₦airaland Forum

eghost247:
some people are just so desperate to get out of nigeria they would go anywhere not even considering their safety and well being

jason123:
LOL!

why can't they put a nuclear power plant in the east so as to create jobs for the youths over there

Dr Know:
By Vancouver Sun


A Metro Vancouver mother is waging a legal battle to keep her three daughters in Canada to protect them from the controversial tradition of female focal place circumcision in their native Nigeria.
The family has lost one legal skirmish but won a second, and is now preparing for a hearing before the Immigration and Refugee Board (IRB) to find out if the mother and daughters -- now aged eight, 14 and 16 -- can remain in Canada.
Their incredible journey is spelled out in documents, at the Federal Court of Canada, that tell a tale as inspirational as it is heartbreaking.
Both Naomi Koin and her husband come from tribes in Nigeria that continue to circumcise young girls -- a practice that includes the partial or complete removal of external ittybits.
Koin became a Christian in 1986 and in 1993 married Rotimi, also a Christian.
( The Sun agreed not to publish Rotimi's last name to protect the privacy of his and Koin's daughters. The couple declined to be interviewed for this story, saying they did not want to speak publicly until the IRB has made its final ruling in this case.)
The couple are united in their opposition to female circumcision, which the United Nations has criticized "as a form of persecution."
But Rotimi's relatives remain committed to the practice, and, according to Koin, continued to "harass the family and threaten them" to try to get the three girls to undergo the procedure.
"As my daughters grew older, the efforts and desires of my late father-in-law to force them to be circumcised intensified. The in-laws would appear at my home, yell from the outside, calling me names and insulting me," she said in court documents.
Koin could not, she argued, just move from Lagos to another area in Nigeria to escape her in-laws because she had a public career: She hosted a weekly Christian talk show and children's program on TV, recorded religious music CDs, and was an actress in a soap opera.
Rotimi, now 50, had moved to the United States in 1999 -- where he is a pastor in Houston -- to try to establish a life that would allow him to get his wife and children out of Nigeria.
Koin tried three times to obtain visitor visas to join her husband in the U.S., but was turned down.
She received visitor visas for London, England, where she has relatives, and flew there in 2005 and 2006, but was told by a British lawyer the immigration process would take years and she would not be able to work during that time.
In July 2007, she was granted a visitor visa for Canada, and made plans to move here in September of that year.
That August, the family had its last confrontation with Rotimi's relatives, which occurred while Koin was at work and her three daughters were at home, momentarily left alone by their maternal uncle.
The eldest daughter relayed to the IRB what happened: "My Dad's relatives told me that my Mummy had given permission for me and my two sisters to go on holidays to their village; they wanted us to pack our bags and go spend some time with them. Because my Mum had given an instruction earlier never to leave the house without speaking to her, I went into the bedroom, called my Mum, told her everything, and she told me not to go anywhere."
When Koin arrived home, the daughter said she could hear her mother and her father's relatives "yelling at each other really loudly. I felt really scared."
Some of Koin's fierce opposition to this practice must surely come from her own horrific experience of being circumcised at 12, as part of a public ritual that included no anesthesia to dull the excruciating pain.
"I screamed and cried inconsolably until I had no more strength. I bled profusely and almost fainted. I was in shock and could not believe that my mother had allowed this to happen to me," Koin recalled.
"To this day, I still endure the negative psychological trauma of that experience."
The family settled in Metro Vancouver in the fall of 2007 and made a Canadian refugee protection claim in 2008.
However, the IRB denied the claim in March, ruling there wasn't enough proof the girls would be forced to undergo circumcision if returned to Nigeria and that the family had not been subjected to persecution.
Koin's lawyer appealed to the Federal Court, and in November Justice Russel Zinn ruled the IRB's decision was "seriously flawed" and ordered it to reconsider the application.
Zinn added: "Given that the in-laws want to force the young girls to undergo a painful and dangerous procedure with severe and well-documented negative physical and psychological ramifications, the Board's finding that 'there is no evidence to suggest that the in-laws' threats amounted to anything' is unreasonable."
The IRB has not yet scheduled a date for a new refugee hearing for the family, but a spokeswoman said such files are given priority when they are referred back by the Federal Court.
The pastor of the family's church wrote a supportive letter to the IRB, saying Koin is a talented gospel singer and that she and her daughters "are a responsible and loving family."
Perhaps the most straightforward argument in this long legal drama, though, comes from Koin's 14-year-old daughter, who simply told the IRB:
"I understand that circumcision means that I would have to be cut in my private parts. I am really afraid of being circumcised in Nigeria and I do not want to do it."
---
A RITUAL OF 'PERSECUTION'
According to the World Health Organization, Female focal place Mutilation (FGM) or circumcision:
- Includes procedures that intentionally alter or injure female focal place organs for nonmedical reasons.
- Has no health benefits for girls and women.
- Can cause severe bleeding and problems urinating, and later, potential childbirth complications and newborn deaths.
- Is mostly carried out on young girls sometime between infancy and age 15 years.
- Is internationally recognized as a violation of the human rights of girls and women.
The practice is most common in the western, eastern, and northeastern regions of Africa, in some countries in Asia and the Middle East, and among certain immigrant communities in North America and Europe.
An estimated 100 to 140 million girls and women worldwide are living with the consequences of FGM. In Africa, an estimated 92 million girls from 10 years of age and above have undergone FGM. The practice continues due to a mix of cultural, religious and social factors:
- The social pressure to conform to what others do and have been doing for generations.
- It is often considered a necessary part of raising a girl properly, and a way to prepare her for adulthood and marriage.
- It is often motivated by beliefs about what is considered proper sexual behaviour, linking procedures to premarital virginity and marital fidelity.
- It is believed to reduce a woman's libido, and thereby is further believed to help her resist "illicit" sexual acts.
- It is associated with cultural ideals of femininity and modesty, which include the notion that girls are "clean" and "beautiful" after removal of body parts that are considered "male" or "unclean."
- Though no religious scripts prescribe the practice, practitioners often believe the practice has religious support.
Source: www.who. int/en/

[/quote/]

Pastor join the support, God help us all!!!

comechop:
Another dumb thread. Such a non issue should not even be a topic of discussion. Marriage is all about COMPROMISE, especially concerning non-issues like this.

PeachyBody:
Hello everyone,

I am new to this site. I am to travel to Lagos in December for a wedding, can anyone advise the routine for getting a visa for myself.

I am not Nigerian, but my boss is, he's the one getting married, am British, and been reading the threads and it seems scary

Any help is appreciated ie: documents, payment etc,

Thanks in advance

reindeer:
Come on! am british?i am not nigerian, lol!indeeed!!
@beneli, thanks for educating the british

Blazay:
Is this how low you think of yourself and your community?
This is very defeatist.
The progression of your communities in the South is being hindered by the dependency of the lazy North?

Well, well, well.
Only in Africa I suppose.

But in the Southern part of Nigeria you drive the best cars. . .flash the most modern GSM sets. . . send your children to the best schools abroad. I have not seen any Northerner that spent 30 million or is it 30 billion dollars on one daughter's wedding like your Adenuga a while ago. When it comes to negative things your are champions of course. . . no one can beat you in those areas.

Please, you can't be serious.
Are you for real?

Yet these same almajiris, you southerners are smart enough to out do in areas of domestic and international 419ning, prosti-tution in Italy and Belgium. . . kidnapping for ransom not to mention ritualism and pedo-philia.

You have enough to keep yourselves down bro. . . you really do not need almajiris do you?

Blazay:
I am flattered. Blazay the 'paranormal' Northerner. . . you wish. If only you knew what I know about "Blazay". . . . .

I think you need to give up the booze.
Just when I thought I had read it all from you.
Arrrrrrrrrrrrrant nonsense.
What twisted logic.
So, besides jumping around this NL attacking Igbos and Hausas, what have you and your 'cult' members accomplished in or out of NL to get Nigeria out of it's sorry state of existence? With the time you guys spend on this NL being mostly under 25 "youths". . , with questionable sources of income, I doubt Nigeria can be rescued by your kinds. With all that smooching going on on FB and all over NL. . . one can only wonder what your brains can accomplish on the long run.


Since you and 'them' up there are smarter than the almajiris, pray tell me why your villages still have no electricity and running water, even worse than the almajiri lands?
How have the almajiris stopped you in the Southern parts of Nigeria from becoming the China of Africa, considering the fact that the wealth of Nigeria is concentrated mainly in the Western part of Nigeria? For one, you cannot even maintain just Lagos city with gutters every where for owamnbe venues, since you do not have almajiris in Lagos State for example? Most of your folk back home still need to travel out of the country to get medical attention huh?

You are not serious. Was it the almajiris of the North that obstructed the Buhari rally in Yenagoa?
What can someone like Ileke-Idi contribute to Nigeria besides showing us how flatulent with Ofe mmanu-mmanu, watery ewa and ijebu garri and curvatious like samba drums the Yoruba bakassi is(while hers is dryer than 'kpanla')?

As for the other tribalists like you and that your Depolar Bear of Nairaland and co. . . I will reserve my comments for now.

I only know that Seun Osewa owns Nairaland. . . just hope he is not related to Pa Anenih somehow.

You nor well at all.

Deep Soul:
Didn't know Journalism paid that well (400k). If it's true, it's quite impressive and encouraging for those interested in the profession.


Quite contradictory.

10 million shared amongst 20 people = N500, 000 each.

By the way like someone said, it isnt possible that IBB would invite people all the way to the Hilltop and give them just 200k.
500k, maybe. But not 200.

tyolsgirl:
Maybe you should mail them at Abuja. I also submitted and was so worried and I just got it today after 30 scary working days, I sent them an email and I got a response, so you can try it out.