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190: na to use public address system announce am

bushwailo: [size=14pt]Victor Moses was playing street football with a 'sticky tape' ball when he heard both his parents had been murdered..[/size]

Victor Moses sat in the prefab office at the Crystal Palace training ground. He made eye contact only fleetingly. He spoke in a voice barely above a whisper and never for more than a few words.

His accent was south London, where he has lived for the seven years since his escape.

But when he hissed his 's' at the end of 'yes', that was his native Nigeria and the first echo of his tragedy.
At least now there is a little distance between him and what happened when he was an 11-year-old growing up in the city of Kaduna in the north of the country.




He has made a good life for himself in England. He only turned 18 in December but he has just bought his own flat. In a few weeks, he will take his driving test.

His boss at Palace, Neil Warnock, says he is the most gifted forward he has managed. Chelsea and Arsenal are said to covet him. He plays for England Under-19s.And yet Victor remains an enigma.

He responds well to the Palace coaches now but when he first arrived, they felt they could not reach him.

They forgave him his silence though, because they knew there was a reason for it.There were rumours about the horrors he had seen. It was said that he had not spoken for two years after he arrived in England because he was so traumatised.

But none of them knew the details of his story until he sat down in
that office last week and whispered some of his memories.

The recollection of it all was still desperately painful and sometimes Victor's whispers became inaudible and he looked away.

He did not say his father had been a brave man but did not need to.

Austin Moses was a Christian minister in Kaduna at a time when religious violence between the Muslim majority and Christian minority was rife.

[b]Thousands of Christians had been killed there in 2000 when they objected to the imposition of Islamic Sharia Law.

The news wires mention countless examples of Christian pastors being butchered in their churches by Muslim rioters.

Still, Austin Moses remained a pastor and with the help of his wife, Josephine, continued with his missionary work.

He did not have time for football but Victor played every day, in the streets or on a dusty concrete pitch surrounded by houses.

His heroes were David Beckham and Michael Owen.

But in 2002, there were more religious riots. The family knew that because Victor's father had his own church, he would be a target.

Victor, the couple's only child, was playing football in the streets with a ball made up of sticky tape bound tightly together when his uncle came to find him.

He told him rioters had set upon his parents in their home and murdered them. He said Victor's life was in danger, too. The little boy, an orphan at 11, was hidden at a friend's house.

"I just tried to be careful afterwards," he said. "It was a week after they were killed I came to England.
[/b]
They got me out as quickly as they could for my safety."

He left so fast and in such panic, shock and bewilderment that he did not even have the chance to bring any pictures of his parents.I asked him if he still had vivid memories of them and for the only time, his eyes blazed. "Yes," he said, "of course."

Victor did not know anyone in England. He had never even been outside Kaduna before. He was placed with foster parents in Croydon and classified as an asylum seeker.

He was juggling a ball in a park by himself one day when he plucked up the courage to ask if he could join in with a team training there, Cosmos.

He began playing in the Tandridge Sunday League with them and was spotted by Palace scouts.

They helped him gain admission to the highly-respected Whitgift School so he could take advantage of its superb sports facilities and the coaching of former Palace star, Steve Kember.

Warnock gave him his debut for Palace last season when he was 16 and he became a fans' favourite and an England Under-19s regular.

Warnock came and sat with us for a while as we spoke and listened intently to what Victor was saying.

The Palace boss experienced a different kind of parental bereavement at the same age as Victor when his mother died from multiple sclerosis.And for a couple of minutes the manager at the end of his career and the boy at the start of his talked about how they imagined their parents looking down on them as they continued with their lives.

Warnock said Moses was good enough to play for one of the top four Premier League sides. He said if Palace did not progress, Moses would leave. He talked about how the boy came alive when he ran on to a football pitch, about how all the pain he seems to carry with him fell away when he had a ball at his feet.

And he said he wished some of today's footballers, the ones who seem to take their gilded lives for granted, could see what Victor had overcome to get to where he is.

Victor nodded. The dream of being a professional footballer meant something different to him, something terribly poignant.

"When I look back," he said, "it makes me want to do everything I can for myself and make sure I am in the right place.

"I want to live well and do the right things. I never want to be in the wrong place at the wrong time like they were."

Dyt: ^ where u bn boi
Pulls him

kudi ice: It's no secret teenagers sometimes experiment with alcohol, even drugs, but new ways they're finding to get drunk had jaws dropping in our newsroom.
"Quicker high, they think it's going to last longer, it's more intense," said Dr. Dan Quan from Maricopa Medical Center. "This is not isolated to any school, any city, any financial area," Officer Chris Thomas, a school resource officer, said. "This is everywhere."
When we heard how kids are getting drunk these days, we thought no way. So we hit up the experts to find out if it's an urban legend or if it's legit.
"There's been documented cases of people going to the hospital with alcohol poisoning just from utilizing it that way," Thomas said. Thomas spends his days patrolling the halls of a Valley high school. He's heard first hand how kids are getting tipsy.
"What we're hearing about is teenagers utilizing tampons, soak them in vodka first before using them," Thomas said. "It gets absorbed directly into the bloodstream. There's no barrier, there's no stomach acid to prevent it," Thomas said. "I would expect it to absorb pretty quickly as well, because it's a very vascular structure," Quan told the newspaper. "This is definitely not just girls," Thomas said. "Guys will also use it."
But take it from this cop, it won't work. It's not just jail time that might be a problem, these new tricks are really risky and could cause some serious problems. "It can cause mucosal irritation," Quan said. Plus, what if you over do it? Irritation could be the least of your problems. "Some of the dangers associated with this is there's no barrier," Thomas said.
There's also no gag reflex, and if it isn't going down the hatch you won't have that tell tale sign you've had too much to drink, which means you won't throw up if you've got alcohol poisoning, and you'll pass out before you know there's a problem. "It's problematic because you don't really know how much you're going to absorb," Quan said. It turns out that a super tampon can hold about a shot of vodka, which is pretty potent when it's going straight into your system.
"If the person does pass out or lose consciousness, health care professionals won't necessarily know that they have to look in those areas and that may delay treatment," Quan said.  
Another myth is that kids apparently think getting drunk that way means they would pass a breathalyzer test because they didn't drink the booze, but that's not true. The test checks out what's in your blood stream, not what's on your breath.

Idowuogbo: yeah....

Big Meat: With over 12 years of civilian government, can anyone point to any tangible or credible development in our nation apart from the over inflated GSM services which was done by the Obasanjo government and only one or two state governors performing above par. The rest are just useless, this has been the case with every democratic dispensation right from the first republic. The first republic was slightly better, save some regions.
The second, third and the current crops are blatant real thieves in agbada and babariga. Shame on the lot of them.

I prefer the military as least we know where we stand and how far we can misbehave.

Most infrastructural developments in the country where done under the military regime e.g.
- the famous lagos-ibadan expressway - Gowon, the plan was to make that expressway all the way to ilorin.
- lagos international airport (known now as MMIA) - Gowon
- building of oil refineries - Gowon
- 3rd Mainland bridge - Babangida
- effective law & order - Buhari
- dealing with foreign companies (e.g British Airways) - Abacha
- plain level exchange rate - Abacha
- festac nigeria - Obasanjo
-operation feed the nation - Obasanjo

The list is endless, but our civilian governments have been just too merciless, taking jumbo pays and doing absolutely nothing.
Someone can help us check, how many bills were passed last year, instead they are always eager or will fight if their allowances are being debated 

Unfortunately and this is sad, we in Nigeria are not yet ripe or intellectually developed to operate a democratic government 
What is needed is a real tough no nonsense military ruler, who specialises in kicking backsides.

Rooneyboy: TOPIC : A Thread For Single Ladies.



www.nairaland.com/1182427/thread-single-ladies/17#14166646

candygosh: Beautiful write up

Idowuogbo: present!

ijebabe: Madam Olofofo, I hope we are safe.

Big Meat: With over 12 years of civilian government, can anyone point to any tangible or credible development in our nation apart from the over inflated GSM services which was done by the Obasanjo government and only one or two state governors performing above par. The rest are just useless, this has been the case with every democratic dispensation right from the first republic. The first republic was slightly better, save some regions.
The second, third and the current crops are blatant real thieves in agbada and babariga. Shame on the lot of them.

I prefer the military as least we know where we stand and how far we can misbehave.

Most infrastructural developments in the country where done under the military regime e.g.
- the famous lagos-ibadan expressway - Gowon, the plan was to make that expressway all the way to ilorin.
- lagos international airport (known now as MMIA) - Gowon
- building of oil refineries - Gowon
- 3rd Mainland bridge - Babangida
- effective law & order - Buhari
- dealing with foreign companies (e.g British Airways) - Abacha
- plain level exchange rate - Abacha
- festac nigeria - Obasanjo
-operation feed the nation - Obasanjo

The list is endless, but our civilian governments have been just too merciless, taking jumbo pays and doing absolutely nothing.
Someone can help us check, how many bills were passed last year, instead they are always eager or will fight if their allowances are being debated 

Unfortunately and this is sad, we in Nigeria are not yet ripe or intellectually developed to operate a democratic government 
What is needed is a real tough no nonsense military ruler, who specialises in kicking backsides.

Tashamania: Ayobase! Damn! Your siggy

Tashamania: Darl, where's Timbuktu?

binger: Yeah,i know that place. I stay in ...., but i'm not home now. I'll tell u more via PM.

binger: At all.That boy? Ayo! Always thinking with his ***

Tashamania: #clears throat# ..eerrm. I'm sure candygosh can handle this more than I would