We doubt Sanusi’s peace moves, FG tells court

The Federal Government, yesterday, said it was still in doubt of the sincerity of the erstwhile Governor of the Central Bank, CBN, Sanusi Lamido Sanusi, to make peace with President Goodluck Jonathan.

Consequently, the Attorney-General of the Federation and Minister of Justice, Mohammed Bello Adoke, SAN, yesterday, told the National Industrial Court, NIC, sitting in Abuja that he was determined to pursue the legal action that was instituted against President Jonathan by the former CBN governor to its logical conclusion.

The AGF made this position of the government known to the court shortly after Sanusi who is now the Emir of Kano, notified the President of the NIC, Justice Babatunde Adejumo, of his decision to withdraw the suit challenging the powers of President Jonathan to suspend him from office as governor of the apex bank without recourse to the National Assembly.


Sanusi had in his suit, contended that only a two-third majority vote from the Senate could effectively oust a CBN governor from office, irrespective of any allegation levelled against the occupant of such position.

Though the case was originally filed before the Abuja Division of the Federal Court, it was subsequently transferred to the NIC by trial Justice Gabriel Kolawole who declined jurisdiction to entertain the matter.

Justice Kolawole in a judgment on May 20, relied on section 24(3) of the NIC Act 2006, to transfer the case on the basis that the issue bothered on employer/employee relationship.

Meantime, at the resumed sitting on the matter yesterday, Sanusi, who was represented by three Senior Advocates of Nigeria, told the court that he had already filed a notice to discontinue further proceeding on the suit

Addressing the court through his lead counsel Mr. Kola Awodehin, SAN, the emir of Kano, stressed that he had already served both President Jonathan and the AGF, who are the 1st and 2nd defendants in the matter, with copies of the said notice of discontinuance. ”Our application is supported by Order 19 rule 17 of the NIC rules, and my Lord, all the parties have been duly served”, Awodehin added.

However, before Awodehin could conclude his submission, counsel to the AGF, Chief Mike Ozekhome, SAN, told the court that although he would not object to Sanusi’s withdrawal application, he said his client, sceptic about the genuine intention of the plaintiff, was determined to continue with the matter.

Ozekhome, contended that Sanusi ought to have shown his sincerity by also withdrawing the appeal he lodged before the appeal court in Abuja which is challenging the jurisdiction of the NIC to adjudicate on the dispute between him and President Jonathan.

”My lord, as we speak today, that appeal is still pending. In fact, the plaintiff equally has another application before Justice Kolawole wherein he is seeking the stay of execution of the federal high court judgement pending the determination of his pending appeal”, Ozekhome added.

He told the court that the high court has already issued the AGF a notice to come and compile records for onward transmission to the court of appeal.

”In view of these developments, the AGF has asked me to wait for further instruction and it is that instruction that I am waiting for now”, Ozehkome told the court.

He insisted that unless Sanusi embarked on a wholistic withdrawal of all the pending legal actions he filed against the government in relation to his suspension from office, the AGF would have no option than to go ahead with the case.

Besides, Ozehkome, informed the court that the AGF has also gone before the appeal court to challenge the powers of Justice Kolawole to transfer the case to the NIC after he had held that he lacked jurisdiction to entertain Sanusi’s suit

- www.vanguard News

Ekiti election didn’t affect Tinubu’s relevance –Kola-Balogun

Mr. Stephen Kola-Balogun

The Osun State Commissioner for Sports and Youth Development, Mr. Stephen Kola-Balogun, on Saturday refuted the claims of Lagos-based lawyer, Fred Agbaje, that the National Leader of the All Progressives Congress, Asiwaju Bola Tinubu, had lost relevance in the politics of the South-West.

Agbaje had, in an interview with Saturday PUNCH, said if Tinubu was still relevant to the people of the region, the APC would not have lost the Ekiti State governorship election.

He added that the era of taking voters for granted and imposing candidates on them had gone and that if care was not taken, the APC would also lose more states in the region.

Reacting to Agbaje’s assertion, Kola-Balogun said it was wrong to equate the loss of control of Ekiti State to loss of control of Yorubaland.

He noted that Agbaje’s claim could only become valid if the APC loses Osun State, which he described as the heart of Yorubaland.

He said, “Fred got it wrong, with due respect to him. He is over reacting. With respect to the Ekiti election, Ekiti is just one group of people.

“In Osun, we have an important election coming up in about five weeks. Osun is at the heart of Yorubaland. In Osun State we have Osogbo, Iwo, Ile- Ife, Ede, Ilesha, and Ila and other large towns.

“It is when we lose a state like Osun that you can you can say the APC or Tinubu is losing a grip of Yorubaland.

“Any party that loses Osun State has lost the heart of Yorubaland. You can’t say because the APC lost Ekiti, then Tinubu has lost control of Yorubaland. Ekiti State is made up of just one people, the Ekiti people, unlike Osun.”

Kola-Balogun however noted that Yorubaland had never been dominated by one political party for a long time, saying there would always be opposition in the region.

He added that the PDP’s victory in Ekiti State could also be attributed to the sympathy votes that its candidate, Ayo Fayose, got due to his unceremonious removal from office as governor of the state; as well as the defection of Opeyemi Bamidele from the APC to the Labour Party.

'Fast & Furious 7' gets new release date

But before you freak out, this is good news: "Fast & Furious 7" is coming out even faster.

Instead of arriving on April 10, 2015, the seventh installment of the "Fast" franchise will now bow on April 3, Variety reports.

The speculation is that Universal moved the release date up a week to allow more time for an international run.

"Fast 7" was initially supposed to open during 2014's summer season, but that changed after the death of franchise star Paul Walker last fall. The theory is that Universal's planning to "retire" Walker's character, Brian O'Conner - not kill him off.

Joan Rivers jokes Obama is gay, first lady is transgender

 Who needs Fourth of July fireworks when you have Joan Rivers around?

The comedian known for her lack of self-censoring recently officiated a same-sex wedding and was asked by a photographer if she believed the United States would ever see the first gay or female president. Her response was typical Rivers.

"We already have it with Obama, so let's just calm down," she said. "You know Michelle (Obama) is a trans."

When asked to further explain Rivers said, "A transgender. We all know it."

A representative for Rivers released the following statement to CNN from the comic about her remarks to the photographer:

"I think it's a compliment. She's so attractive, tall, with a beautiful body, great face, does great makeup. Take a look and go back to La Cage Au Follies (sic). The most gorgeous women are transgender. Stop it already ... and if you want to talk about 'politically correct,' I think this is a 'politically incorrect' attack on me because I'm old, Jewish, a woman and a 'hetty' -- a heteosexual ... and I plan to sue the reporter who, when he turned off his camera, tried to touch me inappropriately on the a** - luckily he hit my ankle. Read the book ... if you think that's silly, wait to (sic) you see what I say about FDR and Eleanor!"

400 trucks burn on Afghan roads

Smoke and flames rise from burning fuel trucks following an overnight attack by Taliban militants.

More than 400 trucks carrying fuel and oil were burning on roads west of Kabul, Afghanistan, police spokesman Hashmatullah Stanekzai said Saturday.

Emergency crews tried to contain the damage, he said.

Residents and local news reporters posted images online of a line of red fire and burning trucks on the night horizon.

The Taliban claimed in a statement that their fighters had attacked a parking depot used by trucks delivering supplies to NATO.

MBGN and other beauty pageants should be banned- Etcetera writes

Etcetera now shares his opinion about pageants in Nigeria. He thinks it should be banned...lol. That won't happen. Pageants have been around for decades and will be around for many years to come. I absolutely do not agree with anything he wrote here but read for yourselves and share your thoughts.

Every year, thousands of girls compete in various beauty pageants across Nigeria. While the organisers may believe that they are helping our girls to feel “beautiful,” they are also in many other ways causing significant damage to the self-esteem and body perception of other girls. The girl who won may feel as beautiful as the prettiest woman ever created, but what about the girls who didn’t win? How do they feel? I spoke with some past contestants of one of the pageants (the girls that didn’t win) and asked them why they think they didn’t win, and this is what some of them said, “Because I wasn’t pretty enough,” “Because the organisers didn’t like me,” “Because it is a racket and who knows what she has offered,” etc. Things like this inspire jealousy, low self-esteem, and other self destructive behaviours such as self isolation, social anxiety, eating disorder, drug abuse, personality disorder, bitterness and social phobia among our girls. Continue...
Beauty pageants in Nigeria should be sanctioned. Where do we draw the line between “beauty pageant” and “prostitution?” These pageant organisers and agencies are doing nothing but exploiting our girls in order to make money. The society is becoming so twisted and our sense of right and wrong is becoming so skewed. You gather politicians and paedophiles to watch girls in G-strings and bikinis wriggling their waists all in the name of making a show for TV. Are the contestants always meant to lie about their beliefs and relationship status in order to get a good score? Have we totally lost sight of what is morally right and wrong?


Beauty contests seem pointless to me. To tell a woman to submit to someone else’s definition of beauty is crazy. So when the contest is over and someone wins, does that immediately make them more beautiful than the rest? Are they more beautiful according to a panel of judges? I think it is a sick idea and the money spent organising these beauty contests can be more useful for other causes.
Beauty pageant has been nothing but degrading and harmful to our women and children. It turns our women into objects to be used and played with. It makes the women that don’t make it through feel bad about their looks and even those that do get through feel like they still have to do something more to look prettier. These beauty pageants also set false standards about how beautiful women are supposed to look. So, just because a woman is thin with certain looks, it makes them more beautiful? And women that are thick or big can’t be pretty or beautiful? All they have succeeded in saying is that beauty is only skin deep. Well my friend, it isn’t.


Isn’t it bad enough seeing young Nigerian girls forcing eating disorders on themselves just to be perceived as prettier? ‘I am so fat and it is just not healthy’ has become the chorus of every girl on the street. Parents have become very competitive trying to make their daughters more beautiful than their neighbours’ by forcing their children to make unnecessary adjustments to their bodies to look better than their peers. Now we see six-year-olds having hair extensions, permanent mascara and waxed eyebrows. Do these children really need to be exposed to such things to know that they are beautiful? Do we need our children to think that their looks are judged and if they don’t stand out among their peers, they are not beautiful?


Can a woman ever have a sincere appreciation of her body when the only time she is ever praised for her looks is after hours of preparation with dozens of beauty products? Beauty pageants can only judge what we can see at first glance, and women are so much more than that. The society needs to protect the children from the sick idea of assembling girls in camps and tasking them with over-sexualised dance routines. These beauty pageants can only ingrain into our women that in order to be beautiful, they need to be skinny, which for some body types is incredibly unhealthy. Sincerely, what is the moral behind these beauty pageant shows? How have they helped the society in general? With sports, we can talk about mental discipline, fitness and advance body control. For all the money that beauty pageants cost to organise, is it really worth it? Of all the things you could expose our girls to, are pageants really the best thing out there?


When you teach people that beauty is only on the outside, it can cause major problems, not only health problems but social, physical and mental problems also. If a beautiful girl enters a pageant and doesn’t win, she may begin to consider herself ugly or fat or too skinny. Beauty pageants create a lot of problems that can affect not only the girl but the people she surrounds herself with.


Women have always demanded respect from men. Not only should they demand it, I think they deserve it. But why make them scamper around in G-strings and bikinis showing off their bodies, knowing that men are going to go “gaga” and lick their lips. I don’t want to sound disrespectful, but can you blame the men? Men will always be men. We can’t change our nature, but you know what we can change. We can change the fact that our women are naked and competing to be “the most beautiful in the world.” We shouldn’t endorse beauty contest because it brings money to some people. I believe that there are still a handful of women out there that share the sentiment that beauty contests are wrong and give men the wrong idea of what a “true wife” looks like.

'BRT bus did not kill any soldier' - LAGBUS official explains what really happened

LAGBUS Asset Management Limited, operators of BRT buses have denied that one of their buses killed a soldier. Soldiers went on a rampage yesterday around the Palmgrove area of Lagos, stopping BRT buses, asking passengers to get down, beating the drivers, destroying the buses before eventually setting them on fire. The damage yesterday is said to be worth over N100million.

But speaking about it, a LAGBUS official said they had nothing to do with it, explaining that they only found a corpse in their bus and went to report it to the police;

"By 10 p.m. last night, one of our buses broke down at Onipanu; by 11 p.m., a rescue team with a van went to the scene to tow the bus. Unfortunately, area boys started stoning our team which made our men to leave. Meanwhile, the driver put on hazard lights and C- Caution to alert motorists of the breakdown. Continue...


“By 5am this morning, before the rescue team got to the scene, a corpse had been deposited in our bus and a motorcycle parked behind it.
“When we saw it, we reported the case to the Pedro Police Station, Somolu, but before we got back to the scene, soldiers had burnt down five BRT buses and one belonging to LAGBUS.BRT buses were later withdrawn from the roads yesterday to prevent more damages. The man who died was an army corporal