₦airaland Forum

[quote author=tpia@ link=topic=536650.msg6994554#msg6994554 date=1287768970]obama said the same thing.

i think it's some kind of status symbol with them.[/quote]What did Obama say?

Eziachi:
It was the same story, when in the early seventies, Prof Njoku Obi successfully invented the anti cholera vaccine, but guess what!  Laughable idiotic Nigeria and their moronic govt were busy disputing the effectiveness of the vaccine and the man himself, while on the other side of the world the vaccine is been used by WHO and many countries and health agencies till this day. Shameless people!!

Its extremely important to verify the safety and effectiveness of a vaccine. Anyways, cholera is easily preventable with good sanitation and water treatment. Injecting people with possibly unsafe vaccines with potentially unknown side effects when cholera can be avoided with proper sanitation and cleanliness (i.e. development) is NOT smart.




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Where is he now?

* By Dr. Olatunji Dare
* Published 25/05/2010
* Columnists
* Rating: ratingfullratingfullratingfullratingfullratingempty Unrated


Dr Abalaka

Members of the attentive audience must often wonder, as I now find myself doing, about whatever happened to some individuals, groups, institutions or events that figured in the news, sometimes for an inordinately long period, and then vanished altogether.

Giving the relentless march of HIV/AIDS in Nigeria – an average national infection rate of 4.6 percent, or roughly one of every 20 Nigerians, according to Weekend Trust (April 16, 2010) — I have been thinking about Dr Jeremiah Abalaka, the Abuja-based immunologist who burst upon the scene some eight years ago with the sensational announcement that he had developed a serum for the treatment of the dreaded disease.

At first, the claim caused hardly a stir. After all, so many claims of that kind had been made before by an assortment of village herbalists, shamans, and itinerant quacks. And although Dr Abalaka had graduated from a proper medical school and even completed advanced study in immunology, his was not one of the better-known names in the scientific community.

But when the head of the air force called a press conference to confirm that no fewer than 30 Nigerian airmen stricken with HIV/AIDS while on ECOMOG duty in Liberia had been cured completely by Dr Abalaka’s wonder serum, the scientific establishment was forced to take notice.

Thereupon, matters got murkier and murkier. After due investigations, the prestigious Nigerian Academy of Science reported that the serum did not possess the properties claimed for it. The Federal Government banned its use. Dr Abalaka sought a court injunction restraining the government, and so did patients who had flocked to his clinic in staggering numbers. The ban, they argued, was an assault on their constitutional right to health and happiness.

Not to be outdone on a matter so pivotal, the National Assembly launched a scientific inquiry. The ban was lifted subsequently.

Meanwhile, rightfully jealous of his proprietary rights, and perhaps[b] mindful of the controversy that had plagued the bacteriologist Dr Augustine Njoku-Obi’s cholera vaccine some three decades earlier, Abalaka refused to patent it or submit it for international authentication.

Njoku-Obi, a professor of virology at the University of Nigeria, Nsukka, had developed his cholera vaccine at a time of a raging epidemic shortly after the civil war. He had administered it extensively to students at the University and in the neighbouring community. An expert from Poland, brought in by the Federal Government, had testified to its safety and efficacy.

Just to make absolutely certain that the vaccine met the highest standard, a sample was dispatched to Geneva, for the imprimatur of the World Health Organisation. The verdict the WHO issued after the usual tests was terse and shattering: Unfit for human consumption.

Till this day, it has not been established whether the sample sent to Geneva came from Dr Njoku-Obi’s laboratory or some foul concoction packaged by some envious colleagues in the scientific community out to discredit him.[/b]

In whatever case, having toiled so hard to achieve this epochal breakthrough, the combative Dr Abalaka was not going to place his fortunes at the mercy of any scientific community, local or foreign.

He revealed that one of the grandees the Nigeria academy of science detailed to analyse the vaccine had been fooling around and had been stricken with AIDS and had come to him in the dead of night to beg for a dose of the miracle serum. The randy grandee, Dr Abalaka said, had since teamed up with his detractors to pour scorn on the very serum that had saved his life.

And he pooh-poohed the tests the Academy said it had conducted, saying that he was so sure of his invention that he had tested it first on himself. After injecting himself with the serum, he had then injected himself with the virus that causes AIDS. The serum had rendered the virus dead on arrival. To make sure this was no spurious outcome, he had also subjected every member of his family to the same procedure. The result was the same in every case.

What further authentication was required?

With the ban on the serum lifted, patients who could afford the N30,000 Dr Abalaka was charging for a complete dose poured into his Abuja clinic in staggering numbers, grateful for a chance to beat what would most certainly have been a slow, painful death.

Dr Abalaka himself seemed happy with his scientific breakthrough and his fame, if not his fortune. The scientific community might be chafing that he had been pushing his serum with the crassness of a peddler rather than the cool detachment. That was their business.

Where is Dr Abalaka today as HIV/AIDS ravages the Nigerian landscape, exacting a fearsome toll? Why does he settle for local celebrity when he can win universal acclaim and a place in the pantheon of scientists whose inventions and discoveries have saved humankind from the scourge of disease?

If he is worried that he might be swindled of his rights once the serum enters the international arena, why doesn’t he seek help from some of the smartest intellectual property attorneys in Nigeria and abroad?

If he is still in the business, it has to be said that it is simply not right that – in fact, I am almost prepared to say it is unconscionable – that he should hoard in his laboratory a cure for HIV/AIDS while tens of thousands of Nigerians are stricken with the disease and millions in Africa and worldwide perish from it every year.

What became of his patients by the way – The ECOMOG veterans cured of HIV/AIDS by his serum and those who flocked in their thousands to his Abuja clinic, not forgetting the randy grandee from the Academy of Science?

It is to be hoped that Dr Abalaka and the medical community have been monitoring them and checking for the unintended consequences that usually flow even from vaccines and medications that have been subjected to the most rigorous clinical trials, producing conditions far more disabling than the ailment they were designed to cure.

I am thinking of one drug that its manufacturers say is guaranteed to neutralise the bacteria that cause women’s toe nails to turn yellow. Within six months, the toe nails will be restored to full, vibrant health, and the woman can show off her pedicure. The only trouble is that the drug may cause kidney or liver damage or both, plus a variety of other conditions.

But unlike Dr Abalaka’s patients, women taking the drug cannot say they weren’t warned.









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http://allafrica.com/stories/201006140538.html




Nigeria: Uncertainty of HIV/Aids Local Medications

Ebenezer Edohasim

14 June 2010

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Lagos — Since the discovery of the Human Immuno Deficiency Virus (HIV) which causes Acquired Immuno Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS) 27 years ago, the world has been confronted with the consequences posed by the reality that no cure has been found against the disease.

Again, no vaccine approved by the World Health Organisation (WHO) has been invented, thereby extending the hope for permanent eradication of the virus.

Even the ARV drugs used in the management of People Living with HIV/AIDS (PLWHA) is in short supply in poor countries, as some donor nations to developing countries have soft-pedaled in their funding activities, partly due to the global financial recession, and diversion of funds meant for HIV/AIDS medication into private pockets of some corrupt government officials.

Whereas the developed nations have what it takes to cater for their PLWHAS, the poor countries still depend on drugs from outside donors to take care of theirs.

In the quest to curtail the spread of the virus, scientists in advanced countries are busy struggling to invent reliable vaccines, while traditional and orthodox healers in some developing nations like Nigeria are parading range of medications which they claim to be potent for HIV cure, even AIDS.

Mr. Valentine Oke, a bio chemist described the local discoveries as "stocks of dangerous concoctions not scientifically certified and also not fit for human consumption.

"They hardly subject their claims to scientific investigations, thereby rendering their medication suspicious from the outset," he said.

In the recent past, some orthodox and unorthodox Nigerian medical professionals lay claim to the potency of their various drugs.

However, the discovery which shook Nigeria as a nation was that of Dr. Jeremiah Abalaka in 2001.

Dr. Abalaka is the proprietor and chief consultant of Medicrest Specialist Hospital, Gwagwalada, Abuja. Abalaka is a medical doctor who equally had advanced study in immunology.

As he claimed, "my serum named PABALAKS, is potent and passed through all known scientific measures in the preparation of serum and therefore is fit for human consumption".

He further claimed that, "Unlike western inventors, who used humans as guinea pigs, I offered myself and members of my family to test the efficacy of my drug.

"What I did was to inject my serum into our system and thereafter I injected the virus which causes HIV into our blood stream and because of the potency of my serum, none of us contracted the virus".

Abalaka bluntly refused to patent his serum. But the Nigerian Academy of Science (NSA) investigated his claim and concluded that the serum did not posses the properties he claimed.

The panel said "any scientific feat all over the world is subjected to voluntary test, and investigations to verify claims. But Dr. Abalaka has refused on many occasions to submit his discovery for scrutiny, therefore we got the sample from a patient and after thorough scientific analysis we discovered that Dr. Abalaka, s claim was not true".

Subsequently, the Federal Government banned the substance and Abalaka and his teeming patients who took the drugs went to court to challenge an assault on their constitutional rights to health and happiness.


However, the National Assembly launched a separate investigation and lifted the ban. But Abalaka remained adamant to patent his serum, which according to him was "to avoid what happened to Professor Augustine Njoku-Obi, s cholera vaccine three decades ago".

Then, Obi, a professor of virology at the University of Nigeria Nsukka (UNN) invented vaccine against cholera shortly after the end of the Nigeria-Biafra civil war. Unfortunately, his vaccine was declared unsafe for human consumption by WHO, after a scientific delegation brought in by the Federal Government from Poland had earlier certified Obi's vaccine safe and potent.

The serum from Abalaka which sold for N30, 000 for complete dosage came at the time Nigerian military authorities found that some of their personnel, who served at the West African Joint Military Peace Command known as ECOMOG, in war- torn Liberia and Sierra Leone, were already infected with HIV and would need drugs to stay alive.

Basseti:
I am really surprised that peeps are recycling old argument. Instead of making wild speculation, just pick up a history book and read. U might learn learn sth.

Confederacy is just a prelude to break up.

Are you talking to me or the person I quoted when you say I should "pick up a history book and read"? Because your last sentence agrees exactly with what I stated in my post that you quoted.

Source?

Yes there are Koreans, yes there are Pakistanis, etc,


But I was talking about actual Chinese and Indians, whose names give them away easily. There are many more of them that are internationals (not American), especially in the undergraduate and graduate science courses across all fields than there are Nigerians, also especially in the engineering and medical areas also even in courses like law and dentistry, this Envoy needs to do his homework: Nigeria's population ~ 140 million, Chinese (not even including Taiwan) > 1.3 billion, India >1.1 billion. Yet all three have international students rushing to the U.S. to study. Do the math.

As for how he arrived at his extremely small figures, I don't know, but the reason I think he might have conflated Nigerian Americans with Nigerians is because he said "largest number of students who attend universities and high schools in the US," when not very many Nigerian international students attend high school in the U.S. (but maybe the ones he's counting haven't obtained their U.S. citizenship yet , but are planning to). Anyhow, the numbers are indeed too small.

Ikengawo:
^smart post.



Also you people act like all ppl do in nigeria is kill and eat ppl from other tribes lol.


walking through any lagos market, at any gathering of NIGERIAN ppl, the result is unanimous: NOBODY CARES ANYMORE.


Everyone is going to prefer their tribe and some ppl will have prejudice but the level of mixing and cooperating of tribes FAR out weighs 3 or 4 'ethnic' fights per every 2 years in a country of 150 million.

Nobody really cares anymore and anyone acting like tribe is the #1 issue in nigeria hasn't been in naija since Babangida.

I spent 2 days hanging out in Alaba market. Sellers and Buyers from all tribes came, laughed, communicated, argued, and simply went about their business. Its is what i've been seeing in Nigeria for the past ever.




My father went to a delegation for GEJ to meet him and delegates from all over the country and the first thing he told me was boldly: Everyone has put the tribe thing behind them.

Really? Seems you don't fall into that "everyone"

Ikengawo: Igbos> Yorubas

in everything
ev.er.y.thing.

so drop the subject

https://www.nairaland.com/nigeria/topic-437206.0.html

^^^^

Title holding is different in different African cultures and nations,

There are certainly some cultures within Nigeria where titles are not easy to obtain or extremely widespread,

And I'm not sure that a lot of other African countries have the unfortunate situation of having engineers use their profession as a title. If they don't have a doctorate they usually just shut up, In a place where PhDs are abundant this will be the norm, however in a place where engineers are rare an engineer will be seen as more than he really is,

good move,

[quote author=Ileke-IdI link=topic=536419.msg6986531#msg6986531 date=1287674390]an ordinary [b]man [/b]like myself[/quote]LMAO

Ikengawo:
Dapo, don't bother yourself, you already lost the argument.

Are you serious? JustCash thrashed your argument.

Justcash:
[b]My point is for a Con-federal Nigeria that has different nations held together by a weak central government. These nations can be in many pieces, but they will be more responsible for their development. They will have their rights to instill their values, control their resources, create sources of incomes for themselves and control them, have their own police security outfits carved to suite their Socio-religious systems and terrain (The army would be national, with equal contribution from every nation in the union) etc.
This way, there will be peace (Because Hausas, Igbos, Yorubas etc can practice what they want, how they want it, and can make other Nigerian nationalities to respect their system without argument) and progress (Because a healthy competition will brew up among the nations as a result of envy and pride which is a typical feature of Nigerians).
MEND, MASSOB, BOKO HARAM will disappear.
Urge for ZONING and NATIONAL FEDERAL CHARACTER will disappear because the federal government will become unattractive.
Power supply problems will disappear in many Nigerian nations because there will be no need to keep the deceptive and annoying national grid.
Ethnic massacre, Religious riots etc will disappear.
People will only blame themselves and their nation rather than other Nigerian nations for their leadership backwardness.
Progressive Leaders like Fashola, Chime, Amaechi, Duke, Saraki etc will find it easier to manage a smaller and more homogeneous areas without much stress.
Non-progressive leaders like T. Orji, Ohakim, Mr Tura, OGD etc will have no strong FG to protect them, and no where to hide from the wrath of their people.[/b]

The italicized is just the Aburi agreement all over again. And like that accord, it is not practically realizable. A body cannot have 7 heads, 14 eyes and ears and still go in only 1 direction. It is either national unification or complete disintegration, a sort of limbo or intermediate state in between with mini nations would not actually work. And please think before you mention U.A.E. as a counterexample.

There are far more Indian and Chinese international (foreign) students in U.S. universities than international Nigerian students in U.S. universities from my experience.

It's very likely that he was conflating the Nigerian Americans with Nigerians.

Why are they obsessing over one attempt at wit by some rich Brit when the reputation of Nigeria is less than shi.t and whining won't stop scammers one bit,


His snide remark wasn't too far from the truth, too many scams do come out of Nigeria, and taking all this time to condemn him is really just giving the comment far more power than it should really have. If you respect yourself, you can take a little mockery or derision. I know I make fun of Brits every now and then for the way they act, their supposedly glorious inglorious history, and their awful food, I doubt a Brit would get all up in arms if I did so, as they have a tendency towards sarcasm and would just fire back; then it would be a competition*(_+

Nonsense.

I read your post already. I never claimed he claimed that he won the Nobel prize or a computing equivalent or that he made the Connection Machine, that's not my gripe. It doesn't change the fact that

1) Emeagwali did not contribute in any significant way to the development of supercomputers.

2) Emeagwali is not a father of the internet. At all.

3) Every patent applied for has an identification number (serial number) and the status of every patent applied for can be checked (nowadays it can be checked online even!), so if up to 40 patents were ever submitted, whether any of the patents were granted or rejected could easily be determined by Emeagwali, and he would not have to lie for years that they had just somehow been "submitted", without being filed and verified or rejected by the patent examining bureaucracy. I should point out that patents do not take many many years to get granted. Without proof, his claim seems ludicrous.

To verify whether he actually even submitted the patents he claims he did, it is only necessary to go to this website:

http://www.uspto.gov/patents/process/search/index.jsp#heading-2


From there click on the link under "USPTO Patent Application Full-Text and Image Database (AppFT)" that refers to either quick search or advanced search.

If you use quick search you can just type in "Emeagwali" when you choose field 1 as "Inventor name" and leave field 2 as "All fields"

If you use advanced search, you should type in IN/Emeagwali-Phillip$, in accordance with the instructions on the site.

Either way, you'll get nothing. If the reason for this is that he submitted them a long time ago and that that database does not go back far enough (pre-2001) then the claim is even more ludicrous, since patents to not take many many years to get granted. At most, the examiner may call the inventor in to produce more substantial evidence, better explanation, or demonstrate it if it is a device or method, but they do not just let it sit in some file cabinet somewhere without being evaluated. If they were submitted a while ago (pre-2001) then one could just look it up in the "USPTO Patent Full-Text and Image Database (PatFT)" which has patents from 1790 to the present day if it they were approved. If they were submitted but not approved then there is definitely nothing for Emeagwali to be bragging about as submitting up to 40 patent applications but having not even one seen as credible, plausible, innovative, or useful, is not an achievement but a failure.


These are my complaints and my concerns. I don't give a damn about the whole tribal angle. I give a damn about the black/African fraudulence angle and the false hope/theft of other people's credit and honor angle.

guddsid:
@PhysicsMHD can you please prove that he is a fraud ?

Do you understand what "proof" is? Do you understand how simple logic works?

It is not the case that others have to disprove what one person has asserted when what that person has asserted is not so obvious that it could be accepted as though it were some axiom or unchanging fact without evidence or demonstration of its validity. The person who has made the assertion (statement), must have supporting evidence (proof).

When a mathematician asserts that he's proved Fermat's last theorem, or proved Poincare's conjecture, or an engineer claims he's constructed an artificial heart, or a scientist claims he or she has done such and such and developed this and that, an article is published or a patent is submitted which explicitly confers priority and credit to the developer of that revolutionary idea. In fact it is not even necessary to have a patent or published paper if an adequate inventor's notebook or lab notebook or other reasonable evidence from which others clearly derived what are really one's own ideas can be shown in a court of law, as in the case of the inventor of the laser, Gordon Gould, who had to argue his case in court and succeeded. So if Emeagwali had ever even bothered to write down anything in any detail and published it anywhere reputable or submitted a patent on anything, he could claim credit or atleast co-invention on whatever he wanted to.


But instead, Emeagwali deceived numerous people into believing he had achieved what he had not, set up a website promoting himself, and at even posted links to the groups he had deceived in order to give himself an air of legitimacy. I distinctly remember his original website before he changed it and added all of that stuff about his childhood, the Biafran war, African development and technology and Nigerian history, it was solely concerned with the promotion of his greatness as a giant in the world of supercomputing and how he had developed computers to perform the world's fastest computations  and was a father of the internet so I should point out that these claims are very real  and do not originate from anyone but Emeagwali himself, although the various variations on them might be due to the individual deceived groups promoting him, whose original source for these claims are his original website before the modifications which started these claims.

Suggesting that scientists would ever bother to dispute Emeagwali's lies when they already know the truth can be compared to asserting that they need to address every quack who proposes a new cold fusion theory, herbal cancer cure, perpetual motion machine, or claims that Einstein's theories were really developed by a motley of different early 20th century German scientists, or that AIDS, SARS, and the ebola virus were created in a laboratory and is the height of absurdity, and suggesting that they need to be non-Nigerian is just as absurd.

I was going to eventually do a full rebuttal of every lie ever promulgated by this fraud but if the idiotic response I would get is that I was bashing his tribe, I won't even bother. People defending this clown should remember that on the biafranigeriaworld.com messageboard (the messageboard is down now though), the charlatan was struck down and exposed by hard core Igbo nationalists and Biafran advocates in a lengthy thread somewhat like this one, and in that case, as in this one, some delusional individuals continued to defend him.


Reputable scientists already know who Vinton Cerf, Bob Kahn, Tim Berners-Lee and Robert Cailliau are. Computer scientists already know who Seymour Cray is. Nobodies on nairaland and scientifically illiterate people in Nigeria don't. That's the only factor here.


If I suddenly claimed that I developed the first working LEDs, and then people pointed to Nick Holonyak, or that I developed selective laser sintering and then people pointed to Carl Deckard, or that I developed all of the modern drug delivery systems and then people pointed to Robert Langer and Nicholas Peppas, I would be no different from Emeagwali.

Emeagwali is no better than John Hutchison, Aubrey de Grey, John Bedini, or the Bogdanovs. But I bet some dunce on here will come and claim that the contempt they arouse for their ludicrous claims is due to racism and persecution against white people by the racist Eastern media!

PhysicsMHD:
Emeagwali is a known fraud and it bothers me immensely that defenders of this charlatan, whether under the pretense of tribal solidarity, Nigerian nationalism, or black consciousness would dare to defend such an embarrassment to the extent that this thread could reach 9 pages.

Do I have to put this on a stamp and pound it on you people's foreheads? This is the reality.

The Gordon Bell Award is in no way equivalent to the "Nobel Prize of computing". That distinction is reserved for the Turing Award. None of Emeagwali's research is of any relevance to anything significant in modern science.


There are Nigerians who have made actual contributions to science and yet numskulls here are defending this known fraud. The guy fooled you all. He couldn't make it academia so he pretended he was a superstar and made ludicrous amounts of money off of speaking engagements and got acclaim and praise for nothing.

Emeagwali is a known fraud and it bothers me immensely that defenders of this charlatan, whether under the pretense of tribal solidarity, Nigerian nationalism, or black consciousness would dare to defend such an embarrassment to the extent that this thread could reach 9 pages.

No. I don't see the point. They don't normally speak Bini. If they are interested in the language the way, say you or myself might be interested in French, Portuguese, or Japanese, then let them learn. But otherwise, it would be a misuse of the state's resources. If they want to promote and teach their own language let them, but there's no way a state with a majority of one ethnicity will be promoting, preserving, and teaching the language of a minority, as you yourself acknowledge about Igalas in Anambra. It just doesn't happen in Nigeria and this isn't evidence of some Edo plan of maltreating them or marginalizing them, it's just practicality and common sense.

This whole thread is garbage. There's so much misinformation and imbecilic reasoning here my head would explode if I were to attempt to refute it all. Why bother,

^^^

Everybody knows Idoma and Igbo share common ancestry,


What will be shocking is if 10,000 years ago Yoruba and Igbo and "Edo" were one and the same. There's no proof of that, yet however.

Who said Etsakos speak Bini? Who said anyone will make Ishan children learn Bini? Stop insinuating something for which there is no evidence on the ground. Bini's could not even force their particular dialect on other groups or did not want to force their particular dialect on other groups within and outside of the present Edo state during the time of the Benin kingdom not to talk of later when there is ethnic and cutural consciousness amongst even the smallest groups in Nigeria.

You do realize the governor that made it compulsory for "Edo language" to be taught in all schools is an Etsako, right?

Uneme, Etsako, Ishan, etc. children will learn their languages if there are qualified individuals available to teach them in the schools.

But the idea of Edo state sponsoring the teaching of an Igboid language has as much chance of happening as Ondo state sponsoring the teaching of an Edoid language or Akwa Ibom sponsoring the teaching of an Ijoid language. There's absolutely no political force that can make it happen unless the concerned individuals of such groups in those states do it for themselves in their particular areas and the reason for this has been spelled out clearly in my previous post.

^^^^

There's not some sort of intrinsic difference between the two kid. They're all black west african males. Difference is a large percentage of one group (Africans) is out for legal papers and sex, and a very very very small proportion of the other group (African American males) is out for an intelligent, beautiful, hardworking woman. It's more about intent and situations than inner character really. Anyways, the kind of African women that end up with African American men are usually so caught up in pretending to be AA, especially attitude and behavior-wise, that they don't appeal to African men anyways. In the same vein, I'm quite surprised that there are many African male/African American woman relationships in the first place, as most hardworking, reasonably accomplished, and ethnically or nationally conscious African men would just go after an African woman anyways, resulting in most of the leftovers (with few exceptions) being left to AA and American women,

^^^^

Damn. Merciless.

source?

With regard to Ogbemudia forcing the Igbankes to be part of Edo state, that doesn't even sound plausible. He wasn't even governor when Bendel was split and although he has clout he doesn't have THAT much clout. A whole group of people could not sit and take it. There would have been protests, petitions, etc. It's more likely that, as in a few other parts of Nigeria, a group of people who were mostly Igbo in culture and language saw themselves as some other culture, except that in this case it happened to have some influence from Edos, so the elites among them saw themselves as Edoid. If they see themselves as Igbos now, that might not always have been the case among the elites among them.

People who think any non-Edoid languages would be taught in Edo state don't understand the politics of that state or of anything in Nigeria or they're pretending to be ignorant. There are also Ijaws in Edo state, just like there are in Ondo State and also Akwa Ibom. There are also Yorubas in Edo state. There are also Igbos in Akwa Ibom. There are also Edoid peoples in some parts of Ondo and Delta state. And, as somebody else pointed out there are Igalas in Anambra. There are also Igbos (Ekpeyes) in Bayelsa. Does anybody actually think any of these groups would get the governments of their states to sponsor the teaching of their languages in public schools? If the parents of the children insist on their children being taught these languages in public schools they are welcome to move to the state in Nigeria where their language or an extremely close language can be the primary language taught. As citizens of the Nigerian state they have every right to take up residence wherever their language will be paramount amongst all others. Otherwise they can teach the children the languages themselves. Stop pretending to be ignorant. By making this change this Etsako governor is not marginalizing anybody in anyway.

Igbos, Ijaws, Yorubas, etc. have about as much chance of getting the Edo state government to sponsor teaching their languages in public schools in Edo state as Edos have of getting an "Edoid" word on the Naira-and for exactly the same reasons. If Edo, Ijaw, Tiv, Ogoni, and other minority languages are not fit to be on the naira because they have not managed to produce enough people, while Igbo, Yoruba, and Hausa are, then ethnically distinct minorities in all states are not fit to have their languages acknowledged by the majority ethnicity state government by being taught in public schools for exactly the same reason. I remember at some point seeing the Queen Idia mask on the one naira note. While that may acknowledge Edo history, what about the many other minority groups? Let's not turn logic on its head here when 50 years of "unfair" practices suddenly happen to "unfairly" impact members of our particular ethnicity. If we put Hausa, Igbo, and Yoruba on the naira, why bother complaining when Bayelsa doesn't sponsor teaching of Igbo (Ekpeye), Ondo doesn't sponsor teaching of Edo, or Edo doesn't sponsor teaching of Igbanke and Ijaw? This isn't marginalization, it's merely practicality taken to its logical conclusion.

I think that somehow CNN got the wrong picture,

from all google searches for Folashade Abugan a less attractive athlete comes up,  unless she also got massive plastic surgery in addition to steroids,

https://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2010/10/15/article-0-0B88A0D2000005DC-239_306x494.jpg

[img]http://www3.pictures.gi.zimbio.com/IAAF+World+Junior+Championship+5CBaNlOFWb6l.jpg[/img]

The one in the center.

[img]http://3.bp..com/_D0_JFnqIKRU/SHu_30C-bdI/AAAAAAAACBo/tgzOpl43-bU/s400/P1040728.JPG[/img]

Once again, the one in the center.

I think they got the wrong pic. Though I would like to know who is in the picture they have up there as that woman is indeed very pretty (better than Nigeria's candidate in the Miss World competition, for sure).