Photos: Excitement as actress Omotola host widows & orphans

Star actress Omotola Jalade Ekeinde, her husband and some of their friends hosted some orphans and widows via her 'Give and Let Give' and OYEP foundation end of the year event. The actress brought gifts and other goodies for the widows and kids. See the photos after the cut..

 Photo credit: Daniel Sync

See the outfit Rita Ora wore to BBC interview that got 400 viewers complaining

Over 400 people have so far complained to The BBC after singer Rita Ora appeared on The One Show with her boobs on display in a low-cut white blazer. Rita was on the show to promote BBC's singing competition, Voice UK, where she's the newest judge. 

"I do not want to see her boobs hanging out on a family programme,' one viewer wrote on the BBC's Points of View message board. 

Over 400 others have so far complained forcing The BBC to issue an apology. They said; "If we had been consulted we would have requested she wore something more suitable for 7pm.'

Tecno Mobile Receives International Quality Crown Award in the Gold Category

Mobile technology giant, Tecno mobile was recently awarded the international Quality Crown Award in the Gold category; recognized for quality, leadership, technology and innovation at the BID Quality Convention in London. Surrounded by centuries of grandeur in a world where pushing the boundaries is an everyday occurrence, MrArif Chowdhury, the Vice president of Tecno Mobile, stood before business leaders present to receive the BID International Quality award from the president of BID Jose E. Prieto

Mobile technology giant, Tecno mobile was recently awarded the international Quality Crown Award in the Gold category; recognized for quality, leadership, technology and innovation at the BID Quality Convention in London. Surrounded by centuries of grandeur in a world where pushing the boundaries is an everyday occurrence, MrArifChowdhury, the Vice president of Tecno Mobile, stood before business leaders present to receive the BID International Quality award from the president of BID Jose E. Prieto

Tecno mobile was recognized not only for outstanding commitment to quality and excellence, but also for its dedication to continuous improvement and innovation.

Being considered for the award however requires full commitment to the criteria of the QC100 TQM model which ensures customer satisfaction, leadership, innovation and efficient processes at every level of the business.

In making customer satisfaction the highest measure of quality, Tecno has not only set the benchmark in the technology sector, but has also contributed immensely to the social and economic development of the countries where it does business.

Understanding that the continuous improvement of product image and brand value is very vital, not only to the survival of the a brand, but to its resounding success in the ever evolving mobile technology space and a highly competitive market, Tecno mobile continues to strive for positive change in delivering world class quality and yet making it accessible to everyone, no matter the age or class. This is clearly evident in the line of products and after sales service Tecno mobile offers to its massive customer base. Little wonder why Tecno mobile has received this global quality recognition award.

Nigerian becomes first African to win International Tennis player of the year award

26 year old Nigerian international tennis player, Quadri Aruna has won the 2014 International Table Tennis Federation (ITTF) player of the year award, making him the first African to win the coveted prize. At an award ceremony held at the Armani Hotel in Dubai today Jan. 7th, Aruna beat Portugal's Marcos Freitas and Chinese pair Fan Zhendong and Xu Xin to land the coveted prize. He is ranked 30th best tennis player in the world. Big congrats to him.

Ghanaian socialite caught with drugs sentenced to 8yrs by London court

The popular Ghanaian socialite Nayele Ametefe also known as Ruby Adu-Gyamfi, who was arrested on November 10th 2014 at London's Heathrow Airport, with 12kg of cocaine worth about $5 million (read here), has been sentenced to 8 years in prison by a London court. She was sentenced yesterday January 6th after pleading guilty. Her other accomplices are currently on trial...

HIV positive Kenny Badmus comes out as gay on a Facebook post

Brand expert Kenny Badmus who took to his Facebook page to reveal he was HIV positive on Dec. 1st, this morning took to his wall again to reveal that he is. He wrote about how he got married and led a false life just to satisfy society and how he told his ex-wife before they got married that he's gay and how she didn't care hoping he would, with time, stop being gay.

He also talked about how she allegedly victimized him when he eventually got fed up and asked for a divorce 6 years after they got married and had a child together. Kenny said he decided to share his experience to mark the one year anniversary of the Anti gay law which was passed on Jan 7th 2014. Read what he wrote after the cut.




When I first told my ex-wife that I was gay, we were far from being married. I wanted her to find other men honorably, who had a thing for women. I never did. I ‘swear down.’ I was only obeying the popular demand of traditions. Now, this was my terrible mistake. No one should live their life based on dogmas and other people’s expectations. As far as I could remember, even though I was always dating girls, I had always preferred being with a man. I had fought it with every fiber of spirituality in me as a Pentecostal preacher boy (find details and journeys in my book ‘THE EXODUS.’) The more I fought my sexual preference for men, the more I became more miserable. Unfortunately, as erroneously believed, sex wasn’t the problem. I had been having sex with women as far back as a twelve-year-old. Sexuality is whom we are emotionally present with, not whom we are sleeping with. And oh boy, she really tried to make me a heterosexual. But I'm still not, sadly.

One of those pre-marriage days, while we were with our marriage counseling team, I brought up the issue again – that I had always had a preference for men. I wanted the Ministers to dissuade her from the marriage. I just couldn’t put a ring on a fat big lie. My father taught me one principle: DIE FOR YOUR OWN TRUTH, EVEN IF IT'S UNPOPULAR, BUT DON'T HARM OTHERS WITH IT. She was so happy to tell the ministers, as quickly as she could, that my feelings for men would all be gone, because she believed it was a childhood disorder. I guess she meant she was going to fuck my brains into heterosexuality. This is a mistake a lot of us make. We all want to change people to conform to our preferences. We find it easier to play god in the lives of people we did not make.
After six years together, I knew I was not getting any better. I STILL LOVED MEN. And one day, because I didn’t want to cheat on her, I humbly asked her that we should go our separate ways. That was when all hell broke loose. She suddenly forgot about how it all started. In court, she told the Judge how she suddenly found out that I was gay, and how it’s against the Law of the Federal Republic of Nigeria. In other words, she wanted me sentenced to the new 14 years jail term served by the Nigerian government. Luckily, I was in a civil court. Sadly, that day, I had to duck my face in shame as the crowd jeered at me for being whom I had always been. 'You faggot' 'Oh what a shameful man!' 'homo!' 'Na wa o ' I still don’t know how I walked out of the court premises that day. ( this case is still ongoing) What about my business.? Tell any client in Nigeria that you are gay, and you lose their business. That’s exactly what happened. I lost friends, businesses, sponsorships and family members. I had to start my life all again. Applied for a new job. Get back to school. Although my ex-wife is one of the most faithful and beautiful women in Nigeria, she is a victim of institutionalized homophobia. Just like many people who are reading this.

It will be exactly a year today, when Nigeria instituted a law to jail people like me. What’s our offense? Because we are simply wired differently. There are only about 5 to 10% of homosexuals in every population as cited by popular findings and documents. Why is a 90% dominant population afraid of its 10%? Shouldn’t you care about us? Don’t you think it’s a lot easier to be seen as part of the 90%? And before you throw those religious verses on us for being wired differently, I want to leave you with my favorite Bible verses from Romans 8:Italics mine:
That Nothing Can Separate Us from ( the universal narrative of ) God’s Love
31 What shall we say about such wonderful things as these? If God is for us, who can ever be against us? 32 Since he did not spare even his own Son ( in the popular narratives according to the Christian Faith ) but gave him up for us all, won’t he also give us everything else? 33 Who dares accuse us whom God has chosen for his own? No one—for God himself has given us right standing with himself. 34 Who then will condemn us? No one...

38 And I am convinced that nothing can ever separate us from God’s love. Neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons,[b] neither our fears for today nor our worries about tomorrow—not even the powers of hell can separate us from God’s love. 39 No power in the sky above or in the earth below—indeed, nothing in all creation will ever be able to separate us from the love of God that is revealed in ( in the narrative of ) Christ Jesus our Lord

Meet the brothers who killed 12 people in Paris massacre yesterday

Brothers Cherif Kouachi (left), 32, & Said Kouachi (right), 34, both from Paris, have been identified as the men who stormed into the office of French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo yesterday and killed 12 people, including two police officers. A third suspect, 18 year old Hamyd Mourad, who didn't fire any shorts, surrendered to police late last night after seeing his name circulating on social media. The two brothers, who are said to have been trained in Yemen as assassins, are still at large.

One of the suspects, Cherif Kouachi & 6 others were arrested and sentenced to 3 years imprisonment for terrorism in Paris in May 2008. All seven men were accused of sending about a dozen young Frenchmen to join Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the leader of Al Qaeda in Iraq, after funneling them through radical religious establishments in Syria and Egypt. French authorities believed Kouachi had been planning to go to Syria for training in 2005.

They shot a police officer at point blank range as they fled the Charlie Hebdo office yesterday

I’ll ensure stable power supply if elected - Gen. Buhari

APC Presidential candidate Gen. Buhari, has delivered the usual Nigerian promise to ensure stable power supply for all and also expand Nigeria’s economy if the people elect him as the next president.

According to Punch, Buhari said this at the Govt Sec. School in Calabar, Cross River State, while addressing a mammoth crowd yesterday Wednesday Jan. 7th. Concerning power supply, he said;

'The power sector would be stabilised in order to resuscitate dying industries in the country. “If you go down memory lane during the period of regional governments, the leaders then used to allocate 43 per cent of the budget to education and that is why their names will never be forgotten. We will try to secure our country; we will ensure industries are resuscitated. Our industries are dying and will continue to die unless we get the issue of power supply correct. We will resuscitate our industries.” he said

WHERE IS BUHARI's WIFE?

The photograph of the presidential candidate of the All Progressives Congress, Gen. Muhammadu Buhari at the Lagos State interdenominational thanksgiving service standing with his running mate, Prof. Yemi Osinbajo; the General Overseer of the Redeemed Christian Church of God, Pastor Enoch Adeboye, and Governor Babatunde Fashola on the front row says something about the APC flag-bearer.

There have been murmurs about his donning a cap in church – that he is a Muslim disrespecting Christian tradition. For me, his forgetting to take off his cap shows he has yet to fully master the nuances and rituals of spaces he is treading for the sake of his political ambition. If I were a Christian, I would pardon him.

What is not so easily dismissable in the photo-op, however, is much more telling than his cap. In the picture, all the aforementioned men had their wives by their sides except Buhari...

For a man who preaches “change” and desires to rule a country made up of men and women in almost equal halves, I wonder why he finds the anomaly of an “invisible wife” wholesome. Interestingly, this is not the first time that Mrs Aisha Buhari would be left behind in her husband’s aspiration.

In 2003, she was not prominent when he lost to Olusegun Obasanjo’s “moonslide.” Four years later, not much had changed though one could argue that his biggest opponent, Umaru Yar’Adua, did not “use” his wife to campaign either. In 2011, when the presidential election was on, I asked one of Buhari’s closest aides where Mrs Buhari was and why she was practically unseen in her husband’s campaign efforts.

My query sprang from his image: If you are being termed an ogre, furnish reasons why you could not be one. His wife standing side-by-side with him would, I told the aide, soften his unimpressible image.

This Buhari’s aide agreed with me that his wife would be strategically invaluable for his persona. He said she was coming to Lagos at that time and he would arrange press interviews to introduce her to the public.

The aide called later to say Buhari was not sold to the idea. The aide was apologetic while explaining why Buhari did not want his wife displayed like a ware even in the heat of campaigns. He said Buhari himself could be rather reticent; then, I should consider the religious factor, and that the General was too disciplined for such and several etceteras. I wished him the best and left it at that.

By then, Patience Jonathan was criss-crossing the country and canvassing votes for her husband in her peculiar ways. Even though she was being mocked for her lack of sophistication, she was winning some hearts because of her confidence.

By the time Buhari’s wife would surface to sell the “softer” side of her husband; by the time people saw her on TV expressing herself more articulately than the woman who would become the First Lady, the election had practically been won and lost.

We were eventually availed her credentials: she is not just a housewife who sits at home making “Fura de Nunu” for her husband but a distinguished person in her own right. I do not claim Buhari’s loss of the 2011 election had to do with his wife but I think the belatedness of her emergence was a flaw.

If your own spouse is not at the forefront of your dream, it could be interpreted in several ways. One is that the woman does not believe in you enough, or that you do not have faith in her abilities, or you are the alpha male who believes women should be seen and not heard. Any which way, it does not look good.

After three defeats, you would expect Buhari’s packaging to prominently include his wife. You would expect an image of him as a loving husband and devoted husband to be part of his virtues marketed to the public. You would have thought he would take his wife with him for the photo-ops he is garnering in churches and elsewhere. But no, she is still missing in the picture.

When Buhari had a photo-shoot recently where he was dressed in the attire of various cultures of Nigeria, I wondered why he was the only one in the picture. How does a man run for president, take pictures of himself at a desk with the Nigerian flag in the background but his partner of many years would be missing from the shoots? They decked the General in suit and even had a picture of him “hi-fiving” a child but there is none where his wife appears? Why? I do not want to speculate on his private life as a married man but I think those images portray him as a self-centred person who does not share space.

When the picture of his family appeared, eventually, we saw his wife, children, son-in-law and even grandchildren but this time, Buhari himself was missing. I am still trying to wrap my head around the kind of PR that misses the simple fact that Buhari should have appeared in his family picture.

There are several reasons one can adduce for Buhari and his wife’s photo hide-and-seek. One, the culture of lovey-dovey is simply not him. Like the Igbo proverb that says a man cannot learn to be left-handed in old age, I wager that this is a left-handedness that Buhari has not learnt and is probably a far harder lesson than removing his cap during a church service.

Two, he probably thinks being seen with a woman will detract from his famed militarist discipline and Spartan image. He has done a lot of bending just to project himself as a non-Islamic fundamentalist pan Nigerian statesman but the woman aspect just does not resonate well with him – yet. Third, the religion and culture Buhari has known all his life do gift a second-class citizen status to women.

As if the invisible wife syndrome is not grave enough, he even threatened to abolish the office of the First Lady. Did he think the “First Ladyship” is all about frivolity and has no symbolic and cultural value that redeems it? Did he consider the implication of such a move for his image and ultimately, ambition? His manifesto promises women empowerment but I wonder how he proposes to empower Nigerian women when his own wife is tucked away from view.

True, Nigeria has had First Ladies who have turned out as a real nuisance; Area Mothers who have their aliterate fingers spotted in every political conundrum. The classlessness of some, however, should not overshadow the beauty of others who reinvented themselves and rose to the status of a genuine First Lady.

By Abombola Adelakun

Photos: Mammoth crowd at PDP presidential rally in Lagos

Massive turn at the PDP presidential rally at TBS Lagos. See more photos after the cut...

Spot the difference: featuring D'banj and Kenya Moore

There are five differences...you see them?

I don't hate the North - GEJ tells Northern leaders

Pres. Jonathan has refuted claims that he hates the people of Northern Nigeria. He set the record straight while hosting some Northern leaders at the state house in Abuja, yesterday January 7th.

“Some people say Jonathan hates the north; I have heard that statement and I tell Namadi Sambo; `they say I hate the north but you are here as my Vice-President’. I tell the National Security Adviser and my Principal Secretary the same thing. In fact my Principal Secretary (Hassan Tukur) has been my friend since I was the deputy governor of Bayelsa​.​ I never knew I was going to come here as Vice-President not to talk of President. But I have known him since I was the deputy governor of Bayelsa.

My Chief Detail, Yusuf, is from Borno and has been with me since I was a deputy governor in Yenagoa. I see him as a good person and I have carried him along with me. So I had to ask how can somebody wake up and say I hate the north?” he said. 

President Jonathan says he loves Northern Nigeria so much that out of the 12 Federal Universities his administration has established, 9 are within the Northern region. He says he has established more Almajiri schools in the north because he gets saddened by the percentage of school dropouts in the North.

"I feel we must enter the north with aggression through education. Whenever the statistics of school dropouts in the country is released, I’m not happy. The percentage from states in the north is sometimes as high as 50 (per cent) and even more. The last one was up to 70 per cent. I said no, we must change this statistics. Somebody who hates the people cannot talk about educating their children because the people we are educating are the future leaders of this country,” he said

While speaking to Northern elders, GEJ expressed his sadness over recent comments made by some Nigerians who are referred to as elder statesmen, According to him, elder statesmen who make provocative comments are just mere politicians

"Some people call themselves statesmen but they are not statesmen; they are just ordinary politicians. Being a statesman is not because you have occupied a big office before but the question is what are you bringing to bear? Are you building this country or are you a part of people who tell lies to destroy this country and to create enmity between people who ordinarily would have been living together? At the appropriate time Nigerians will know all of us even though I know most of you know us but the younger ones do not know. Some people are hiding under some clogs, some big names and creating a lot of problems in this country,” he said.