The remains of footballer, Joseph Izu, was laid to rest at his hometown in Okarki village in Rivers State today December 3rd.

The grieving parents of the slain Shooting Stars defender, Izu Joseph, Mr & Mrs George Joseph, have joined others to call on the Federal Government to bring the killers of their son to books.

The calls came shortly after the burial rites of the player whose life was cut short by the bullets of armed security personnel in Okarki area of Port Harcourt, Rivers State, on 16th, October, 2016.

It was indeed a free flow of tears, wailings and teeth gnashing when the body arrived at the burial site and a complete shut down of activities on all the streets passed by the long convoy.

In his sermon by the grave side, Rev. Father John said everyone comes from dust and to dust we shall return! He admonished people to live Lord dominated life with total dedication, reminding everyone to brace up as death would come unannounced.He later prayed to God to hold the family together at this time of grief.

Reacting shortly after the interment, Shooting Stars’ Akinwumi Akinyele described Izu Joseph as a committed player who is already being missed by the club.He called on the appropriate authority to act fast at bringing the killers to justice.

Also, toeing the same line was the General Secretary of the Ijaw National Congress, Victor Butubo who believes the Federal Government should not turn deaf ears as Izu’s killing is already a dent on its image.

Responding few minutes later in his residence, Pa George Joseph said he is only interested in getting justice for his son but frown at perceived lopsidedness in the posting of security personnel to Niger Delta areas!

“I only need justice for my son.And I should say this too, the policy of posting particular ethnic group in the Army to Niger Delta is not good for the unity of the country”, he concludes.

The burial events attracted people from all walks of life. Izu Reuben Joseph, 24 is survived by wife, a daughter, parents and siblings!

After several months of sourcing for funds for the survival of their child, the Sam family has lost 13month-old Michelle Sam to Symptomatic Heart Disease.

Michelle was suffering from several heart conditions that lay undetected until she fell sick and was diagnosed of Symptomatic Heart Disease last April.

Later on, the family cried out for help of N6m from the general public for a heart surgery in India. Luckily for them, they met the target and preparation started for the family to fly out the little girl out of the country to begin her treatment.

However, the family was told the chances of Michelle surviving the surgery is very slim.

This prompted the father to channel his search to several American hospitals.

But unfortunately, the surgery could cost them from 30 to 40million Naira as against the initial cost of 6million in India.

In preparation for the America surgery, the family have to travel to Ghana to rerun some test before setting off to America for her treatment.

The consultants however, cut short their plans when, they were told, the hospital waiting list is too long for her to have the procedure in time, so her parents put all their efforts into raising money for a private operation to save their daughter’s life at the National Hospital in Abuja.

The mother said she knows other patients have been waiting a year for treatment, but Michelle can’t wait that long.

Mrs Sam said her baby was always in and out of hospital and was prone to a lot of infections.

She also disclosed that the pressure was already tough on the family, who desperately did not want to lose their daughter.

She said:

‘I have collapsed two times in hospital because of the stress, and have had to have counselling to help me deal with things. My husband had to be strong for the family and continue working as I’ve been off work for the last couple of months, looking after Michelle.

‘All I wanted was to help my baby, more than anything else in this world.’

Fast forward to November 15, the surgery was successfully carried out in Hospital for Humanity in Abuja by league of American doctors who were concerned about Michelle health and flew down to Nigeria for the surgery.

The joy of seeing their child recuperating was cut short on November 28, when 13 months old Michelle couldn’t bear the pain any longer and succumbed to death.

However, the left over proceeds from the donations from well meaning Nigerians has been used to set up a foundation in the name of Michelle Sam to help others going through the same predicament overcome it at early stage.

The family had also donated massively for another patient suffering from Heart surgery in Abuja few days after losing their own daughter.

Symptomatic Heart Disease is a birth defect of the heart in which there are holes between chambers of the heart, and the valves that control the flow of blood between these chambers may not be formed correctly.

This means that blood flows where it normally should not be able to, and extra blood flows to the lungs.

Culled From LailaBlog

Musa Amadu, 10, suffered first degree burns on his hands after one Yawale, his teacher at a Qur’anic school in Kura, Kano State, scalded him with hot water, for allegedly, failing to run an errand for him, back in September.

Yawale, had, reportedly, told Amadu to wash his cloth, but the boy gave an excuse that he was sick. Unhappy with his response, Yawale allegedly beat him up, boiled some water and immerse his hands in it.

However, Yawale, who was said to standing in for the head teacher, at the time of the assault, has now been arrested. Doctors at Aminu Kano Teaching Hospital have amputated the fingers of Amadu, who was sent to study Qur’an in Kano, from Jigawa State. Crdt: Rariya

Civil servants in Cross River State on Friday condemned the decision of the state governor, Ben Ayade, to pay their December salary on the first day of the month.

Our correspondent learned that some civil servants had on December 1 received alerts for the month’s salary, as against the 25th of every month.

It would be the second time that workers would be receiving salaries on the first day of the month as they had in May 2016 got a similar gesture from the governor in commemoration of the Workers’ Day celebration.

The aggrieved workers said the decision to pay their salaries in advance would later cause untold hardship as the Yuletide approaches.

A top civil servant in the Ministry of Environment, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said, “The state government’s decision to pay December salaries of some civil servants within the first three days of the month will make us suffer in due course.

“The government should have employed caution by delaying December salary payments to a later date. Our governor may want to score a political point with this payment, but I think that those of us receiving this money stand to lose fiscally when January comes.”

But one of the governor’s aides, who pleaded anonymity, said the workers should applaud the governor instead of complaining.

The source said, “People are so impossible to please. There are states in this country where salaries are not paid as and when due, but in Cross River State, our governor pays salaries and even pays ahead to cater for special occasions like the Workers’ Day and this Yuletide.

“Instead of applauding him, some people say he shouldn’t have paid. Nigerians are difficult to please.”

Time there was when Ben Johnson used to be the world’s fastest runner, now it is Usain Bolt, an unbeatable world record he has maintained for many years.

Last Wednesday, when ‘Bakassi’ Hostel, the female living quarters of Yaba College of Technology became engulfed in inferno following electricity spark caused by power surge that is still a focus of investigation, many of the students said to number over 200, tried to beat even Bolt, in the ensuing panic and stampede.

But in their case, destination was not an issue; running, in their bid to escape for dear lives, was. Destination would take care of itself. Caught unprepared, some of the students who were rudely woken up from their sleep by raging fire and sparking wires, rushed out of the hostel, stark naked, before coming back to their senses.

It was like a scene pulled out of Obi Egbuna’s play, The Anthill, in which the Queens’ mother ran out from the bathroom, naked, following the pulling of the public fire alarm by some mischievous black boys in London.

One of the students told The Sun Education that the fire seemed to have put the affected students in utter confusion and thus making them to forget that they had nothing on their bare bodies as they rushed through a maze of equally confused fellow students trying to save their own skin too: it was a case of everyone to herself, God for us all.

Some students ran out naked
One of the students, Sarah (she refused to reveal her surname) who sustained injuries on her left leg, covered with bandage, was too weak to talk to this reporter.

Clothed in a very skimpy, rumpled old dress, allegedly provided by a Good Samaritan, she looked distraught and devastated in company of her elder sister, as she searched for an ideal place to change into better clothing.

This reporter tried to follow them but the obviously irritated girl blurted out: “Please, stop following me about. I’m a Mass Communications student but I can’t talk with you now. You can see that I have a wound on my leg. I’m feeling the pain. And I need a place where I can change my clothes. Look at what I’m wearing.”

A student who shared her experience after Sarah had gone to have a change of clothes thanked God that nobody died.

“That morning, many of my fellow female Bakassians ran out naked. I think some of them were still sleeping, when they were woken up by shouts of ‘fire’ ‘fire’ and ‘help’ ‘help’ and ran out, forgetting they had nothing on them.

“In some cases, some of our male colleagues pulled off their shirts and gave to the affected girls to put on. Some female students of other hostels also ran and got dresses for others who had none to wear.”

College officials also affected
Students were not the only one whose normal lifestyle was disrupted by the fire incident. Dr. Charles Oni, the Public Relations Officer of the college was also affected by the development.

As at 1pm on that Wednesday, he was yet to have his bath since morning as he was busy attending to public relations situations that cropped up within the day.

Necessity they say is the mother of invention. Oni revealed he had a suit kept in his office always. And when occasion demands, it simply comes in handy. But then, smart and corporate as he looked, the pair of slippers he wore Wednesday sold him out. “I’ve not had my bath today,” he told The Sun Education.

“I came here in bathroom slippers. Usually, I have this suit here. So for a day like this, I put it on in case there is going to be a television interview”.

The first news on the YabaTech hostel fire came from postings on social media. Some of the reports said that students set the hostel ablaze. Others said that the fire had claimed lives with various links posting conflicting figures of casualties.

The dire accommodation situation at Yabatech

“But for the timely intervention of God Almighty, we don’t know what would have become of these girls”, a male student who had rushed in to ascertain the safety of his girlfriend said. The fire razed about 27 of the hostel rooms.

Investigation by The Sun Education shows that legitimate students in each room house other students as squatters thereby bringing the number to, sometimes, 10 – 15 per room. It was further gathered that squatters could exceed lawful allotees.

Speaking on the arrangement being made to accommodate the affected students as a result of the fire incident, Dr. Oni, noted that the redistribution that is being made is strictly for those who were lawfully given accommodation. “I have been a student, and stayed in hostel for years,” he said.

“My first inroad into institution of higher learning was in 1985 when I gained admission to study Mass Communications at the University of Lagos. Even me, that year, I had a squatter. Even then accommodation in the hostels weren’t stiff as it is now.”

He hinted at the fact that some steps would be taken to check over-squatting, in order to minimize risks during crisis. “They say that when people are of like minds, they compromise with themselves,” he said.

“And they are compassionate with themselves. Students usually sympathise or empathise with those who do not have accommodation. Accommodation is so tight that sometimes some students sleep in the classrooms. And there’s nothing you can do about it. Even myself, I do go round. And we know some people have used that against us.”

Thanking God for mercies
A HND 2 male student who spoke with The Sun Education but who did not want his name mentioned in print also thanked God that the fire did not happen in the middle of the night and at the time students used to sleep in classrooms. The school authorities, he said, had ordered security men to chase out students from classrooms after nine o’clock in the night.

“But the rooms are hardly enough to take all the students,” he said. “They are overcrowded. But the girl’s hostels are worse. You may find 14 – 15 of them in one room. And the rooms are not large. The males have like six, seven in a room. I don’t know how they will handle this.”

Talking about the cause of the fire spread, aside kerosene reported to be stored and sold in the hostel, the PRO identifies foams as other items that boosted the power of the fire. “There were foam materials inside the hostels, and we know that foam is a combustible element, and with the slight Harmattan we’ve witnessed in the last few days, the fire spread so quickly. But thank God for the intervention of the fire service which actually doused the terrible ruin that would have been occasioned by the accident.”

Counting the losses
Mrs. Adejoke Bakard who operates a business centre near the hostel said that the fire consumed computer Central Processing Units (CPUs) and monitors, gadgets, printing papers, photo copying machines, laptops, and other goods belonging to her and other operators of business centres around the hostel for the simple reason that nobody saw the fire coming, nobody was there to rescue anything when it started as it was too early in the day.

And by the time the news got to them it was too late for anybody to salvage anything as none of them lived within a walking distance of their businesses. By the time they arrived the scene the raging fire had already gotten out of hand so much that nobody in his or her right senses dare go near as to see what can be saved.

That was how many people came to lose properties worth millions of naira. For many it turned out to be a very big, and in some cases, irreplaceable and irreparable loss, in a downward economy such as we are going through at the moment.

One of the students who lost her belongings including her clothes, shoes, handbag, laptop and junk drive bearing the soft copy of her work is however grateful that although the fire did not spare the hard copy of her academic research work, she has a soft copy of it in her email box.

“I had my laptop, my phones and flash drive in my room,” she said. “No one knew that a thing like this would happen. But I had my project saved in my email box. I did the typing myself. So, I’m hopeful that I’m going to retrieve it. But, what I’m not sure of is whether I saved all or part of it.”

Less than two weeks after a Nigerian, 38-year-old Chijioke Obioha, was executed in Singapore for smuggling 2.6kgs of dried weeds that tested positive for cannabis, officials of the NDLEA, at the Lagos airport, have prevented Augustine Uchenna, 38, from execution in China.

The suspect, who sells safety equipment in Lagos, was caught attempting to smuggle 10.275kg of cannabis to China, where drug trafficking attracts death penalty. .

The drug was detected during the outward screening of passengers on an Ethiopian Airline flight to China. The drug was hidden inside foodstuff like garri, bitter leaf, bitter cola and other spices.

During interrogation, Uchenna said that he was not aware that drug trafficking is punishable by death in China. “My friend in China promised to pay me N600,000 to take 10.275kgs of cannabis to China.

This is my first time of smuggling drugs and I never knew that drug trafficking is punishable by death in China. I import safety equipment and I have been going to China to buy my goods since 2011. .

The economic recession affected my business that I find it hard to pay my rent. This was what led me into drug trafficking”, he stated. Augustine hails from Enugu State and is married with three children.

It is no new tale that Nigerian politicians are used to flaunting security details regardless of any circumstance or event.

Ekiti state Governor Fayose, yesterday went against the usual frivolities. This is a very welcome development and we hope to see more sane actions from Nigerian leaders.

Two outstanding National Youth Service Corps members who are both firstclass graduates have died mysteriously at their respective orientation camps.

The first to die, Miss Ifedolapo Amoke Oladepo lost her life in unclear situation at the Kano NYSC orientation camp on November 29.

More details of the information as reported by Punch revealed that the corper might have died of negligence as alleged by her family members.

According to one Ajibolu Marcarony Yusuff, who appears to be a relation of the deceased, Ifedolapo called home five hours to her death and told her older sister, Mrs. Oyeyode Abimbola (a nurse) to start coming to her Kano orientation camp because, as alleged, the NYSC doctors were not giving enough care.

Yusuff said the late 26-year-old corps member who graduated with a First Class degree in Transport Management from Ladoke Akintola University of Technology, Ogbomosho, was given injection at the orientation camp’s clinic, but that she called home to say that she had reacted to the injection, as she noticed visible rashes all over her body.

Later, Yusuff claimed, Ifedolapo called home to complain of tongue-twisting, and was reportedly given another injection.

Yusuff continued, “When a male doctor agreed to speak with her sister (Oyeyode Abimbola), he explained that Ifedolapo was having anaphylaxis (acute allergic reaction) and that they intended to place her under observation for an hour before transferring her to Aminu Kano Teaching Hospital.”

Yusuff claimed that it took about five hours before the camp management transferred Ifedolapo to General Hospital, Gwazo, instead of the AKTH as promised.

She allegedly became incommunicado, as she could no longer be reached on phone.

Thirteen hours later, the family allegedly received a call from the Kano State NYSC camp officials informing them of her death.

But, the Head of the NYSC Press and Public Relations in Abuja, Mrs. Bosede Aderibigbe, has denied that Ifedolapo did not die of stress as thought by the relations.

She said Ifedolapo was sick when she arrived the Kano orientation camp.

Also, another First Class graduate of Petroleum Engineering from the University of Uyo, Mr. Ukeme Monday, lost his life in a most shocking manner at the Zamfara State orientation camp.

He reportedly died on Thursday, December 1, of yet-to-be-ascertained causes.

A classmate of his, one Mr. Patrick Immo, noted that Monday was a committed Christian worker in his local assembly, the Power City International.

Speaking on Ukeme’s death, Immo said the two of them had shopped together a few days to the orientation camp, and that they departed Uyo for their respective orientation camps on November 23.

“It was thus a rude shock to me when, on December 1, I heard that Monday had died,” Immo narrated.

In addition to his First Class certificate, friends said Monday also won four scholarships and other top academic prizes as a student.

These are the currency exchange rates for today, December 2, 2016, powered by Zenith Bank Plc. This state of the naira against the dollar is expected to worsen Nigeria’s economic woes.

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A polyandrous Zimbabwean woman, Jack Chako, has given details on how her relationship with her two husbands has progressed, and how she enjoys sexual intimacy with them.

ZimPapers reports that the 30-year-old woman claims that her life is a bed of roses.

On how she gets maximum sexual satisfaction ‘as claimed’ from her husbands – Michael Hwita and Lifford Chimoto, Chako said, “We are a happy family, I live with my two husbands and we love one another.

“My two husbands are best friends and they are always together.

“Chimoto is the elder husband, while Hwita is the junior.

“I married the second Hwita because Chimoto is elderly and increasingly becoming weak in bed.

“They both have different roles and I love them both.

“They have different strengths. Chimoto fetches a lot of firewood and cleans up the house well but he is weak in bed and weak when it comes to fending for the family.

“The reason why I married a second husband is that Chimoto was starving me sexually.

“Hwita is also technically minded. He repairs a lot of broken goods, including cell phones and cobbles shoes too, making him bring some cash home. His biggest strength is he is excellent and strong in bed.

“To be honest, in terms of conjugal rights I favour Hwita. He gets me there.

“I only do it with Chimoto as a token. At times, I feel pity for Chimoto and give him token conjugal rights and he appreciates that.

“The rule is no one gets out of the room, because he is not on duty. Whoever is not on duty, just watches us at it.

“I am in charge and my two husbands are now used to sleeping side by side in one bed; because they don’t mind and they both appreciate each other for the different roles each play to the family,” the mother of five, three children from a previous marriage and two from this polyandrous affair stated.

Speaking further, she said, “I use some concoction to pacify my husbands. It is not a secret that I used a concoction to cow them down. I also sell this concoction to other women to cow down their errand husbands and make them compliant.

“None of my two husbands wishes to leave me. Initially I only had Chimoto but I ran away from him and went to my parents’ home because he was not satisfying me sexually and I was tired of stealing sex from neighbouring boys and men. But he followed and pleaded until my parents ordered me to take him back.

“I then gave him a condition that I should get another man to help him in bed and he agreed. This is how I got the second one. Since then, we live happily and enjoy our life, although we know that the generality of people around us do not like it,” Chako explained.

The husbands, Hwita and Chimoto, on their parts, said they don’t have problems taking Chako says their joint wife.

Chimoto said, “I know my failings and I appreciate the decision which was taken, we have various duties and life goes on.”

Hwita said, “I see no problem. She loves both of us and we understand our situation.

“I respect Chimoto as the elder husband because I found him here.”