₦airaland Forum

Very interesting.

Akpabio has executed notable projects in this nation. I am impressed.

https://www.nairaland.com/nigeria/topic-79330.32.html

Read the insight from Megacash

[quote author=High_Chief link=topic=512970.msg6748858#msg6748858 date=1284423205]I really wish this Bill would be passed and implemented. It will go a long way to force those thieves to develop that country and enact rule of law. And pls IBB should be the first on that list cos since his "looting" career Nigeria has suffered a major set-back.[/quote]That man brought Nigeria down financially and we havent been able to recover since his introduction of SAP and 'legalizing' corruption.

Senegal tackles child-beggar tradition
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Story Discussion By ADAM NOSSITER • New York Times | Posted: Monday, September 13, 2010 12:00 am | No Comments Posted

Font Size: Default font size Larger font size Share DAKAR, Senegal • The judge spoke quietly, and decades of custom were quickly rolled back: The Muslim holy men were to be punished for forcing children to beg.

The sentence handed down in a courtroom Dakar last week was gentle, only six months' probation and a fine for the seven marabouts, or holy men. Yet the result could be a social revolution, in the eyes of some commentators. By government decree, and under international pressure, Senegal has forbidden the marabouts to enlist children to beg on their behalf.

Outside the crowded courtroom, a dozen or more white-robed marabouts sat in an anxious conclave on the ground to discuss their colleagues' predicament. More than 40 had shown up in support, and they knew the stakes. If the government follows through, thousands of children could be released from a practice that human rights groups condemn as exploitation under the guise of education but that religious leaders defend as essential for keeping their enterprises afloat.

A singular and ubiquitous feature of the landscape here seems about to change: the flocks of ragged boys known as talibes, who tender begging bowls to motorists and pedestrians on behalf of the marabouts.

The bowls are sometimes no more than old tin tomato cans. When they return to their rudimentary living quarters in the evening, they must turn their coins over to the marabouts, or face severe punishment.

Three weeks ago, after the government announced its ban, the police began rounding them up, along with other beggars. The children, in turn, led the authorities to their marabouts, officials here said.

"It's an abusive use of children," said Ibrahima Thioub, a specialist in Senegalese history at the Universite Cheikh Anta Diop in Dakar. "These kids in the street don't learn the Quran."

Tidiane Balde, a spokesmen for the marabouts at the courthouse last week — each of them has around 40 to 100 talibes — countered: "They don't have the means to feed the talibes. So they have to send them out."

The custom is so ingrained that many Senegalese, even if they do not quite approve, continue to roll down their car windows and flip coins into the children's bowls, sustaining the practice. The government, dependent on support from powerful Muslim brotherhoods with large popular followings here, has only just begun to tackle the problem. There has been no popular pressure to do so. The outrage has come mostly from abroad.

So prosecuting the marabouts is a major break with precedent, Thioub said.


http://www.stltoday.com/lifestyles/faith-and-values/article_bdcf01a0-6509-5b10-976a-88d246387d23.html#Scene_1

Read this:

http://www.eretzyisroel.org/~jkatz/templemount.html

I am a deep sleeper, and as a kid, goodness, my mother would have to nudge and nudge me (funny) before I woke up. But I remember being whupped with my elder brother by my mom with a broom. Funny stuff. Now, (thanks to boarding house) though I still sleep deeply, all what you have to do is to call my name and I will wake up. Guess that goes with adult responsibility.

My! This man was a politician in the 70's.

jamace:
Hmnn. Mrs Acholonu tried.

My concern here is that she has indirectly said God did not CREATE human beings but that human beings evolved from  monkeys, baboons, apes, chimpazees, gorrillas, orangutan e.t.c (I just imagined my ancestors with long tails hopping from tree to tree in the forest. It wasn't funny o). Na wa o    .
She has again confirmed the  Darwin's Evolution Theory that I detest.

Anyway, Mrs Acholonu has done an academic exercise, reserved for people with higher brainwaves. No qualms.

But me I reject that my ancestors EVOLVED from the monkey family. My stand is GOD ALMIGHTY CREATED MY ANCESTORS DOWN TO MY HUMBLE SELF. No monkey bizness at all.

GBAM! My own be say, God created Man in His own Image. For someone to even compare Man with animals is not only absurd, but totally false.

To me, it appears this woman is on a mission even if it means fabricating the Holy Text, to advance the causes of the Ibo people. Pathetic.

abadaba:
http://sunnewsonline.com/webpages/features/living/2010/aug/28/living-28-08-2010-002.htm
Professor traces biblical Eden to Nigeria
• Says Igboukwu is the place
From MODESTUS CHUKWULAKA, Abuja
Saturday, August 28, 2010



In 2005, Afro-centric scholar, Prof. Catherine Acholonu, rattled the imagination of a bemused global academic community, when she claimed that the biblical Adam, the progenitor of the human race, was an African, in all probability a Nigerian. Her book, Gram Code of African Adam, chronicles what she described as the hidden contributions of ancient Africans to world civilization. Acholonu, a former presidential aide on culture, had, in that work, challenged those who are intent on unraveling the mystery of the lost Garden of Eden to zero in their searchlight on the African continent because of what she considers compelling evidence in that direction.

Acholonu was even more audacious last year with the publication of the second book in her Adam series, entitled, They Lived Before Adam. In that book, she had rubbished the belief held by many for so long that the Igbo people of South-East Nigeria might have descended from the Hebrews. Rather, he said, it was the Jewish culture that had been enriched by Igbo traditions, as a result of earlier interface between the two peoples thousands of years earlier. In deed, Acholonu had questioned the veracity of the creation story, as recorded in the Bible and said the origin of the Igbo race pre-dates Adam! And if anything, she said, Adam, and ipso facto, his descendants, owed their ancestry to the Igbo.
Now, with her forth-coming book, The Lost Testament of the Ancestors of Adam, Acholonu, a professor of African History and Philosophy, is sure to ruffle no fewer feathers than she had done in her two recent books. Predictably, the present book completes the Adam trilogy, and Acholonu tells Saturday Sun that the book serves as a logical conclusion to the arguments that were advanced in the Gram Code concerning the pre-eminence of Africa, and particularly Nigeria, in the origins of man.

“The Gram Code touched on a lot of things, but when we wrote They Lived Before Adam, we put more flesh and details to some of the things we hinted at in the previous one. When we said that Eden is in Nigeria, we substantiated it; now the evidence is mounting,” she says.

In the 2005 book, Acholonu explains that she basically used her expertise as a linguist, focusing on pieces of linguistic evidence that suggested that Eden was somewhere in sub-Saharan Africa, most probably in West Africa. She says she and her team of researchers had backed up their claims by oral and written traditions that are yet to be controverted.

However, in last year’s book, Acholonu says they had to go deeper than linguistic evidence and traditions to look at “those cultures whose histories has been written down, explaining, “we analysed symbols from continent to continent and found out that West Africa, indeed, Nigeria, your people and my people have been the origin.” Quite an audacious claim, but Acholonu, who had, earlier in her academic career, written The Igbo Roots of Olaudah Equiano, said she does not envisage any controversy because the facts speak for themselves.

She says: “We put together what archaeologists and paleontologists have done over the years; those who study human fossils, and they found out that by seven million BC, people were living in the Chad Basin. They were not yet men, but ancestors to the homo erectus, they were called Australopithecus.”

According to her, a French paleontologist had concluded, after a 2002 study, that the ancestors of the homo erectus lived in the area around the Chad Basin. In the course of its research for the coming book, Acholonu says her team had found out that way back in the 1970s, a team of archaeologists from the University of Nigeria, Nsukka had discovered that homo erectus lived in Ugwuele, a town in the present day Abia State, South East of Nigeria, one million years before the birth of Christ. Home erectus was the direct ancestors of modern man, the homo sapience.

In Acholonu’s words, “the ancestors of Adam, the cave men lived in Ugwuele, and their ancestors lived in Borno area of Northern Nigeria. In other words, those people who were ancestors of Adam were here.”
Of course, she had said as much in her previous works, but now Acholonu appears to be more insistent and precise: “Africa has been the mother of everything; not just Africa, it’s Nigeria. Everything started here. We have not yet been dismissed by anybody.”

How does the Ugwuele and Chad Basin connection translate to the exact place, where the Garden of Eden, as described in the Bible, was? Again, Acholonu says she has borrowed from history to arrive at her conclusions. She says her team had been able to identify the locations named not only in Egyptian records, but also in Herodotus. She speaks of several references made to Eden in ancient history, and says the descriptions tally with her findings about Igbukwu in Anambra State.

Acholonu obviously knows she has a lot of explanations to make here, and says, as a caveat, that mythological Egypt should be distinguished from the much later ancient Egypt ruled by the pharaohs. The former, she says, was somewhere in West Africa and was ruled directly by the gods.
“They were calling us Ethiopia, Egypt, Nubia, Lybia and all sorts of name. Ethiopia was us,” she says, pointing out that history spoke a lot about Ethiopia West, “where the gods were dinning and where the Nile had its source. The Egyptians believed where the Nile had its source is Eden,” she says.

Describing Egyptian records as record of everything, she says her team studied the works of the founder of Egyptian civilization, Tot whom she describes as the god of writing and wisdom, insisting that the link between his works and Nigerian traditions are overwhelming.

“The gods of Egypt were living here; it was only in 3100 BC that Tot moved from Nigerian to Egypt. We’ve gone into several records from different parts of the world. The mythological Egypt was here, the same god-man ruled them,” she says.

She identifies River Nun in the Niger Delta as the source of the Nile, citing Herodotus who wrote that the source of the Nile “lies somewhere South-west of Egypt.” This description, she says, fits River Niger, which is the source of River Nile: “They said that that place where the Nile had its source is where the River Nun is, that’s where life started. That’s where the Niger enters the Atlantic.”
Bringing her argument further home, she speaks of a sacred lake referred to by Egyptian historians, which was square-shaped and flowed from the source of the Nile, a confluence of that river.
“They said the lake was 440 cubits and (was) the base of the great pyramid of Gizer, the oldest and biggest of the pyramids, that lake was Idemili Lake; the Igbo still talk of the same sacred lake, the Binis, the Yoruba speak the same,” she claims. Citing historical references to the city built upon the plateau, the scholar says the plateau was recovered from the deluge.

The city in question, she says, was reputed for its stone tools, which archaeologists have said thrived as an industry there, “like the whole world was being supplied stone tools from there,” adding that her team “capitalised from such information and placed it side by with what is generally known of Igbukwu.” According to her, given the pervading reference to plateau, the cave men, the source of the Nile, the mythical lake, stone writing (monolith) and other features that can easily be related with Igbukwu, it is not difficult to point to it as the Eden described by historians – and not by the Bible, anyway. 
When Tot, the founder of ancient Egypt came from Atlantis, she says, “he saw cave men, the same cave men of Ugwuele. Stones were cast at him, but he used his magic and built the city. That city was the first post-deluge city. It was from there that the world was populated. That city was built at least by 10,000 BC, they came here immediately after the deluge; it’s here in this country. That ancient forgotten city is at Igbukwu. It’s what the Egyptians called Yabo.

“It’s on a hill. Shaw already speaks about it. His finds in Igbukwu could fill museums. Igbukwu is the confluence city. Everyone in Igbukwu finds archaeological treasure while burying, while digging, while building. The city where the gods were going to banquet is Igbukwu; it was great to live anywhere close to the city,” she said.

Rather than be trailed by controversy and rebuttals, Acholonu says the two previous books in the Adam series were well received within and outside the country. For instance, They Lived Before Adam is available at Amazon and has received a number of international awards, the most recent being the US-based International Book Award. While the book was still in the works, Acholonu was invited to the Harlem Book fair in New York, where a dance drama was staged in honour of “the revelation the book was bringing to the world” at the Schomburg Centre for Black Culture.

“It’s an international bestseller; under one year we are getting orders from classrooms, individuals, libraries across the world, and this encouraged us and made to understand that there is so much hunger for what we are doing. We’ve toured a number of universities in the US,” she says.
In fact, Acholonu says she was told to go for the Nobel on account of the two books, so as to put the books on the spot to draw the attention of the world to the hitherto unknown African contribution to history. However, she was reminded that to go for the Nobel, she had to complete the trilogy, hence had to do the third and final book which is expected to be out next month. Asked what to expect from the book, the author of The Gram Code of African Adam said: “It’s a wash book!

My understanding is that this woman is Roman Catholic, yet she is disputing the Biblical account of creation. Tell her not to question the creator of the Universe. God's understanding is unsearchable.

Praise God in the Highest, Amen.

Injustice!

KenGali:
@matoyeh.
First Obasanjo did not know when he placed a whole Sovereign nation at the mercy of a poorly defined court presided over by a party with interest (a French Judge) and so we gave out Bakassi like little fun men. Then he also did not know when after offering asylum to an African President he waited till US placed an illegal bounty on his head and proceeded to chased him out of the house, so the dogs can have their fill.

In very like manner we will not know when our independence will be mortgaged for the selfish ambition of a single individual.
Let it be known to readers that no US, UK, Russia, Japanese citizen or Israeli is subject to a world court. Infact the mere fact that US and UK reject the court at Hague means it is no world court at all. Yet we are all queing up to get justice.  The idea of world court so negates and clashes with the definition of sovereignty of nations, that Nigeria is one of the very first nations to swallow the pills. And not only that, went  on to mortage other African nations by her actions. I hope Obasanjo will not oneday find himself at the world court for the mass murder he committed in Odi, delta state or rather inability of western interests to fully enjoy there investments in the Niger Delta.

No matter how bad Taylor was, he should be judged by his people in Liberia, or the so called people he affected in Sierre lone

So called? Are you serious?

Having sympathies for a mass murderer. pity!

[quote author=invisible! link=topic=492527.msg6532746#msg6532746 date=1281219238]@chy-baby, herein lies the contradiction, how can a woman with very high degrees and too much knowledge respect anyone, talk less of his husband that she sees his 'kini' every night? The high pursuit of knowledge by women is a problem on its own, in the end the kids suffer, the society gets more misfits growing up and yet things are not better than they were when our grannies lived.[/quote]Very ignorant statement. Or would you rather the woman is uneducated so that when the head of the husband dies, the children will be left to suffer financially, because a woman is not supposed to be highly educated? Please discard this archaic views. A woman can still be educated and be the deputy to the husband.

"Submission does not mean subordinate. If you are submissive, you just recognize his authority. Any creation with two heads is a monster. There can only be one head. Support it well."

Applause @Prittigree for the above quote, Man is the head of the house!

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100731/ap_on_re_la_am_ca/lt_brazil_switched_at_birth

It's not spam!

Marriage is a honorable institution that nobody should tamper with.

This bribery has been going on for decade in Nigeria. Growing up it was tagged the "Brown envelope syndrome"

Is this a new thing?

EmemJU:
you are very right!! some people think that giving money is a viable option, afterall they wont be there to partake of it, but to me, i think since it's done in the person's name, it's just as if she was there, from experience, i make bold to say that an entire family can decide not to perpetuate such acts and it will stand, nothing will happen to anybody, my family is a clear example,
i called an aunt of mine on this yesterday, cos i had heard while growing up that it was done for her and her daughter got married last year and wanted to know if it was done for the girl, she said God forbid!! that the didnt do it, and that if she had known then, she wouldnt have allowed it do be done on her head. she went further to say that most times, for people that refuse to do it when the family demands, it is not any spiritual consequences 'anything', that it's just some diabolical people that conjure up those things that affect the ones involved and then of course, everyone will say it's becos they didnt do it.

God will keep u!!

GBAM! You got that right. My uncle was just saying people demand Okukim just for "nduta" but there are diabolical people, as you mentioned, who would conjure evil to haunt the innocent party on grounds that the traditional demands for the trado marriage were not met and havoc will ensue in the family. I had been thinking about it, and realize that while some people do it out of ignorance, others do so out of fear of a reprisal by evil spirits. As for me, Ubok mi, ukot mi, isangake do. I dont blame people though, who fed up with this wickedness choose to marry an American girl to save them that kind of wahala.

Absurd statistic. How did the 'psychatrist' arrive at such a preposterous conclusion or did he test every single Nigerian to determine their sanity?