.

Mr Onipede added that ‘financial pressure’ had driven Fatoyinbo to offend, and that she was ‘very remorseful and sorry’ for what she had done.

The judge made no deportation recommendation because of the ongoing asylum application.

Fatoyinbo admitted a single count of possessing a false identity document.

Source:Times On line

Winnie Mandela

Winnie Mandela remains one of the uncelebrated heroines of Apartheid South Africa. She no doubt was one of the main pillars behind the struggle and the marital separation between him and her ex hubby Nelson remained an anti-climax that would hunt many of her detractors who stood her accused of murder many years ago.

Nadira Naipaul of Evening Standard and her husband were guests to Winnie recently. She poured her hearts out to the journalist and her husband as she (Winnie) hosted then in Soweto. She remains  resolute despite those hard times claiming Nelson betrayed Black South Africans. Read the report as presented by Nadira Naipaul of Evening Standard.
My husband had been reluctant to come here but then he had followed his instinct and it had brought us to the Soweto door of the mystifying Winnie Mandela, a much celebrated and reviled woman of our times.

Looking out at her garden, I wondered how long we would have to wait to see her. We were in a stronghold of sorts, with high enclosing walls and electronic gates which were controlled from inside a bunker-like guardhouse. There were tall muscular men dressed in black who casually appeared and disappeared.

In the late Eighties, Winnie’s thuggish bodyguards, the Mandela United Football Club, terrorised Soweto. Club “captain” was Jerry Richardson, who died in prison last year while serving life for the murder of Stompie Moeketsi, a 14-year-old who was kidnapped with three other boys and beaten in the home where we would soon sit, sipping coffee. Winnie was sentenced to six years for kidnap, which was reduced to a fine on appeal.

Members of the gang would later testify to South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission that Winnie had ordered the torture, murder and kidnap of her own people, and even participated directly.

Winnie used to live, before she was famous, down one of the narrow, congested streets with small brick and iron sheet houses. Soweto is still a predominately black township: tourists come in buses to gawp at the streets linked to freedom, apartheid and Mandela.

Winnie now has an imposing fortress on the hill. The garden is full of trees and well-manicured shrubs. We walked straight into a small cluttered hallway. It was full of the man: Mandela. He was everywhere. Presents, portraits, honorary degrees and letters covering every empty space on the walls.

There was an air of expectancy as we entered. Our fixer had arranged this meeting with Winnie (or Mama Mandela, her township name) through her confidant and admirer. He is a young man in his early forties who is a well-known television presenter here and clearly an ardent devotee.

Nelson Mandela

He sat us down and talked softly about her. The politics of his generation, he said, had been defined by this woman. Her courage, her fire and her sheer stubbornness had made them men. They saw how unafraid she was and the risks and humiliations she was willing to absorb. These humiliations had not ended with apartheid. She was discarded, demonised and betrayed, he said.

My nerves were playing up: my husband does not like to be kept waiting at the best of times. He is punctilious and has been known to walk away from a delayed meeting, leaving me to deal with the fallout.

It was at that moment she appeared, tall, carefully attired in soft grey, wearing her signature wig. She held Vidia’s outstretched hand and asked him to sit next to her. She flashed a smile in my direction. The air was electrified by her presence.

I did what was expected of me. I asked her if she was happy with the way things had panned out in South Africa. Winnie looked at my husband. Did he wish for the truth? She had heard of him. He pursued the truth or the closest he could get to it.

No, she was not happy. And she had her reasons. “I kept the movement alive,” she began. “You have been in the township. You have seen how bleak it still is. Well, it was here where we flung the first stone. It was here where we shed so much blood. Nothing could have been achieved without the sacrifice of the people. Black people.”

She looked at Vidia expecting another question. He said nothing, but his dark hooded eyes shone and she carried on with her eyes firmly locked onto his face. “The ANC was in exile. The entire leadership was on the run or in jail. And there was no one to remind these people, black people, of the horror of their daily reality; when something so abnormal as apartheid becomes a daily reality. It was our reality. And four generations had lived with it – as non-people.”

As she spoke, I looked at her thinking she was, at 73, as her reputation promised, quite extraordinary. The ANC had needed this passionate revolutionary. Without her, the fire would have been so easily extinguished and she had used everything and anything to stoke it. While some still refer to her as Mother of the Nation, she is decried by many because of her links to the Stompie murder and other violent crimes during the apartheid era, and a conviction for fraud.

“Were you not afraid?” I asked instinctively, but then I regretted this foolish query.

She looked towards my chair. Her grey glasses focused on my face. “Yes, I was afraid in the beginning. But then there is only so much they can do to you. After that it is only death. They can only kill you, and as you see, I am still here.”

I knew that the apartheid enforcers had done everything in their power to break this woman. She had suffered every indignity a person could bear. They had picked her up in the night and placed her under house arrest in Brandfort, a border town in Orange Free State, 300 miles from Soweto. “It was exile,” she said, “when everything else had failed.”

Hard fighters, Nelson and Winnie.

At this remote outpost, where she spent nine years, she had recruited young men for the party. “Right under their noses,” she said to Vidia, laughing with the memory of it. “The only worry or pain I had was for my daughters. Never really knowing what was happening to them. I feel they have really suffered in all this. Not me or Mandela,” she said.

Her two young daughters had never quite understood what was really happening. Bad men went to prison. Their father was in prison but he was not bad. “That anguish was unbearable for me as a mother, not knowing how my children coped when they held me in long solitary confinement.”

Zenani, now 51, and Zindzi, 50, remain very much in the background, having no wish to enter politics themselves, Winnie said. Nelson Mandela is no longer “accessible” to his daughters and they have to get through much red tape just to speak to their father, she told us.

Winnie brought up his name very casually, as if it was of no real value to her: not any more.

“This name Mandela is an albatross around the necks of my family. You all must realise that Mandela was not the only man who suffered. There were many others, hundreds who languished in prison and died. Many unsung and unknown heroes of the struggle, and there were others in the leadership too, like poor Steve Biko, who died of the beatings, horribly all alone. Mandela did go to prison and he went in there as a burning young revolutionary. But look what came out,” she said, looking to the writer. He said nothing but listened.

It is hard to knock a living legend. Only a wife, a lover or a mistress has that privilege. Only they are privy to the intimate inner man, I thought.

“Mandela let us down. He agreed to a bad deal for the blacks. Economically, we are still on the outside. The economy is very much ‘white’. It has a few token blacks, but so many who gave their life in the struggle have died unrewarded.”

She was pained. Her uncreased brown face had lost the softness.

“I cannot forgive him for going to receive the Nobel [Peace Prize in 1993] with his jailer [FW] de Klerk. Hand in hand they went. Do you think de Klerk released him from the goodness of his heart? He had to. The times dictated it, the world had changed, and our struggle was not a flash in the pan, it was bloody to say the least and we had given rivers of blood. I had kept it alive with every means at my disposal”.

We could believe that. The world-famous images flashed before our eyes and I am sure hers. The burning tyres – Winnie endorsed the necklacing of collaborators in a speech in 1985 (”with our boxes of matches and our necklaces we shall liberate this country”) – the stoning, the bullets, the terrible deaths of “informers”. Her often bloodthirsty rhetoric has marred her reputation.

“Look at this Truth and Reconciliation charade. He should never have agreed to it.” Again her anger was focused on Mandela. “What good does the truth do? How does it help anyone to know where and how their loved ones were killed or buried? That Bishop Tutu who turned it all into a religious circus came here,” she said pointing to an empty chair in the distance.

“He had the cheek to tell me to appear. I told him a few home truths. I told him that he and his other like-minded cretins were only sitting here because of our struggle and ME. Because of the things I and people like me had done to get freedom.”

Winnie did appear before the TRC in 1997, which in its report judged her to have been implicated in murders: “The commission finds Mandela herself was responsible for committing such gross violations of human rights.”

When begged by Archbishop Desmond Tutu to admit that “things went horribly wrong” and apologise, Winnie finally said sorry to Stompie’s mother and to the family of her former personal doctor whose killing she is alleged to have ordered after he refused to cover up Stompie’s murder.

Someone brought in the coffee and we took the offered cups in silence.

“I am not alone. The people of Soweto are still with me. Look what they make him do. The great Mandela. He has no control or say any more. They put that huge statue of him right in the middle of the most affluent “white” area ofJohannesburg. Not here where we spilled our blood and where it all started. Mandela is now a corporate foundation. He is wheeled out globally to collect the money and he is content doing that. The ANC have effectively sidelined him but they keep him as a figurehead for the sake of appearance.”

The eyes behind the grey tinted glasses were fiery with anger. It was an economic betrayal, she was saying, nothing had changed for the blacks, except that apartheid had officially gone. As she spoke of betrayal she inadvertently looked at a portrait of Mandela.

I looked at Winnie. Maybe she did not know when to stop. Maybe that is the bane of a revolutionary: they gather such momentum that he or she can’t stop. I saw that although her trials and tribulations had been recorded, the scars on the inner, most secret part of her spirit tormented her.

But for Winnie the deaths, the burning tyres around the necks of the informers and her own Faustian pacts perhaps made Mandela and his vaunted wisdom look like feeble compromises from a feeble man. No one could expect him to protect her or his children from his 27-year incarceration but now he was out he had wanted peace. He had longings, perhaps scars in the mind, fears and perhaps even wisdom that she could not match or return.

The rumour rife in South Africa was that she could not abide him or touch him during their two-year attempt to salvage the marriage after his release in 1990. It was all too sad. And though he had been prepared to forgive the past, his wife’s affairs while he was in prison, it had not worked. They divorced in 1996, having spent only five of their 38 married years together. Her anger was a mighty liability and her defiance was too awful for words.

“I am not sorry. I will never be sorry. I would do everything I did again if I had to. Everything.” She paused.

I thought of the terrible shadow of the murder of Stompie. Winnie had flung the stone that had cracked the one-way mirror of apartheid. The “interrogators”, the compromisers, were now all unmasked and for what?

“You know, sometimes I think we had not thought it all out. There was no planning from our side. How could we? We were badly educated and the leadership does not acknowledge that. Maybe we have to go back to the drawing board and see where it all went wrong.”

This was Winnie the politician. This was the phoenix. Publicly, the ANC leadership, who made her a minister in the first post-apartheid government in 1994 and welcomed her back subsequently, distanced themselves from her amid allegations of corruption (in 2003, she was convicted of fraud and given a suspended prison sentence). But for the masses, she spoke their language and remains popular with those who feel their government hasn’t done enough.

We could see why the ANC had needed this obdurate woman. She was bold and had an idea of her worth. She was the perfect mistress for the ANC in the bad times but then she became dangerous.

As we stood up to leave, we saw a photograph of a young Winnie looking wistfully into the camera. She was ravishingly beautiful and Mandela had sought her. But the battle was over. She had played her part. It was over. She had been sidelined and discarded, but since the freedom had not brought the promised dream for the vast black population, she would continue to play her hand in politics. Of that I was sure. She was still a woman who could reflect the dangerous part of a man’s dream, whatever it may be.

“When I was born my mother was very disappointed. She wanted a son. I knew that from a very early age. So I was a tomboy. I wanted to be a doctor at some point and I was always bringing home strays from school. People who were too poor to pay fees or have food. My parents never rebuked me or told me that they were hard-pressed, too.”

She lit up talking of her past and of early memories that had nothing to do with the struggle. And then she suddenly turned towards Vidia and said: “But when I am alone I cannot help but think of the past. The past is still alive in here. In my head.” She pointed to the brain.

Was it all nothing but a great loss? I wanted to know. Part of me ached for her. As a woman I felt her great transgressions and the pain. I wanted to tell her that if I had been Mandela I would have forgiven her but I lacked the courage. What would Vidia say to me if I did?

He was saying goodbye. My eyes were filling. Instinctively she turned and looked into me and her eyes softened. She walked towards me and pulled me into her embrace. “I know what you want to say,” she whispered into my ear, “and for that I am grateful.”

ByNadira Naipaul, Evening Standard.

The impending crippling  strike looks inevitable as the airline following  rejection of the  peace proposals from the ‘UNITE’ trade union may culminate in yet another major downtools.

BA said that the union’s plans, which included a 2.6 per cent pay cut this year, fell “significantly short” of the £62.5 million savings it was looking for.

The breakdown of talks means that Unite is likely to announce plans for a strike by 13,500 cabin crew within days.

British Airways

A walkout could be as soon as next Thursday, depending on the decision taken by union officials, who will meet tomorrow to discuss their next move.

Even though Unite has said it will not strike over Easter, the uncertainty over when the union will walk out is threatening the travel plans of more than 800,000 passengers between now and the end of the month.

British Airways, which obtained a High Court injunction to block a 12-day walkout before Christmas, is not thought likely to take further legal action this time.

Instead it has trained more than 1,000 volunteers – including some pilots – to step into the shoes of striking cabin crew. They will be used to keep much of the airline’s long-haul operation going.

In addition the airline has made arrangements to hire 20 aircraft and crew from other companies – a process known as “wet leasing”. These aircraft will be used for short-haul European operations from Heathrow.

Unite had tabled plans for a four-year pay deal which, it said, would offer the cash-strapped airline significant savings.

Its proposals meant that in addition to a 2.6 per cent pay cut this year, the union would accept last year’s pay freeze.

However they did expect an inflation linked pay rise in 2011 and a bonus at the end of that year.

Unite was also prepared to accept the creation of a new low-cost fleet at Heathrow.

But this was considered inadequate by BA. “Our package for crew, which includes minor changes to on-board crew numbers, saves £62.5m a year and involves no reduction in earnings for existing crew,” a spokesman said.

“Unite’s proposals would fall significantly short of this level of savings and would require pay cuts for crew of between £1,000 and £2,700 a year. These pay cuts would be particularly unfair for crew at Gatwick, where no changes to on-board crew numbers have taken place.

“We remain available for talks.”

Union sources accused British Airways of failing to negotiate in good faith. “Every time we took one step towards them, BA appeared to take one step further back.”

The breakdown of talks dismayed Brendan Barber, the TUC general secretary, who had presided over six weeks of stop-start negotiations.

“Despite a prolonged period of negotiations it has not been possible to reach agreement between BA and Unite,” he said last night.

“Both parties will be reflecting on the position and the TUC will be keeping in touch but at this stage no further negotiations are planned.”

Source: Telegraph

“My deepest condolences to the victims of the atrocious violence which has bloodied Nigeria and which has not even spared defenceless babies,”  Pope Benedict said in the short statement.

He cautioned: “Once again, with a sorrowful heart, I repeat that violence does not solve conflicts but only worsens their tragic consequences … I call all those in the country who have civil or religious authority to work for the security and peaceful coexistence of the whole population,” he said.

Pope Benedict with cross

The latest unrest and eventual killing of more than 500 innocent villagers has been condemned worldwide and in another recent reaction, The United Nations, United States, rights groups and opposition politicians have all urged the authorities to ensure those responsible face justice and called on the security forces to protect civilians

As hoodlums took over the heart of the country engaging in sporadic killing of innocent people through petty excuses in recent times, the nation’s acting President is incapacitated with some cabals in the current government sabotaging his use of executive power  to deal with the crisis, while engaging in underground threat to arm- string  the acting President.

Acting President Jonathan has tried to assert his authority while ailing leader Umaru Yar’Adua remains too sick to govern.

The United Nations, United States, rights groups and opposition politicians have all urged the authorities to ensure that those responsible for the carnage are brought to book , urging Nigeria security forces to protect the civilian populace in the country.

The Pope condemns killings.

Plateau State Governor Jonah Jang on Tuesday blamed the military, which took control of security in January, for failing to respond to his warning that movements of armed men had been reported by villagers shortly before Sunday’s attacks.

Police have made over 100 arrests but rights groups are concerned that those responsible may not actually be prosecuted.

More than 300 people were arrested in January and about half of them were due to be sent to the capital Abuja for prosecution, but it is unclear how many actually faced justice.

Local officials said many of those responsible for January’s violence were the same people arrested but no confirmation from  the state authorities.

Fierce competition for control of fertile farmlands between Christian and animist indigenous groups and Muslim settlers from the north have repeatedly triggered unrest over the past decade.

Retaliatory attacks are not uncommon and Acting President Goodluck Jonathan has put the security forces on red alert to try to prevent unrest from spreading to neighboring states at the heart of Africa’s most populous nation.

“Last night until this morning everybody kept vigil. Nobody slept,” said Felvis Aduba, a Jos resident who owns a shop selling electronic goods.

Police IG Onovo.

Jos was already under a dusk-to-dawn curfew after clashes between Christian and Muslim mobs in January which killed more than 400 people, according to community leaders.

Aduba said the city had been put on edge by SMS messages sent to mobile phones warning that militants from the Muslim Hausa-Fulani ethnic group, blamed for Sunday’s attacks, were coming from the northern city of Maiduguri to wage war.

Gangs of youths gathered in self-defense, witnesses said.

Gunfire also rang out from the Tudun Wada neighborhood of the city overnight, where residents said panic was sown when a resident from another state received a truckload of cows.

Many of the herders around Jos are Hausa-Fulani and when a vigilante group saw the animals, they took the man for a northern

Professor Wole Soyinka.

Nigeria’s civil rights activists staging a rally on Wednesday in the nation’s capital Abuja  demanded the dissolution of the nation current Cabinet and requested for the appearance of the ailing President to show to Nigerians his arrival back to the country was real and not a political con- trick.

The peaceful demonstration which had been organised by Save Nigeria Group (SNG) though were disallowed from entering the Presidential Villa in Aso Rock by the police, the group delivered  their  main three point request to the secretary to government of the federation, Yayale Ahmed who received the strongly worded messages on behalf of the Acting President, Goodluck Jonathan.

The Cabinet has remained divided since a purported transfer of ailing President Yar’Adua from Saudi Arabia where he was receiving treatment to the presidential Villa in Abuja while no specific political progress has been made in the country since the arrival of the sick President back to Nigeria rendering the whole nation even more ill circumstantially.

Also on demand by the group is the urgent implementation of the recommendations of the Justice Muhammadu Uwais Electoral Reform Committee report.

The police stopped the protesters — led by prominent Lagos Pastor and human right activist, Tunde Bakare –just by the first gate of the Presidential villa where they had planned to present their demands to Acting President Goodluck Jonathan.

The secretary to government of the federation, Yayale Ahmed, on behalf of Acting President Jonathan, received the demands of the activists and promised a prompt delivery to the office of the Acting President.

Nigeria;'s Flag, still flying.

“The acting president has asked me to assure you that your demands will be looked into with immediate effect. You want to know the status of health of the president… You will not be denied of it,” Ahmed told the protesters.

The protesters, who were blocked from gaining entry into the national assembly, also demanded the implementation of the report of a committee on electoral reforms.

The activists called for comprehensive electoral reforms ahead of the 2011 general elections.

“We will continue to mobilise Nigerians… to engage in public action, including protests and strike action until these demands are fully implemented in the interest of peace, security and genuine democracy” Tunde Bakare said just after the protest.

However, top members of the government and political activist are urging the Acting President to take up his responsibility and serve the nation with his and heart and might rather than serving PDP, his political party which many have seen as a party of liars and nation destroyers.

“The Acting \president’s allegiance is to the nation rather than to the party, an action congress activist in London, Mr Segun Erinle said urging the Acting President to wake up to the reality of the duty placed before him to salvage the nation from her present state of ‘intensive illness’.

Abike Dabiri, Chairperson of the Committee on Nigerians In Diaspora Organisation said last week during the nation’s political lifeline Television programme, ‘Focus Nigeria’ that the people have given Jonathan power through the parliament adding the ball was in Jonathan’s court even if he would perform his duty for a short time.

Save Nigeria Group Logo.

“ The power has been transferred to him and there is no reason for him not to use the power. The worst is for him to revert to his post of Vice presidency. Nobody can sack him having been elected by the people”, Abike Dabiri said.

It would be remembered that last week, the Chairman of Jonathan’s Presidential Advisory Committee, General Theophilus Danjuma, challenged the Acting President to show the hallmark of a true leader.

Be your own man, nation demands action form acting President Goodluck Jonathan.

In his own charge of Acting President Goodluck Jonathans, Professor Wole Soyinka held Goodluck Jonathan responsible for the recent community carrnage killing ijn which over 500 innocent people including men and women were killed linking the Acting president to his lack of action as the nation’s acting President.

Ailing President Umaru Yar’Adua returned to Nigeria on February 24 after spending 93 days in Jeddah, where he was being treated for acute pericarditis. Evern since his so called arrival, he has not been seen in the public  and the question lingers as to whether the  President was genuinely in the country.

The so called return has since thrown the country into confusion, a state of coma while thre had been a revived power-play by the PDP stakeholders who continue to fool the nation and fellow party faithful.

Human Rights Watch also asked Acting President Goodluck Jonathanto provide police and military protection for those in the small villages surrounding Jos, a central Nigerian city that has become the fault linefor religious violence in the region.

Those who survived attacks Sunday in three mostly Christian villages to Jos’ south said security forces never provided them any guards, even though Jos itself has remained under a dusk-til-dawn curfew since violence in January left more than 300 dead, most of them Muslims.

“It’s time to draw a line in the sand,” Human Rights Watch researcher Corinne Dufka said in a statement Tuesday. “The authorities need to protect these communities, bring the perpetrators to book and address the root causes of violence.”

Police say they’ve arrested more than 90 people suspected of inciting the violence. Survivors said the attackers spoke Hausa and Fulani, two languages used mostly by Muslims. Some described the violence as a reprisal attack for the Muslim deaths in January, while others said

Fulani cattlemen wanted to take over their land on the dusty plateau.

The U.S. Embassy in Abuja, Nigeria’s capital, also issued a statement calling on Nigeria’s federal government to seek justice “under the rule of law and in a transparent manner,” the embassy said.

The U.S. also asked the state government to “to ensure that all people and citizens in the Jos area feel that they are respected and protected.”

The U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay said that she was appalled by the violence.

“In both cases, women and children and elderly people were among those who were viciously slaughtered,” Pillay said. “After the January killings, the villages should have been properly protected.”

“Clearly, previous efforts to tackle the underlying causes have been inadequate, and in the meantime the wounds have festered and grown deeper,” she said.

Jonathan traveled to Jos after the violence in January, and promised that the fighting would stop. After the recent flare-up, the acting president fired his national security adviser late Monday night.

Jonathan also said security forces would lock down the borders of Plateau state to stop weapons and potential fighters from infiltrating the region. But on Monday, an Associated

Press reporter passed through seven supposed checkpoints where searches should have been conducted and none were. Some posts were unmanned, while police and soldiers at others merely watched a line of cars pass by without stopping them.

The killings Sunday add to the tally of thousands who have already perished in Africa’s most populous country in the last decade due to religious and political frictions. Rioting in September 2001 killed more than 1,000 people. Muslim-Christian battles killed up to 700 people in 2004. More than 300 residents died during a similar uprising in 2008.

Nigeria is almost evenly split between Muslims in the north and the predominantly Christian south. The recent bloodshed has been happening in central Nigeria, in towns which lie along the country’s religious fault line. It is Nigeria’s “middle belt,” where dozens of ethnic groups vie for control of fertile lands.

Oil dripping from Mary eyes.

An image of the Virgin Mary has been shedding tears of oil, its owner has claimed.

The strange sight has drawn hundreds of visitors to the man’s home in France.

Esat Altindagoglu has been inundated with more than 50 visitors a day hoping to see the “miracle” at his house near Paris.

The one-foot high painting was given to his wife Sevin by a Lebanese priest on her birthday in 2006, the Turkish-born salesman said.

It began weeping oil on February 12 this year, and had been “crying” every day since, he claimed.

He said: “As word spread, people started arriving from France, then from all over Europe.

“I’ve been having between 50 and 60 people a day turning up for more than three weeks now.”

An Orthodox priest had now agreed to say mass at his home in Garges-les-Gonesse this week to thank the Virgin Mary, Mr Altindagoglu said.

He added: “Apparently the next step is to have to weeping witnessed by a bishop so the miracle can be officially recognised by the church.”

Over the centuries there have been hundreds of incidents of statues said to have wept blood, oil or water.

But the only one ever approved as a miracle by the Pope was Our Lady of Akita in Japan, in 1973, with all the others ruled out as hoaxes.

EMNnews.com logo

EMNnews.com logoLike many other news organisations, EMNnews.com  is emerging as a fresh starter on the internet news web family.

We are not soliciting for influence, but we seek justice and fair-play for all Africans, particularly, for all Nigerians home and in the Diaspora in the wake of the current political ineffectiveness which is plaguing our motherland and continuously pushing her inside a deep pool of irrelevance on the world scene. Shame! Big shame.

A prospective world power and Africa’s champion in initiative making, Nigeria sadly is being completely side-tracked and made irrelevant among many committee of nations. She had been widely perceived as an infectious virus and treated with scary isolation courtesy of long years of misrule by visionless and purposeless leaders whose ambition has always been to divert Nigeria resources and wealth to their personal kitty.

Indeed, Nigeria for long has suffered betrayal, economic rape and social dehumanisation resulting from lack of effective leadership. The country continuously wanders in hopelessness and staggers around in self defeatist posture.

The common man’s hopes have been dashed for long and the destiny of the citizens put in the hands of opportunistic few whose life experience is not even strong enough to handle their family state of affairs.

Many actors on our political stage  have got little or nothing to offer for our political solutions. Unless a major overhaul of our political system takes place, there seems to be no future or any positive direction for Nigeria.

The Country is a bundle of energetic personal and economic potentials, strong in content but deflated in weight with many of her citizens making relevant contributions to the growth of many nations in the world. Yet the country we call our own remains a slumbering giant parading itself as a laughing stock to the rest of the world.

We in the Diaspora cannot stand by while life degenerates and our loved country sink more into obscurity. We have got a lot to offer or contribute in the wake of the current wobbling. We cannot continue to act as bystanders while hopelessness and doomsday stare at us in the face. The need is now to mount SOS pressure to save Nigeria from civil tragedy.

Many of our political actors are have created strong impression that the country they visualise to live is far away from the true Nigeria nation.

That there are agendas to carve out a nation for them inside our dear country and call that nation their own.

The current spate of looting and disrespect for the rule of law by many of our so called leaders are worrying. Our current political actors have failed the nation. No end in sight to offer any respite in the wake of breakdown of social amenities and economic infrastructures.

Many governors have demonstrated complete lack of care and sympathy for the governed and lack of vision for the states they rule over with obvious no agenda rather than to loot and divert state resources to personal kitties. The whole world is having a good laugh at the state of affairs in Nigeria riding freely on our free gestures of free offer sell out of our conscience and pride at give away sums as many have paraded Nigerian nations as a nation of many fools.

We have no other country to call our own than this Nigeria.  With our leadership demonstrating to us absolute disregard for the rule of law and lack of purpose and vision which they pledged during election,  we as citizens still hold our destiny in our hands. Many of us in the Diaspora are exposed enough to understand the level at which many past leaders have sunk our pride, ego and hope.

Nigerians have long been treated with disrespect, disgrace and dishonour all over the world, a fall out of our leaders’ total disregard for all citizens. If Nigeria were to be a human entity, the level of heartbreak would have sunk her into everlasting demise yet many loyal and patriotic citizens have been sent into oblivion caring and pleading for a better Nigeria.

Our state of pride has degenerated to level where many countries that Nigeria has lifted from the abyss of tragedy have even treated Nigeria and her citizens with contempt and disregard. It is heart breaking.

Nigeria and Nigerians need to wake up because we still remain remains one of the most viable nations in the world if handled properly by right leadership.

This news website craves for a Nigeria with egalitarian status and this website is a forum for us to shape things up for our dear country at least in our own little way.    Good comments and positive contributions are welcome. Please be part of a new hope for our dear country.

ECLIPSE Media Network is unique in many ways: From internet News to News and programme production for News organisations and information companies, EMN relishes telling it as it is, and that is why our slogan reads: ’News from the right perspectives’. If we ere, please tell us and we will cherish your constructive criticism and would not  be impervious to corrections.

If we are justified or vindicated, commend us to enable us know that we are expressing your feelings and aspirations. We promise that we would not let you down. Welcome to ECLIPSE MEDIA NETWORK (EMN), your news, information and entertainment website giving you news from the right perspectives.

A pile of twenty pounds notes.

The Bank of England is withdrawing one of the old twenty pound notes from circulation.

The Edward Edgar in -scripted will sieze to be  legal tender after June 30 this year.

This means that shops no longer have to accept the notes, and it is up to banks whether they agree to swap notes after this date.

From July 1 only notes with the image of Adam Smith, the Scottish economist, will be legal tender. These notes came into circulation in March 2007.

About 10 per cent of all £20 notes in circulation – equating to 150 million notes, worth £3 billion – are the old versions featuring the English composer.

They were introduced in June 1999 along with a view of the west face of Worcester Cathedral, replacing the previous series of notes featuring Michael Faraday, the physicist, and before that William Shakespeare.

The Adam Smith design was introduced to cut down on forgeries. The new £20 design included more of the printed words raised and a greater number of flecks that show bright red and green under an ultraviolet light.

Old notes will eventually be sent to one of the official Government incinerators, where they will burned alongside damaged notes. A small amount of thermoelectric power is generated by these sites, which also burn illegal tobacco seized by HM Revenue & Customs at British ports.

After June 30 if a bank or building society refuses to swap a note, consumers have the right to swap the notes at the Bank of England itself. The Bank promises that it will honour the face value of any note issued, even notes from before the Second World War.

Idahosa

A circulating picture of a mass murder scene had generated a long controversy in recent times.

Many patriotic and concerned Nigerians have circulated the pictures apparently to tell the world about the real story of the Nigerian Police force which had been allegedly attacked by Police Minister himself as having let the nation down for pursuing trivialities instead of protecting the people.

The Inspector General of police was so concerned he had to defend the indefensible claiming the  scene of massacre of 19 people, overrun by an on-coming trailer was actually a scene of accident -rather than a robbery and carnage killing spot  as claimed by those posting  the  photographs.

The truth has emerged and the story was right as narrated by the picture contrary to claims by the Inspector general of police Onovo that  it was a scene of accident.

Tue story, true pictures but story time wrong amd belated, though still relevant.

The driver of the truck which crushed the victims has come out to narrate his story. He claims the incident would chase him for the rest of his life. Please enjoy the story as told by  the author.

Courtesy; Sun Newspapers.

Fresh details have emerged on the Benin Ore  road incident, as the man who drove his truck over the robbery victims has cleared the air.

The incident, according to him, happened on July 31 2009. And contrary to the general belief that the driver of the ill-fated luxury bus was ordered to run over his passengers by the bandits, the man whose vehicle crushed the robbers was actually the driver of a truck.

The Edo State born driver spoke with Daily Sun at the police headquarters, Louis Edet House, Abuja at the weekend.

He said he ran over the passengers thinking they were barricades put on the highway by armed robbers. Giving a graphic account on how the 19 robbery victims met their gruesome

death, Osayande Idahosa, 40, said he was driving a Seaner Truck with registration number XN 808 BEN on July 31 last year from Benin en route Lagos.

According to him, he was in company with his conductor, Lucky, and the woman who hired him for the trip. The woman, he said, was going to supply some bags of garri.

Idahosa said he encountered a huge traffic jam at Ore but said he decided to continue the journey because of the nature of the goods in the truck

He said he noticed that there were no other vehicles on the road until he sighted the headlights of some vehicles at Obalende area of Ijebu-Ode. “When I saw the lights, I was happy. I did not know that it was an evil light that will continue to haunt me till eternity,” he said.

Idahosa said immediately he approached the vehicle, he sighted some barricades that looked like logs of wood on the highway. “I thought it was a police check-point, so I slowed down. But I started hearing gun shots. I saw many people firing at me. Out of panic, I decided to run over what I assumed were logs of woods.

“As my truck ran over the ‘barricades’, I noticed that they were too soft. I also heard gun shots and agonizing cries of people. I suspected that I must have killed some people but I did not know who my victims were. I couldn’t control the vehicle and it ran into the bush. I immediately jumped down and took to my heels. “While in the bush, I saw about 20 armed men in civilian clothes searching for me. They were boasting that they would soon fish me out and slaughter me in pieces. At this time, I did not know the fate of my conductor or that of the woman who hired me.”

He explained that while the armed men where searching his vehicle, he ran deeper into the bush where he found a hole in which he hid. The incident, he said, occurred about 9.45p.m. He said he continued hiding in the bush till six the following morning, August 1. Idahosa further said that in the morning, he started hearing the sound of siren and he saw some of the robbers fleeing the scene. When he suspected that the robbers were all gone, he now traced his way to the highway, he explained.

According to him, when he got to the road, he saw another driver who told him that those he ran over were actually human beings. Idahosa was reportedly advised not to venture near the scene as he would definitely be lynched by the angry mob who were still in shock at the huge number of corpses that littered the road. His driver friend, he said, dropped him off at Ijebu-Ode junction where he picked a commercial motorcycle to the Obalende police station and surrendered himself to the policemen on duty. The cops reportedly took his statement and advised him to go back to the scene as the Commissioner of Police, the Divisional Police Officer and other senior policemen were there for an on the spot assessment.

Idahosa said when he got to the scene and sighted the havoc committed by him, he bent down and wept. He then allegedly surrendered himself to the mob who were walling uncontrollably. “But rather than stoning me to death, they all started listening to my story on how I unintentionally killed innocent robbery victims who I mistook to be robbers’ barricades. The sympathizers started consoling me, telling me it was not my fault. The policemen took me along with them and I was with them for four days before I was granted bail.”

He revealed that for the next one month, he couldn’t stand the sight of meat. “Right now, I won’t engage in a night journey anywhere. The pain is too much for me to bear. My wife is devastated. You can’t imagine the agony I go through everyday when I remember how I crushed 19 innocent people to death. But I trust that God will forgive me because I did not know that they were human beings.”

Driver of the robbed Young Shall Grow luxury bus with registration number XF 285 AKD, Okechukwu Okafor, blamed the tragedy on the bad condition of the road.

He revealed that, on the fateful day, he was on a morning trip from Enugu en route Lagos. The journey, he recalled, was smooth until 3.00p.m when he met a traffic gridlock at Ore. He said he was in the traffic for over four hours. In his words, on reaching a point between the Federal Government College, Odogbolu and Babcock University junction along the Ijebu-Ode/Shagamu Expressway, the luxury bus was forcefully stopped by a gang of armed robbers numbering about 50.

According to him, when he saw the intimidating number of the bandits, he jumped out of his bus and took to his heels. He revealed that while in the bush, he was hearing gun shots and wailing of people in agony. “I thought it was the robbery gang that was killing my passengers. It was not until the following morning when I found my way out of the bush that I learnt that it was a truck driver who refused to stop for the robbers that ran over my passengers.”

Okafor said he wept when he was confronted with the crushed bodies of the passengers. “You know, right from the park at Enugu down to the scene of the ugly incident, we had all become friendly. In fact, in my 22 years of driving, I had not seen or heard such a story that looked like a fairy tale.”

Force Public Relations Officer (FPRO), Mr. Emmanuel Ojukwu, said the incident happened on July 31, 2009.

“Following some offensive photographs being posted on the internet by some mischievous people who made the incident looked like it happened recently, the force would like to inform the public that the ugly accident happened on July 31, 2009,” he said.

He said 19 passengers of the luxury bus, including six females and 13 males, were crushed to death by the truck.

He explained that the file in respect of the case has been duplicated and forwarded to the Director of Public Prosecution (DPP) for legal advice.