NIGERIAN STUDENT CONSTRUCTS FIRST SOLAR-POWERED AUTO MOBILE

At first, he was kinda discouraged but after a long time persistence, Segun Oyeyiola came up with the first solar-powered car in Nigeria and makes boast and fame and name.

A report revealed that the car itself has got a scarce detail. According to the report, “given the size of the solar panel and (what is assumed to be) the lack of access to modern li-ion or li-air batteries, I’d have to assume that the range and speed of the solar-electric VW are pretty limited. Certainly not enough to take on the ubiquitous Honda CG110 motorcycles that dominate Nigerian roads. Still, it’s something. “It will ease our movement from our house to the office,” Segun is quoted as saying, “to market, and to church.”

Source: cleantechnica

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ABIA STUDENTS SMILE OUT FOR N50,000 BURSARY

An Abia State student will soon be smiling home with a huge sum of N50,000 (fifty thousand) Naira in his pocket; courtesy of the Ochedo Global legacies in the education sector which has left no one without a touch.

The Ochedo’s bursary grants to Abia State students have struck a different tune in Nigeria education system as the only state that paid up to such sum of money to its students. Research has revealed that this is the highest grant ever given to students just for bursary by a state government in Nigeria.

Earlier, the student leaders were asked to send in the names of their legitimate students to ensure transparency and piousness.

The list comprises of students from various universities, both federal and state.  

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ABIA POLY GETS A PERMANENT SITE

Abia State Polytechnic is the feather that colours the flying wings of education in Abia State. For those who may have ignored the relevance of polytechnics in Nigeria, it will however be shocking to them that Abia Polytechnic is shredding the pride of most universities by introducing a new wave of school administration in ASPOLY which has over the years attracted the winks of likes and jealousy by passers-by who perhaps expected a lower feat.

The newly procured permanent site has attracted huge applauses from lovers of education across the globe, boosting our ego and pride of place. However, the Rector of the Institution and the brain behind the project had, in an interview revealed that the eaves drop from the top of the state administration, stating the these strides would not have been practically possible if not for the assistance of the state Governor in the person of Chief Dr. Theordore Ahamefula Orji (Ochendo Global) who was recently crowned with the superfluity of honour as the Chairman of South East Governors forum, a crown which no head would have been best fit for.

Chief Sir Onukogu has reiterated that the efforts of the state Governor has been a huge source of encouragement as God-sent Ochendo Global has been giving the necessary support for the success of the school.

The Permanent site is expected to house Mass Communication and other exclusive disciplines which are scantly found in Nigerian polytechnics.

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UNICAL LECTURER SHOT BY UNKNOWN ASSASAIN

A University of Calabar lecturer, Dr. Godwin Iwatt has been knocked by unknown assassin who shot him in his office.

It was about 1:30 PM, on a normal school day, a gunshot was heard around the administrative unit of the Department of Micro Biology. The gun shot scared the students and staff around the area and all scampered for safety.

An eyewitness told our correspondent: “when we heard the gun shot. Students started running. Nobody knew what was happening and nobody knew where to run to. I started running too.

Another student confirmed to journalists: “I saw one boy with a short gun in his hand. He was pointing the gun up, down and centre, so everybody was running away from him, clearing way for him. But all of a sudden he disappeared. Nobody knew where he ran to whether in an office or in a car.

Not so long after the incident, the Unical surveillance team arrived the department with full squad of security personnel with live ammunition.

As at press time, it was not revealed if any arrests had been made in connection with the incident.

“The victim, Dr. Iwatt was immediately rushed to the Unical Medical Centre from where he was referred to Unical Teaching Hospital” said Mr. Eyo bassey, Unical Information Officer who confirmed the incident.

He said: “it is an unfortunate incident but we are happy that we did not lose our staff. He survived the attack.

Shortly after the incident, threats messages were sent out to another lecturer in the Department by name, Dr. Maurice Ekpenyong. Mr. Bassey disclosed the number as 0810284399 and reiterated that security measures are invoke to ensure that the culprit is brought to book. “The immediate cause of the incident has not been realised. Dr. Iwatt has been reckoned with positive legacies in the department.

However, Mr. Bassey reassured the students of security and advised them to go about their normal academic activities without fear.

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PASTOR, MEMBERS EAT KEYBOARD AS PASTOR CELEBRATES HIS BIRTHDAY

It was another wonderful Sunday, after a church service in Calabar, when a student-pastor and his members cut and ate a keyboard which was presented by the Pastor to the church as a birthday gift.

“There is no difference between this keyboard here and the keyboard you use in this church”, says Afia Ndah, the Chief Executive Officer of Chi Chi Spiece who is the designer of the cake that looks like a keyboard.

The keyboard-cake has an octave made up red and white keys. Miss Chi Chi a student of University of Calabar (Unical) said “the white keys signify the word of God while the black red keys signify the blood of Christ.

Rankin Ndipmong is a marketing student in University of Calabar and the Pastor of Redeemed Christian Church of God (RCCG), Overflowing Parish. Ndipmong, former Financial Secretary of the Students Union Government, on his birthday, did a huge hosting for all May-Born students in his church, inviting students to come and cheer out with him.

The day was the first Sunday of the month of May and also a thanksgiving service. Ndipmong, organized a special service for students born in may to his church and invited special guests like the Joint Campus Committee Chairman of National Association of Nigeria Student, Comr. Patrick Andem and former President of the National Association of Cross River State Students, Comr. Eyo Bassey, who are all May-born students.

Other personalities include former Director of Welfare, SUG Unical Comr. Imeh Iyakene

Pst. Ndipmong cut the cake along with all ‘May-Born Babes’ as they were called out to the Alter and also prayed for.

In his remark, Ndipmong noted that there is no better place to celebrate his birthday than in the presence of God’s people.

While reiterating on the essence of Thankgiving, Pst. Ndipmmong advised the members of the church to always give thanks to God for what He has done and get ready to receive more from Him.

One of the participants, Eyo Bassey thanked the Pastor for organizing such an event to mark the birthday of May-born students. He said: “in most cases, we fail to recognize and thank God for keeping us alive. We may not know how many May-born who may not have been able to make it up till this point but God has kept us alive”.

The church also organized a prayer session for the north crisis and the Boko Haram insurgency. 

They prayed that God should bring peace in the land and protect those who do his will according to His promise.

The participants went home with packages and take-away refreshments.

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WHEN DOKUBO COUGHS

Asari Dokubo has been off the shades of media for some time now.

The other time he came out, he challenged the statement made by one of the top politicians in Nigeria and former Head of State Gen. Muhammadu Buhari. Although the statement was ethnocentric, former Head of State was making a case for free and fair election come 2015. In reaction, Dokubo swore fire and brimstone if Jonathan fails election in 2015.

Behold, last week, Asari Dokubo roared again! He made a speech which so loudly pointed to 2015 and his unbridled, riotous megalomania. He spoke to challenge Abubakah Shakau and his Boko Haram gang. He was speaking at an event organized by the Niger Delta Development Commission. This time, Dokubo dared Shakau and his men to come out to the centre stage come 2015 for a 

bloodbath.

As much as I know, Asari Dokubo is not a staff of the Nigerian Army. He is not a Soldier, formal or informal. I am still trying to understand his integrity in commanding terrorist group like Boko Haram to a battle front.

Each time Dokubo coughs, he coughs out threats. He breathes out threats of terror and violence. He dares whoever to come out for a show of might and valour.

Nigeria does not belong to Niger Delta, not even this time that a Niger Delta indigene is on the helm of affairs. No ethnic group should think that it has the power to decide who stays in Aso Rock. Nigeria belongs to all of us.

I am from an oil producing state and I don’t believe in identity politics. If the people of Nigeria say that Jonathan should step down in 2015, good, let him step down. If the people say he should continue, let him continue.

Anyone who heard or read Dokubo’s speeches last week will see unparalleled support for Jonathan and his bid to defend Jonathan, even if it will take him to hell. He was drumming support for Jonathan and he meant doing anything, whether good or bad to have Jonathan as President come 2015. That was wrong; Very wrong.

Dokubo is ethnocentric. He is not patriotic. Or better still, his loyalty is not in the Interest of Nigeria but in the interest of politics of identity.

If I were Jonathan, I will advice Dokubo to be on the offing till after 2015 election because his constant roaring and ostentatious talks may result to an unprecedented ethnic rivalry.

Nigeria is not a wrestle ring for terrorists and militants. It is not an arena for the display of savagery and lawless barbarity.

The fight against Boko Haram is a unanimous fight. It does not demand the use of one ethnic group against the other, or the use of one terrorist group against the other.

You cannot use terrorism to curb terrorism. Whether you call it Niger Delta militant group or Boko Haram, they are all terrorist groups.

After all, was it not Asari Dokubo and his men that ware moping sleep off out eyes a couple of years back. Was is it Dokubo and his gang that were raining hell in the Niger Delta, blowing up pipelines, kidnapping foreign investors and engineers years back, which led to a rapid decline in the daily count of crude oil per barrel. Oh, does Dokubo think we have forgotten? He will be thinking wrong if so.

In fact the only difference between Dokubo and Shakau is Amnesty. Were it not the Amnesty program of President Umaru Musa Ya’Adua, Dokubo and his men would have been in the creeks today.

If Dokubo feels he can challenge Boko Haram as a one-man-squad, fine. Let him join the Army, hang-on with the AK 47, Machine Gun or whichever weapon he is good at and go into Sambisa Forest.

Instead of coughing threats and tension into our ears and making us feel 2015 is a going to be a black year for Nigeria, let him stand up and do something. Let his enlist for recruitment and go to Cameroon, Chad or where ever and bring back our 234 missing pubescent girls. That is a priority to us as Nigerians and Africans and even the world.

EMMANUEL SHEBBS studied Political Science in University of Calabar.

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CIVIL WAR, BOKO HARAM AND THE LAW OF KARMA

The day was 6^th July 1967. In the early hours of the day, as usual, a civil servant on the streets of Onitsha and Aba would have his flat file strapped under his arms to board the next train to his office.

A school master would be on his White Horse bicycle, cycling his way to the school to wait on late-coming students to whip with the cane, inculcate the culture of true citizenship, discipline and teach the future leaders.

A collage kid in the Western Nigeria would be up to school with his pen and brain to have a fair share of the unparalleled and exclusive scholarship which the Western leader, Obafemi Awolowo hugely lavished.

In the wake of a new Nigeria, on that fateful day, while all was well and wobbling with the fresh evergreen of the Nigerian grass and water, a 33 year old young man, Lt. Col. Yakubu Gowon as was then known and called, lifted up his military staff, declared to be mobilized, a legion of army for warfare against a peaceful land peopled by unarmed and unsuspecting civilians in the Eastern Nigeria.

Lt. Col. Gowon, a man born from the blood lines of the Plateau raped the peace of Nigeria at a time when young Nigeria was sucking the breast of new democracy; at a time when the states were weak, people’s minds were young about state governance, government and politics. Like a little baby born and thrown into the red oil, so was Nigeria born and thrown into the heat of Nigerian Civil War by the northerners who claimed to be leaders and lovers of Nigeria.

Lives were lost up to millions. Children, women, men, young and old were squashed to the grave beyond by the outrageous masculinity of a man who is currently old and stricken in age.

To digress a little, the first and the last time I met with Yakubu Gowon was 1^st December 2012, during the Worlds Aids Day celebration organized by Coca Cola Company which I had a free ticket to attend and watch Nigeria Superstars play a football match at Lagos. When I saw him, I could not believe. He was such an old. Never looked like the Lt. Col. Gowon that could lift a barrel. Never looked like the man I read in my government text book who marshalled a host of military forces during the Nigeria civil war.

Today, Boko Haram is hitting the butts of Nigerians, sorry, Northern Nigerians. It is playing out every day. The stories go into the local and international air waves. Tremor, terror and tribulation trickle down every now and then.

Anyone who thinks of Boko Haram thinks of a group of masked Negroes with amours and weaponry tightly clamed on the thighs, arms and shoulders. Or better still, everyone thinks of a well dressed fellow wired with an IED (Impoverished Explosive Device) or what we know as a bomb, ready to detonate in the midst of a huge crowd.

But for some time now, no one has thought about the other side of the mayhem. What I call ‘the other side’ is what I will explain using a universally accepted, naturally applicable and involuntary operational law which is called The Law of Karma.

The Law Of Karma

In summary the Law of Karma has 12 points but I will pick the first point which is more important and of course the summery of the whole.

“As you sow, so shall you reap”.

This is also known as the Law of Cause and Effects. The law has it that whatever you put in the universe is what comes back to you, whether good or evil. If you bend down to sown, you stand up to reap.

I started by giving an illustration of the Nigerian Civil War. The dreadful incident took place under the administration of a northerner. The Nigerian army, hugely manned by the northerners were massively employing strategies to maliciously deal with the peace of the Easterners who were mainly Igbos. They killed and maimed innocent citizens who knew nothing about the state politics. There was unbridled looting and theft everywhere.

Colonel Shuwa (a northerner) took the lead of the war by lunching a first attack on the North side of Biafra with the 1^st Infantry Division.

Murtala Mohammed (also a northerner) was working hand-with-hand with Gen. Gowon. During the war, Mohammed formed the 2^nd Infantry Division that swept off the Biafran forces from the mid west. This Infantry was led mostly by northern solders. The 3^rd Infantry was led by Benjamin Adekunle, who is the only Yoruba in the ally.

The Northerners calculated and executed the Nigerian Civil war, killing and maiming innocent Easterners. They were the cause and existence of Civil war. They participated in it much more than the Yorubas. Lagos was definitely afar from the view. The Yorubas were into education, feeding well, doing their trade without many disturbances. The northern Nigeria was very peaceful. No mines, no bombs, no shelling. The East was a hell of war.

Early in 1967, a peace negotiating meeting of the Supreme Military Council of the Federal Republic of Nigeria and the Eastern Region Military Governor, Lt. Col. Ojukwu was called under the auspices of Gen. Ankrah of Ghana in Aburi, Ghana.

All efforts to intervene by eminent Nigerians and well - wishers to Nigeria like Gen. Ankrah,  late Emperor Hallie Selassie of Ethiopia and the late Dr Martin Luther King proved abortive.

In May 1967, an act came by a decree from the Federal Government dividing the country into 12 states without consultation with the regional heads. Some believed it was a tactic to dissuade the rumoured secession of the Eastern Nigeria.

Soon, the war started.

The northerners’-led Federal government was hell bent on engaging a series of brutish and violent death row in Eastern Nigeria. They were never wanting for peace.

Down in the East, there was famine, hunger, starvation. Women and children were dying at random. The Nigerian Army was deliberately mapping out strategies to unleash mayhem on the East to if possible, crush the people, the land and the cities therein.

Before the war, in Sept. 1966, the Northerners were already revealing their violent and riotous school of thought. Lt. Col. Gowon, in a broadcast that year said: “I receive complaints daily that up till now Easterners living in  the North are being killed and molested and their property looted.  It appears that it is going beyond reason and is now at a point of recklessness and irresponsibility.

Far in the North, Easterners were passing through hell while the Northerners down in the East were living in heaven. No molestation. No harassment. No abuse of human right.

Today, the reverse is the case.

The fact remains that if Boko Haram exists, South-South, South-East and South-West Nigerians do not know. The economy is booming. Trade, commerce, market and industry is effectively booming and the cash exchange matrix is beaming green everyday in the eastern Nigeria.

Our kids are in collage, going to school without been kidnapped. No curfews, red alarms. No bloodbath, no famines, no threats or terrors.

Recall that about 50 years ago when Northerners were unleashing terror in the East and Southern Nigeria, it was clearly channelled in the religious trajectory. Anyone who was a Christian was looked at as an opponent to the Muslims. That was the spirit, culture, orientation and character which the Northerners have made everyone from 19^th century till date to have.

Well, I detest such a belief. I have a lot of Muslim friends. In fact, my Editor is a Muslim. He is such nice and gentle that I was shocked when he told us he is a Muslim.

Boko Haram is not about Muslim, it is about the Northerners whose life style, character and spirit is imbued with violence.

The Law of Karma is playing out in Northern Nigeria. For about a decade, Boko Haram has been on the news killing men and women in cold blood. I haven’t ever witnessed it; only in news, Facebook, etc.

The tribulation and terror is gradually chipping down in few pieces on the northern children. It is a consequence of the primordial and pure savagery which their fathers unleashed on the innocent Eastern Nigerians; no thanks to Boko Haram.

Why we unanimously mourn with the northern brothers and sister, this is time for them to call upon Allah and ask for forgiveness. Not only that, it is time for them to tear-off the flesh of violence, learn to admit that people from other tribes, religions, states in Nigeria are their brothers and sisters.

This is time for northerners to admit that Nigeria is one indivisible country which is bounded by Law dating far back 1960; that any individual whether from North, South, East or West is empowered by the Nigerian constitution to be the President of this country.

It is a time of reconsolidation. It is time when northern children, should be taught that their fathers have erred by planting seed of discord and bitterness between them and other people in Nigeria.

This should be a time for northern mothers to teach their children that leadership of Nigeria is not cultured into any tribe. It is a time for them to teach their children to know the language of peace, understanding, and unity to support whoever that is in power and make Nigeria a place where everyone can leave together.

Emmanuel Shebbs

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ABDUCTED GIRLS: 80 MOVED TO CAMEROON; RAPED IN HIDEOUT; 50 FERRIED TO CHAD, SOLD OUT FOR SEX WORK AT THE SUM OF $12 (N2,000) IN CAMEROON AND CHAD

Under the cover of darkness, Nigeria’s dreaded Islamic

terrorist group, Boko Haram have allegedly conveyed over 80 under-age girls earlier kidnapped at Government Girls Secondary School in the Chibouk area of the north-eastern state of Borno to Cameroon, while another 50 had been hidden in Chad. Painfully, all these under-age girls between 12 to 17 years were transported in long buses outside Nigeria to Cameroon and Chad when the hit of Nigeria’s soldiers were becoming too heavy for them to counter. This is the content of a report released by Nigerianewspaper.com

According to the report, the girls were transported under the thick cover of darkness in line with strict instruction by Abubakar Shekau, most wanted Boko Haram’s African terrorist by United States Government.

The report further disclosed that its special crime correspondent in Yaoundé (a division in Camerooon) got exclusive information from one of the aides to Narcisse Pierre, a local herbalist and ‘witch doctor’ who provides spiritual fortification to these blood-thirsty terrorist Sect in Cameroon that “When those innocent under age Nigerian girls were brought here around 1am under the cover of darkness, we all heard them (the girls) crying, saying they want to go back home to their parents. But they were threatened by many of the Boko Haram members who freely smoke Indian hemp.

When probed further, this aide said he would not want to mention his name to avoid backlash. He only told the correspondent to take off after squealing that he overheard his master and few of the Boko Haram members saying “50 of these school girls have been moved to Chad, since they were already forcefully married to the Sect members.”

Investigations by the online media disclosed that these girls were randomly assaulted sexually by the Boko Haram Sect against their will, allegedly without ‘condom’, since the Sect do not believe in ‘Western Policy of Education’ of any kind. And these girls cry daily, continually. We learnt that this latest move by Boko Haram is to escape attack by Nigeria’s patriotic security operatives.

However, there is anxiety now amongst comity members of African Union (AU) as this rising terrorist act by Boko Haram have attracted a huge debate. And a common phobia in the AU is how to ensure these girls’ freedom and be sure they have not yet contracted HIV/AIDS yet.

Investigations by Naija Standard revealed that each of the girls were sold out into sexual slavery for as little as $12 or N2, 000 in Cameroon and Chad.

More details: www.nigerianewspaper.com

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