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All movies starring Steven Seagal and Jean Claude Van Damme

Conn. man kills masked boy, finds out it's his son
Associated Press

A man fatally shot a masked teenager in self-defense outside his neighbor's house during what appeared to be an attempted late-night burglary and then discovered it was his son, state police said.

Police identified the dead boy as 15-year-old Tyler Giuliano, who was shot at about 1 a.m. Thursday in New Fairfield, a town along the New York line just north of Danbury.

A woman who was alone in the house believed someone was breaking in and called the teen's father, who lives next door, and he grabbed a gun and went outside to investigate, police said.

The father confronted someone wearing a black ski mask and black clothing and then fired his gun when the person went at him with a shiny weapon in his hand, police said.

When police officers arrived, the father was sitting on the grass next to the woman's home and the teen was lying in the driveway with gunshot injuries. The teen was pronounced dead at the scene, police said.

"All in all it's a tragedy," state police spokesman Lt. J. Paul Vance said.

The teen's father, Jeffrey Giuliano, a fifth-grade teacher in town, hasn't returned a message seeking comment on what happened.

The teenager was a student at New Fairfield High School, a short walk from the neighborhood where he was killed.

Superintendent of Schools Alicia Roy sent parents an email about what happened, Danbury's The News-Times newspaper reported.

"Our district has experienced a tragedy that has affected us deeply," she wrote, adding that students weren't told of the killing because all the facts weren't clear.

No charges have been filed. State police are investigating. An autopsy on the boy is planned.

This is crap!! Since when does monitoring Police radio communication stops police anywhere apprehending criminals?
From anywhere in the world, I can monitor Radio communication of lots of Police Departments in the US using a perfectly legal app on my phone called 5-0 Police Scanner http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/5-0-radio-police-scanner/id334624666?mt=8. So does that mean Police in the US do not apprehend criminals?
I beg make them look for another excuse jor.

Well for me that will be books

LOL
I could say the same thing about my daughter. She does not only destroy toys but books too.
There was a day I came from a trip with toy wristwatches for her and her older brother. I only got to know that the maid had helped her opened the wrapping of her own when she brought the dismantled toy wristwatch.
I had not even finished undressing. She just said in Yoruba "mo ti baaje". Since we live outside Naija, it is funny that this statement is probably the only Yoruba she speak without a mistake.
Be rest assure that your son will change as he grows older. My daughter is almost 4 now and I have started seeing changes in her behavior. I must confess that I have had to smack her because she destroys not only her toys but at times remote control and some other stuffs in the house.

LOL
I could say the same thing about my daughter. She does not only destroy toys but books too.
There was a day I came from a trip and bought toy wristwatches for her and her older brother. I only got to know that the maid had helped her opened the wrapping of her own when she brought the dismantled toy wristwatch.
I had not even finish undressing. She just said in Yoruba "mo ti baaje". Since we live outside Naija, it is funny that this statement is probably the only Yoruba she speak without a mistake.
Be rest assure that your son will change as he grows older. My daughter is almost 4 now and I have started seeing changes in her behavior. I must confess that I have had to smack her because she destroy not only her toy buy at times remote control and somee other stuffs like that.

Siena: Brother Omoabike, I'll give this some thought, do some research, and give you a response tomorrow, if that's okay by you. I hope it won't be too late!

Chief Siena,
Tomorrow is fine with me. I will appreciate your response.
Thank you so much

Hello Siena,
Sorry to derail your thread.I posted this message in February this year. I did not get any response from anyone. As it is now it is very urgent that I get an expert advice before proceeding on this issue.

[b]I have urgent need for an advice from the Auto Buffs here. I have a 2002 TOYOTA TACOMA Automatic Transmission which I have just been informed have issues with the Reverse gear which has stopped working.
It is a long story but I will keep it short, this vehicle is being driven by my brother since I do not live in Nigeria. It was bought at around 158,000 miles last year. It has around 180,000 miles since my brother due to the nature of his job was always doing intercity trips with the pickup.
His idea of service for the vehicle is just to change the engine oil every month and even after warning him several times he still continued doing this. I had a feeling the transmission fluid probably is down and this may have caused the issue. However, I do not know much about vehicles myself and will need your advice on the way out.
Do we need to change the transmission to manual as some mechanics have advised him? This I am not interested in as I do not like driving manual vehicle since I drive the same vehicle whenever I am in Naija myself.
If the issue is the transmission, what do you advised I do? Is it repairable or do we need to change it completely. Your candid advice would be much appreciated.
Thank you[/b]

Please your advice is going to be greatly appreciated as I need to make a decision on the vehicle in the next couple of days.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/ryanmac/2012/08/01/professor-billionaire-david-cheriton/

It’s dusk on a crisp January day at Stanford University, and David Cheriton is in his corner office waiting for his weekly research meeting to begin. The last slivers of sunlight filter through the windows, illuminating the pages of Superyacht Living & Style, a glossy magazine Cheriton is browsing through with only the mildest of interest.

“I once read that a boat is a hole in the water where you pour in a bunch of money,” says Cheriton. He flips through a few more pages and disdainfully tosses it to the floor alongside a pile of keyboards, cables and cords. “I don’t know why they keep sending me these things.”

Burgess, the yacht magazine publisher, knows exactly why: Cheriton is rich. Rich enough to afford the April Fool, 200 feet of steel-hulled elegance listed at $60 million, or New Zealand billionaire Graeme Hart’s Ulysses, priced at $49 million. Or both. With a net worth of $1.3 billion, Cheriton is likely the wealthiest full-time academic in the world. But yachts are not his thing. The Stanford computer science professor calls himself “spoiled” for taking the occasional windsurfing vacation to Maui. When pressed to recall his latest splurge, the best he can come up with is a 2012 Honda Odyssey (“for the kids”). His act of thinking is often punctuated by the clicks of three different-colored ballpoint pens that he rotates through his fingers.

The one expensive passion he does pursue? “Startup companies,” he says, as he continues to shuffle his pens. Blue. Click. Red. Click. Black. Click.

When Cheriton uses one of those pens to write a check to a startup, he usually ends up more in the black than in the red. Far more in the black. The first two companies he founded were sold to Cisco Systems and Sun Microsystems, respectively, for hundreds of millions. In all he’s spent more than $50 million out of his own pocket, investing in 17 different firms, which range from VMware to his latest, Arista Networks. But the topper was a $100,000 check he wrote in 1998 to a pair of Stanford Ph.D. students named Larry and Sergey. That check alone is now worth more than $1 billion in Google shares. “I feel like I’ve been very fortunate in investing, but I still have the brain of a scrounger in terms of spending money,” he says.

Cheriton, 61, maintains a low profile. Google searches of his name turn up primitive Web pages in Times New Roman, not the LinkedIn and Facebook profiles that have become Silicon Valley standards. (He doesn’t even tweet.) When I asked random Stanford students about him, several paused to think, then asked if his last name is spelled the same way as the Sheraton hotel chain.

That’s the way Cheriton prefers it. He still drives the same 1986 Volkswagen Vanagon he had before he made his money, lives in the same Palo Alto home he’s owned for the last 30 years and employs the same barber—himself. “It’s not that I can’t fathom a haircut,” says Cheriton. “It’s just easy to do myself, and it takes less time.”

For a man who works 10 to 12 hours a day, Cheriton understands that time is everything. His investment in Google allowed college freshmen cramming for exams to cut through the junk that had flooded search engines like ­AltaVista. His newest company, Arista Networks, makes a data switch that cuts down the delays between servers, allowing bits to be transferred in less than 500 nanoseconds, nearly twice as fast as Cisco’s fastest switch and Juniper Networks’ best. That gives traders on Wall Street the ability to submit their trades nanoseconds before their competitors and gives doctors the capacity to sequence a patient’s genome in real time. Cheriton has been working on the guts of its operating system since 2004, when the company was founded. Arista, based in Santa Clara, Calif., is adding at least a customer a day. The company says it is operating at an annual revenue run rate of $200 million. “Imagine if cars going 50mph speed up by a factor of ten,” says Cheriton. “It qualitatively changes what you can do.” Arista is that vehicle.

The third of six children of two Canadian engineers who grew up during the Great Depression, Cheriton was always encouraged to pursue his own path, says his father, Ross. The elder Cheriton recalls an independent, “self-sufficient” boy who didn’t indulge in team sports and built his own timber fort in the family’s yard away from the other children. His father also remembers a gifted son who decided to stay out of Edmonton’s Eastglen High School for the 11th grade because he felt the curriculum was too slow. “He went his own way,” his father says. “We didn’t channel him.”

As a boy with broad interests, Cheriton wasn’t chided when he tried to pursue a degree in classical guitar and performance arts, his main passions as a college student. When he was rejected from the music program at the University of Alberta, he simply pursued another interest, mathematics, and later computer science. He completed his undergraduate studies at the University of British Columbia and then got a master’s and Ph.D. at the University of Waterloo.

In 1981, in search of research funding, Cheriton arrived at Stanford, soon to become the engine room of a budding Silicon Valley. It was at Stanford that Cheriton first met Andy Bechtolsheim, a brilliant German Ph.D. student who was constantly tinkering with a workstation computer he had designed called the SUN, short for Stanford University Network. Looking for someone to develop software for the workstation, Bechtolsheim turned to Cheriton, whom he’d met in the computer science department. The Canadian assistant professor played with the device, then asked for tweaks to the hardware. Bechtolsheim obliged.

Bechtolsheim left to start Sun Microsystems in 1982 but Cheriton continued on as an academic well into the 1990s. He mostly avoided the startup bug that infected so many of his students and colleagues, among them billionaire Netscape cofounder Jim Clark, a former Stanford professor.

When Bechtolsheim left Sun in 1995 he started casting around for someone who could understand the fundamental software problems behind Ethernet connections. He dusted off the phone book and called Cheriton. The two formed Granite Systems, an Ethernet switching company that was bought for $220 million by Cisco after 14 months in existence. In 2001 they tried again and formed Kealia, another networking company, which was acquired by Sun for $120 million. In between their startups Cheriton and Bechtolsheim made their savviest investment, the $100,000 each forked over to the Google founders.

A couple of weeks after meeting up with Cheriton at his office, I sat down with him on his front porch to see the place where he wrote that check to the Google guys 14 years ago. Page and Brin were not Cheriton’s students, but they’d approached him after hearing about his success with Granite, hoping he could impart some wisdom in their quest to commercialize their PageRank algorithm. With his pockets deeper than ever—Cheriton’s 10% ownership of Granite netted him more than $20 million—he was eager to help.

“There was a big problem raising money. I didn’t think it needed to be a big problem,” Cheriton says of Google’s earliest days. (Yahoo and Excite had turned down the opportunity to license the algorithm.)

Bechtolsheim was there that day, too. It took him only a few moments to comprehend the search engine’s elegance as well as the creators’ plan to sell sponsored links. “I remember thinking in the back of my head, ‘Well, if they get a million hits a day, 5 cents a click, that’s $50,000—at least they won’t go broke!’” Bechtolsheim reminisces.

While Bechtolsheim describes himself and Cheriton as “accidental investors,” others have downplayed the role of sheer luck. “It’s not accidental at all,” says Ron Conway, Silicon Valley’s ubiquitous angel investor whom Cheriton introduced to Google for a later investment. “It’s because of the environment that they’ve built around them. They’re such smart and astute engineers that they attract other engineers to share their ideas with them.”

Back at Cheriton’s office, lined with 33 intimidating masks from around the world, you get the sense you’re in the gravitational center of Stanford’s hallowed computer science department. So many students have come here over the years in search of wisdom and, if possible, cash. Sam Liang, one of Cheriton’s former Ph.D. students, was one of them. After leaving Google in 2010, he shared with his former professor an idea for a mobile platform that could track the whereabouts and habits of its users in real time. He has since received more than $100,000 from Cheriton to start his company, Alohar Mobile.

“His standards are extremely high,” says Liang, whose research meetings with Cheriton were the most nerve-­racking part of his week. “He tells you, ‘You have to think big. You have to make an impact in the world.’” Buried under stacks of old papers and books on Cheriton’s desk is a plaque that reads, “Dr. David R. Cheriton, Chief Superintendent of Saying Important Things.”

Siddharth Batra, a former Stanford master’s degree student who received funding from Cheriton for his company in 2009, appreciated his former mentor’s attention to detail. “Technologists probably find it easier to share things with David, since he will understand a lot more than if you go to a VC who will sort of give you a blank stare and not really understand the promise of what you’re doing,” says Batra.

Cheriton says he avoids pursuing market whims—he considers social networking one of them—and stays focused on breakthroughs that make measurable improvements to human life, such as the way Google helps a college junior complete a research paper at 3 a.m. He says he has “a belief that if you are providing real value to the world and doing it in a sensible way, then the market rewards you.”
Cheriton and Bechtolsheim have put in a combined $100 million into Arista, 95% of its total funding. Its CEO, Jayshree Ullal, did not disclose financial details but noted that the company is finally now “profitable” after seven years on the runway. Arista is fortunate to have deep-pocketed founders. The networking sector has been lethal for similar startups. “A lot of switching companies never really got a full return on their investment dollar,” says Alan Weckel, a senior networking analyst at the Dell’Oro Group. He cites firms such as Woven, which did not receive a second round of funding and folded, and Force10 Networks, which was bought by Dell in August after being unable to time its products to the market correctly.

“Sometimes it takes a little longer when you’re doing something innovative and creative to get there,” says Cheriton. Arista has doubled its head count in the last year, and rumors of an IPO continue to swirl. The high-speed switching industry in which Arista competes is expected to grow tenfold to $2.4 billion by 2016, according to Weckel.

For all his brainpower, Cheriton never could have predicted his life would turn out this way. He has worked hard to make sure it remains relatively unchanged. “Some things in life, like net worth, aren’t planned,” he says. “Some investments work out, and some don’t.”

They’ve worked out for David Cheriton.

[size=14pt]Nigeria oil bill waters down its reforms[/size]
Tue May 29, 2012 7:22am GMT
By Joe Brock

ABUJA (Reuters) - Nigeria's long-awaited oil law, when it finally comes, looks likely to be a botched job that gives favourable tax terms to foreign oil firms while doing little to satisfy calls for transparency and reform of a corrupt and wasteful sector.

A new draft of the long-awaited Petroleum Industry Bill (PIB) is close to being finalised, potentially ending years of uncertainty that has blocked billions of dollars of investment.

Licensing rounds, contract renewals and investment have been put on hold for five years pending the new bill to regulate Africa's top oil and gas industry. Passing the bill will allow such work to resume.

But provisions that would have forced the government to publish how much oil it pumps and all the payments it receives from oil firms - in an industry where secrecy is blamed for corruption - have been stripped from the bill.

"I expect the petroleum industry to be happy. I expect many Nigerians to be upset," said Pedro Van Meurs, an oil and gas expert who has consulted with the government on the PIB.

"Transparency provisions related to corporate income tax, hydrocarbon tax and production sharing were deleted. This should be a source of concern."

The PIB is meant to change everything from fiscal terms to overhauling the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC). Its comprehensive nature caused years of disputes between lawmakers, ministers and oil majors.

The latest copy proposes some changes that will improve transparency: keeping royalty payments secret will not be allowed, for instance. Oil company profit taxes proposed in the bill are also in the public domain for the first time.

But it does not require disclosure of oil sales, of other taxes like income and hydrocarbon tax, nor of payments to the government, including signature bonuses. Openness on such subjects is vital to clean up the energy sector, say campaigners.

President Goodluck Jonathan commissioned a task force in January to fast-track a new copy of the PIB, which makes the passage of this condensed version more likely, even if the national assembly debate on it takes a while.

"Passage of any piece of legislation brings a level of certainty to the industry that has been absent for years," said Gordon Bottomley, Nigeria analyst at Ergo, a New York-based advisory firm that has been closely tracking the PIB.

"(But) the re-organisation of ... Nigeria's oil and gas industry is going to be far from painless. And this bill, in terms of transparency, appears less than desirable."

NEW POWERS FOR MINISTER

The bill also gives the oil minister new supervisory powers over all industry institutions, including a new regulator to police downstream and upstream, raising concerns about checks and balances. Lawmakers had rejected drafts that did this in the past.

It says anyone who "interferes" with the minister will be fined or imprisoned. And it allows the oil minister and the directors of state institutions to receive gifts, which will not please civil society groups calling for an end to graft.

Foreign oil companies like Shell, Chevron and Exxon will be relieved that tax changes are more favourable compared with previous versions. This could be a sticking point with lawmakers seeking a better deal for Nigeria.

Analysts say that the taxes foreign firms pay on profits onshore, which will be published under the PIB, will amount to a big cut from the taxes that are now levied in secret.

Furthermore, the cut will apply both to existing fields and to new fields, unlike in earlier versions of the law which cut taxes only on new fields, the analysts say. Van Meurs says the government could lose 20-50 percent of its tax revenue per barrel on existing assets.

NATIONAL OIL COMPANY

Detail is thin on plans to partly sell off the mismanaged NNPC, seen by experts as the biggest barrier to progress.

Nigeria exports some 2 million barrels per day (bpd) but could double that with a better-managed state oil firm able to pay for its share of joint ventures, foreign oil majors say.

NNPC was last month described by parliament as "answerable to no one" in a probe into a $6.8 billion fuel subsidy fraud. It is accused by oil traders of owing billions in unpaid bills.

The NNPC rejects allegations of corruption or insolvency.

The PIB proposes a new National Oil Company (NOC), which will within three years be partly listed, in theory leading to much-needed accountability.

But the PIB isn't clear on what assets the NOC gets. The old NNPC would still exist and keep joint ventures and production sharing contracts with oil majors, which cover the majority of Nigeria's known oil and gas reserves, for an indefinite period.

"For arguably the most important element of the bill, it is worrying the section on NNPC is both brief and vague," an executive at an oil major operating in Nigeria said.

There is also no domestic gas pricing in the bill, which is key to unlocking the world's seventh largest gas reserves.

Left in doubt are onshore licenses Oil Minister Diezani Alison-Madueke is in the process of renewing. She signed a 20-year one with Exxon worth trillions of dollars in February and has promised to do the same with Shell and Chevron by June.

It has not been made clear whether they will include clauses exempting them from the PIB, in which case a huge portion of the oil business would not be governed by the new bill.

"It's meant to be single framework for everything in oil and gas. If you are going to have it but then do a special deal for, say, Exxon ... That would be a huge departure from what the bill was meant to be," said Antony Goldman, head of PM Consulting.

http://af.reuters.com/article/topNews/idAFJOE84S02I20120529?sp=true

texazzpete: Obviously they want to help Fashola do his job. Remember Fashola swore an oath to preserve the lives and property of Lagosians, an oath he now cares nothing for as he sits happily by while ordinary Lagosians suffer.

I think any sane Nigerian can easily see that the doctors demands are not extravagant and can easily be met by the Lagos state government. When a governor puts his ego above the welfare of his people, you can understand why people need to act quickly to restore sanity.

I stopped supporting the doctors when I heard on STV News that one of their requests to call off the strike is that they should not be made to pay income tax on the money that they were asking to be paid.
That to me is delusional to say the least.

As someone who is building a storey building at the moment in Ibadan, though not a 4 3 bedroom flats but a ground floor of 3 bedroom ensuite apartment and an upper floor of 4 bedroom, I think the house is a good deal at 8 million.
The house already has fence and roof which should count for something. You may also propose 7 million.

In addition what I use that always works for me is to hover the cursor on the email address of the sender of the email.
This always gives them away as I know the original email address of GTB or any organization I deal with online.
Also I have never and will never fill my personal details online.
In recent times I have been getting order pages from Apple or Amazon for supposed orders I made; telling me to confirm if indeed I made the orders.
Checking the email address as decribed above always saves me.
It cannot be overemphasised the need to be extravigilant and careful online epecially when it comes to money.

For 39 years, the Trinity Broadcasting Network has urged viewers to give generously and reap the Lord’s bounty in return.The prosperity gospel preached by Paul and Janice Crouch, who built a single station into the world’s largest Christian television network, has worked out well for them.

Mr. and Mrs. Crouch have his-and-her mansions one street apart in a gated community here, provided by the network using viewer donations and tax-free earnings. But Mrs. Crouch, 74, rarely sleeps in the $5.6 million house with tennis court and pool. She mostly lives in a large company house near Orlando, Fla., where she runs a side business, the Holy Land Experience theme park. Mr. Crouch, 78, has an adjacent home there too, but rarely visits. Its occupant is often a security guard who doubles as Mrs. Crouch’s chauffeur.

The twin sets of luxury homes only hint at the high living enjoyed by the Crouches, inspirational television personalities whose multitudes of stations and satellite signals reach millions of worshipers across the globe. Almost since they started in the 1970s, the couple have been criticized for secrecy about their use of donations, which totaled $93 million in 2010.

Now, after an upheaval with Shakespearean echoes, one son in this first family of televangelism has ousted the other to become the heir apparent. A granddaughter, who was in charge of TBN’s finances, has gone public with the most detailed allegations of financial improprieties yet, which TBN has denied, saying its practices were audited and legal.

The granddaughter, Brittany Koper, and her husband have been fired by the network, which accused them of stealing $1.3 million to buy real estate and cars and make family loans. “They’re just trying to divert attention from their own crimes,” said Colby May, a lawyer representing TBN. Janice and Paul Crouch declined requests for interviews.

In two pending lawsuits and in her first public interview, Ms. Koper described company-paid luxuries that she said appeared to violate the Internal Revenue Service’s ban on “excess compensation” by nonprofit organizations as well as possibly state and federal laws on false bookkeeping and self-dealing.

The lavish perquisites, corroborated by two other former TBN employees, include additional, often-vacant homes in Texas and on the former Conway Twitty estate in Tennessee, corporate jets valued at $8 million and $49 million each and thousand-dollar dinners with fine wines, paid with tax-exempt money.

In the lawsuits and interviews, Ms. Koper, 26, also charges that TBN has spent millions of dollars in sweetheart deals with a commercial film company owned until recently by a son of the Crouches, Matthew, including poorly monitored investments made after he joined the TBN board in 2007.

“My job as finance director was to find ways to label extravagant personal spending as ministry expenses,” Ms. Koper said. This is one way, she said, the company avoids probing questions from the I.R.S. She said that the absence of outsiders on TBN’s governing board — currently consisting of Paul, Janice and Matthew Crouch — had led to a serious lack of accountability for spending.

Ms. Koper and the two other former TBN employees also said that dozens of staff members, including Ms. Koper, chauffeurs, sound engineers and others had been ordained as ministers by TBN. This allowed the network to avoid paying Social Security taxes on their salaries and made it easier to justify providing family members with rent-free houses, sometimes called “parsonages,” she said.

The company did not always succeed. Last year, officials in Orange County, Fla., turned down TBN’s application to register the adjacent lakefront houses in Windermere as parsonages, saying they served no religious purpose, The Orlando Sentinel reported. The designation would have resulted in religious exemptions and saved TBN roughly $50,000 in taxes a year.

Ms. Koper said that the company run by Matthew Crouch, 50, who is her uncle, had received an estimated $50 million in TBN money over the years, with little oversight, to finance religious film projects and television shows. TBN recouped only a small fraction of its loans and investments, sometimes forgiving large sums in return for broadcast rights of limited value, she said.

She also questioned the justification for providing rent-free houses for Matthew, now a TBN vice president, and his wife, Laurie, and separate houses for their young-adult sons in Costa Mesa, Calif., including one that Ms. Koper said was remodeled at company expense with wall-mounted Transformer robot figures costing several thousand dollars, a putting green and an indoor basketball court.

Ms. Koper and her husband, Michael Koper, 28, who formerly managed sales of TBN airtime, said they were fired last September after writing memorandums to the elder Mr. Crouch about questionable spending. They showed a reporter for The New York Times what they said were copies of the memos.

“People have been conned by my grandparents,” Ms. Koper said.
But TBN said the pair made their charges only after the company confronted them with evidence of embezzlement. TBN later filed and then dropped a civil lawsuit accusing the Kopers of fraud, and this week filed a new suit in a California court, repeating only a few of the original allegations. No criminal charges against the Kopers have been filed.
Mr. May, the lawyer, offered a broad defense of TBN and the Crouches. He said that TBN had indeed ordained hundreds of people who felt a true “ministerial call” and that performers at Holy Land Experience, for example, were “ministers playing roles.”

He said that all contracts with the film company that Matthew Crouch led until mid-2010, Gener8Xion Entertainment, had been at “arm’s length” and provided good value to TBN.

Mr. May added that TBN owned so many homes because traveling employees and guests used them. He said that the remodeled house, in the Lifestyles complex in Costa Mesa, was not occupied, but used as a set for youth television programs, with the Transformers serving as props. Matthew Crouch, through the company spokesman, declined an interview request. But Gilbert J. Luft, president of the Lifestyles Homeowners Association in Costa Mesa, said that the sons were familiar residents and that the association does not permit filming there.

Extolling TBN’s prominence and programs, Mr. May said the spending that some call opulent “is necessary to convey the ministry’s position of accomplishment.”

The Gospel of Prosperity

On the air, the Crouches combine uplifting talk with encouragement to give to the Lord, and so be repaid. This “prosperity gospel” is shared by several televangelists who appear on TBN. But many conventional Christian leaders regard it as a sham.

“Prosperity theology is a false theology,” said R. Albert Mohler Jr., president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Ky. Between its message and its reputation for high spending, Mr. Mohler said, “TBN has been a huge embarrassment to evangelical Christianity for decades.”

While TBN said it provided tens of millions of dollars’ worth of free advertising time to conventional charities like the Salvation Army and a few million dollars in some years for aid to disaster victims, it is forthright about its overriding purpose: “to spread the Gospel to the world” through its cable systems, satellite transmitters and, now, via computers and smartphones.

Janice Crouch, called “Mama” on the air, is known for her pink-tinged wigs, which look like huge swirls of cotton candy, and for talking emotionally about the Lord’s blessings. Mr. Crouch, or “Papa,” is relentlessly upbeat as he quotes flurries of Bible verses on signature programs like “Praise the Lord.”

Clearly, many viewers have heartfelt responses. In 2010, TBN received $93 million in tax-exempt donations, according to its tax report. The company also had $64 million in additional income from sales of airtime and $17 million in investment income that year.

It spent $194 million operating its far-flung network and investing in new programs. The company was in the red for the year, but could draw on its cushion of $325 million in cash and investments.

Rusty Leonard, an independent tax expert and the leader of Wall Watchers, a charity watchdog group that has long criticized TBN for financial secrecy, said televangelists often escape penalties for extravagant spending because the definition of taxable “excess benefits” is subjective, and authorities are reluctant to challenge religious groups.

Marcus S. Owens, a tax lawyer with Caplin & Drysdale in Washington, said that lavish spending by nonprofit organizations could raise red flags for tax officials. “The law says that any compensation must be reasonable, and the value of a house is part of that,” he said. “Dinner on the company every night could be an issue too.”

At the same time, Mr. Owens said, churches have considerable latitude under the First Amendment. Regarding the ordination of untrained workers, he said, “absent clear fraud, the government is not going to touch that.”

A TBN spokesman said executive salaries were recommended by independent consultants. In 2010, Mr. Crouch received $400,000 as president, Mrs. Crouch $365,000 as first vice president.
On the air, Mr. and Mrs. Crouch tell viewers that they have almost no personal assets. But that only underscores the problem, said Tymothy S. MacLeod, a lawyer for the Kopers. “It’s the tax-exempt company that is giving them this opulent lifestyle.”
Accounts of Extravagance

Relatives and former employees agreed that Paul and Janice Crouch seem to have deep spiritual feelings and believe they are doing the Lord’s work — a belief, according to a former employee, Troy Clements, that seemed to justify almost any extravagance.

Mr. Clements, a former executive at Holy Land Experience, said that when employees questioned decisions like remodeling the cafe three times in six weeks, Mrs. Crouch said, “No one has told me ‘no’ for 30 years, and you’re not going to start now.”

Mr. Clements, who was sales and then personnel director at Holy Land, said that he resigned in frustration in 2008 and that working for Mrs. Crouch had often been “surreal.”

In 2008 and 2009, as Mrs. Crouch began remodeling Holy Land Experience, she rented adjacent rooms in the deluxe Loews Portofino Bay Hotel in Orlando — one for herself and one for her two beloved Maltese dogs and clothes, according to Mr. Clements and Ms. Koper. Mrs. Crouch rented the rooms for close to two years, they said.

Ms. Crouch was seldom without her little white dogs, pushing them in a pink stroller and keeping a costly motor home, originally purchased to serve as an office, for two years as an air-conditioned sanctuary for her pets, the two former employees said.

In Newport Beach, according to Ms. Koper, the elder Mr. Crouch sometimes traveled in a chauffeured Bentley, which TBN says is used to ferry television guests in proper style.

First-class “working dinners” are a way of life. In pending lawsuits, the Kopers say that Mr. Crouch, Mrs. Crouch and their son Matthew each ran up meal expenses of at least $300,000 per year. Mr. May, the TBN lawyer, said this was not accurate but did not offer other figures.

A Contentious Exit

When Brittany Koper and her husband decided to join TBN in 2007 after college, they were tempted by the generous perquisites, they admit. But they said that as Mr. Koper completed law school on the side, and Ms. Koper her M.B.A., they began to feel uneasy and moved out of their company house.

Nonetheless, they did borrow company money for their down payment on a private home and the purchase of a condominium, and gave Mr. Koper’s uncle a company loan of $65,000, among other acts that Mr. May called thefts. The Kopers said the loans were authorized in writing by the elder Mr. Crouch, with clear repayment terms.

TBN says Mr. Crouch’s signature was forged. Mr. May showed a reporter letters from the fall in which Ms. Koper apologized for lying and lending herself company money.

Ms. Koper said that she had never admitted to breaking the law. She said she was pressured by TBN lawyers to show “Christian contrition” and to hand over company property and repay their loans.

In October the Kopers moved to New York. “We just wanted a fresh start,” Ms. Koper recalled.

Her father, Paul Crouch Jr., Matthew’s older brother, was also forced off the staff and quit the board.

He declined to be interviewed, but he wrote in an e-mail, “Getting caught in the middle of disputes involving my daughter, brother and parents is probably one of the hardest things I’ve ever had to endure.”

As lawsuits and countersuits swirl, the Kopers are living in the basement of his father’s modest house in Elmont, on Long Island.

Mr. Crouch and an assistant, Matthew and his family, and two pilots are nearing the end of a six-week world tour in the larger company jet, visiting affiliates, taping programs and scouting new territory for evangelism in Rome, Dubai, Israel, Hong Kong and Hawaii.

“Others may do things differently, and may criticize TBN for how it operates, its look, its doctrine and belief,” Mr. May said. “But what is absolutely clear is that TBN, with God’s grace, has succeeded where most others have failed.”


http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/05/us/tbn-fight-offers-glimpse-inside-lavish-tv-ministry.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1

That would be between Houston and Atlanta to and fro. Did it in 2 days however as I stopped in Mobile Alabama to spend the night as it is not safe to drive more than 8 hours averagely per day.
Planning to do Houston to Orlando Florida in June.

iloike: Thanks bros' i think you got it there. but is the mother not enough evidence and marriage certificate too.
And what do you advice me to do?
thanks man!

I will advise you get what Blank mentioned above. In addition, I think it would help if you could get the letter of consent notarized. Your wife would then go there with these documents.
I think this would be enough. Your marriage certificate does not guide against your wife travelling with the child without your consent once she has obtain passport for the child. Hence why they ask for this consent. The issue of a spouse absconding with children from the marriage when there are marital problems is real worldwide and asking for all these documents is not peculiar to Nigeria as I have a child who also have another country passport in addition to the Nigerian passport and the requirements are similar.

@OP
You can get passport at any age. I have had to get passports for 2 of my kids when they were less than 1 year and had not had to bribe anybody as some people are insinuating.
The only thing different is that me and my wife had been present at the passport office.
I think you need to find out more what is the issue. I have a feeling it is because you are not there at the passport office with the mother.
So you may need to find out how you the father would need to legally give your consent for him to get passport.
When it comes to kid getting passports the authorities; because of child trafficking tend to be stricter than for when getting passport for an adult.

@OP
Well as someone who has a wonderful boy of the same age and a wife who complain all the time about how the boy is too much to handle for her, I can relate to your concerns.
I will tell you what I tell my wife on how to handle him and you will see a change.
Control the urge to smack him at will.
This would not make him change but in my opinion could do more damage than good. Also you don't want to raise a child that only knows how to communicate by hitting someone. It will also make him want to always “annoy” you and you will end up smacking him the more which make you more frustrated.
Listen to him
We always make the mistake that kids at this age do not have opinions .My observation is that they do and they want to be listened to. This does not mean you will do what they ask but it means you are willing to listen to them and doing this would make them communicate more with you rather than be “difficult”.
Be truthful
If something is not possible let him know and if possible explain why. Their attention span is very short and he may have forgotten your previous explanation. Just repeat the same explanation again and he will “understand” Do not get into the habit of lying to him.
Most importantly, be assertive
Though you communicate with him, he is still your son not your friend and when he is out of line, assertively tell him no when it is needed and he will fall in line. Children this age know how to sense weakness on the part of the parent and they always try to push the envelope. Be friendly with him but at the same time firm.
Reward him when he does something right
Try to commend him when he does something right and call him out when he does wrong.
Please don’t get frustrated with your child he is God gift to you and all the cute kids people talk about are not better than your own son. Just be patient with him, this is part of development for him.
Wish you the best of luck.

Hello my People,
I have urgent need for an advice from the Auto Buffs here. I have a 2002 TOYOTA TACOMA Automatic Transmission which I have just been informed have issues with the Reverse gear which has stopped working.
It is a long story but I will keep it short, this vehicle is being driven by my brother since I do not live in Nigeria. It was bought at around 158,000 miles last year. It has around 180,000 miles since my brother due to the nature of his job was always doing intercity trips with the pickup.
His idea of service for the vehicle is just to change the engine oil every month and even after warning him several times he still continued doing this. I had a feeling the transmission fluid probably is down and this may have caused the issue. However, I do not know much about vehicles myself and will need your advice on the way out.
Do we need to change the transmission to manual as some mechanics have advised him? This I am not interested in as I do not like driving manual vehicle since I drive the same vehicle whenever I am in Naija myself.
If the issue is the transmission, what do you advised I do? Is it repairable or do we need to change it completely. Your candid advice would be much appreciated.
Thank you

As everybody has rightly commented on this issue, it depends on the in-laws and how they respect the spouse that is not their relative in the marriage. As for me, my in-laws made not living with us easy for me because of how life was for me and my wife when we just married. I have a very domineering mother-in-law.
We were just managing then and my mother-in-law and to some extent her siblings at several times threw insults my way because they felt their daughter/sister married a “poor” man. She was always complaining about our not having chairs in our sitting room whenever she came on short visits to our house then. When my wife had a miscarriage she did not come to our house and when she had our son, she did not even come to the hospital until 2 days after even though she lives in Lagos as we were living then.
As it turned out I moved to a multinational and after a few years I was transferred to the US and have now have been transferred to another location. In the intervening years, they started putting pressure on my wife to let the mom come for a visit.
My wife initially could not tell me as my mum who was the one always around to help her while we were in Nigeria with our child then has not even come to us on a visit. But when she ask I said no problem but only after my mum comes and my mum I know (as she has told me) is not ready to leave her business to come sit in our house for weeks.
I would have had no problem with her coming but for her open animosity to me and the way she behaved to me and my wife after our marriage. With the way she has been going about she has not “repented”. What she has been doing is to try to get at me using my wife. She forced me to get an apartment for her and her husband.
When I told them I could not afford this which was the truth, it led to a big fight between me and my wife. It was only after, my wife accepted what I gave which could only get a house in an area the mother did not want. My father-in-law refused to move to this place and the house was then let out by my mother-in-law and she kept the money.
So for me, if you ask me I will say no for any of them to stay in my house.  Most times immature and mischievous in-laws will only bring trouble into a marriage and as such should not be welcomed.

maclatunji:
I appreciate your insight and I am sure it will help OP become a better woman but I am sure she did not make-up the scene at the airport and what MIL did there was inexcusable! Even enemies hug at the airport because they know they may never see each other again!

I can almost taste the hurt in her post. All the other things she typed don't really matter- it is that scene at the airport that is leaving her crushed, in despair and on the verge of depression!

I understand what you mean but you need to appreciate that different people behave differently when they are angry. Most times people behave when they are angry in ways that they will be ashamed of later. Until one is in the same situation as the mother in law, you cannot blame her too much for her actions. One does not know what other things the OP did to the Mother in Law that she did not mention in her post.

debrief08:
Remember that this is her side of the story, Look am a woman and have seen d Mother In Law daughter dynamics from so many angles. The woman may have played with the kids but sometimes just wants to rest, it is also possible dat the kids could be a handful and d woman complains or frowns if d kids re disciplined old school style and the old woman just wants her peace of mind and doesnt want to stir confilct.
I generally frown at my friends who expect someones mom to come and do maid service or nanny for them, let the woman rest her bones for heaven sake, how did you cope when she was not around. Now she is here and you want to make her stay as stressful and uncomfy as possible. I have seen a lot of this my brother, I have a friend staying with us she got a job and needs to stand on her feet, I dont expect her to do chores or assign any to her talkless of ma mother in law. Haba lets be honest, sometimes us wives just go looking for drama, the old woman came to rest and didnt cause any trouble still thats not enough we have to build up a bad mama in law drama to share.

Once again, you have spoken well. How I wish there is a "like" option on Nairaland. I don't know why people are ready to castigate the MIL based only on a one sided story.

debrief08:
First of all I believe you need to seperate the 2 issues. Deal with your issues with your husband and not his family. Talk to ur husband about what u feel regarding these issues and listen to what he has to say. You don not know the family dynamics, it could have been dat the family may have sold der property to get him to where he is now, so what you and your husband need to do is find a balance where caring for his extended family will not totally strain u totally.
As for his moms visit, I really dont know why pple expect their mother in laws to come and work for them when they come on visits. The woman came on a vacation abeg, it beats me when women come in and complain dat their mother ion law came to visit and did nothing, she is not a free maid, I dont allow my mother in law to do anything least of all expect or demand her to work, I believe her visit is a time to rest and play with her grand kids. However my mother in law is strong willed and insists on doing stuff despite my objections.
As for her departure and her not saying goodbye, say the truth you must have given her a bot of attitude during her visit cos she didnt do d things u wanted her to do and thus her reaction.
I am not absolving her of any blames but the mother- daughter in law dynamics is a lot of politics and you have to learn to play it well. It has nothing to do with being Nigerian or Turkish. Talk to your husband and try to understand mama in laws personality

Gbam. You have said it all.

Any Yoruba person who understands the culture of his/her people will know that it is unusual for a MIL to behave like this to her daughter in law.  How has the OP been behaving herself to the mother in law? She should not believe that her giving the mother in law clothes and other things are favors to her.  For the woman to have treated her and her kids like this may be in response to her own behavior to the woman.
Yoruba says “Ti koba si ese, Ese o dede se” (literally meaning there is no smoke without fire). For every action, they say there is a reaction.

SHE WASN'T EVEN EN INTERESTED TO PLAY WITH THEM THE ONLY THING SHE WANTED TO DO IS SIT DOWN AND WATCH NOLLYWOOD OR GO SHOPPING AND SPEND OUR MONEY, SHE WOULDN'T DO ANY HOUSEWORK OR COOKING EVEN THOUGH SHE KNOWS I DON'T KNOW HOW TO COOK NIGERIAN FOOD

,
Also she should not say that the husband has no obligation to his people once he is performing his duties as a husband and father in the house.  Did she know how much sacrifice was made for her husband to come to the UK or for him to go through school?
I will advise her to show genuine interest in the culture of her husband’s people.  Since she is Turkish, I want to believe she is a Muslim and she knows the position of a parent to a Muslim. After God, it is said that the Parents are the most important to a Muslim. So I will expect her too to appreciate this and make sure she makes the effort to reach out to the MIL. I believe when she stops her own “entitlement” mentality to help in the house (cooking and household chores as well as babysitting) or her complain about her husband helping his people (which by the way is our own welfare system in Nigeria) and make conscious efforts to truly get to know the in-laws she will have it better with the mother in law.

khou.com
Posted on November 14, 2011 at 11:50 PM
Updated today at 9:43 AM

HOUSTON – A tracking system on a stolen vehicle led investigators to an international auto theft ring in Houston, police said.
Recently, a Texas State Trooper was driving over the Ship Channel bridge when he noticed an alert coming from his onboard computer.
Information on his screen said the nearby signal was from a 2010 Honda Crossfit, which was equipped with a LoJack device.
The alert was strong, but finding the car wasn’t easy because the vehicle was somewhere inside the Port of Houston. And it wasn’t parked in a lot.
“We located the signal from a container yard where there were probably 40 to 50 containers being stacked,” said Senior Officer Jim Woods with the Houston Police Department.
With help from the Port of Houston Police and U.S. Customs and Border Protection, one by one, the containers were taken down. A few hours later the car was found tightly packed and ready to be shipped to Nigeria.
The discovery of the stolen vehicle at the port turned out to be just the tip of the iceberg.  U.S. Customs decided to open all containers being shipped to Africa by the same person and it paid off.
“We found two additional containers in the yard that were all bound for Lagos, Nigeria, and that led to the recovery of six stolen vehicles,” said Senior Officer Woods.
HPD had stumbled on to a sophisticated auto theft ring. It turns out, all the cars were recently stolen from dealerships in the Dallas area.
All were taken during or after test drives by a man who said he was responding to an Internet ad that was put out there by the dealerships.
“All we have is a generic description of the suspect and a possible name (and) cell phone number,” said Woods.
The man is likely a low-level thief, hired by an unknown middleman here in the U.S. who was hired by leaders of the crime ring in Nigeria, investigators said.
Most of the stolen vehicles were Toyotas. All of them were stuffed with goods such as bottled water, lotion, clothes, and rice.
U.S. Customs carefully searched each car, checking for contraband. Agents even used tiny cameras attached to cables, enabling them to search gasoline tanks.
“We wouldn’t have gotten these cars without HPD, and LoJack and those guys being able to come into the port and examine with us. It works out perfectly. There are going to be some happy car dealers and car owners who are going to get their cars back,” said Chief John Landry with U.S. Customs and Border Protection.
And while this find was a success, busting up these types of rings is difficult.
U.S. Customs says it exports around 6,000 vehicles a month. Checking every manifest with every VIN number is impossible.
The person whose name was found on the ship’s manifest was identified, but he was not cooperating with investigators, police said.  The Garland, Texas, resident has hired an attorney.


http://www.khou.com/news/HPD-Tracking-device-on-stolen-car-helps-uncover-international-theft-ring--133859118.html

Evil Brain:
I'll give you $1billion is you can name 5 countries where pay as you go sims are required to be registered. I'll give you another $1billion are fewer than 4 of them are backwards 3rd world countries where the people are too hungry to care that they are being spied on.

Even post-911 America doesn't require you to register your SIM. Only those with contracts need to give up their info for payment purposes and the government still needs a court order to access it.

It's so sad to see even intelligent, tech-savvy Nigerians like you showing such ignorance about such an important privacy issue. Your government is slowly turning into a tyrannical, USSR-style, big brother corruptocracy and you're busy cheering them on. May God save us!of them are backwards 3rd world countries where the people are too hungry to care that they are being spied on.

Even post-911 America doesn't require you to register your SIM. Only those with contracts need to give up their info for payment purposes and the government still needs a court order to access it.

It's so sad to see even intelligent, tech-savvy Nigerians like you showing such ignorance about such an important privacy issue. Your government is slowly turning into a tyrannical, USSR-style, big brother corruptocracy and you're busy cheering them on. May God save us!

Chief
Be careful the way you give money out oh. I remember last year I had to provide my driver license to buy a pay as you go SIM at a T-Mobile store in Houston for a visiting friend from Naija. Before that on a previous visit to the US on training when I bought a Pay as you go SIM i had to provide my passport. From my own experience, I am not sure you can buy pay as  you go SIM without providing details about yourself in the US.

I understand the stress the OP must have gone through as I had been unfortunate to have been stopped sometimes ago in front of the Officer's Mess in Marina. The guys who were in plain clothes claimed to be policemen from Adeniji-Adele. I showed them  my company's ID card and the company Asset tag on the laptop. This guys still insisted to take me to their station. I decided to call my company's security control room from where they decided to send some Mobile Police to the point. It was then that the guys started arguing on whether I should be left to go. I was afraid because i had gone against the company policy of never moving around with the company assigned laptop without being in a company's car.
I had thought I could quickly dash to the bank from the hotel i was staying in Victoria Island (I had came in from Port Harcourt for a few days work on a project) by riding an "okada". I was on the "okada" when I was stopped. This was on a monday morning.
I have had colleagues who had been stopped while on "okada" and searched by these unscrupulous policemen and I have had several run-ins with the Police that should make anyone bitter.
However, I think we Nigerians should do away with this our attitude of always blaming the country for the acts of a few bad people.
The difference between us and other countries' citizens is that they do not blame their countries for the problems caused by their fellow countrymen and women.
While I believe the OP has the right to be bitter against any country he so wishes, he should rather channel his bitterness to the perpetrators of this atrocity on his person and not Nigeria the country.

Guys
It is been interesting for me reading through the comments on this topic. I am so happy to read what Kobojunkie has been saying and I think her comments should serve as good lesson for any would be immigrant arriving in the West (especially the United States).

I was lucky to live in the US for 2 years until two months ago on transfer from Nigeria. I was meant to stay for 5 years but due to business reason I had to leave before then. Even though I can say, based on my earnings that I would be classed middle class in the American society; I never got carried away by the unbridled consumerism.

One thing I have known about the US is that it is the place where you will see Capitalism in its worst and best forms. For the masses, the worst form of capitalism is in the blatant encouragement of consumerism with several adverts practically begging people to buy lots of things they do not need. In the process, they get shackled with debt they cannot pay back.

Before we arrived, I made my wife realize this, so we agree that we would make conscious effort to not get caught up in the “rat race” that the American society is for her numerous people.

I made sure my credit card and debit card in addition to my auto finance loans were from my company employees’ credit union which gave me highly favorable conditions. I made sure I bought only a fairly used car since I knew I would ship the car back to Nigeria after my official assignment and definitely would like to have paid the loan off.

The reason why I took up the credit card was to build up a credit history as what I found out was that having a good credit history has its benefits. However, before putting a purchase on the credit card I made sure I had the cash to pay for it and throughout my stay I was never late on my credit card payment.

As mine is a very young family, I was never tempted to go look for a bigger house to rent rather I made sure I stayed in an apartment which though more expensive is not as big as the apartment I lived in while in Nigeria. It was however in a good neighborhood and as such we were able to have a good quality of live.

What I have found out is that  lot of us Nigerians get carried away with the “effizzy” of life in the West that we lose our “heads” hence why most usually find themselves in the hole they are finance wise.

I have left the United States with my family for another African country on transfer without any regret. Without gainsaying, life is far better in the West but call me crazy or something worse, I am one of the people who still believe in the saying “There is no place like home”.

From day one, I know I would be ready to go back to Nigeria as soon as I am required to, so I never got into this I must stay in America by all means mentality. I must confess it was hard for my wife to see things that way though, I think she was carried away by the “our own people dey America “mentality of folks back home, so she wanted to stay back. My new job in Africa even pay better than the one in the US, and if you ask me I do not see why I have to continue to pay into an economy I have no stake in as soon as I am required to leave.

We need to face reality, life stopped being rosy for immigrants to the West after Sep 11 so why can’t we Nigerians try and face our own issues and do whatever we can to salvage our country?  All across Europe and United States the topic of interest is immigration (both legal and illegal) so there is indeed an issue to look at critically here. Leading politicians and business people are going about complaining that immigrants are taking advantage of the welfare systems in these countries and as such need to be checked. Though this is as a result of the recession, what it tells me is that more stringent measures are around the corner for immigrants.

My own little advice for those wanting to come back to Nigeria is this. They should not forget that the way things are done in Nigeria is different from the way they are done in the West so they must leave their[b]” I have lived in the US, London, Germany”[/b] mentality at the airport. To get the best from Nigerians (from your household workers to your colleagues and family member), you have to make sure you are not condescending or snobbish in any way.

I however understand that if Nigeria becomes the next Singapore some people would still prefer to live abroad so I will implore us not to begrudge those people their wishes. In the same vein, those who do not think there is any reason for them to move to Nigeria should not have issues with people moving back home.
Like they say, “Different strokes for different folks”

Y’all should have a great day

rasputinn:
Unfortunately the man that introduced nomadic education (that should be the dumbest idea by a prof the world over) died yesterday and is therefore unable to apologise

What are you smoking? I think you should get off it for your own good. What is wrong with introducing nomadic education if the goal is to have no child left behind? If education is seen as an inalienable right of every child why should we attack any plan that take into account a child's socio-cultural environment in providing such right to him. Is it a crime to be a nomad? Why do you people use the opportunity of the anonymity that the internet provide to make unguided and moronic statements? It would be nice to know your alma mater to ascertain whether you really got a well rounded education.

bk.babe97y:
Ah, I thought all these lying Ibo scoundrels have been saying "What has Mbu got to gain from lying?". What they failed to inform us was that the old thug was BIAFRAN FOREIGN MINISTER!!!! I swear, by the day, it shows that these Ibo men are irredeemable liars and deceits!

http://nigerianwiki.com/wiki/Matthew_Mbu

From the Wiki page

After the proscription of political activities and the regional system of government by the military, Mbu was later made a delegate to the 1966 Ad Hoc conference under Gowon where[b] the Eastern delegates presented points on returning to regional autonomy.[/b] He later joined the Eastern government's secession move and became the Biafran minister of foreign affairs.

The same Regional Autonomy the North had wanted since the time before independence. The same thing they wanted after the Nzeogwu Coup in January 1966. It was Ironsi with the backing of some Southern "Intelligentsia" who took Nigeria into a Unitary system of government. 6 months after they started singing the tune of Regional autonomy. Goes to show that no tribe has the monopoly of violence.

For the first time I agree on something with Femi Fani-Kayode.
Mbu's comment is just a lame attempt at Historical revisionism.
He and people like him should just let sleeping dogs lie and let us find ways to forge a united and prosperous nation.