₦airaland Forum

DapoBear:
That is scary. Wrap it up, folks.
Even scarier 

Campaigners are fighting the deportation of a Nigerian woman who claims she could be killed for witchcraft after her one-year-old daughter died.

Cynthia Owie came to Britain on Boxing Day 2008 with her baby daughter, Daniella. She was given leave to remain when Daniella contracted meningitis and required hospital treatment.

Ms Owie was told she would be deported after her daughter died last year, as she had no grounds to extend her stay.

However, she claims she has received death threats from people in Nigeria who believe she “engineered” Daniella's death through witchcraft.

Ms Owie, 33, said: “I have been threatened that I will be killed if I go back. I have been told I am a witch and murdered our daughter.”

Ms Owie also claims she was treated “like an animal” at the Yarl's Wood detention centre, in Bedford, where failed asylum seekers are held before removal.

Michael Emenalo has been appointed Chelsea's assistant first-team coach following the departure of Ray Wilkins last week. Emenalo had been working as head opposition scout for the club since October 2007 but will now make the transition to coaching.

Chelsea confirmed the move on their official website: "Chelsea Football Club are pleased to announce the appointment of Michael Emenalo to the position of assistant first-team coach. He moves up from his previous position of head opposition scout.

"Michael has been an important part of the first-team management structure since he arrived in October 2007, and his promotion to assistant first-team coach is recognition of his efforts to date.

"Michael will continue to oversee the first-team scouting operation as he makes the transition to coaching. He will split the initial period between assisting first-team coach Carlo Ancelotti and updating his coaching qualifications as he takes on this bigger and more influential role."

Emenalo, a former Nigeria international, was brought to the club by the former manager Avram Grant and, along with the first-team coach Paul Clement, was among the favourites to replace Wilkins as Chelsea looked to appoint from within.

"Michael Emenalo is doing a fantastic job as head opposition scout and he is already working very close to me," Ancelotti said.

Emenalo, 42, was a defender during his playing days and became known to Grant during their time at Maccabi Tel Aviv. In 1986 he moved to the US, where he graduated from Boston University three years later with a degree in international relations with political sciences, having also played college soccer.

He also played in Belgium and Germany before winning the Anglo-Italian Cup with Notts County. He won 14 caps for Nigeria and played in the 1994 World Cup in the US

He has made an astonishing 4,598 passes (over 1,000 more than Scholes – just think about how many that actually is). He is the beating heart of this Chelsea team, moving the ball with metronomic precision.
Ah, but it’s easy enough to keep completing passes when all you do is move the ball 10 yards sideways, no? Like the departed Ray Wilkins, is Mikel not just a midfield crab, safely shifting the ball laterally from one harmless position to another?
Until this season that was a fair enough accusation (although one that underestimates the importance a short pass can have) but this season Carlo Ancelotti has made Mikel something of a pet project.

Nicklas Bendtner has threatened to leave Arsenal unless he is given more opportunities to play in the first team

In an outspoken interview with a Danish newspaper, Bendtner also risked offending some of his own team-mates by declaring that he was “100 per cent good enough” to be in Arsenal’s starting line-up.
“I’m extremely disappointed with the lack of minutes,” said Bendtner. “If the situation doesn’t change and I’m still on the bench at Arsenal, I’ll look for a transfer. That’s obvious. But my first priority is definitely – as it has always been – to play for Arsenal. I’ve had a lot of patience and I won’t sit on the bench anymore.”

Bendtner’s remarks are understood to have taken Arsène Wenger aback, particularly as the 22 year-old has only recently returned from a long-term injury Nicklas Bendtner has threatened to leave Arsenal unless he is given more opportunities to play in the first team

Middle-class mother who fell in love with Nigerian she met on web,  and didn't hesitate when he asked for £40k to fund oil scam

‘Middle-class, middle-aged, respectable. I was brought up nicely and married well. Our boys went to public school.
‘But after what I’ve been through, I know they’d find me unacceptable around here. Things like this don’t happen to women like me.’
She has a point. For in Caroline’s case, ‘things like this’ means dabbling in fraud and embracing folly on such an epic scale that even her close family struggles to comprehend.
‘Everyone asks how could I have been so silly,’ she sighs. ‘I got more than I bargained for.’
How could she fall in love with a foreigner on the internet and then, despite his many and obvious lies, entrust him with £40,000, money she will never see again?
In fairness, Caroline, now 54, has the honesty and intelligence to talk about her motives and the loneliness which is at the root of her current predicament.
Similar to many women of her age, with two failed marriages behind her, she badly wanted the comfort of a relationship.

Then she came across a man she calls Sab, who seemed so very different from the run-of-the-mill men she had been meeting.
‘Of course, his name is really Steve,’ she says, of the man she now understands is a Nigerian called Stephen Ehiamhen.
‘I call him Sab because, when he first advertised on the site, he called himself Sabastine Roland. He used a fake picture and posed as a Greek, claiming to be an entrepreneur in Nigeria.’

According to SOCA, ‘romance scamming’, as it is known, is more common than ever, with British women at greater risk than those of any other nationality.
One scammer in Ghana, Maurice Fadola, has defrauded 16 women, taking £700,000 from five of them.

Arsenal boss Arsene Wenger was last night accused of having a secret affair with a stunning blonde French rapper.
The married Premiership manager, 61, refused to confirm or deny allegations that he has been seeing 39-year-old Sonia Tatar.

He said: "I wish to deal with the matter privately."

Wenger reportedly flew to Paris on Thursday and met single mum Sonia - just hours after his team lost a Champions League match in the Ukraine.
It is claimed the pair have enjoyed a close two-year relationship, which allegedly began when they met at a restaurant in Paris.

Wenger, married to ex-PE teacher Annie Brosterhous, has managed the North London side for over a decade. They have a 13-yearold daughter, Leah.

Ibime:
^^Sharrap!

How many Ashi do you know?

I've passed by 2 Ashi joints (not for conjugal visit) in Serrekunda and The strip, and most of em are Freetonians! Hehehehehe

Essar, the Indian conglomerate, is planning an investment of $2bn or more in Nigerian power plants if Africa’s most populous nation sticks to reform plans designed to overcome crippling energy shortages, people familiar with the matter said.

Several engineering and power groups have been linked with potential Nigerian investments in the months since Goodluck Jonathan, president, unveiled a blueprint to attract the tens of billions of dollars required to meet the electricity needs of the country’s 150m people.

Essar’s interest is among the most ambitious and would see it invest in power capacity of at least 2,000 megawatts, equivalent to two-thirds of Nigeria’s entire average output at present, at an estimated cost of $2bn.

“The feeling is that this market has a lot of potential,” said one person with knowledge of Essar’s plans.

But the person echoed the view of other potential investors who have warned that projects will only materialise if the government drives through market reforms to make the power sector commercially viable.

Once the reforms were in place, the person with knowledge of the plans said Essar was “ready to go”.

Essar would primarily seek to build new power plants but might also look to purchase assets in the planned privatisation of the Power Holding Company of Nigeria, the stricken former monopoly which is to be broken up into six generation companies, a transmission network and 11 regional distribution companies.

“Essar is looking for the right opportunity to invest several billion dollars in Nigeria,” a person familiar with the matter said. “They are working closely with the government and are ready to get things started as soon as possible.”

“They are definitely interested,” added a senior Nigerian power official of the Indian group.

Nigeria endures one of the world’s lowest rates of electricity production per capita, despite being a key oil and gas supplier to the US and Europe.

Officials forecast that on current trends the lack of power would cost the country an annual $130bn in thwarted economic activity over the coming years, hampering Nigeria’s ambitions to join the big emerging economies.

Thursday’s conference for potential investors at the presidential palace in Abuja, the capital, drew delegates from Chinese and Indian groups as well as western engineering companies such as Siemens and Rolls-Royce.

Nigerian financiers and others thought to include investors from the UK and the Gulf are looking to make power investments under the new regulatory regime, which aims to tap the country’s vast untapped stocks of natural gas.

India’s Power Grid Corporation, Canada’s Manitoba Hydro and Ireland’s Electricity Supply Board are the final three bidders hoping to manage the transmission network.

The sale of the distribution companies and power stations is scheduled to be concluded by May.

Essar said it was “looking at growth and investment opportunities … in India and other emerging and growing economies”.

Another person familiar with the situation said the Nigerian investment would come through Essar Energy, the London-listed group majority-owned by Mumbai-based Essar group.