SIMON KOLAWOLE; Corruption and the Nigerian Project

Simon Kolawole Live!: Email: simon.kolawole@thisdaylive.com

What is corruption? Ask a typical Nigerian, and the response is likely to be “government officials stealing our money”. This definition effectively shields the lecturer who forces students to buy his books before they can pass his course; the journalist who demands money to write a story; the company executive who awards contracts to himself through fronts; NGOs and activists who falsify their accounts to their donors; lawyers who prepare and seal fraudulent deals; etc. Everybody is oiling the corruption chain in their own humble way. I have always argued, and will never stop arguing, that people don’t become corrupt the day they join government. The grooming process starts from their childhood. They practise corruption in bits and pieces until they get into position of access. Look at this: is it the market woman who falsifies scales that will suddenly become upright when she becomes a council chairman or commissioner?

Moments with Mo: Search for Mo’s Co-host Begins

The search for a co-host to pair with Mo Abudu, the pioneering host of the internationally acclaimed TV talk show, Moments with Mo, has begun in earnest. According to a statement issued in Tinapa, Calabar, Moments with Mo, Africa’s first and only syndicated daily talk show has begun its search for “a young, charming, brilliant, exciting and dynamic person to co-host the long-running, but now even more rejuvenated show, alongside its pioneering host, Mo Abudu.”

BIG BROTHER SEEKS HOUSEMATES

The eighth edition of Africa’s biggest reality series BIG BROTHER AFRICA kicks off in May and already fans of arguably the most successful television franchise ever seen on the continent are asking… who will the new housemates be? Who will find their name and their faces gracing newspapers, their profiles loaded to websites and blogs?

Who will become the subject of drive time radio and just who will find themselves heating up the Twitter-sphere? At this time there is no way to know this but if you meet the entry requirements and enter between now and Valentine’s Day on February 14, you may well be among the superstars in waiting and may find yourself flirting with fame and fortune!

AMAA Nominations Holds in Malawi

President Joyce Banda of Malawi with Peace

Come March 16, President Joyce Banda of Malawi will host film makers and celebrities from different parts of Africa during the nominations event that will be hosted by her country. The AMAA nomination weekend will run from March 14th-17th during which the business community, the political class in Malawi, celebrities from across Africa and their counterparts in the Southern African country will be hosted to per-nomination concert, the nominations event proper and post-nomination party.

The Director of Administration of the organisation, Mr. Tony Anih said the government and people of Malawi are very excited with the prospect of having movie icons and other players in the motion picture industry coming to the country for the nominations event.

FG to Ban Medical Treatment Abroad

Minister of Health, Prof.  Onyebuchi  Chukwu

The Federal Government has said that plans have been concluded to place a ban on Nigerians seeking medical treatment that could be handled by some  public and private health facilities in the country abroad.  

The Minister of Health, Prof.  Onyebuchi  Chukwu, who stated this Monday in Asaba, the Delta State capital, during the opening ceremony of the first  Nigerian Medical  Association (NMA)  National  Health  Summit,  said government was no longer comfortable that  Nigerians rush  abroad unnecessarily for health challenges that could be handled in the nation’s public and private facilities.

DELE MOMODU; Special Tribute to Our Freedom Fighters

By Dele Momodu

Fellow Nigerians, as I watched President Barack Obama pay tribute to Martin Luther King Junior from my hotel room in Washington DC last Monday; I could not help but shed some tears for our unfortunate country. My mind raced through some stream of consciousness and flashes of sadness. I remembered our dead and living heroes, the authentic freedom fighters who made our democracy possible. As you read this piece, please take time to imagine my state as someone who had joined the struggle as early as a teenager and pioneer Jambite in 1978, in those good old days of Ali Must Go at Great Ife. Try to picture our unbridled radicalism and idealism at such tender age.

Mystery Death: Anambra to Exhume 15 Bodies

Floating Corpes

Anambra State Government Friday said that 15 out of the recovered 18 bodies found floating on Ezu River in Amansea, Awka North Local Government Area, last week, which were buried while investigations on the source of the bodies and possible cause of death were ongoing would be exhumed next Monday for autopsy.

Gale Of Demolition Rocks Lagos Again

Roadside traders salvages what remains of their wares after the demolition

TORN BETWEEN ITS DRIVE TO BUILD AFRICA’S MODEL CITY AND THE POLICY AGAINST ILLEGAL ACTIVITIES THAT THREATEN THE DREAM, LAGOS STATE TASKFORCE ON ENVIRONMENTAL AND SPECIAL OFFENCES (ENVIRONMENT) UNIT PENULTIMATE WEEK DEMOLISHED SHANTIES AND DENS OF OIL THIEVES in Lagos. GBOYEGA AKINSANMI WRITES

She never expected she could be caught and displaced so soon. But she knew long before now that what she was doing for a living truly violates the Lagos State Environmental and Special Offences Law as well as the new Road Traffic Law.    

Nine-month-old Baby Kidnapped in Kwara Found in Ibadan

Gov Abdulfatah Ahmed

More and more bizarre acts are happening in Kwara State, some of them stranger than fiction. Or how does one explain that a woman on hearing that her friend was delivered of a new born baby and went to share in her joy only to steal the baby and abscond with it?  The incident has set tongues wagging in Oke-Ola area of Oro in Irepodun Local Government Area of Kwara State, where the visiting friend stole the nine-month-old baby, Funke Alaba.

40 Nigerians Repatriated from UK, Spain, Says Official

deported Nigerians

About 40 Nigerians have again been repatriated from the United Kingdom and Spain, a senior embassy official said on Thursday in London. Head of Immigration at the Nigerian High Commission in London, Mr. Lawal Isah, disclosed this in an interview with the Western Europe Correspondent of the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN). He said the deportees, who are due back in Nigeria today, consist of 40 persons from the UK, with an uncertain number from Spain. Isah said among those repatriated were people who had served jail terms in various prisons across the UK, and others arrested for illegal stay.