Friday, October 18, 2013
Gospel Singer Maheeda Takes Pictures In Her Underpants…To Show Off Her New Shoes
Lol.. BBC World News insults Nigeria on twitter
Sorry about the Lol, it's not funny I know but I just couldn't resist. The 'unfinished capital' cracked me up. So BBC says Abuja was built on stolen land, stolen from who? Continue to read the pic's accompanying article
Written by By Alex Preston for BBC News
When one of Nigeria's long line of military rulers, General Olusegun Obasanjo, seized the land on which Abuja was to be built in the late 1970s, he could hardly have imagined that the city would remain unfinished 35 years on.
Abuja has a makeshift, haphazard feel to it: A place of bureaucrats and building sites, its streets eerily empty after the buzz of Lagos or the enterprising bustle of Kano.
It is one of the most expensive cities in Africa, and one of the most charmless.
The skyline is dominated by the space-rocket spires of the National Christian Centre and the golden dome of the National Mosque, facing each other pugnaciously across a busy highway at the city's centre.
Its other striking landmark is the vast construction site of the Millennium Tower, which, if it is ever completed, will be Nigeria's tallest building.
The skyscraper was intended to mark Abuja's 20th birthday in 2011. Now delayed until who-knows-when, hugely over-budget and the subject of numerous official investigations.
The National Mosque stands at the side of a busy road in the city centre
All the people of Abuja have to show for the billions invested in the project are two stunted fingers of scaffold-clad concrete.
I had been in Abuja for three days - about two-and-a-half too many - when my friend, Atta, a sociologist, picked me up from my hotel.
We drove out towards Aso Rock, the monolith looming over the presidential palace.
On either side of the road there are complexes of bulky, imposing mansions, most of them unfinished.
Some had empty swimming pools; others had mock-Tudor timbering, but were windowless and often roofless.
Atta told me that 65% of the houses in these developments were uninhabited, put up only to launder Abuja's dirty money.
Like the Millennium Tower, these grandiose schemes are ruins before they are completed, bleak monuments to a city built by kleptocratic politicians on stolen land.
We pulled off the Murtala Mohammed Highway at Mpape Junction, and immediately the road deteriorated.
There are many uninhabited mansions near Aso Rock
"I am going to show you the real Abuja," Atta told me, as his car struggled up a deeply-rutted dirt track.
A warm wind from the desert to the north - the Harmattan - whipped clouds of red dust around us as we climbed through rocky scrubland into the hills.
Continue reading the main story
“Start Quote
Life here is difficult. Often we can't see across the street because of the smoke and dust”
Mary
People began to appear on the streets - men carrying ancient Singer sewing machines, women balancing baskets on their heads.
We entered a vast shanty-town of shacks with corrugated iron roofs, slums stacking to the horizon.
Nissan minivans scuttled past - they are called "One Chance" buses, as they barely stop on their manic journeys through these uncharted streets.
Crowds thronged between skinny cows, beneath posters advertising beaming televangelists.
Dance music blared out, interrupted by a muezzin's call to prayer. Bright-eyed children kicked footballs about.
This was the home of the Gwari people, the original inhabitants of the land where the capital was built.
Hundreds of thousands of them were summarily evicted in the 1970s, and now scrape a living in the hills.
Many of the original owners of the land around Abuja are now living in poverty
Abuja is itself a Gwari word and, although the city of generals and politicians below us had barely 700,000 inhabitants, two or three million people live in these shanty towns, many of them Gwari.
The Gwari people continue to fight for compensation for the land wrested from them by the Obasanjo government, land now worth more per square kilometre than almost anywhere else in Africa.
We got out and walked through the smoke and dust towards a row of shacks.
In one of them, a woman knelt on the ground plucking a chicken, a man above her leaning on a makeshift bar.
They were Frank and Mary, Gwari people in their thirties, children of one of the thousands of families originally evicted during the foundation of Abuja.
The four of us sat in the shack sipping Fantas, staring out at the swarming life of the shanty town: Motorbikes and cattle and people, all of them through a veil of reddish dust.
"I trained as an architect," Frank told me. "I have an education. But I do not have money, I don't know the right people. So I work here with my sister. In Abuja, money defines everything."
I ask him about the empty mansions lining the roads into the city.
"That is pseudo-Abuja, a false place. It's unjust - we should be living in those houses. Instead…" He gestured to the squalid lean-to that jutted from the back of the bar.
Mary looked up from her chicken. "Life here is difficult," she says.
"Often we can't see across the street because of the smoke and dust. If it rains, you can't move for the mud. But we pray hard."
Thick dust and smoke often fill the streets
Frank pulled out a CD. It was Fela Kuti's Suffering and Smiling.
"This," Frank said, as the music coiled out from an ancient hi-fi, "is the compressed statement of Nigerian society. We suffer, but we smile. Nothing will change until we get angry, until we stop smiling."
A storm was coming in, red clouds rolling overhead and thunder crackling down the valleys.
Frank and Mary stood waving to us, the music playing still, as we drove off down the hill, towards pseudo-Abuja.
Adams Oshiomhole signs death penalty for kidnappers bill into Edo state law
Edo State governor Adams Oshiomhole today October 18th signed into the Edo State law, a bill that prescribes the death penalty for kidnappers. The death penalty is not just for kidnappers who kill their victims, its for all acts of kidnapping whether it involves murder or not. The new bill also states that houses used by kidnappers will be demolished.
Is this a welcome development or...? Please share your thoughts...
Is this a welcome development or...? Please share your thoughts...
Ayefele’s band boys disappear during US tour, refuse to come back to Nigeria — Do You Blame Them? Or Do You Not Blame Them?
As gospel music styled secular singer, Yinka Ayefele arrived the country Tuesday, following a six-week musical tour of the United States, there appeared to be a ‘dent’ on the emotion of the artiste, whose fulfilment of the concert was partially shattered by the disappearance of three of his band boys.
The other members of the group arrived amidst cheers by fans, but one could tell that the leader of the band was worried; perhaps knowing the credibility question the defection by the boys could pose to his career. Reports say the ‘gospel tungba’ crooner, has written to the United States Homeland Security to track and deport the three guys who defected at the tail-end of the inter city concert.
The band left the country on September 2, performing at Washington, Maryland, Baltimore, New York, Atlanta, Houston and Dallas.
In a mail sent to the US agency, Ayefele urged the department to look for the defectors and act accordingly, so as to serve as a lesson to others.
The defectors, according to a release signed by his publicist, David Ajiboye, include Ojoyido Adegbenga Ezekiel (Keyboardist), Solomon Olugbenga Motimoke (Vocalist) and Olusola Kayode Isaac (vocalist).
“While Olusola Kayode Isaac defected at the LaGuardiala Airport, New York on Monday, 14th October on his way from Houston with three other members of the band, Ojoyido Adegbenga was said to have disappeared from the group at the Howard Johnson Inn on Rockaway Boulevard, New York on Tuesday, 15th October. The third man was Solomon Motimoke (Yatty), who left the band while still at Washington DC on 11th October,” the statement read.
The other members of the group arrived amidst cheers by fans, but one could tell that the leader of the band was worried; perhaps knowing the credibility question the defection by the boys could pose to his career. Reports say the ‘gospel tungba’ crooner, has written to the United States Homeland Security to track and deport the three guys who defected at the tail-end of the inter city concert.
The band left the country on September 2, performing at Washington, Maryland, Baltimore, New York, Atlanta, Houston and Dallas.
In a mail sent to the US agency, Ayefele urged the department to look for the defectors and act accordingly, so as to serve as a lesson to others.
The defectors, according to a release signed by his publicist, David Ajiboye, include Ojoyido Adegbenga Ezekiel (Keyboardist), Solomon Olugbenga Motimoke (Vocalist) and Olusola Kayode Isaac (vocalist).
“While Olusola Kayode Isaac defected at the LaGuardiala Airport, New York on Monday, 14th October on his way from Houston with three other members of the band, Ojoyido Adegbenga was said to have disappeared from the group at the Howard Johnson Inn on Rockaway Boulevard, New York on Tuesday, 15th October. The third man was Solomon Motimoke (Yatty), who left the band while still at Washington DC on 11th October,” the statement read.
Photos: Man Tattoos His Eyeballs — ‘I cried ink for two days’
A Brazilian man claims he ‘cried ink for two days’ after getting his eyeballs tattooed to make them darker.
Tattoo artist Rodrigo Fernando dos Santos, 39, of Sao Paulo, decided to go ahead with the bizarre procedure after having already had 70 per cent of his body covered in ink.
The work involved a special syringe being used to inject the ink into the whites of his eyes.
Painful: The whites of the tattoo artist’s eyes are now darker than his pupils
The irreversible procedure involved using a syringe to inject ink into the sclera – the protective outer layer – of his eyes, 9News reports.
The ink used to inject his eye is believed to be the same used for tattoos on the rest of the body.
Eye specialists have advised against the procedure which some warn can cause inflammation and possibly even vision loss, according to 9News.
Eye tattooing is believed to be growing in popularity worldwide, with a tattoo artist in Australia claiming to be the first to have had the procedure done.
It is part of a trend for more unusual tattoos, with some women even having ‘perfect’ eyebrows and nipples tattooed onto them as a beauty treatment.
Tattooing goes back thousands of years, and has been a widespread practice across the globe, from the Pacific islands to northern Europe since ancient times.
It is currently enjoying a growth in popularity, with celebrities such as David Beckham setting the trend by having their bodies covered in ink-work.
Tattoo artist Rodrigo Fernando dos Santos, 39, of Sao Paulo, decided to go ahead with the bizarre procedure after having already had 70 per cent of his body covered in ink.
The work involved a special syringe being used to inject the ink into the whites of his eyes.
Painful: The whites of the tattoo artist’s eyes are now darker than his pupils
The irreversible procedure involved using a syringe to inject ink into the sclera – the protective outer layer – of his eyes, 9News reports.
The ink used to inject his eye is believed to be the same used for tattoos on the rest of the body.
Eye specialists have advised against the procedure which some warn can cause inflammation and possibly even vision loss, according to 9News.
Eye tattooing is believed to be growing in popularity worldwide, with a tattoo artist in Australia claiming to be the first to have had the procedure done.
It is part of a trend for more unusual tattoos, with some women even having ‘perfect’ eyebrows and nipples tattooed onto them as a beauty treatment.
Tattooing goes back thousands of years, and has been a widespread practice across the globe, from the Pacific islands to northern Europe since ancient times.
It is currently enjoying a growth in popularity, with celebrities such as David Beckham setting the trend by having their bodies covered in ink-work.
Wande Coal shares childhood photo as he turns a year older today
Thursday, October 17, 2013
Bruce Jenner is a closet transgender? Lol. Stop it, Kris Jenner!
These Kardashian women don't play. Once their relationship with their men end, you start to hear all sorts of things about the men. First Lamar Odom became a drug addict after reports surfaced online that he cheated on Khloe with several women. He later tested negative for drugs.
Now Star Magazine is reporting that Kris Jenner's estranged husband, Bruce is a closet transgender and that their separation is due to the former Olympian wanting to be a woman.
"Bruce has a feminine side. He likes growing his hair out, likes getting manicures and pedicures and won’t leave his house without his diamond earrings. And he’s obsessed with plucking his eyebrows! Kris has told Bruce that she will reveal his secret if he doesn’t go along with her plans about their split or their show." A source told Star
Kim asked the housekeeper if she'd seen any lingerie, and the housekeeper said it was in Bruce's closet. So Kim went inside Bruce's closet and found tons of expensive lingerie that was all stretched out! She took it all and left. . .
Kim told Bruce she had his lingerie. He turned red and walked out. When Kim finally told her sisters, it became a running joke that Bruce wears lingerie. . .
A second source also claims to be aware of Bruce's penchant for women's underthings. "He's always been feminine, so it doesn't surprise me when I found out he was a cross dresser."
Now Star Magazine is reporting that Kris Jenner's estranged husband, Bruce is a closet transgender and that their separation is due to the former Olympian wanting to be a woman.
"Bruce has a feminine side. He likes growing his hair out, likes getting manicures and pedicures and won’t leave his house without his diamond earrings. And he’s obsessed with plucking his eyebrows! Kris has told Bruce that she will reveal his secret if he doesn’t go along with her plans about their split or their show." A source told Star
Kim asked the housekeeper if she'd seen any lingerie, and the housekeeper said it was in Bruce's closet. So Kim went inside Bruce's closet and found tons of expensive lingerie that was all stretched out! She took it all and left. . .
Kim told Bruce she had his lingerie. He turned red and walked out. When Kim finally told her sisters, it became a running joke that Bruce wears lingerie. . .
A second source also claims to be aware of Bruce's penchant for women's underthings. "He's always been feminine, so it doesn't surprise me when I found out he was a cross dresser."
Joan River's comment about Chris Brown
A few people felt the remark from Joan Rivers was inappropriate because of real victims...there are many sad cases of altar boys being molested by priests...but Joan is 80 years, guess she can get away with saying anything...
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