merit1988:
Hi pple, will you like to make new friends with like minds here... there's a what'sapp group for that purpose...we play games, share jokes, gist, tease each other, discuss marital issues, business/careers talks and just hv fun generally...

Please you must be mature and married to be added to the group... that way, you have confidence that you meeting with someone who's in the same situation as you and understands what you are going through.

You might have to prove that you're married before added.


PM if ur Interested.... dropping ur phone number here wouldn't be necessary... I'll be waiting dearies.....

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The frustrated organisers of Zimbabwe’s biggest beauty pageant are making contestants swear on the Bible that they’ve never had nude photos taken, a report says.

The last two winners of the Miss World Zimbabwe contest have had to step down when nude photos of them were leaked.

So this year those in charge are taking a tough line, in ensuring that the organisers are not put to shame again

“They’ll take oaths holding a Bible upon checking in for boot camp next month,” Miss Zimbabwe Trust spokesperson Tendai. Models last year had to sign a declaration saying they’d never posed for nudes but that didn’t stop Emily Kachote entering and winning the contest before being dethroned. She argued that she’d not knowingly posed for the pictures, which were apparently taken by an ex.

But the Miss Zimbabwe Trust maintained that her behaviour was immoral.

Kachote’s dethronement followed a similar nude photo leak for Miss World Zimbabwe 2014, Thabiso Phiri. She too lost her crown, though the trust insisted she’d stepped down of her own accord.

The spokesperson told a local newspaper “All we ask for this year is honesty and integrity from our queens.”

One of the rules of the competition reads: “Winners of the Miss World Zimbabwe beauty pageant whether a title holder or a runner-up, must not have posed nude professionally or socially in all forms of media.”

The Miss Zimbabwe nudes scandal opened up a conversation about who was really to blame for Zimbabwe’s sex tape scandals, and why the ex-boyfriends who leak photos are not prosecuted.

This year’s final is to be held on April 16 in Harare.

Apart from making models swear on the Bible, the trust is taking extra precautions to make sure they don’t lie: if nudes leak during or after the competition, the winner will have to pay back “all the money we will have used on her,” Chirau was quoted as saying.

Dethroned queen Emily Kachote maintains an active Facebook page — on which she regularly posts news of other people’s sex tapes.

Source: http://samhaykins.com/swear-on-the-bible-youve-got-no-nudes-zimbabwe-beauty-pageant-tells-models/

Does the name “Lanesra” ring any bell? Definitely not

It’s just kind of a pretty-sounding name, right?

Man names his daughter “Lanesra”, wife only finds out it is Arsenal spelt backwards when the child turned 2.

Source: http://samhaykins.com/man-names-daughter-after-his-favorite-soccer-team-wife-finds-out-two-years-later/

At least the way the President addressed the lingering fuel scarcity shows Maturity unlike the minister for information

What would have been one of the most happiest moments for this boyfriend went sour when the man’s elaborate marriage proposal flopped when his girlfriend turned him down because the diamond on the ring was too small.

The man was seen to have gotten down on one knee in cringe worthy photos while hired dancers performed in front of her in an elaborate display.

Initially, the woman seem to be awed by the performance of the mob dancers on a street in Chengdu, the capital city of south-west China’s Sichuan province.

She was so awed to the point that she started to cry as her boyfriend approached her.

However, when he went down on one knee and held up the box, opening the ring for her to see, surprise was obviously written all over her face and was not impressed at all.

An eye witness said: “Her eyes went wide as she put her hand over her mouth, and then she turned around and walked away without saying anything.”

A screenshot of a WeChat conversation allegedly between her and a friend was later leaked online and published alongside the story.

In the message, the girlfriend says: “But he agreed to buy me a diamond ring as large as one carat.

“Why was this one so small?

“Is he so careless or has he ever cared about me?”

Her friend replies: “Don’t worry

“Perhaps the bigger one will be waiting for you later or he hasn’t prepared it for this time.”

http://samhaykins.com/marriage-elaborate-proposal-flops-after-mans-girlfriend-says-diamond-is-too-small/

There's this saying that politicians are liars. They promise to build a bridge even when there's no river.

When they were soliciting for votes, they promised heaven and earth.

At least they saw and understood the gravity of what was on ground before they chose to take over.

When will the blame came end and Nigerians begin to see the change they were promised?

This talks and no action is becoming nauseating to the ears.

Abeg! Stop blaming and start acting

Yet again, online social media platform, Facebook closed the year 2015 as the most popular app with close to whooping 127 million users logging on each month.

The social network floored, google owned YouTube, which came in second on Nielsen’s “Top Smartphone Apps of 2015” list with 97.6 million users.

There’s has been a significant increase in the popularity of Facebook with an 8 percent increase from 2014, when it topped the list with more than 118 million users. Another one of the company’s apps, Facebook Messenger, sits comfortably in the third spot in 2015 with more than 96 million users, up from around 53 million last year.

Google’s dominance is evident in the middle of the list with Google Search, Google Play, Google Maps and Gmail each seeing modest gains in users from last year.

Gone is Google+, which was the eighth most popular app last year, and iTunes. Taking their place were Apple Music — the streaming audio service launched in June — and Apple Maps, which has bounced back from its embarrassing launch in 2012 to attract a total of more than 54 million users.

http://samhaykins.com/top-smartphone-apps-of-2015/

One of the aspirants in the South Korean presidential race who also is frontrunner has apologised after sparking a public uproar for jokingly likening the skin colour of a Nigerian student in South Korea to coal.

Kim Moo-sung, the leader of the country’s ruling conservative Saenuri Party and an aspirant in December 2017 elections, issued the apology following the series of public criticism over the comment he made

“I failed to realise that showing friendliness this way could hurt someone’s feelings,” Kim wrote on his Facebook page on Friday.

“I am really sorry and there is no excuse. I sincerely apologise from the bottom of my heart.”

He made the dry joke while delivering coal briquettes to the needy in Seoul alongside a group of foreign exchange students earlier on Friday.

The event was part of a charity programme which drew around 40 students from 27 countries as well as 50 young members of the Saenuri Party.

“Your face colour is the same as the colour of briquettes’ (A briquette (or briquet) is a compressed block of coal dust or other combustible biomass material such as charcoal, sawdust, wood chips, peat, or paper used for fuel and kindling to start a fire colour,”), the 64-year-old said to a Nigerian student while laughing.

The Nigerian student, said he did not take offence.

“I don’t give any special meaning to it,” Adekunie later told local news outlet Focus News. “He said it jokingly. He was laughing.”

“Personally I’m a black man… It’s nothing that I am ashamed of.”

Asked whether he thought Kim should apologise to him, he replied in Korean: “Guenchanayo [No problem]”.

The 26-year-old student is attending a local university on a South Korean government scholarship.

http://samhaykins.com/s-korean-presidential-frontrunner-sorry-for-joke-comparing-nigerian-students-face-to-coal/

I have come to realize that some of these type of messages are not directly from the network providers but some marketers that uses shortcode services. This shortcode service is set up by individuals and when you respond to the message with the with you are asked to do, certain amount of money that is preset is deducted from your account balance. Each time you respond to those type of messages, someone is smiling to the bank.

Tennis star, Serena Williams, won Sports Illustrated’s Sportsperson of the Year. This was meant to be a beautiful and celebrated occasion for her. However, some white guys who felt the horse should have won took to Twitter to express their dissatisfaction at the choice of the Sports person of the year.

The horse won the Triple Crown and was voted by fans as their choice for the award, but Sports Illustrated said that the vote wouldn’t have any bearing on who won anyway. And, also, it’s horse! Like, you are really that angry that you’ll want a horse over a Black woman?

Wao! Look at the venom with they are ranting on twitter and the counter reactions. Anyways, big congrats to Serena Williams!

See the tweets below!

http://samhaykins.com/seriously-white-people-are-mad-serena-williams-won-sportsperson-of-the-yearover-a-horse/

The attorney representing Bill Cosby revealed on Monday morning that he will be countersuing seven women accusing him of rape. The comedian is accusing the women of making “malicious, opportunistic and false and defamatory accusations of sexual misconduct against him.” Around 55 women have said the comedian raped or sexually abused them.

Tamara Green, Therese Serignese, Linda Traitz filed a defamation suit against Cosby in December 2014. They were joined by four more women—Linda Traitz, Louisa Moritz, Barbara Bowman, Joan Tarshis and Angela Leslie—in November. The suit accuses Cosby of falsely claiming they were lying about their sexual abuse claims.

Initially, Cosby’s attorneys argued that the suit filed by these women was unconstitutional and a violation of his First Amendment rights. And now, having evidently dropped that and adopted a new strategy, Cosby’s is following same path they towed by countersuing them on the same defamation claims they brought against him. His attorney Monique Pressley told USA Today the women are making these false claims cheap popularity and for financial gain, specifically to ruin his deals with NBC and Netflix:

“Mr. Cosby states plainly that he neither drugged nor sexually assaulted the defendants and that each defendant has maliciously and knowingly published multiple false statements and accusations from Fall 2014 through the current day in an effort to cause damage to Mr. Cosby’s reputation and to extract financial gains.”
This new statement comes despite the fact that Cosby previously admitted under oath to drugging women he wanted to sleep with.

In other Cosby news, Boston University is the latest school to announce they are revoking an honorary degree presented Cosby. BU’s president wrote in a campus-wide email Monday that Cosby’s alleged assaults on a double-digit number of women brought “significant and lasting discredit upon himself and is inconsistent with the University’s mission and values.”

At least nine schools have recently announced their decisions to revoke Cosby’s meaningless fake degrees: Brown, Spelman, Lehigh, Marquette, Fordham, Tufts, Goucher College, Amherst College, and Springfield College. Around 35 schools have yet to revoke the degrees they bestowed on Cosby. That’s still less than the total number of women who have accused him of rape or assault, which, again, is at least 55

http://samhaykins.com/bill-cosby-countersues-seven-of-his-rape-accusers-for-defamation/

Michael Adebolajo, who is currently serving a jail term for killing Lee Rigby has sued the Prison Service for compensation after two teeth were knocked out of his mouth in jail.

The £20,000 claim was launched by Michael Adebolajo after an incident with prison guards that led to him losing two teeth as they tried to restrain him.

According to reports, he became agitated as five officers led him from his cell in maximum security Belmarsh prison and claims the resulting struggle led to the loss.

However, the Ministry of Justice revealed that that the prison guard did nothing wrong after careful and thorough investigation into the incident.

A spokesperson commented “A police investigation into this incident took place and no charges were brought against members of staff.

“The public will be rightly outraged at the thought of this man receiving compensation from the taxpayer and we robustly defend claims made against the Prison Service.”

The duo of Adebolajo, then 29, and Michael Adebowale, 23, were sentenced for life in 2014 for hacking to death Drummer Rigby as he walked to his barracks in Woolwich, South East London.

The late 25-year-old was ran down by Adebolajo before he was “butchered” with his accomplice in an attack which shocked the entire world.

http://samhaykins.com/michael-adebolajo-sues-prison-service-after-having-two-teeth-knocked-out-in-jail/

The Minister for Information and Culture, Lai Mohammed was at the weekend with some Nigerian Soldiers at their headquarters in Bama, Borno state.


http://samhaykins.com/photos-lai-mohammed-joins-soldiers-for-push-ups-at-their-camp-in-maiduguri/

Find pictures below!

According to Forbes, Boko Haram is currently ranked on the number position of the world's 10th richest terrorist organization with an annual turnover of $25 Million. Find below the 10 richest terrorist organisations in the world;

1.ISIS - Annual Turnover $2 Billion
ISIS is the richest terror organization the world has known. Its annual turnover amounts to around $2 billion, and some analyst estimate the number to be $3 billion.

Main funding sources: oil trade, kidnapping and ransom, collection of protection and taxes, bank robberies and looting.Goal: the establishment of Islamic State of Iraq, Syria, Jordan, Lebanon and Palestine, the Muslim holy war against the infidels, Crusaders (i.e. Christians) and the Jews

2. HAMAS - Annual Turnover $1 Billion
Hamas's militant coup resulted in taking over of the Gaza strip in 2007, making the group a powerful organization in less than a decade.

Region: West Bank and Gaza Strip.

Main funding sources: taxes and fees, financial aid and donations (especially Qatar).

Purpose: militant struggle against the state of Israel and the establishment of a Palestinian Islamic state from the sea to the Jordan River

3. FARC - Annual Turnover $600 Million
FARC, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia), is an underground Marxist and anti-imperialist activist group and a key player in the bloody struggle that’s ravaged Columbia for more than 50 years.

Region: Colombia.

Main funding sources: drug production and drug trafficking, kidnapping and ransom, mining of minerals (especially gold), fees and taxes.

Purpose: elimination of the capitalist regime and the establishment of a Marxist-socialist welfare

4. Hezbollah - Annual Turnover $500 Million
Region: Lebanon

Main sources of income: financial assistance and donations (especially Iran), production and trafficking of drugs

Purpose: militant struggle against the state of Israel and establishing an Islamic state in Lebanon

Established as a militant group fighting for the Shiite population in Lebanon and against Israel, Hezbollah, like Hamas, has a strong political arm that became one of the major powers in Lebanon. Hezbollah has a network of nursing institutes, which provides relief, welfare, education and livelihood to large segments of the Shiite population in need.

5. Taliban - Annual Turnover $400 Million
The Taliban is a militant political movement that ruled Afghanistan from 1996 to 2001 and applied the rule of Sunni Islamic Sharia law.

Main funding sources: drug trafficking (mainly production of opium and heroin), sponsorship fees and taxes, financial assistance and donations.

Goal: the establishment of an Islamic theocracy in Afghanistan

6. Al-Qaeda - Annual Turnover $150 Million
Al-Qaeda is one of the most lethal terror organizations, and brought about a profound change in the Western's world attitude to Islam.

Main sources of finance: financial assistance and donations, kidnapping, ransom and drug trafficking.

Purpose: global jihad against the Christians and Jews and the formulation of a unified Islamic front against Western-secular forces

7. Lashkar-e-Taiba - Annual Turnover $100 Million
Lashkar-e-Taiba, "army of the righteous" to its followers, is a Pakistani radical Islamic terror group, considered to be one of the dominant groups in Southeast Asia.

Main sources of finance: financial assistance and donations.

Purpose: immediate release of Kashmir India and integration with Pakistani Kashmir under Islamic rule

8. Al Shabab - Annual Turnover $70 Million
Al-Shabab is the largest militant organization in Somalia, founded in 2006.

Main funding sources: kidnappings and ransom, illegal trade and pirate activity, sponsorship fees and taxes

Region: Somalia, Kenya, Uganda

Purpose: removal of foreign forces from Somalia and the establishment of an Islamic caliphate.

9. Real IRA - Annual Turnover $50 Million
Real IRA is a radical faction of the IRA (Irish Republican Army), established by activists who oppose the peace agreement signed in April 1998. This faction is considered to be the strongest resistance organization operating against the British, and it is defined as a terrorist organization by the EU and the USA.

Main funding sources: smuggling and illegal trade, aid and donations

Region: Northern Ireland, Ireland, United Kingdom

Purpose: Release of Northern Ireland and the creation of a united Irish state, which includes Northern Ireland and Ireland

10. Boko Haram - Annual Turnover $25 Million
Boko Haram means "Western education is a sin". It opposes education according to western values because, as they believe, it contradicts the Islamic faith.

Main funding sources: kidnappings and ransom, fees and taxes, protection, bank robberies and looting

Region: Nigeria, Cameroon

Goal: Fighting secularism and Western influences, overthrow of Christian-secular and the establishment of Islamic law in Nigeria

This is definitely mind blowing! Just as corporate organisations are recording annual turnover, these terrorists also have annual turnovers...



http://samhaykins.com/boko-haram-ranked-worlds-10th-richest-terrorist-organization/

Lol!

dominique:
When in Rome, act like the Romans. He should have taken some time to observe his environment and find out what applies. What is obtainable in Nigeria may not be obtainable in the UK.

I concur with this post. Concerning this matter, this is my position too. Because it is acceptable in Nigeria does not mean it will be acceptable elsewhere.

“When I was 16, I don’t think I knew what the word ‘feminist’ meant,” confesses Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, the Nigerian author who’s penned award-winning works such as Half of a Yellow Sun and Americanah. “But,” she adds firmly, “I was a feminist.”

The latest book from the writer, We Should All Be Feminists, is a personal essay that discusses sexual politics, gender construction, and her experience being an African woman. The book is an adaptation of the TED Talk the author gave in 2013 that’s now garnered over two million views on YouTube, the book is both a close-to-the-heart narrative and a clarion call for global feminism.

The intent of the book is beginning to yield results at least in one country.

Sweden is doing everything possible to ensure that the citizens get a full grasp of the message by having the book translated and was released last Tuesday (Dec. 1), several organizations have come together to distribute and make available Adichie’s book to all 16-year-olds in the country.

The organisations that came together among others are the Swedish Women’s Lobby, together with publishing company Albert Bonniers Förlag, the UN Association of Sweden, and several other partner groups. They revealed on Tuesday that they would ensure that a free copy of the book gets to every second-grade high school student in Sweden. So far, Over 100,000 copies have been given out, and the Swedish Women’s Lobby also plans to distribute discussion guidelines to teachers next month.

While the free book is intended for the teenagers alone, it is hoped that all Swedish citizens will benefit. In a statement, Clara Berglund, chair of the advocacy group, said “this is the book that I wish all of my male classmates would have read when I was 16.” Adichie’s book, she said, will be “a gift to ourselves and future generations.”

At the group’s Tuesday press conference in Stockholm announcing the project, Adichie greeted Swedish high school students via video, saying:

For me, feminism is about justice. I’m a feminist because I want to live in a world that is more just. I’m a feminist because I want to live in a world where a woman is never told that she can or cannot—or should or should not—do anything because she’s a woman. I want to live in a world where men and women are happier, where they’re not constrained by gender roles. I want to live in a world where men and women are truly equal, and that’s why I’m a feminist.

Sweden, of course, is not the only country to have adopted Adichie’s book as an exemplar of feminist speech. The book is ranked high in Amazon’s best-selling gender studies book list currently and US singer Beyoncé even sampled Adichie’s words in a pop track in on her latest album.

Good one for Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie!

http://samhaykins.com/all-16-year-olds-in-sweden-will-get-a-copy-of-chimamanda-adichies-feminist-book/

I personally feel that she is too young for this. How can a 8 year old girl know what modelling is about and decide to chose a career out of it if not the parents living their own dream through her.

In the final FIFA ranking for the year, a one time African giant and the best football country in Africa, Nigeria, finished as the 66th best footballing nation in the world and 14th in Africa for the year 2015.

The top ten in the world are as follows;

Belgium
Argentina
Spain
Germany
Chile
Brazil
Portugal
Colombia
England
Austria

Top African Countries


Cote d ivoire
Algeria
Ghana
Cape verde Island
Tunisia
Senegal
Congo
Guinea
Egypt
Cameroon
Congo DR
Mali
Uganda
Nigeria

http://samhaykins.com/fifa-rankings-nigeria-ranked-66th-14th-in-the-world-and-africa-respectively/

Supreme Court in South Africa’s has upgraded Oscar Pistorius’s culpable homicide conviction in the death of Reeva Steenkamp to murder.

Prosecutors wanted the conviction upgraded to one of murder. The argument was that Pistorius must have known that firing four bullets through the door of a tiny toilet cubicle could kill the person behind it.

Pistorious girlfriend, Steenkamp was killed in the athlete’s home in Pretoria in the early hours of 14 February 2013.

Pistorius is currently living under house arrest at his uncle’s home in Pretoria, having been freed from prison after serving less than a year behind bars. He must now return to the Pretoria high court for a new sentence.

Source:http://samhaykins.com/oscar-pistorius-conviction-in-death-of-reeva-steenkamp-upgraded-to-murder/

Prisoners in India have been given the opportunity to secure an early release if they can master yoga poses and pass the yoga exams set for them.

The prisoners have been informed that they can reduce their sentences by three months if they can do well to impress the prison wardens in yoga practices.

“There’s a written and physical exam and those who excel will be given remission with respect to their performance,” Bhushankumar Upadhyay, the additional director general of the Maharashtra prison department, who is responsible for the scheme, told AFP.

“We have started the written tests and the practical examination will commence in January. We are going to hold two exams a year and prisoners can get a maximum of three months early release.”

The aim of the programme according to prison authorities is to improve the mental and physical well being of the prisoners. Prisoners are expected to answer questions such as “What is yoga?” and “How does it help you?” as well as perform a series of complex moves.

“Yoga has been found to be very positive in harmonising our mental and physical energy. It has played a great role in the formation of the soul,”, an official of the prison said.

This initiative is the latest one from the different yogic activities outlined by India’s yoga-loving prime minister, Narendra Modi, since he came into office . May last year.

Structures have been put in place to promote yoga and other traditional Indian treatments, and also started free yoga classes for his government’s 3 million bureaucrats and their families.

Source:http://samhaykins.com/indian-prisoners-secure-an-early-release-if-they-pass-yoga-test/

Tweet on Twitter

Some weeks back, the attention of the world was focussed on France because of the attack that left 130 dead, the internet was agog with news about the attack and in solidarity, a lot of social media profiles changed their display pictures to France national colour. However in Nigeria, there’s hardly a week in recent times, where there weren’t any form of attack from the the insurgents leaving scores dead and millions displaced, it is gradually becoming a norm and the world moves on like nothing happened. This is a write up by Tolu Ogunlesi for the NY Times about the victims of insurgency that are nameless;

WITH the world’s attention focused on the Nov. 13 attacks in Paris that killed 130 people, there was a flurry of debate about how much more media coverage France had received than Beirut, where, a day earlier, suicide bombers sent by the Islamic State killed 43 people. In Nigeria, we expect most terrorist attacks to go unnoticed by the world.

Considering the global attention paid to the Islamic State, you would not guess that Boko Haram is actually the world’s deadliest terrorist organization, according to the Global Terrorism Index. While the Islamic State operates in an oil-rich region and directly threatens the West, Boko Haram’s brutality remains largely confined to remote, sparsely populated parts of Nigeria. The group has reinforced this isolation by attacking telecommunications towers.

At the turn of the year, the group occupied territory estimated to be the size of Belgium. In March, its leader, Abubakar Shekau, released an audio message, pledging allegiance to the Islamic State. But he has not appeared in public since then, fueling speculation that he is dead or incapacitated. And Boko Haram has been pushed on the defensive, pummeled by a coalition of troops from Nigeria, Chad, Cameroon and Niger, briefly supported by mercenaries from South Africa and the former Soviet Union.

In August, I visited Yola — home to at least three camps for internally displaced persons, as Boko Haram’s refugees are known. The Yola I encountered was actually a less beleaguered place than it had been a year earlier, when Boko Haram fighters were virtually knocking on its doors, having overrun a string of nearby towns.

In Maiduguri, about 250 miles away, where Boko Haram first burst onto the national scene in a bloody uprising six years ago, the airport reopened to commercial flights in July, after being closed for about 18 months. The city’s public secondary schools, shuttered since early 2014, started reopening in October.

While Boko Haram may have been weakened, it has yet to lose its capacity to sow terror. The suicide bomb attacks — some carried out by young girls, not even teenagers — now blur with surreal intensity into one another. Many attacks go unclaimed; everyone assumes it’s Boko Haram, as usual.

There’s a lesson in Boko Haram’s rise about how quickly terror metastasizes. It is difficult now to remember a time when Nigerians did not fear suicide bombings. Yet I can recall that when Boko Haram detonated a car bomb outside the police headquarters in the capital city, Abuja, in 2011, the widespread sentiment was that the suicide bomber couldn’t have been Nigerian, because Nigerians love their lives too much.

We’ve long since purged ourselves of those notions. When Western media reported that the suicide bombing in Paris was the first by a woman on European soil, I could only think, “that was Nigeria two years ago.” The first recorded such attack here took place in June 2013. Since then, there have been more than 30 by women and girls, while thousands of civilians have been killed by Boko Haram fighters.

More than two million people have been displaced by the conflict, but the world is largely oblivious, perhaps because these refugees are not a threat to Europe’s security and Western civilization. Many are holed up in camps like Yola’s, but most are squatting with family or friends in safer areas. If there’s a unifying emotion among them, it’s homesickness. They’re terribly eager for peace so they can return home and rebuild their lives: farming, fishing, trading, traveling.

At one of the camps I visited, I met a Muslim man who, as soon as he heard I was from the southwest, switched flawlessly to my Yoruba language. He was a frequent traveler to Ibadan and Lagos, hundreds of miles away, buying lace and coconuts to sell at home in Borno state, heartland of the Boko Haram insurgency. Another man I interviewed was a cross-country cattle merchant and local politician; one of his daughters had been missing for a year, since they fled their town.

Many people are now returning to villages and towns the Nigerian military has liberated. In August, President Muhammadu Buhari gave the newly appointed military chiefs an improbable December deadline to defeat Boko Haram.

Even if, by a miracle, Boko Haram was routed once and for all, the work would only just have started. All those displaced persons have to be rehabilitated — a task likely to prove harder even than the protracted military operation. A reintegration program in the restive Niger Delta has cost more than a billion dollars; repairing the damage done by Boko Haram will surely cost more.

How will Nigeria, facing dwindling revenues, restore two million people to their homes? How can all the children who have now lost almost two years of education catch up — especially in a region like Borno with historically abysmal attendance rates (about seven out of 10 children didn’t go to school, even before Boko Haram started destroying their schools)? And what about all those burned-out schools, hospitals, bridges and houses? That’s before even thinking about support or treatment for the psychological trauma of witnessing massacres, or being victims of forced marriage and sexual abuse.

Sadly, unlike France or America, Nigeria will never know the names of most of the terrorists’ victims. Here, there are no official tallies of casualties, and news agencies proclaim death tolls in hedged terms — “at least,” “more than,” “as many as.” Much about this tragedy plays out in the realm of speculation. The vagueness extends from the loss of life itself to the dignity of its acknowledgment.

Soldiers fare no better. Often, they’re buried with little ceremony, as though there was something shameful about dying for one’s country in this fight. There are no flags flying, no televised military funerals, no profiles of dead soldiers in the media. When tributes emerge, they’re from family and friends, confined to social media. Mr. Buhari’s decoration of a handful of war heroes in Yola in November was the first such event dedicated to soldiers fighting Boko Haram.

Admittedly, there’s nothing new about these attitudes toward suffering and loss in Nigerian history. We fought a brutal civil war nearly 50 years ago, in Biafra, but there’s no way to tell that from visiting the National Museum in Lagos. And a planned National Museum in Abuja has never been built. If the devastation of Boko Haram teaches us anything, it should be that if we do not memorialize terror’s victims, then we can hardly complain when nobody else does.


http://samhaykins.com/terrors-nameless-victims-in-nigeria-by-tolu-ogunlesi/

The former president of Nigeria is not smiling at all. Olusegun Obansanjo took to twitter in successive tweets to abuse and blast the governor of Ekiti State, Ayo Fayose;

Check out the tweets below:

Source: http://samhaykins.com/obasanjo-abuses-fayose-in-recent-tweets/