₦airaland Forum

Friendly: Flying Eagles Hold Colombia In Six-Goal Thriller

Nigeria’s Flying Eagles held Colombia to a 3-3 draw in their last warm-up game before the 2023 FIFA U-20 World Cup on Tuesday night.

Ladan Bosso’s side went behind on 20 minutes with Abel Ogwuche conceding an own goal.

Colombia doubled their advantage nine minutes later with Oscar Manuel Cortes converting from the spot.

Jude Sunday reduced the deficit for the Flying Eagles five minutes before the break.

Colombia regained their two-goal lead immediately after restart with Yaser Asprilla finding the net.

The Flying Eagles fought back with Mohammed Beji reducing the deficit on 65th minute.

Emmanuel Umeh equalised for Nigeria 12 minutes from time.

The West Africans will now fly to Mendoza where they will tackle Dominican Republic and Italy in their opening two games in the competition.

Five-time winners Brazil are other team in the group.

Secretary Blinken’s Call with Nigerian President-elect Tinubu

The below is attributable to Spokesperson Matthew Miller:

Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken spoke this morning with Nigerian President-elect Bola Ahmed Tinubu to emphasize his continued commitment to further strengthening the U.S.-Nigeria relationship with the incoming administration. The Secretary noted that the U.S.-Nigeria partnership is built on shared interests and strong people-to-people ties and that those links should continue to strengthen under President-elect Tinubu’s tenure. Secretary Blinken and President-elect Tinubu discussed the importance of inclusive leadership that represents all Nigerians, continued comprehensive security cooperation, and reforms to support economic growth.

goshen26:
The guy na clown Sha;

Someone said NEPOTISM

He replied "of the highest order"

Seun Kuti spends night in custody, police plan arraignment

16th May 2023
By Abiodun Sanusi


The Lagos State Police Command on Monday reiterated that Afrobeat musician, Seun Kuti, will be taken to court for arraignment for assaulting a policeman on duty in Lagos on Saturday as captured in a viral video.

The Police Public Relations Officer in Lagos, Benjamin Hundeyin, told The PUNCH that the musician, who turned himself in on Monday, was handcuffed and detained, would spend the night in custody.

“Seun Kuti is still in our custody; he’ll be arraigned once investigation is concluded,” Hundeyin confirmed the development to our correspondent in a telephone interview on Monday night.

The PUNCH reports that Seun, the youngest son of the late Afrobeat legend, Fela Kuti, submitted himself at the State Criminal Investigation Department, popularly known as Panti, in Yaba, Lagos State, on Monday morning.

He was accompanied by a Senior Advocate of Nigeria, Adeyinka Olumide-Fusika, alongside a lawyer from Falana and Falana Chambers, Femi Akinyemi.

The police released a video clip and pictures showing the musician in handcuffs while being paraded by police officers at the SCID, Lagos.

Trouble began on Saturday when a video of the musician assaulting a police officer on the Third Mainland Bridge in Lagos State went viral.

In the 12-second video, Kuti, who wore a red shirt and a white pair of trousers, was seen pushing a policeman, who stood beside a Toyota Hilux police van. He then proceeded to slap the cop, as he shouted, “You dey craze, you dey mad?”

A motorist, who filmed the incident from his car, was heard saying, “Omo na Kuti o. Na better news be this o.”

The Inspector-General of Police, Usman Baba, reacting, ordered the arrest of the singer.

But Seun Kuti, in a social media post on Saturday, alleged that the policeman in question made an attempt on his life and those of his family members.

However, our correspondent reliably gathered on Monday that the singer had later apologised to the policeman and offered him ₦12,000 to repair his (policeman’s) damaged vehicle.

According to sources privy to the development, the policeman trailed Seun Kuti to his Akin Osiyemi residence off Allen Avenue, Ikeja.

The source said, “The policeman was alone, and after the altercation, he followed Seun Kuti to his home in Ikeja, and the musician apologised to the policeman and gave him ₦12,000 to repair his damaged vehicle.”

Responding to an inquiry concerning the apology and monetary tip, in a telephone interview with our correspondent on Monday, the Police Public Relations Officer, Hundeyin, confirmed the apology and the ₦12,000 offer by Seun Kuti.

Hundeyin said, “Although investigation is still ongoing, your correspondence is correct. Seun Kuti apologised to the officer on Saturday, and gave him ₦12,000 to repair his damaged vehicle, after the officer followed him to his house in Ikeja after the altercation.

“Fortunately, the policeman had earlier reported the incident at the Area F Police Command, and deposited the ₦12,000 with the command, before the video of the assault went viral on social media.”

As condemnation trailed the assault video on social media, the IG ordered the musician’s arrest.

Also, the Police Service Commission, on Sunday, issued a strong statement, demanding the prosecution of the musician to serve as a deterrent to others who may want to toe the same path.

Meanwhile, Olumide-Fusika, who accompanied Seun to the police station, critised the police for allegedly subjecting his client to a media trial.

The SAN complained that “Mr Seun Kuti was handcuffed and his photograph taken in the open by the Lagos PPRO, Mr Benjamin Hundeyin, who coordinated the parade and apparently shared the photograph of his parade in the media.

“Mr Kuti is presumed innocent until the contrary is proved by the state. Therefore, the decision of the police to subject him to the media parade violates Section 9 of the Lagos State Administration of Criminal Justice Law, which has prohibited any form of parade of criminal suspects in Nigeria in Lagos State.

“The police are supposed to enforce the law but prefer to disrespect and break it so casually and randomly. A police institution that has no respect for the law it exists to enforce is not a good example to alleged lawbreakers.

“The decision of the police to handcuff Mr Kuti is equally illegal as it constitutes a violation of Section 5 of the Administration of Criminal Justice Law.

“After handcuffing him, the police then drove him in a long convoy of heavily-armed personnel from Ikeja to Panti Lagos, where he was again displayed for viewing to the men and officers of that police formation, and is currently held.

“We await the next move of the police on the misdemeanor alleged against Mr Seun Kuti.”

Grateful to be selected as the only Nigerian to take a short course on Governance at the prestigious Peking University @PKU1898, Beijing, China under the University’s Dongfang Program 2023 Spring. May the Almighty put His barakah in everything we will be learning in the next couple of weeks and may it will be beneficial to us and the people around us. Ameen!

Nigeria election: The mystery of the altered results in disputed poll

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President-elect Bola Tinubu is facing legal challenges ahead of his inauguration on 29 May

A BBC investigation has found evidence suggesting some results from Nigeria's presidential election may have been manipulated.

The winner Bola Tinubu is due to be inaugurated on 29 May but the opposition is challenging this.

The BBC has uncovered significant anomalies in Rivers state, a key battleground, although not sufficient to change the overall national outcome of the election, which took place in February.

There are also questions over the identity of an election official who read out some of the unexplained results.

How votes are counted in Nigeria


On 25 February, Nigerians cast their votes at thousands of polling stations across the country.

At each polling station, the votes for the party of each candidate were publicly announced and the results sheets taken for collation first at the ward level, then at local government (LGA) centres.

An election official from each LGA then travelled to the state capital, where these results were officially declared.

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Example of a tally sheet from a single polling station, one of almost 177,000 across Nigeria

For the first time in a Nigerian election, photographs of the polling station results sheets were published online by the electoral commission.

This made it possible to add up all the polling station sheets and to compare them with the results declared at the state level.

What we found in Rivers state

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We found an increase of just over 106,000 in Mr Tinubu's vote in the official declaration when compared with our polling station tally - almost doubling his total in the state.

In contrast, Mr Obi's vote had fallen by over 50,000.

It's important to make clear that although we searched through the election website for every single one of the 6,866 polling stations in Rivers state, we were not able to obtain results from all of them.

Some were incorrectly uploaded, others were missing, even after a month from the date of polling.

For about 5% of polling stations, the photos of tally sheets were too blurred for us to read. It's reasonable to assume that the official count would have included these as they would have had the original documents.

In another 17%, there were no results at all. Many of these would have been places where no voting took place due to security issues or the non-arrival of voting materials. Others had technical problems preventing officials uploading the documents.

So there clearly would have been more polling stations included in the final official results that weren't included in the BBC investigation.

However, these additional tally sheets would have increased the totals for each party, not decreased them. And what we found was that the votes for Peter Obi's Labour Party had decreased sharply in Rivers state.

So how can the sharp fall in votes for Peter Obi - in the official result - be explained?

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Peter Obi has contested the outcome of the vote in Rivers state

Where were the biggest discrepancies?

Two areas stood out.

The first was the Oyigbo local government area, where we found:

• The vote for Bola Tinubu was six times larger in the officially announced results compared with the BBC's polling station count

• Peter Obi's votes had been cut in half

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The second local government area where we found major discrepancies was in nearby Obio/Akpor:

• The official result for Mr Tinubu was 80,239 votes, but we counted just 17,293 votes from polling station tallies.

• The count for Mr Obi was announced officially as just 3,829 votes, but the BBC counted 74,033 votes for him on the tally sheets.

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So how did these differences occur?

As explained earlier, all the polling station sheets are collated at local government (LGA) headquarters.

We found an official election document with these collated votes for the Oyigbo area, signed by an election official and some of the party agents.

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The results for Oyigbo (with the two largest parties highlighted)

Several different photographs had been taken of it and uploaded on social media accounts.

The numbers in this document closely matched our own tallies for the two leading candidates (Obi and Tinubu).

This would have been one of the 23 collation sheets from LGAs in Rivers state taken to the state capital, Port Harcourt, for the official declaration.

Broadcast live on television on 27 February, in front of a bank of microphones, Oyigbo election official, Dr Dickson Ariaga, announced his name and that he worked for the Federal College of Education in Omoku.

On the recording, the word "Omoku" is indistinct, but there is only one Federal College of Education in Rivers state.

Dr Ariaga then read out the results for each party in alphabetical order, including for all the smaller parties.

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Dr Dickson Ariaga (seated far left) announced the Oyigbo results

They all matched those on the collation sheet the BBC had obtained. But when he reached Mr Tinubu's APC, instead of saying 2,731 as written on our photograph of the sheet, he read out "16,630".

Then for Mr Obi's party (LP) the figure changed again - instead of the 22,289 seen on the sheet, he announced "10,784", more than halving his vote.

The mystery surrounding Dickson Ariaga

We asked the electoral commission if we could speak to Dr Ariaga, but they would not give us his details or reach out to him for us.

We spoke to the election official seated next to Dr Ariaga, but she told us she wasn't authorised to talk to the press.

So we sent a reporter to the Federal College of Education in Omoku, about two hours drive north of Port Harcourt, where he'd said he worked when introducing himself.

The Deputy Provost Moses Ekpa told the BBC: "From our records, both from our payroll and from our human resources, there is no such a name in our system and we don't know such a person."

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Moses Ekpa says the Federal College of Education in Omoku has never heard of Dr Ariaga

We tried tracking him down on social media and eventually came across another Facebook account for someone in Port Harcourt, whose profile details had the name Dickson Ariaga.

When we compared an image from this account to the television pictures of Dr Ariaga using Amazon Rekognition software, we achieved a match of 97.2%, indicating a very high probability they're the same man.

Dr Ariaga did not respond to messages sent by us to this account.

By reaching out to his Facebook friends we did finally manage to speak to a man who said he was a relative, who was at first willing to help us but then didn't return our calls.

What have the authorities said?

We put these findings to Nigeria's Independent National Electoral Commission (Inec).

Johnson Sinikiem, Inec's regional spokesman in Port Harcourt, told us that due to a "gross shortage of time and personnel" they had needed to take on some people without verifying their identity documents.

Referring to Dr Ariaga, he said: "If he had presented himself as a lecturer from [the college in Omoku] and it's otherwise, then he is dishonest."

We also approached Inec's headquarters in Abuja for a response to our findings of discrepancies in the results in Rivers state. We were told that they were unable to comment due to ongoing legal challenges.

This is just one case in one state in southern Nigeria where the evidence points to the results having been manipulated.

On their own, these altered results would not have decisively swayed the outcome of the presidential election. Bola Tinubu won the national presidential vote by 1.8m votes over his nearest rival, Atiku Abubakar of the PDP.


We're still looking for Dr Ariaga to respond to the findings in this report.

Additional reporting by Liana Bravo, Jemimah Herd, Jake Horton and Kumar Malhotra

Edited by Dan Isaacs

Spiritualizt:
Yeah the same way man united men and women teams will celebrate the FA cup Victory ✌️✌️

Harder. . .SAM KERR!

Of course it is! Chelsea strike first in the Cup final. The deadly duo combine. There can be no more predictable villain!