Sunday, 30 August 2015
Hotbed of Champions! Kenya finishes on top for the first time at the IAAF World Championship in Beijing
History was made today, August 30 when Kenya topped the
world at the 15th IAAF
World Athletics Championships in Beijing with 7 Gold, 6 Silver and 3
Bronze. 26-year-old Asbel Kiprop crossed the line in 3:34.40. to win the
Men's 1500m gold medal which ensured Kenya finished top.
Jamaica finished second overall with 7 gold, 2 silver and 3
bronze to make a total of 12 medals while United States of America came
third with 5 gold, 6 silver and 6 bronze to sum up the best top three
with 18 medals in total.
Bono becomes world's richest pop star after investment in Facebook earns him over $1billion
Now Bono takes over Beatles legend Sir Paul McCartney as the world’s richest pop star. The singer, who is married to Nancy Shevell, has an impressive £730 million. While Madonna has £520 million.
Facebook hit its own ‘billion’ milestone this week, when it had one billion users in one day.
The company went public in 2009.
Source: UK Mirror
Mutilated body of kidnapped man found in Ebonyi
According to reports, Christian who is said to be in his 40s had gone out to buy some things for his family when he was whisked away inside a hilux bus and taken to an unknown destination.
A relative of the deceased who spoke on how he was found said
‘One of us went to his farm. While in the farm, he said he perceived bad odour and that the odour was so offensive that no one could stand it. So, when the man was searching for the source of the odour, he saw the dead body of our brother who have been missing for the past one week,” he saidWidow of the deceased, Isha Ada described her husband as a peaceful man and wondered why he was killed in such a manner.
‘I never believed my husband could be killed in this manner because he doesn’t look for anyone’s trouble. And those who killed him will never know peace in life. He was good to me, caring and tolerant. Today I have lost a companion, a loving man and a true husband,” she saidThe Ebonyi police command has launched a full scaled investigation into the matter.
Read Borno state governor's tribute to his late deputy
I can't remember the exact date I gave him that name, 'Mazan Fama'. I had given him series of assignments to undertake, some of them really tasking. All I did was to give him targets. I wanted all the assignments accomplished for the good of Borno but I wasn't expecting them accomplished in one outing! It was typical of what we do in the banking sector where I spent most of my professional years.
It was early into our first term in office when I commissioned our Deputy Governor, His Excellency, Alhaji Zannah Umar Mustapha to travel to Gombe, Abuja and Lagos with a tall list of deliverables. As he was glancing through the list, I looked at his face, expecting to see him wear a look of anxiety like we mostly wore in the bank any time we had new targets to meet. The Deputy Governor seemed normal. I asked him, have you gone through the list, he said 'Yes, Sir' and pocketed the list. He was then asking if there was anything in addition to the tall list. 'What is wrong with this man?' I said to myself before responding to him. 'No, there is nothing else, Your Excellency, just proceeds with that and please try to return to Maiduguri as quickly as you can' I said to him. He left me immediately. I was confused, wondering if he understood the weight of the work ahead of him, the number of people he needed to meet at some agencies of the Federal Government, with and without prior appointments. The task was really challenging. All I expected was something out his planned trip. My anticipation was somewhere around 50 to 60 percent which would have been okay by me, given the importance of the tasks. Within few days that he left, he was back to Maiduguri unannounced and walked straight to my office. I was rudely shocked when I saw him. I was afraid of asking him what happened. I was so sure he must have encountered a serious setback. But then I asked myself, 'why didn't he call to tell me the problem so I could try to come in instead of returning to Maiduguri?'. I was becoming inpatient as he stood in the middle of the office exchanging pleasantries with a guest that I dismissed on sighting the Deputy Governor. Before he sat down properly, I said to him, 'Your Excellency, hope all is well?'. He smiled but I was too anxious to make anything out of his face. I folded my hands, waiting for a sad news. He brought out an envelope he was holding, brought the list I handed him before the trip. One after the other, my Deputy Governor had convincingly achieved all the tasks I gave to him. He went further to accomplish two others that were related and important but which I didn't note. Then, he amazed me with three words, 'what next, Sir?'. It was that day I nicknamed him 'MAZAN FAMA' which I used in describing him as my 'reliable warrior'. For four years and 78 days, I had such a sufficiently efficient man as my Deputy in Borno before the untimely, cold hands of death came calling on Saturday, August 15, 2015.
My late Deputy Governor wasn't only efficient; he was also extremely honest and prudent. Officials serving in committees liked his commitment but preferred not to take request to the Deputy Governor because he mostly cut down unreasonable requests mercilessly and very correctly, to save funds for the Government. He transparently used little to achieve so much and disclosed savings for return to treasury. Taking advantage of his competence and character, I made sure the Deputy Governor was chairman of any special group that was to be entrusted with so much funds for execution of public programmes and capital projects. He chaired the committees that built more than half of the 2,500 houses we are completing, coordinated disbursements on immunization programmes, and was my permanent Ameerul Hajj from 2011 till he died during which he remarkably raised the welfare of pilgrims; he was empowered to summon any government official and any contractor handling any public project in Borno State and he did many interventions with my expressed approval. But in all that he was doing, he was most passionate about his role as chairman of central coordinating committee on the welfare of internally displaced persons, IDPs, to the extent that there was virtually no time I and him were alone that he wouldn't say something about IDPs. In fact, even when died in Yola, one of his schedules after the Convocation ceremony at the Modibbo Adama University of Technology (MAUTECH), was to follow up on his earlier visit on matters affecting the welfare of IDPS from Borno State who were conveyed from Cameroon to Yola.
We went through the darkest moments of Borno like a 'tube and tyre' as they say it. Four years have gone by after the seemingly interminable and deadly conundrum that has gripped our land. A renewed air of optimism is now sweeping through the hearts and minds of our beleaguered, yet resilient people, seeing that in the dark clouds that have hovered over the skies for so long, the glimpses of a silver lining is beginning to appear, thanks to the strong political will demonstrated by the President Muhammadu Buhari Administration in tackling the insurgency. As a result, we in Borno - both as a government and people - are bracing up to tackle head long the enormous but not insurmountable challenges that are bound to come with the onerous task of rebuilding Borno and restoring it to its former glory, and my late Deputy's trailblazing role was assured in the scheme of things.
My unyielding show of confidence was far from being misplaced, for the late Deputy Governor was hardwork, passion, commitment and diligence personified. A workaholic per excellence, an asset virtually indispensable, always cheerful and full of life, my Man Friday, mazan fama (the reliable warrior); the quintessential Zannah Umar Mustapha. Therefore, to say that His Excellency's sudden death in the early hours of that dark Saturday in his sleep, hit me like a thunderbolt out of the blues is to grossly understate a glaring fact.
As
unwavering believers, we solemnly affirm not only that "every soul
shall have taste of Death" (Kullu nafsin za'i katul Mawt, Qur'an 3:185),
but no death is untimely. Indeed, when our appointed time arrives and
the Angel of death comes knocking, there is absolutely no room for
negotiation, debate or casting the ballot. That undeniable truism does
nothing however, to detract from the sheer depth of the devastation
caused by our irreparable loss.
Considering
how our friendship, nay comradeship, blossomed with time, I could say
my crossing of paths with my Zannah occurred in fairly inauspicious
circumstances. As astonishing as it sounds, before the irresistible
allure of politics eventually pulled us in the same partisan direction,
we were at best casual acquaintances, and by the time we had our first
real and sustained interaction in 2011, I was already by God's grace
ANPP Gubernatorial candidate and he my presumed running mate.
Four
years and 78 days absolutely changed what we meant to each other. In
that relatively short period of time, we bonded into a friendship very
rare in its cordiality, political soul mates of a special hue and, above
all else, into brothers as though of the same blood.
In
the immortal words of the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jnr., "the ultimate
measure of a man is not where he stands in the moments of comfort and
convenience, but where he stands at times of challenges and
controversy". Zannah Umar Mustapha endeared himself to me in particular
and our people in general chiefly and precisely because he was able to
prove his mettle in our handling of the well-known security and other
developmental challenges that have confronted Borno in the last half a
dozen years or so. He relished the hardwork and loved to carry out
difficult tasks assigned to him and more importantly, he possessed an
uncanny ability to deliver results, and speedily too. Therefore,
entrusting such tasks to him became a second nature to me, knowing I was
totally at home and could sleep with both my eyes closed.
Both
on account of the law of nature and constitutional requirement, the
gaping hole created in our administrative set up by the unexpected exit
of the amiable Zannah Umar Mustapha must be filled. Yes, fill we must
the vacant position of the Deputy Governor of Borno State, but without
any shadow of doubt Zannah is irreplaceable. He was an honourable man
and an extremely loyal, a trusted deputy and ally.
What
made us a pretty good team was that my late indefatigable deputy and I
complimented each other rather seamlessly. Where I am an introvert -
quieter, more reserved, he was aggressive and vivacious; where I am
diplomatic and (I am told) self-effacing, he was blunt and point-blank;
where I am the product of a free wheeling, laissez faire civilian
up-bringing, he was a beneficiary of military regimentation. In fact,
even in terms of our physical attributes, we mixed quite well - where I
am fair in complexion, he was dark ebony. About the only attribute we
had that didn't complement each other is our age, which is about the
same, both of us having been born in 1966.
I
dare say that our complementarity tended to conform with the Yin and
Yang (literally meaning dark and bright) strand of Chinese philosophy
which describes how apparently opposite or contrary forces are actually
complementary, interconnected and interdependent in the natural world,
and how they give rise to each other as they interrelate to one another.
Like Yin and Yang, we tended to act as complementary (rather than
opposing) forces that interact to form a dynamic system in which the
whole is greater than the assembled parts. That was how the Deputy
Governor and I blended.
I
state without any iota of ambiguity that I have lost my bosom friend
and brother; the APC, our party, has lost an astute politician and a
consummate mobilizer; Borno's multitudes of IDPs and other hapless
victims of Boko Haram, a comforter; Borno State, a committed leader; and
for Nigeria, the country has lost a true patriot.
Mazan
Fama is gone forever, but we cannot afford the luxury of wallowing in
self-pity, for there is an awful amount of work to be done. Besides, we
can't question the wisdom of the best planner of them all, Allah the
Almighty. Indeed, the most befitting tribute we can pay his sweet memory
is for us to rededicate ourselves to doing sufficient justice to the
sacred mandate the good people of Borno freely and overwhelmingly gave
us. The best honour we can bestow on the soul of our departed hero is to
make Borno a bastion of good governance, an enduring model of
excellence in sustainable development, a true home of peace and harmony,
a much better place for its teeming inhabitants to live in than we
found it. In short, to restore Borno's diminished glory and reposition
it for greatness. As Abraham Lincoln succinctly captured, “In the end,
it is not the Years in your life that count. It is the life in your
Years.”
Adieu
my dear friend and brother, may Allah (SWT) forgive your sins and grant
you abode in Al-Jannat Firdausi. Inna Lillahi wa inna ilaihi raji'un
(surely, we belong to Allah and to Him shall we return)!
Former Gov. Audu Abubakar wins APC Guber Primaries in Kogi
What this crazy but creative mum did to make her daughter take 1st in class
What would you do if your child who you know is an A student always comes out with D’s, E’s and F’s !? That was the exact problem a mum in Lagos was facing, after taking her daughter to over 3 different schools in 18 months, shouting at her, praying, fasting and casting with no improvement. She came up with a different and shocking approach to the problem…
My daughter was
a proper OLODO!! I’m not like many parents that shy away from problems
concerning their children, I don’t think that helps so I face them head on. I’m
a working class mum living in Lekki, I have 3 kids and an ever demanding
husband. My daughter is the eldest so when I started noticing her academic
problems I didn’t answer her, I simply hoped they would pass. Truth is I didn’t
have her time until she got to primary 4, that is when this girl gave me better
disgrace in public.
Here’s what
happened ohh! I went with my daughter for a party of one my secondary school
classmates that always praised me for being a brainy and carrying first. While
we were there, my daughter and I met many of my old friends, my daughter has a
very unique name and they said loved her name, that’s how one bad belle inside
asked her to spell her name. My daughter couldn’t spell her name! Her own name
at age 8! My heart cut!
I resulted to
beating oh! Better beating! For every word she couldn’t spell I would give her
a stroke. After 1 week I was the one taking painkillers for my arm, so I
stopped beating her and said no more tv, instead I would lock her up in my room
to read. She started to retreat and get depressed. So I told her to start doing
press up! When she comes home and I see 0 in her note she will do 10 press-ups.
Nothing worked!
Then a friend
gave me this number 01-2913970, she
told me, they are education
consultants and tutors and she had heard very good things about them. I
forgot about it until I heard of them here on my Lindaikeji.
So I got a
tutor on the islandfrom Prepclassat
the beginning of the new school term (this was 3rd term in April
this year) and told them I want a very good tutor and if my daughter doesn’t pass
I will fire the tutor immediately.
The tutor was
unbelievably good. She didn’t know I used to spy on them from the kitchen
window. After the second week my daughter started to improve, it was like
magic. I was paying only N50,000 for this magic oh, the tutor would visit my
home 3 times a week and spend 2 hours or more with my daughter. When the results
came out, my olodo daughter took1st in the class, I called the Prepclass
tutor aside and asked her how she did this miracle, even my daughter’s
school teacher’s where shocked.
The tutor told
me my daughter was not actually dull she just needed someone to provide her
with support,she wanted attention whether good or bad. When she started getting
100% attention, 1 on 1 from her tutor, she wanted to do more to get that kind
of attention. The tutor showed her that she couldget it by being a very good
student and after that everything changed. The Prepclass tutor practically
changed my daughter’s life in less than 4 months. I realize the power of
getting a teacher to help your child personally and it goes beyond just
academics. Prepclass
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not just a teacher
Do you want
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