fujirice:
He'z already playin' 4 us

snydergp:

IMBECIL ur the slowpoke here.

Where have u read that he did this to stay in power u fool.

President Jacob Zuma’s family killed 12 cows in a ritual believed to be aimed at extending his tenure ahead of the ANC’s national elective conference in Mangaung, according to a report

Although no other African National Congress leaders were seen at the event, Zuma joined Zulu warriors in traditional dances as thousands of his relatives prayed for him to retain his position of ANC president.

Zuma was reportedly given a shield and spear to defend himself from other contenders for the ANC’s top position.

snydergp:

Where the hell have u heard this because pple in SA aren't that naïve to think that way. Since when has any post democratic SA leader over stayed there welcome or tried to stay in power 4 life.

Those days are long gone in most african nations.

When africans practice there native traditions some of u fools whose used to western propaganda machinary see this as backward why. I he doesn't believe in Jesus and conforms to his ancestral believes does that make him less of a presedent. Should he do what the Queen does please!.

Just because ur a Christian doesn't give u the right to think other african traditions who still believe in there native ways isn't good enough to.

So u gonna tell me that the India's leaders who worships cows will also do everything to stay in power

Chedarking: African Leaders are All the Same..

Willing to do Anything, Willing to kill Anything to Stay in Power..

ochallo: I don't believe this couple are going to have sex , the whole night would be sent praying and thanking GOd.

If I were to get N50, for every time government and security agencies in this country have said the words; “Nigerians have been advised to go about their normal duties as security operatives are on top of the situation”; I would have made the Forbes Africa rich list published last week. I would make even more money for every time they make that statement and something terrible like another mass murder or robbery or kidnapping occurs. It is mostly laughable these days.

There is no doubt that criminal activities mostly go unpunished in Nigeria. The ones that do not even make the news sometimes outnumber the sensational headlines we see everyday and quickly forget soon as we drop the newspapers. Not because we do not care but mostly because, bad news has become so overwhelming in these parts that we have become so toughened, knowing that the next bad news is not too far off.

I keep trying to have faith in our security operatives but they never help their case. If the police isn’t killing people at checkpoints and at the back of police stations, the military Joint Task Force (JTF) are ironically wiping out whole communities in their search for peace in the North. As the criminals and terrorists get more brazen, security operatives usually seem to turn their anger on the defenseless. Someone always has to bear the brunt and judging from history, it is usually the innocent Nigerian. The criminals sometimes get amnesty and rewards instead.

Okay, not sometimes. Most times actually. The ones in government never get arrested and continue to milk the country’s treasury dry. A recent headline by ‘The Punch’ newspapers said; “5 trillion Naira has been looted under President Jonathan’s government alone.” Even I didn’t bat an eyelid at such a humongous figure. We have become used to seeing billions and trillions bandied in the news for so long that it almost feels like stealing a trillion might even be forgivable nowadays. With successive governments seemingly becoming more corrupt than their predecessors, it is inevitable for crime to rule the land.

Militants have been given amnesty and are being paid unbelievable amounts of money just to stay quiet. This temporary solution to the Niger Delta problem might be working for now, but what happens when a new president comes in and decides just like President Jonathan did with fuel subsidy payments, that Nigeria can no longer afford to pay amnesty? We would go right back to square one right? Except this time, we would be left with militants who now have unbelievable amounts of their own personal funds, enough to cause even more harm than they did the first time out.

But until then, while we celebrate the faux calm and peace in the Niger Delta, we obviously need to address the even scarier problem in the North. Thousands have lost their lives to the terror attacks across parts of the North in the last 2 years and talks about amnesty for members of Boko Haram, have become even louder. First, they were threatened, then they were begged; then they were called for negotiations; then the government confirmed that “backdoor negotiations” were holding; then Mr. president denied the negotiations; then a most wanted list was released with monetary rewards for any leads. All these while Nigerians continue to die and live in fear. What really is the strategy here? Many believe an amnesty program would solve everything. Which would then mean that many innocent Nigerians would have died once again while their killers be allowed to live happily in sheer opulence as a result.

The South East has refused to be left behind. The Niger Deltans might have started the kidnapping trend, but the Igbos, have made it a full-fledged business. Not a day passes without someone’s grandmother or uncle or brother being grabbed and held till some money is paid for his or her release. It is a problem. I grew up visiting my village at least twice a year every single year. It is an integral part of who I have become today. But in the last 4 years, I have been there just once and it was on an unscheduled visit. I spent a night there and ran out. That is how much fear they have put in us.

Headlines over the weekend got even funnier (read as ‘scarier’) with reports that an Association of Kidnappers of Nsukka (AKN) had been formed. This group in Enugu State was brazen enough to print fliers and posters and paste them in different parts of Nsukka, warning people in communities to pay certain amounts of money into certain bank accounts or get kidnapped; some sort of kidnapping prevention fund. So maybe the kidnappers would go round one day and ask everyone to show their bank teller deposit slips to confirm payment. Those who haven’t paid might then be thrown into a bus and shipped away. It would be laughable if it weren’t possible, knowing my country. As usual, the police spokesperson has told Nsukka resident to go about their daily business as the police is handling the situation.

It is hard to know how long we can go on like this for without it all imploding right in our faces. But it is also hard to see why we would not be fine, since we have lived this way for decades. Security operatives here have always been incompetent. Nigerians have lived with robbers, murderers, ritualists and what not for God knows how long. Yet, we have continued to move on. Is that a good enough reason to keep looking the other way? No! But it probably is reason for Nigerians to go about their normal business, hoping that they never get caught in the criminal web slowly entangling us all.

As you were…

Super-strength marijuana is to be banned from Holland's coffee shops under tough new laws that could see 'skunk' reclassified as a class A drug.

Dutch justice minister Ivo Opstelten wants the country's famous licensed cafes to only sell cannabis containing less than 15 per cent of the main active chemical, THC.

The decision will be a major blow to hundreds of coffee shop owners, many of them in Amsterdam, who will have to replace around 80 per cent of their stock with weaker varieties.
Snuffed out: Super-strong marijuana will soon be banned from Holland's famous coffee shops over fears it can be as bad for your health as cocaine and heroin

Snuffed out: Super-strong marijuana will soon be banned from Holland's famous coffee shops over fears it can be as bad for your health as cocaine and heroin

Critics claim it will make the problem worse by pushing stronger versions of the drug onto the black market.

Mark Josemans, the spokesman for the Maastricht coffee shop owners association, told the Volkskrant newspaper: 'Weak weed in the coffee shops, strong weed on the streets - then the choice is pretty clear.

'It makes it harder for society. A user smokes less, just as people don't drink rum out of a beer glass.'

According to the Daily Telegraph, the government is acting on a study by Dutch mental health charity, the Trimbos Institute, which found that skunk can be so dangerous it should be classed alongside heroin and cocaine.

THC is the compound that gives users the 'high' and in large quantities has been blamed for causing psychotic reactions.
Burning issue: The decision will be a major blow to hundreds of coffee shop owners who will have to replace around 80 per cent of their stock with weaker varieties
A bag of cannabis

Burning issue: The decision will be a major blow to hundreds of coffee shop owners who will have to replace around 80 per cent of their stock with weaker varieties

At present, the country's liberal laws allows customers to buy up to five grammes (0.18 ounces) of marijuana for personal use in around 500 licensed cafes.

The decision comes as Jacqui Smith, the former home secretary, admitted it was a mistake to upgrade cannabis to a Class B drug in Britain.

She now argues that it would have been better to improve education about the drug rather than raise the level of criminalisation.

When Mr Opstelten announced the tougher laws, he also relaxed a mandatory plan to ban foreigners from cannabis-selling cafes.

Under the rules, which had been branded 'tourism suicide', only Dutch residents would have been able to enter coffee shops.

Potential customers would also have been forced to sign up for a one-year membership, or 'dope pass'.

Now it will be up to local authorities to decide how to enforce the new legislation.



Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2236386/Holland-ban-skunk-marijuana-coffee-shops-fears-dangerous-heroin-cocaine.html#ixzz2Cx1P

Mad Cow:

kachy:
Oibe, who doubles as the Public Relations Officer of Northern CAN, said he who lives in a glass house should not throw stones.

He said: “If there is any clergyman in the country whose constituency is government, it is Bishop Kukah, who served every government in power in the last decade.

“He thinks people have forgotten in a hurry how he served in Obasanjo’s government and turned round to attack the former president, or his fraternity with the former Governor James Ibori and his Rivers State counterpart, Peter Odili.”

http://www.vanguardngr.com/2012/11/private-jets-can-slams-kukah-bakare/

Kidnapping, the taking away of a person against the person's will, usually for ransom or in furtherance of another crime, is becoming everyone’s nightmare in our dear country. Daily, we read nightmarish stories of people being abducted as they go about their daily business. A criminal act, which first attracted national attention on 26 February 2006 when Niger Delta militants kidnapped foreign oil workers to press home their demand, kidnapping has since become ubiquitous and commercialized.

It has spread from the Niger Delta to virtually all nooks and crannies of the country, with some states of course being hotspots. Similarly victims have changed from being predominantly foreign oil workers to Nigerians, including parents, grand parents, and toddlers and about anyone who has a relative that could be blackmailed into coughing out a ransom. Those behind the recent wave of the despicable act have also changed from being exclusively Niger Delta militants to dodgy elements from different walks of life - armed robbers, unemployed, professional 419ers, and at least one Catholic priest

There is no doubt that Nigeria is today one of the major kidnapping capitals of the world. This has obvious implications for investments, the country’s development trajectory and even the quality of governance.

The common tendency is to blame the pervasive wave of kidnapping outside the Niger Delta exclusively on the unacceptable rate of unemployment in the country, an inefficient and corrupt police force that is ill-equipped to fight crime, and collusion between kidnappers and politicians. These factors however appear to be mere symptoms of a larger malaise, namely that pervasive kidnapping, is one of the major symptoms of both ‘failed’ and ‘failing’ states. Most of the countries where kidnapping have been pervasive have been either failed or failing states – Baghdad after the 2003 invasion of Iraq, Columbia from the 1970s until about 2001, and Mexico between 2003 and 2007.

A ‘failed state’ is often used to designate a state, which has become incapable of fulfilling the basic functions of a sovereign government. These functions include physical control of its territory, provision of security of life and property for its citizens, the monopoly of the use of legitimate physical force and ability to provide reasonable public services or to interact with other states as a full member of the international community.

A “failing state” on the other hand denotes a state in transition to a failed state. Here while the state remains nominally a sovereign and fulfils a modicum of the functions of a sovereign government, the central government has become so weak and ineffective that it has little practical control over much of its territory, leading to an upsurge in pervasive insecurity such as kidnapping, organised assassinations and robberies. A failing state is also characterised by a weakened ability to provide basic public services and widespread corruption as people think of themselves first, following the failure of the state to perform its traditional functions. Most of the countries in the developing world involved in civil wars or protracted internal conflicts could qualify as ‘failing states’.

Following from the above, while Nigeria is not yet a ‘failed state’, it could arguably qualify as a ‘failing state’. This in essence means that while addressing the problems of unemployment and inefficient and corrupt police force could be good palliative measures in combating kidnapping, any lasting solution to the menace will inevitably have to address the key question of the nature of the Nigerian state, including why it has transited from a weak state to a ‘failing state’ and rapidly gravitating towards being a failed state. I would recommend the following:

One, there is a need to restructure the Nigerian state to enthrone true federalism, including true fiscal federalism. Classically, federalism is regarded as a system of government in which the centre and the federating units are each, within a sphere, co-ordinate and equal. A true federalism cannot work in Nigeria under the present condition where the federating units are atomised into 36 unviable states, (with the possible exception of two or three states), which are dependent on the centre for their survival.

Instituting true federalism will require merging the present unwieldy number of states into about six to make them manageable and cost efficient. The federating units should be allowed to run their own police force and to take measures they deem fit, within the law, to protect the citizens within their territory. Each federating unit ought to have a database of people living in its territory, including what such people do.

Two, the cost and efficiency gains from the consolidation of the present 39 state-structure could be channelled towards improved provision of public services and better quality of governance. A computerised national identity card scheme has become an imperative.

Three, states should invest in smart security, especially preventative security, which could involve phone tapping, extensive use of moles, and possible use of private armies and private military companies in protracted conflict areas. In this sense, the recent call by Governor Peter Obi of Anambra state that he would hold traditional rulers in the state in whose domain kidnapping takes place culpable, appears misplaced.

Traditional rulers, especially in the Southeastern states, only have ornamental value and should therefore not be expected to be the chief security officers of their kingdoms. They are not paid security agents of the state, and should therefore not be expected to play the role of moles, which was never part of the duties of traditional rulers. There is however merit in the proposal that kidnapping should attract capital punishment.

Four, in the social contract theory that created the notion of sovereign (monarch or constituted national authority), a key argument is that prior to the creation of the sovereign, there was what the English political philosopher, Thomas Hobbes, called the ‘state of nature’. This ‘state of nature’, he argued, was characterised by the ‘war of all against all’. People agreed to the creation of this sovereign, and willingly gave up their right to self-help because they were very eager to escape the conditions in this ‘state of nature’ where life was ‘short, nasty and brutish’.

This is the underlying philosophy of the social contract between the government and the governed. It could therefore be argued that pervasive insecurity is a key manifestation of the breach of this social contract by the government. This raises an interesting question of whether citizens should continue to be bound by this social contract when one of the parties – the state- is increasingly failing to keep its own side of the bargain? A state becomes a failed state when citizens and groups conclude that they too should no longer be bound by the terms of the social contract. In this scenario, the Hobbesian state of nature reigns.

Is Nigeria moving in this direction?

afam4eva:

Is kidnapping in Igboland more than it is in other parts of the country?

Mr.chippychappy:


since when did Masch start diving ? His is a DMF / CB he has no business with diving.

afam4eva:
What has Igboland got to do with it? Must you go tribal?