₦airaland Forum

Datazone:
I heard Urhobos on the internet saying there will be no Olu title again after the death of the former one.. LOLZZZZZZZZZZ

Long Live Iwerre Kingdom

Wetin concern urhobo wit olu of itsekiri.....mtchew....

Holyghostpikin:
Virginity for a woman is biblically recognized!!!
unfortunately our society and the church of God is shying away from this fact because of decadence. May God help us.
Anyway am a virgin and I intend to marry one!

Good for u. I dey hear dey watch u like nollywood movie as u wan take go ur villa go marry dat virgin

hbpeze:
All I know is that if a woman is not a Virgin on a wedding day she uselessed herself and the man is marrying a spare part

I hope say u go marry virgin wen u dey open ur blouse mouth dey talk nonsense. Akpadon

http://punch.cdn.ng/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/Fola-Ojo-360x342.jpg Fola Ojo

The salience in an Old English proverbial submission about the hardiness and assumed invincibility of the cat tells us a lot about the animal. “A cat has nine lives. For three he plays, for three he strays, and for the last three he stays”. The cat possesses very flexible backbones because it has more vertebrae than humans. When tossed down a skyscraper or a high-rising building, it is able to twist around very quickly through an innate endowment called a ‘righting reflex’. Breath of life, it is inferred, cannot be sucked out of the cat in one shot. You have to smother the animal more than nine times before you can pronounce it dead.

Corruption is not just expansive in Nigeria, it is considered immortal. If in other parts of the world it is a cat with nine lives; in Nigeria, it probably is a beast with nine-thousand breathing valves. We heard recently that in the last 16 years, a total sum of $29.635bn or N6.52tn was wasted on electricity supply between three Presidents from the same party with nothing to show for it. The administration of former President Olusegun Obasanjo reportedly spent $16bn (N3.52tn), his successor, late President Umaru Musa Yar’Adua, expended $5.375bn (N1.183tn) while immediate past President Goodluck Jonathan’s administration spent $8.26bn (N1.817tn). The stacks of trillions of naira were not frittered away in trash-bins or over Rivers Niger and Benue; they were diverted into private pockets of big and powerful names both home and abroad.

In the last 100 days and without expending one extra dollar; power supply suddenly improved. A tour-de-force that could not be pulled off in almost 6,000 days by three Presidents from one political party with many ministers, sub-ministers, super permanent secretaries, super consultants and legions of advisers, was sealed in 100 by one man with no minister! But how did that happen? The new Sheriff just flashed his badge to those in charge of power supply. The gluttonous, greedy geeks and their faceless votarists began scampering for their lives by doing the right thing they actually could have done from the get-go. Don’t forget that there was a crew placed in oversight before May 29th. What we heard was that their hands were tied. Without a doubt, they were fettered in ropes of larceny and thievery.

Nigeria has a system in place that traps those who pillage. Some of them are caught but are let go by a loose adjudication process. Each time an erring public official is brought before the court of law, their retained big-wig SAN lawyers immediately file motions for bouts of adjournments that linger on for many years. The prosecuting team then loses steam and enthusiasm or moved away from the case. Judges hearing specific cases stretching over many years are promoted to a higher court almost at the end of the case. The replacement judge has no choice but to begin the case from where the last judge began. The process then drags on and on. Our laws are lame and without bones and muscles. Many of the interpreters of our decrees and judges with gavels sitting up high are men who know no shame. In such an environment, corruption, the cat with nine lives keeps living.

Whatever salvo has been fired against corrupt activities in Nigeria since Buhari came on board still does not convince some that the war will one day be won. Right now, many in and outside Nigeria are only waiting and watching. It is unthinkable for many countries around the world to believe that in Nigeria, corruption will truly be wiped off. The proof came in an article written penultimate Saturday by one Sudarsan Raghavan in the Washington Post. ‘With only $150,000 in savings, Nigeria’s leader may be the least corrupt in Africa”; was the title. It came after President Muhammadu Buhari declared his assets. But I did not miss the surreptitious message in the “Least corrupt” headline insert. It is not a superlative befitting a man who has not for once been found culpable in corrupt odysseys. The “least corrupt” phraseology played into an expansive and far-flung presumption that in Nigeria, no leader can be trusted even if he’s been proven to be trustworthy. That headline, in my humble opinion only further expressed the harboured opinion that Buhari is already dirtied up in filthy lucre; and today he is only the best among those who have come before him. The thought of a corruption-free Nigeria is far-fetched in the permutations of skeptics including Nigerians.

In 1992, Keith Richburg, Foreign Service Correspondent of the same Washington Post threw this insult: “Welcome to Nigeria, world capital of the business scam. Shake hands, but be sure to count your fingers”. Richburg’s insinuation was that in Nigeria, no one can be trusted. Dianne Abbot, a British MP wrote an opinion in the Jamaica Sunday Observer April 9, 2006 titled; “Think Jamaica is bad, try Nigeria”; “When it comes to corruption, Nigerians make Jamaicans, and every other nationality in the world, look like mere amateurs. Billions of pounds have been looted by politicians. Seventy per cent of private wealth has been taken out Nigeria”.

Transparency International ranked Nigeria 144th out 177 most-corrupt nations in the world. Scavenging slave masters have been in charge of the nations treasure and treasury. When public funds are stolen and diverted for private use, when funds meant for pensioners are used to purchase private pent-houses abroad; it is considered both luck and the ‘blessings’ of God. The roads these men travelled to corner the wealth are considered an ingenious exercise of divine wisdom. Corruption is not just pervasive among us, some believe it is immortal. Workers are owed twelve months’ salaries and politicians elected lives of blatant and lousy luxury.

The more Nigeria has attempted to eliminate corruption, the more the cat has sprung back to life. For ages, almost everywhere in the country has become a harbour where corruption burgeons. Even in places which are deemed holy, unwholesome activities of corruption still flourish until today. In a country where poverty is rampant at the rate of 62.6 per cent; where men live below $1.25 per day, and where about 112 million of our 170 million population are dying of hunger and poverty; any manner of reckless display of wealth by politicians, and especially pastors, is insane and sacrilegious. Perception is everything in life. We continue to wonder how men audaciously splurge Brobdingnagian amount of money on vanity.   It is depressing and heart-wrenching to fathom that the church, a supposedly purification altar from all manners of iniquities is now perceived as a toxic contaminant and harbinger of unending capriccio of corruption. God has to help mend the minds of those who daily tell us the mind of God!

The death of corruption will be slow but the hit must be kept consistently steady; and the President has promised to put it to eternal sleep. In my daily spiritual guide, I read that Moses started off the people’s journey to the Promised Land, but Joshua completed it. I still believe that Buhari was elected to begin the fight against the cat with nine lives; others who will come after him will keep it going.

The parade of who gets to become a minister of the Federal Republic of Nigeria under this President will be a clear indication if corruption will be made mortal. The list will be a revealer of many unspoken words trapped in the heart of our new sheriff in town, and a pointer in the direction we are heading as a nation.

http://www.punchng.com/opinion/one-president-and-a-cunning-cat/

Physicians at the University of Illinois Hospital & Health Sciences System have cured 12 adult patients of sickle cell disease using a unique procedure for stem cell transplantation from healthy, tissue-matched siblings.

The transplants were the first to be performed outside of the National Institutes of Health campus in Maryland, where the procedure was developed. Physicians there have treated 30 patients, with an 87 per cent success rate. The results of the phase I/II clinical trial at UI Health, in which 92 per cent of treated patients were cured, are published online in the journalBiology of Blood & Marrow Transplantation.

The new technique eliminates the need for chemotherapy to prepare the patient to receive the transplanted cells and offers the prospect of cure for tens of thousands of adults suffering from sickle cell disease.

About 90 per cent of the approximately 450 patients who have received stem cell transplants for sickle cell disease have been children. Chemotherapy has been considered too risky for adult patients, who are often more weakened than children by the disease.

“Adults with sickle cell disease are now living on average until about age 50 with blood transfusions and drugs to help with pain crises, but their quality of life can be very low,” says Dr. Damiano Rondelli, chief of hematology/oncology and director of the blood and marrow transplant program at UI Health, and corresponding author on the paper.

“Now, with this chemotherapy-free transplant, we are curing adults with sickle cell disease, and we see that their quality of life improves vastly within just one month of the transplant,” said Rondelli, who is also the Michael Reese Professor of Hematology in the UIC College of Medicine. “They are able to go back to school, go back to work, and can experience life without pain.”

Sickle cell disease is inherited. It primarily affects people of African descent, including about one in every 500 African Americans born in the U.S. The defect causes the oxygen-carrying red blood cells to be crescent shaped, like a sickle. The misshapen cells deliver less oxygen to the body’s tissues, causing severe pain and eventually stroke or organ damage.

Doctors have known for some time that bone marrow transplantation from a healthy donor can cure sickle cell disease. But few adults were transplanted because high-dose chemotherapy was needed to kill off the patients’ own blood-forming cells — and their entire immune system, to prevent rejection of the transplanted cells, leaving patients open to infection.

In the new procedure, patients receive immunosuppressive drugs just before the transplant, along with a very low dose of total body irradiation — a treatment much less harsh and with fewer potentially serious side effects than chemotherapy.

Next, donor cells from a healthy and tissue-matched sibling are transfused into the patient. Stem cells from the donor produce healthy new blood cells in the patient, eventually in sufficient quantity to eliminate symptoms. In many cases, sickle cells can no longer be detected. Patients must continue to take immunosuppressant drugs for at least a year.

In the reported trial, the researchers transplanted 13 patients, 17 to 40 years of age, with a stem cell preparation from the blood of a tissue-matched sibling. Healthy sibling donor-candidates and patients were tested for human leukocyte antigen, a set of markers found on cells in the body. Ten of these HLA markers must match between the donor and the recipient for the transplant to have the best chance of evading rejection.

In a further advance of the NIH procedure, physicians at UI Health successfully transplanted two patients with cells from siblings who matched for HLA but had a different blood type.

In all 13 patients, the transplanted cells successfully took up residence in the marrow and produced healthy red blood cells. One patient who failed to follow the post-transplant therapy regimen reverted to the original sickle cell condition.


http://www.punchng.com/health/healthwise/cure-for-sickle-cell-in-adults-validated/

Lolz....funny though "D COMMENT"






Just here to read comment

Relationship is all about communication. Just try to talk it out wit ur man instead of u tinking abt dat came dat came out of nowhere.
Am married and we didn't court up to 1yr but we still live happily togeda and I LOVE HIM so very much.

FYI: am just 21 n my marriage is not up to a year.

So d key here is communication, patience and understanding.

We hear thank God for her new self.

Lemme go bath and go to church before I late

What a waste


First posting here and I see so many rules dat are not even followed ESPECIALLY "ALL"