NIGERIA: ANOTHER AFGHANISTAN?

Nigeria is a country that needs little or no introduction. A country that boasts to be the giant of Africa with over a hundred and eighty million people and obviously the most populous black nation in the world has had her ups and downs. From being an economic sleeping giant to a great tourist destination to a kidnappers' haven to the corruption capital of the world and now a terror stricken zone. Following is an incomplete list of the mayhem so far recorded in terms of terrorism:

2009 Boko Haram Uprising	July, 2009	Maiduguri, Bauchi, Potiskum, Wudil	1,000+	Islamic militants killed over a thousand people between 26 and 29 July; during the violence, Christians were killed for refusing to convert to Islam
2010 Jos massacre	2010	Jos	992	Religious rioting; victims were mostly Christians killed by Muslims
2011 Abuja United Nations bombing	August 26, 2011	Abuja	21	73 injured; Boko Haram attacked a United Nations compound
2011 Damaturu attacks	November 4, 2011	Damaturu	100-150	Islamic militants associated with Boko Haram attacked police stations, churches, and banks
December 2011 Nigeria clashes	December, 2011	Maiduguri and Damaturu	68+	Islamic militants associated with Boko Haram clashed with security forces between 22 and 23 December
December 2011 Nigeria bombings	December 25, 2011	Madalla	45	73 injured; Muslim militants bombed a Catholic church during Christmas mass
January 5-6, 2012 Nigeria attacks	January, 2012	Mubi, Yola, Gombi, and Maiduguri	37+	Islamic terrorists attacked churches and Christian businesses; Boko Haram claimed responsibility
January 20, 2012 Nigeria attacks	January 20, 2012	Kano	185	Islamic terrorists attacked churches and Christian businesses; Boko Haram claimed responsibility
April 2012 Kaduna massacre	April 8, 2012	Kaduna	38	Islamic terrorists bombed a church on Easter
June 2012 Kaduna church bombings	June 17, 2012	Kaduna, Wusasa, and Sabon Gari	12-19	80 injured; Islamic terrorists bombed three churches
July 2012 massacre	July 7, 2012	Multiple northern Nigerian villages	100+	Islamic militants attacked Christian villages
Deeper Life Church shooting	August 7, 2012	Okene	19	Islamic militants attacked a church; the pastor was among the dead

 December 25, 2012              Potiskum, Yobe   6         Gunmen attacked a church during christmas eve service

Is Nigeria going to be another Afganistan? Violence between Christians and Muslims in Nigeria is drawing the country ever closer to a religious war. The instigator of this conflict is Boko Haram, an Islamist movement whose very name means "Western education is forbidden."

The group was founded in 2002 in Maiduguri by Ustaz Mohammed Yusuf. In 2004 it moved to Kanamma, Yobe State, where it set up a base called "Afghanistan" used to attack nearby police posts killing police officers. If the Nigerian government can't stop this conflict from spiralling out of control, expect the United States to step in -- albeit with a relatively light hand -- to tip the scales against Boko Haram.

The situation in Nigeria hit a crisis point on June 17, when Boko Haram attacked three churches in Nigeria's north-central Kaduna state -- killing 21 people during services. Christians were quick to respond, and sectarian clashes ignited almost immediately. After four days of unrest, roughly 100 Nigerians lay dead.

Terrorist violence is nothing new for Boko Haram, a group that U.S. officials suspect of having links to Al Qaeda. As the U.S. State Department has noted, attacks by Boko Haram and associated militants have taken more than 1,000 lives over the past 18 months. Nor is sectarian strife new to Nigeria: The country, predominantly Muslim in the north and Christian in the south, has a history of sectarian violence in its religiously mixed middle belt. Past riots killed more than 100 people in 2002 -- again in Kaduna -- when Muslim youths protested the Miss World pageant being held in Nigeria, and they also claimed scores of lives in 2006 following Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten's publication of controversial cartoons satirising the Prophet Mohammed.
Recent events show that Boko Haram's attacks are only becoming more deadly. The organisation is in the midst of a tactical evolution: Whereas Boko Haram used to employ such tactics as assassinations and massed assaults on security forces, suicide bombings now feature prominently in its arsenal, and Christian targets -- which are most frequently attacked while church services are ongoing -- have moved to the top of the group's target list.
The Nigerian government has had some successes. Boko Haram was the target of violent suppression in July 2009 when its founder, Mohammed Yusuf, was summarily executed by Nigerian security forces following his capture that month, and roughly 800 members of the sect were killed, according to Nigerian military estimates. As scholar David Cook's useful study on Boko Haram details, however, the group re-emerged with a vengeance the following year. It engaged in "a high profile campaign of assassinations and attacks throughout northern Nigeria," Cook writes, and began to employ suicide attacks in the summer of 2011. Further, Cook notes, Boko Haram's attacks and threats have focused "more and more on interests that touch U.S. economic concerns in the region."
In line with Boko Haram's tactical evolution, it has frequently employed suicide bombings in its onslaught against Christian targets. Prior to the June 17 attacks, Boko Haram had perpetrated a number of other terrorist assaults on church services. On April 29, gunmen attacked services on Bayero University in the northern state of Kano, killing at least 16 people. The group also took credit for a June 3 suicide attack on a church in northeastern Nigeria that killed 15 people and wounded 40 more. The following Sunday, June 10, two church attacks rocked the cities of Jos and Biu, killing three people and wounding over 40. Once again, Boko Haram claimed responsibility. The latest attack on christmas eve 2012 has prompted Pope Benedict to use part of his Christmas message to the world on Tuesday to highlight the need for reconciliation in Nigeria, saying "savage acts of terrorism continue to reap victims, particularly among Christians".

Is Nigeria going to become another Afghanistan and does the Nigerian government and people have the will to stop this reign of terror or will they need international collaboration as spearheaded by the US in Afghanistan?

IS IT REALLY DOOMSDAY ON FRIDAY THE 21ST?

NAT GEO CHANNEL SCREEN GRAB SHOWING THE PREDICTION OF DOOM

It has been widely speculated that the world is coming to an end on Friday, the 21st day of December, 2012. The National Geographic Channel had long started a count down which is displayed on the top right hand corner of your tv screen.


The Doomsday prophecy is based on an ancient calendar from the Mayan civilisation that was based in what is now Guatemala in in Central America.The calendar lasts for more than 5,000 years but comes to an end on Friday, which has prompted fears it forecasts the end of the world.



MAYAN CALENDAR

Dark comets, famine, super-volcanoes, catastrophic climate change, and a plague of cancers are just some of the ends that could fulfill the prophecy.
Some scientists strongly believe the most likely disaster that could make doomsday happen is a black comet.
Such an end would match that of the dinosaurs who after walking the planet for about 165 million years - homo sapiens has been around for a mere 200,000 years - were killed off by a 10km asteroid or comet that slammed into the planet.Dark comets have little of the ice and snow that most comets have, and a lot more dust which makes it much more difficult to spot them as they speed through Space.
The collision itself, except for those near the point of impact, would be unlikely to be fatal to the world's population but it would throw up so much dust into the atmosphere that billions of people could expect a slow death.
Huge quantities of dust would bring on an 'eternal winter' in which the sun would be obscured and crops around the world would fail, leading to mass famine.

A COMET SLAMS INTO THE EARTH

Other favourite Doomsday scenarios include a vast solar storm which will flare out from the Sun and engulf the Earth.
An alternative doom-laden theory is that a rogue black hole will swallow up the Earth, or that a quirk of galactic alignments will trigger a disastrous reversal of the Earth's magnetic field.
Among the favourites is that a rogue planet, Nibiru, which has long been inhabiting the far reaches of the solar system, beyond even Pluto, is now on a collision course with Earth.
Scientists have dismissed the theory as ridiculous not just because no one has ever managed to detect it in the outer reaches of the solar system but because if such a large object was heading this way it would have been spotted by now
Scepticism on the part of experts, however, has done little to diminish the determination of thousands of people to find a safe haven from disaster.
In France the authorities have had to bar New Age followers from travelling to Bugarach, a tiny village home to fewer than 200 people, and the 'mystical mountain' where it is located.
Doomsday fanatics have identified Bugarach as a place of safety on the grounds that aliens live hidden within the mountain and are waiting for the end of the world when they will rescue humans in the area.
'I have issued an order barring anyone from climbing the mountain. And those trying to get into the village will be stopped and asked what their business is,' said Regional prefect Eric Freysselinard.
The village and the mountain will only be re-opened to outsiders two days after the end of the world is scheduled to have taken place.

                                  THE MOUNTAIN IN BUGARACH VILLAGE, FRANCE

But just how much of all these do you believe?   

BREAKING NEWS!! A STATE GOVERNOR , 5 OTHERS PERISH AS NAVY HELICOPTER CRASHES IN NIGERIA

AZAZI AND YOKOWA (right)

A helicopter belonging to the Nigerian Navy has crashed in oil rich Bayelsa State, Southern Nigeria. On board were the Governornor of North Central Nigeria state of Kaduna, Patrick Yakowa, a  former National Security Adviser, General Andrew Azazi, their aides and the pilot. There were no survivors. Azazi was fired in June amid growing sectarian violence in Nigeria, but maintained close ties with the government.
    
Yushau Shuaib, a spokesman for Nigeria's National Emergency Management Agency, said four other bodies had been found, but he could not immediately give their identities.

Pilot of the helicopter, Commander Muritala Mohammed Daba with his widow

The crash occurred at about 3:30 p.m. after the navy helicopter took off from the village of Okoroba in Bayelsa state where officials had gathered to attend the burial of the father of a presidential aide, said Commodore Kabir Aliyu. He said that the helicopter was headed for Nigeria's oil capital of Port Harcourt when it crashed in the Nembe area of Bayelsa state.

Aviation disasters remain common in Nigeria, despite efforts in recent years to improve air safety.
In October, a plane made a crash landing in central Nigeria. A state governor and five others sustained injuries but survived.
In June, a Dana Air MD-83 passenger plane crashed into a neighborhood in the commercial capital of Lagos, killing 153 people onboard and at least 10 people on the ground. It was Nigeria's worst air crash in nearly two decades.
In March, a police helicopter carrying a high-ranking police official crashed in the central Nigerian city of Jos, killing four people.

Read more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/2012/12/15/3143411/helicopter-carrying-nigerian-officials.html#storylink=cpy

ONE SHOOTING TOO MANY!!

Latest Gunman: Adam Lanza, 20

Friday :14/12/12 a lone gun man Adam Lanza, 20, armed with three guns including an assault riffle, forces his way into an Elementary school in Connecticut, USA and opens fire in different directions. When he was done 20 little angels lay dead alongside the school Principal and five other staffers  and himself. He was later found to have started the massacre at home that morning by killing his mother. All three guns belonged to her.

This is just one of the numerous cases like it which occur  almost regularly around the world and the US in particular. Lets go through some of the notable ones in the US:

April 1999 - two teenage schoolboys shot and killed 12 schoolmates and a teacher at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado, before killing themselves.

July 1999 - a stock exchange trader in Atlanta, Georgia, killed 12 people including his wife and two children before taking his own life.  

September 1999 - a gunman opened fire at a prayer service in Fort Worth, Texas, killing six people before committing suicide.
October 2002 - a series of sniper-style shootings occurred in Washington DC, leaving 10 dead.
August 2003 - in Chicago, a laid-off worker shot and killed six of his former workmates.
November 2004 - in Birchwood, Wisconsin, a hunter killed six other hunters and wounded two others after an argument with them.
March 2005 - a man opened fire at a church service in Brookfield, Wisconsin, killing seven people.
October 2006 - a truck driver killed five schoolgirls and seriously wounded six others in a school in Nickel Mines, Pennsylvania before taking his own life.
April 2007 - student Seung-Hui Cho shot and killed 32 people and wounded 15 others at Virginia Tech in Blacksburg, Virginia, before shooting himself, making it the deadliest mass shooting in the United States after 2000.
August 2007 - Three Delaware State University students were shot and killed in “execution style” by a 28-year-old and two 15-year-old boys. A fourth student was shot and stabbed.
September 2007 - A freshman student at Delaware State University shot and wounded two other students at a campus dining hall.
December 2007 - a 20-year-old man killed nine people and injured five others in a shopping center in Omaha, Nebraska.
December 2007 - a woman and her boyfriend shot dead six members of her family on Christmas Eve in Carnation, Washington.
February 2008 - a shooter who is still at large tied up and shot six women at a suburban clothing store in Chicago, leaving five of them dead and the remaining one injured.
February 2008 - a man opened fire in a lecture hall at Northern Illinois University in DeKalb, Illinois, killing five students and wounding 16 others before laying down his weapon and surrendering.
July 2008 – A former student shot three people in a computer lab at South Mountain Community College, Phoenix, Arizona.
September 2008 - a mentally ill man who was released from jail one month earlier shot eight people in Alger, Washington, leaving six of them dead and the rest two wounded.
October 2008 - Several men in a car drove up to a dormitory at the University of Central Arkansas and opened fire, killing two students and injuring a third person.
December 2008 - a man dressed in a Santa Claus suit opened fire at a family Christmas party in Covina, California, then set fire on the house and killed himself. Police later found nine people dead in the debris of the house.
March 2009 - a 28-year-old laid-off worker opened fire while driving a car through several towns in Alabama, killing 10 people.
March 2009 - a heavily-armed gunman shot dead eight people, many of them elderly and sick people, in a private-owned nursing home in North Carolina.
March 2009 - six people were shot dead in a high-grade apartment building in Santa Clara, California.
April 2009 – An 18-year-old former student followed a pizza deliveryman into his old dormitory, and shot the deliveryman, a dorm monitor, and himself at Hampton University, Virginia.
April 2009 - a man shot dead 13 people at a civic center in Binghamton, New York.
July 2009 - Six people, including one student, were shot in a drive-by shooting at a community rally on the campus of Texas Southern University, Houston.
November 2009 - U.S. army psychologist Major Nidal Hasan opened fire at a military base in Fort Hood, Texas, leaving 13 dead and 42 others wounded.
February 2010 – A professor opened fire 50 minutes into at a Biological Sciences Department faculty meeting at the University of Alabama, killing three colleagues and wounding three others
January 2011 - a gunman opened fire at a public gathering outside a grocery in Tuscon, Arizona, killing six people including a nine-year-old girl and wounding at least 12 others. Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords was severely injured with a gunshot to the head.
July 2012 - Masked gunman opens fire at midnight cinema screen of new Batman film The Dark Knight Rises, killing 12 and injuring 58. Suspect James Holmes is arrested by police and awaiting trial.
August 2012 - Gunman kills six people at SIkh temple in Wisconsin before being shot dead by police. Suspect is named as white supremacists Wade Michael Page.

This latest massacre has sadly been recorded as the deadliest school shooting in the US! And President Obama has rightly promised the time to act is now to prevent recurrences.

The way to go is no other than to reconsider very seriously and  urgently the American gun laws and policies! Enough of the talk, time to act is NOW!

HOW REAL ARE REALITY TV SHOWS?

This you can bet is a burning question on most viewers' minds when they are glued to their Tv sets watching any program on the growing list of "Reality Shows". How real can a recorded program that is not on live tv be? This is especially about the ones that focus on "private" lives of 'celebs'. From "Keeping up with the Kardashians" to "Ice loves Coco" to "The Girls of the Playboy mansion" etc the list is growing by the day. One wonders why one should spend one's very precious time watching a program that is not in the least educative or informing? You only get to see the 'actors' go shopping, make their hair, choose a new home, decide which city to move to, have arguments or agreements with their spouses, cry, laugh, sleep, eat, go to parties, go for photo shoots etc.  Where then lies the value of watching these programs?  And to think that these programs are on PAY TV! They  should be on FREE TO AIR if you ask me!

Well if you want my candid opinion I think these shows are to say the least a colossal waste of time and money. They are also very fake and should not be termed as reality tv shows. I would prefer shows like "The Survivor", "The Amazing Race" and "The American Idol" any day to the ones earlier mentioned and their likes.

And so it was with some amusement I watched one of Nollywood's actresses, Omotola, try to copy "Kimora" (or is it "Kim"?) with her "REAL ME" show. And what a poor copier she turned out to be! You could see from her narratives, forced smiles and laughter that the whole things screams FAKE!  I guess in her own case what could be interesting and considered real to some extent is to take the viewers into her home and the Egbeda (or is it Idimu?) environs instead of hotels and nice places she visits.

Or what do you guys think?

MIKE TYSON'S ALLEGED SEX CHANGE STORY IS NOT TRUE!!

On Sunday, Zimbabwean newspaper The Standard carried reports that Mike Tyson, former heavyweight boxing champion, had undergone a sex change.
According to the website for the newspaper, Tyson had said his first menstrual cycle “would be a dream come true” and that he was changing his name to Michelle.
The article was, unsurprisingly, a hit, with 4,900 Facebook likes at the time of writing. A number of other African news sites, including Spy Ghana, soon picked up the story.
Unfortunately, the story isn't true. The Standard appears to have picked up the story from News Biscuit, a UK-based satirical site that published a story on Tyson's (not real) sex change in November. NewsBiscuit writer John O'Farrell told the BBC that the site has been getting so much traffic from Africa over the past few days that it keeps crashing.
Here's a screen-grab of the Standard's article that started it all:

Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/mike-tyson-sex-change-spoof-goes-viral-2012-12#ixzz2EsGDiVaP

OH NO LORD. NOT LINDSAY LOHAN AGAIN!

Liz and Dick" star Lindsay Lohan's alcohol abuse issues have resurfaced and the troubled star has been reported to have been drinking up to two liters of vodka a day according to the Friday, Nov 30. TMZ reports.
The celebrity news site reported that sources close to Lohan have revealed that Lindsay's drinking has been out of control again for several months, with her drinking heavily on a daily basis.
Those close to Lindsay have revealed that she has become so stressed by her financial situation and the impending probation violation that she has turned to alcohol as a stress reliever.
The concerned pal claims that Lohan who's struggled with substance abuse in the past and even has a DUI conviction would often begin drinking first thing in the morning, and continues drinking throughout the day.
Reports from Thursday morning's New York City nightclub arrest have claimed that Lindsay was drinking all day and showed up at the Bieber concert already very intoxicated. She continued to drink throughout the night, and got extremely sloppy.
. .
Some of Lindsay Lohan's friends have revealed that they have given up trying to help her because when she's drunk, she is also very violent or tends to get violent, which adds to the speculations surrounding Lindsay Lohan's recent arrest for assault.

This is sincerely hoping and praying we wont have another Amy Winehouse tragedy!

STRAUSS-KAHN WILL PART WITH USD6M TO SETTLE LAWSUIT

Former IMF head Dominique Strauss-Kahn has reached a preliminary agreement to settle a civil lawsuit brought against him by a hotel maid who accused him of sexual assault last year, sources familiar with the case said.

Former IMF head Dominique Strauss-Kahn arrives at a polling station in the second round of the 2012 French presidential elections in Sarcelles May 6, 2012. REUTERS/Gonzalo Fuentes

U.S. and France-based lawyers for Strauss-Kahn, who was once tipped to become French president, on Friday acknowledged a deal was under discussion, but said it had not yet been finalised.

They also denied as "flatly false" and "fanciful" a report that he agreed on a $6 million (3.7 million pounds) settlement.

"The parties have discussed a resolution but there has been no settlement. Mr. Strauss-Kahn will continue to defend the charges if no resolution can be reached," Strauss-Kahn's U.S. lawyers, William Taylor and Amit Mehta, said in a statement.

"Media reports that Dominique Strauss-Kahn has agreed to pay six million dollars to settle the civil case are flatly false."

French daily Le Monde, citing people close to Strauss-Kahn, said he and the maid Nafissatou Diallo would meet a judge in New York on December 7 to sign a $6 million settlement and close an affair that ended the Frenchman's International Monetary Fund career and wrecked his presidential ambitions.

"The discussions have been going on for weeks, months. The agreement should be confirmed at the start of next week," Michele Saban, a friend of Strauss-Kahn who saw him recently, told Reuters in Paris. She could not confirm the sum involved.

"We are moving towards the end of a tragedy," she said, adding that Diallo had always been open to negotiating a settlement despite reticence from her lawyers.

Le Monde said 63-year-old Strauss-Kahn planned to take out a bank loan for $3 million and would be lent the other $3 million by his wife Anne Sinclair, despite the fact the couple separated in the summer and now live on different sides of Paris.

Strauss-Kahn's Paris-based legal team declined to comment on whether a deal had been reached with Diallo, but denied Le Monde's report of the sum involved.

"Neither Dominique Strauss-Kahn nor his lawyers will comment on proceedings in the United States. That said, however, they strenuously deny the erroneous and fanciful information relayed by Le Monde," said a statement from the Paris lawyers.

The New York Times, which first reported the development, also said the pair would appear before a judge in New York next week. It said the settlement sum could not be determined.

END OF THE AFFAIR

News of the U.S. deal comes as Strauss-Kahn is awaiting a decision by a French court on December 19 on whether to call off a sex offence inquiry involving parties in Lille attended by prostitutes, where he risks trial on a charge of "aggravated pimping".

If that case is dropped and Diallo ends her civil case, Strauss-Kahn would have a freer rein to pursue his consultancy work and could even consider a tentative return to public life in France, where he has been shunned since the Diallo scandal.

Images of the then IMF chief paraded before TV cameras in handcuffs before being charged with attempted rape shocked the world and led to French media raking over smutty details of the former finance minister's private life.

"That's the end, not only of this affair, but of any potential affair because one of the reasons for signing this kind of agreement is that both parties agree that they will never again bring a lawsuit," Christopher Mesnooh, a U.S. lawyer who practices in France, said of the Diallo agreement.

"There will always be people who wonder about what happened in New York and in Lille, but from a legal standpoint if he gets all this behind him, he's a free man," he added.

Diallo alleged that Strauss-Kahn forced her to perform oral sex on May 14, 2011, in his suite at the Manhattan Sofitel.

The criminal prosecution fell apart after doubts emerged concerning Diallo's credibility as a witness and the attempted rape charges against Strauss-Kahn were eventually dropped.

Strauss-Kahn, who in May 2011 was days from entering this year's French presidential election, has maintained that the sexual encounter was consensual, although he said in a TV interview after his return to France that he regretted his "moral error".

He filed his own countersuit against the maid earlier this year, claiming that Diallo's accusations had destroyed his career and harmed his reputation.

In recent months, Strauss-Kahn has been making a comeback under-the-radar with a handful of speaking engagements at private conferences and by setting up a business consultancy firm in Paris.