Photos: Rahama Babangida covers latest issue of BMPRO Covers

Mohammed Babangida's wife is the cover girl for the new issue of Banke Meshida's BMPRO covers and she's stunning. Another photo after the cut...

 

Deva Princess
When I met her over 10 years ago I was struck by her pure beauty. Looooong hair, smoothest skin ever, perfect nails and her gentle persona made her all the more beautiful. Fast forward to Now, growth has come. The hair is tinged with red, grey, brown strands, skin is still as smooth, and she is the most Hilarious person. There is a glint in her eye as she talks. She has followed her passion and is the CEO of Deva Petals. Hair growth serums, Body Oils, Turaren Wuta. She loves to create. Blessed With a rich Kanuri Heritage, knowledge of potions that promote wellness and wellbeing is what has made Deva Petals the success story that it is. Humble beginnings. She started by mixing pastes and potions for close family and friends who wanted her Smooth skin and Long hair secret. She started bottling them up and today the rest is history. Her love for Fashion also saw led to the establishment of Fashion Cafe Abuja. Where you find Accessories and clothes stocked. Legendary and effective herbal supplements has made  Deva petals the number one  Oasis of Wellness products in Abuja.

From Banke Meshida

Photo Credits

Creative Director : Yomi Black

Photography : BigH Studios

Makeup: Banke Meshida Lawal

Model : Rahama BabangidaA

Photos: Man who promised to walk from Lagos to Abuja if Buhari wins, has arrived Abuja

Suleiman Hashimu aka ‘The traveler" who promised to trek from Lagos to Abuja if Gen. Buhari wins the 2015 Presidential election, arrived Abuja this evening after trekking for many weeks. Pictured above is Suleiman wearing the red shirt and carrying a strap bag. He was given a rousing welcome by Abuja residents. See more photos after the cut...

Posted by Linda Ikeji at 5:59 PM

Nigerians Living in Durban South Africa Vow to Fight Back

A group of Nigerians living in Mahatma Gandhi Road in Durban have vowed to defend themselves if attacked by the locals.

Solomon Okoro, 31, according to iol.co.za, said they have been receiving threatening messages but were alert and prepared for any trouble if police are not willing to protect them. He said they would have guns, knives and bottles ready. Okoro said they have no choice but to defend themselves if under attack.

“It is not like we do not know how to fight. It would not be a good thing because this is not our country, we are not here to fight. Also local people are our friends, we eat and
drink together. Those fighting are racist – they cannot live side by side with other Africans. 

We (did) a lot for this country during apartheid. But now that everything is hunky dory we are being attacked… This smacks of hypocrisy,” he said.

Okoro is happily married to a Zulu wife and claims that if he had to go back to Nigeria, it would have a negative effect on his child. He disputed the accusation that the Nigerians living in the Point area were involved in crime.

“I come from the Igbo tribe. I am a king’s son and I came here with lots of money to set up a clothing shop. Most of us are businessmen who have contributed to the economy by employing locals in our hair salons and shops. 

These are just greedy people who cannot stand our success… If these accusations are anything to go by, why not report those involved in crime to police? Not every foreigner is a drug dealer,” Okoro said.

Emmanuel Ike, 35, said his government had given South Africa an ultimatum to come up with a solution, otherwise they would close down all South African businesses.

“There are more than 240 SA businesses in my country and all of them come with their own staff, so to say we are taking your jobs is nonsense. We should be questioning why you are not employing our people back home.” 

We are a hard working nation who do not look for handouts from the government. We work for ourselves,” Ike said.

Kumba Samou, 42, of Liberia said he had received a desperate call from his mother asking about his well-being.

“We are seeing what is happening on television. If you are not safe, please come home. I do not want you to die there,” she said.

GEJ Asks Groups to Refund Unspent N2tr Campaign Money

Our politicians like I would always say prefer winning elections than actually carry out the purpose of being elected – And this is why, you see them spend trillions on campaigns without feeling guilty(me! thinking out loud) – According to Punch, President Goodluck Jonathan and his party, Peoples Democratic Party, after loosing out in the March 28 and April 11 elections, are asking the party and government officials, who handled campaign funds, to refund unspent monies, or those not judiciously expended…

The report says:

Jonathan, credible sources said, has also set up a committee of five to get those with the funds to return them.
Sources within the party and the government told our correspondents that Jonathan was disturbed that despite giving campaign coordinators, ministers, special advisers, close aides and friends, support groups and traditional rulers over N2tr in cash, most of them could not deliver their polling booths and local governments.
The President was said to have been further irked by the results of an investigation he ordered.
The probe showed that some coordinators used campaign funds to buy very expensive properties, especially in Abuja, and luxury cars.
Some of the funds have also been traced to the bank accounts of senior party and government officials, who were charged with the disbursement of funds to voters and groups.

Lets stop there first, N2tr – Wouldn’t have tackled a little bit of unemployment???

South Africans Want War on All Foreigners in Their Land

Following the ongoing xenophobic attacks on Africans in South Africa, Nigerians resident in the country have raised the alarm that some South Africans threatened their lives….

When Punch interviewed Nigerians in separate telephone interviews, they shared their fear of attacks as death threats were being circulated on social media.
According to Itunu Bodunrin, who had his master’s graduation on Monday at the University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban, said he could not leave the school campus afterwards due to the ongoing violence in the town – He revealed further that, South Africans have been sending death threat messages through the social media, threatening Nigerians and other Africans to leave the country.
The message, signed by several groups, including the Patriotic Movement, Pan Local Forum, Unemployed Workers Forum and Anti-Crime Movement, Nigerians and other African foreigners were warned to leave the country – It reads in part:

“Dear neighbour from Africa and other parts of the world, we have travelled the world and have not found one country that allows the floods of humans across its borders as South Africa is experiencing. Even in war-torn parts like Syria, Ukraine, Yemen and Somali.
“We were seven million people in Johannesburg city in 2011. Today, we have an estimated 13 million. In Johannesburg alone, you have taken over entire suburbs: Yeoville, Berea, Bez Valley, Turfontein, among many. You have even moved into rural parts of our country that have 80-per-cent unemployment, and there are no visible signs that you have jobs either.
“We want to be proudly part of the geographic construct called Africa, but we are as different from one another as Kenyans are from Nigerians; Ivorians from Chadians, etc.
“We are pleading with you to return to your home countries. Go and build up those countries so that we can all live in economic, social and political prosperity and peace as neighbours. The genocide in this corner of Africa will be far worse than what happened in Rwanda in 1994. Then the entire continent will be condemned to ashes. Is that what you want?
“South Africans not fully employed or who were found guilty of crimes, were recently repatriated from Nigeria and rightly so.
“Our people are preparing for war against all foreigners (from Bulgaria, Pakistan and Bangladesh to Africa, north of the Limpopo) and we are all very scared. Please go home and build Africa. Millions will die if you don’t. This we can guarantee.”

Hmmmmmm!!!

ISIS Slaughters Some Ethiopian Christians, Warning Others to Convert to Islam

In a recently released 29-minute video, uploaded this afternoon, shows some militants holding two groups captive in Libya…

The group which comprised of at least 16 men, which Islamic State described as the ‘followers of the cross from the enemy Ethiopian Church’, are lined up in a desert area while 12 others are filmed on a beach.
A masked fighter in black then brandishes a pistol as he makes a statement threatening Christians if they do not convert to Islam. Initial reports did not make it clear who the captives were or when they were captured, Daily Mail reports.
So sad!!!

APC Cannot Afford to Fail the Youths – Kwande

An All Progressives Congress, APC, chieftain , Ambassador Yahaya Kwande, has expressed that the greatest challenge that would be faced by the incoming Buhari administration would be unemployment as the administration cannot afford to disappoint the youths given the support they accorded the APC at the national and state elections.

Kwande said:

“We have been challenged by Nigerians and must accept the challenge. Thousands of young men had converged here to celebrate the victory. When I saw them, I nearly shed tears. These youths are from 10 to 17 years who are jobless and are jubilating that change has come. I hope we shall not disappoint this group of people. We need to start training them and fitting them into jobs. There is a challenge before us.”

Noting that the debt profile that may be left by the outgoing administration in states like Plateau should not be a hindrance as it does not matter. He called on government to do its best with the available resources, adding that “it cannot let it wait. If we leave it, it will degenerate further.
“One of the efforts the Plateau state government, for instance, can make is to align with the federal government and it will come to its rescue.
On the level of development on the Plateau, Kwande said it will be wrong to say Plateau has not been able to make any headway, saying, “We will not say Plateau has been stat­ic. It has made some progress but being among the first generation states, you cannot compare its developmental stride with the second or even the third generation states.”
According to the APC chieftain, “We have not been lucky on the Plateau with past administrations in moving along with the progressive states. If there is anything that any government could have done at the least, it should have been to develop its tourism potentials which we are so proud of.”
He couldn’t have said it any better – don’t you agree???

Dbanj poses with Usher, Will.I.Am at World Earth Day 2015 in D.C.

D'banj hung out with Usher and Will.I.Am during his appearance at the World Bank's Global Earth Day concert in Washington D.C last night. See more photos after the cut...

Here's how World Bank Described D'banj's presence at its event.

'Nigerian superstar @iamdbanj performs in the atrium at World Bank headquarters in Washington DC. He joined a star studded lineup along with @unitednations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, President Kim, K-pop stars #Vixx and Roy Kim, and DRC pop star Fally Ipupa. The packed house gathered to build action towards ending extreme #poverty by 2030. @onecampaign and @savethechildren supported this #action2015 event ahead of the @glblctzn #EarthDay event today on the National Mall.'

Heartbreaking photos: People stood by while this man was stabbed to death in SA

People stood by while a Mozambican man, Emmanuel Sithole, was cornered, stabbed in the heart and left to die. This happened yesterday in Johannesburg and yes, he died from his wounds. Killed just for being from another African country.. and the story told by the journalist who witnessed this brutal stabbing is heartbreaking! See more photos and read the full story from Times Live after the cut...

The brutal death of Emmanuel Sithole 

As told by Beauregard Tromp and James Oatway for Timeslive.co.za

Shortly before 7am yesterday April 18th, Sunday Times journalists were in Alexandra township, near Sandton, speaking to shop owners who had their businesses looted overnight. Children played, people walked the streets, some stopped to gawk at the carnage from the night before. Then this happened ...

In a gutter in Alexandra a Mozambican man stopped and lay down. The gash to his chest meant he could go no further.

At the day clinic less than 100m away they could not help him. The doctor scheduled to be on duty did not show up because he was a foreigner and feared being a victim of xenophobia.
It began on Friday night when mobs blockaded Arkwright Avenue, one of the main thoroughfares in Alexandra, with rubble and burning tyres. Foreign-owned shops' roofs were ripped open and metal gates torn away as looters went on the rampage.

Outside one spaza shop, a man in a black corduroy jacket and red shirt was walking along the road.
Suddenly a young man dressed in a grey tracksuit jacket beat him over the head with a wrench. The red-shirt man tried to fend off the blows, his arms raised. He stumbled back, falling into rubbish strewn by the roadside. The blows with the wrench rained down. Then the bludgeoning stopped and the man with the wrench moved away.

"Are we safe here?" asked a South African woman watching the attack.
The man in the red shirt got up. Now another man with a beige spottie approached, holding an okapi knife high above his head. Again, the man in the red shirt raised his hands, pleading for mercy. But his pleas were in vain. He was stabbed ... again and again.

The two grappled and fell to the floor. The man with the wrench returned. Finally, a lanky young man sprinted towards the man among the rubbish, kicking him in the head. The young man pulled a butcher's knife. A man in a black leather jacket who had discouraged the attack grabbed the wrist with the butcher's knife. The attackers fled.

The red-shirt man tried to get up but fell. Finally he made it to his feet. Feebly, he walked up the road.
Do you know why they attacked you? Who are you? Where are you from, we asked him.
He turned his head towards the questions fired at him, his face pleading. He said nothing. His shirt was drenched, a 2cm gash in his chest.

Metres further he stumbled and lay down in the gutter. He struggled to sit up and fell down

"Help me get him into the car. Help me, please," said photographer James Oatway, looking around at the men gathered around him. One stepped forward, reluctantly.
Up the road, at Alexandra Day Clinic, nurses did what they could. There was no doctor; he would have to be taken to Edenvale Hospital.

Along the way the man was flailing wildly, sitting up, lying down, wincing with pain. The wound to his chest was gushing now.

At Edenvale Hospital a lone gurney stood at the entrance. The porters sat in a room with tinted windows. Oatway pleaded for help. The man in the car was critical, he said.

Slowly one porter rose and scribbled in a book. Then the other, both now ambling towards the hospital entrance. Inside the car the red-shirt man looked lifeless.

"He's dead. We can't take him," one porter pronounced.
There was no pulse. Then a gag reflex. He's alive.

Inside the ICU, doctors compressed his chest, massaging his heart. After nearly seven minutes a ventilator was used. Shortly after 9am Emmanuel Sithole was pronounced dead. He was Mozambican. The stab wound to his chest had penetrated his heart.

In his pockets, R285 and 10c in change and a cellphone. His phone would ensure he did not die nameless.

On his wrist, three armbands read: "United for Bafana."

Prisoner tried to carve '666' into his forehead - but used a mirror so it came out backwards

Convicted killer Nikko Jenkins, 28, pictured above in 2014, recently tried to carve the sign of the beast '666' into his forehead but he used a mirror so the numbers came out backwards. Now he has a series of upside-down 9s across his face, this is according to what he told his lawyer.

It is believed that Jenkins, who is currently appealing his death penalty, may use the botched case of self-mutilation as evidence that he's mentally unstable & therefore ineligible to face the death penalty.

Jenkins was convicted of shooting dead four people in 10 days after he was released from prison in Omaha, Nebraska, in 2013.

During his murder trial in 2014, the killer was assessed by a doctor who concluded that he was 'a psychopath' and 'one of the most dangerous people' he had ever encountered.

Jenkins first pleaded not guilty for the murders, then pleaded guilty, then changed his mind and said he was ineligible for trial on the grounds of insanity. The court will decide whether to sentence him to death or not in July.

'Why I’m not proud to call Buhari my president' - Femi Aribisala

Vanguard columnist Dr. Femi Aribisala, in an interaction with Vanguard editors, explains why he is not proud to call president-elect, Gen. Buhari his president. Quite interesting. Read below...

How did you come about your claim that INEC rigged the election for Buhari? 
 There are certain things that are interesting about this election. The first one is that it is one of the most keenly contested elections that we have had in this country. It involved more people. But 10 million less people voted than last time, which gives us some idea as to how true some of the figures we have been having before had been. But the question is: Where did the decline of 10 million come from? I discovered that it came disproportionately in certain areas than it did in others. And to some extent, if you look at the PVC distribution, you can project the election. It is because Buhari could campaign in the South, but the North didn't permit same kind of liberty for the president.

The president was stoned in Bauchi and he was threatened. By the time the pattern of PVC distribution became very known even in war-torn states, it was easy to know that it had been front-loaded. When you then analyze the election result itself, you will discover that some places just had an incredible suppression of voters in spite of high level of interest. Some people had an incredible number of voters. And I am still interested in why more people voted in the governorship election in Katsina than the presidential election.

On alleged gang- up against President Jonathan 

If Buhari had contested in the United States, there is no way that he could win. It is impossible. We know his antecedents. Nigeria doesn’t even teach history in schools. Once you bring up the antecedents, the very idea of having such a person gunning for a position, not even talk of the presidency, would have nullified his candidacy. I was not just writing about Buhari because he tried to arrest me. There were all sorts of things that he did and for which he never apologised. Buhari took ownership of those things. And he never asked for forgiveness. At different points in the history of Nigeria, he was given an opportunity to do that.

We set up a Truth and Reconciliation Commission but he refused to do it. You don’t forgive a man who does not repent. With regards to President Jonathan, I had a problem with the gang-up. And I think it is wrong for two major tribes to gang up against someone from the minority. Why should a President be called clueless? I don’t think that someone will get away with calling Obasanjo clueless. Somehow I feel that the South-South is entitled to have their son as president and we were acting as if we were doing them a favour. If it was not providence that threw up Goodluck Jonathan, I wonder if we would have considered having a South-South president. In the interest of national unity, the North-West producing the president again does not balance any equation in Nigeria. If we are talking about a president from the North, we should be talking about the North-East. I was offended that from the beginning, some people insisted that there would be a civil war if the man ran. They also insisted that they would create a problem if the man ran. And I said that Nigeria belongs to every one of us. So that was an issue to me. Wole Soyinka had vowed not to support Buhari but a few weeks to the election, he asked Nigerians to forget the past and move on.

Are you not being unfair to Buhari given the circumstances we found ourselves? 

I said you only forgive somebody who repents. Buhari has never asked anyone to forgive him. So you are jumping into conclusion that we have a new Buhari? And the fact that he has won the election has not won him forgiveness. We are going to see if Buhari has changed. And I have said that if he has changed, he will do more than just wearing a suit. He will come out and apologise for things done and overdone. He said he took responsibility which is different from apologising. The man who admitted stealing a cow is different from the one who said forgive me for stealing a cow. Buhari is a very deliberate man. I am not persuaded by the election campaign that Buhari is going to be a very competent president. I have not seen any competence in him. There was nothing in the campaign that was of substance that impressed me. No new ideas came from Buhari or the APC. Most of the people in APC are PDP people. So I am not persuaded that we are in for any new thing. But I hope you are right.

Beyond Buhari, you are also not a friend of Bola Tinubu. What are your reasons? 
I wonder why anybody will be a fan of Bola Tinubu especially if you live in Lagos. He is not a democrat. I don’t like Bola Tinubu because he has monopolised Lagos politics. To some extent, Ekiti governorship election was lost because of him. I live in Lekki and every day I have to pay toll fare and I wish I was not doing that. APC is in control of the media to a very large extent. Governor Fashola has gotten an easy pass with the media. It is easy for a Lagos State governor to be seen to be good because he has resources. In the light of the resources of the state, only 10 percent of the people have access to potable water, the same percentage has access to educational structures. In order for the APC to survive, the resources of this state had to be commandeered for political purposes.

So, you can see the end justifies the means. I think it will be foolish of Tinubu to take AIT to court over the Lion of Bourdillion case because if he does, the kind of things that would be revealed about him would be shocking. This godfather business is undemocratic. Let people choose their leaders. One person cannot sit somewhere and decide what is best for everybody. I don’t believe that elections are free and fair in Lagos. I do not believe that Jimi Agbaje lost this election. It was APC’s manipulation that brought out the governorship election result. That is my own opinion. Not many Nigerians are asking Buhari to apologise. What exactly do you want him to apologise for?

It is part of my problem with the media at the moment. We are being given the impression that Buhari won by a landslide. Please let us look at what INEC declared. 12.8 million people voted for Goodluck Jonathan. So don’t assume that they don’t have their reasons or that the people that want him to apologise don’t exist. I maintain that it is very easy to say that we don’t want to look at the past because we want to look at the future. But we need to understand the past in order to move to the future.

So, Buhari needed to apologise. He needed to ask for forgiveness because he killed people through extra-judicial means, he jailed people for telling the truth, he kept people in jail even when kangaroo courts that he set up said they were not guilty. He manipulated the judiciary into jailing some people. I could go on and on. That is why I said that if we were a serious democracy, he would never have gotten away with it. There is a reason Buhari was not nominated by the northerners. They voted for Kwankwaso and Atiku at the primaries. Buhari got his candidacy through Tinubu. We don’t have to pretend that Buhari is well liked because he has won, it seems to be like that but we should know that he only has the plurality of 2.5 million votes.

In your penultimate column you claimed the emphasis on the alleged rigging was in the South-South and South-East, but the PDP was beaten in areas where they had strengths like Niger, Kaduna and other places.

You think the resentment was not real? I mentioned those areas as well. I mentioned Kano, Jigawa, Katsina and Bauchi. I said the results from these places were inflated. We have video recordings of underage voting. There is a problem with the election because if we accept what the PVCs are saying that 17.1 million registered for the election in the North-West alone, the zone will determine future elections. If they decide that they want somebody to be president, by the time we will be looking at the result and they will come up with 9.1 million from Kano, the whole equation would change. What can you get from Imo and Anambra? So, if the North-West vote is more than the South-South and South-East, there is going to be a problem. There will be a problem if we don’t get the proper census of Nigeria. They used to tell us that Kano was bigger than Lagos. Jigawa was split from Kano and Kano is still supposedly bigger than Lagos. In this last election, about 3.1 million people voted in Kano and Jigawa. And 1.4 million people voted in Lagos. That is twice the number of the people in Lagos. I don’t believe these figures. If you do, fine. I am entitled to my opinion.

You said you don’t like Tinubu because of the reasons you adduced, but when the books would be written, it would be said that Tinubu contributed significantly to Buhari’s emergence as a democratically elected president. What do you make of that? 

I don’t agree that Tinubu made Buhari the president. Let’s get the facts right. Tinubu made Buhari the presidential candidate of the APC. But in the presidential election, Buhari did not win Tinubu’s votes. And that is part of the problem. All the discussion before was that everything would be determined in the South-West, but Tinubu did not deliver the South-West. The margin of defeat in the presidential election was not much in Lagos. Tinubu, to some extent at the presidential level, is expendable. And that is the problem. You can actually not choose a president just from the North. It interests me that while the campaign was going on, all the northerners making noise that it was their turn disappeared. They did not campaign with Buhari. The people campaigning were Tinubu, Amaechi, Fashola. I bet you that the northerners are going to come out come May 29. And you will see it happen. Don’t think that the people that had been clamouring for power to return to the North in the past six years, were doing that for Tinubu to inherit. I don’t believe that. They have an agenda. That is why I said the story is not told because the election has taken place, the story will unfold when the administration comes on board.

Are you saying that you are impressed with Jonathan’s performance? 

Yes I am. I think APC ran a fantastic campaign. They hired Obama’s people and they controlled so many different things. So, a lot of things were simply propaganda. And part of the problem with the PDP was that they had it so easy for so long that they did not know how to campaign anymore. So, they thought that it was just going to be another cake work, and this was a different issue for them. Many of the things that Jonathan did, his people like Reuben Abati did not talk about it. People just did not know anything until some spirited efforts were made at the last-minute during the extension. That was when they now told people what had happened. But within the framework of Nigerian presidency, Jonathan is a good president if you compare him with others who had occupied that position.

Read the rest on Vanguard

Photos: Kim Kardashian buys herself $400K Rolls Royce luxury car

The reality star and mother of one was spotted in LA yesterday driving in a brand-new 2015 Rolls Royce Phantom, the latest model which starts at $407,000. That would be about N80m in Nigerian currency. See more photos after the cut...