Police seal off National Assembly from youth protesters

Gun-toting mobile policemen yesterday sealed off the main gate of the National Assembly to prevent some young Nigerians on a protest march to the premises in Abuja, from seeing the leadership of the Assembly.

*Watch video here

The protesters who included celebrities like Omotola Jalade-Ekeinde, Stella Damasus, Omawumi Megbele, the Rooftop MCs, as well as older well-wishers like Peace Fiberesima, Dele Momodu, Muma Gee, Nona Adimora and Charly Boy, assembled at the Eagle Square at 11 in the morning, from where they proceeded to the Assembly grounds.

They were met by a tight security cordon on the outer perimeter of the Assembly premises. The security personnel, numbering about 40, were led by Mohammed Shehu, the Divisional Police Officer of the National Assembly. Mr. Shehu was later joined by Emeka Okere, a retired colonel, the National Assembly’s Sergeant-at-arms. Mr. Shehu promised the protesters that he would inform the leadership of the Assembly of their presence, despite protestations that the management had been duly informed prior to the rally.

Mr. Okere, on his own part, said that the leadership of the Assembly was not available, but that he would be happy to deliver the protesters’ message to them, an offer which was turned down.

While this was going on, the marchers continued to sing and chant, demanding to be allowed into the Assembly. At 2.21pm, the protesters, now numbering over a thousand, surged forward without warning, succeeding in breaking the security cordon. This move, which was met with stiff resistance and threats to shoot, forced the policemen to beat a hasty retreat to the main gate of the National Assembly, where they immediately shut the gates. Not less than three lines of mobile policemen were immediately deployed outside the shut gates. The Assembly’s public address system also broadcast messages stating that no one without a staff identity card would be allowed inside the Assembly.

Conflicting message

There were conflicting messages from the security officials; while Mr. Okere called the NTA and AIT camera crews present and informed them that the leadership of both chambers of the Assembly had left the Assembly premises, others said they were not duly informed of the protest; an allegation which was immediately debunked by Adebola Williams, who coordinated the logistics of the rally.

“On Monday the 8th (of March), we sent a letter to the office of the Clerk of the National Assembly, and it was received,” Mr.Williams said. “We also sent a letter to Dimeji Bankole (Speaker of the House of Representatives) on the ninth and that same day he sent it out to the State Security Service (SSS), the National Assembly Divisional Police Officer (DPO) and the Sergeant-at-Arms.”

Mr. Williams also said that the Senate President’s letter was sent on the same day as the Speaker’s, and that a copy had been sent to the Inspector General of Police, Ogbonnaya Onovo, a few days earlier.

He added that he was aware that the Speaker’s office forwarded the letter to the SSS and the Assembly DPO because he personally followed up by visiting both parties, where he was shown photocopies of the letter, sent from the Speaker’s office.

“I spent four days at the National Assembly tracing these letters,” he said. “I was interrogated by an SSS Assistant Director, on the purpose of the rally.”

Eventually, after more than four hours of waiting, without the appearance of any member of the National Assembly, the Chairman of the House Committee on Youth and Sports emerged to address the crowd. The protesters, however, refused to grant him audience, claiming that he was not the one they had come to see, and also refused to formally hand over their protest letter, titled “Nigerian Youth Say Enough is Enough!” to any of the Assembly officials present.

The protesters departed the premises of the National Assembly at about 4pm, with a promise to return within three months and to mobilise young people across the country to vote out leaders who do not pay attention to the youth.

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AMAA announces nomination list

30 films are amongst the contenders for the top awards in this year’s African Academy Movie Awards (AMAA), The nomination list was announced on March 6 in Ghana. Amongst the 30 films that made it out of a list of 280 are The Tenant, The Figurine, The Child and Nnenda. All make the nomination list for Best Feature Film.

In the contest for best director are Shemu Joyah (Seasons of a life); Shirley Frimpong- Manso (The Perfect Picture); Kunle Afolayan (Figurine); Leila Jewel Djansi (I sing of a well); Jude Idada and Lucky Ejim (The Tenant).

Also up for awards are Nigerian actresses Stephanie Okereke (Nnenda) and Bimbo Akintola (Freedom in Chains) in contention with Ghana’s Jackie Appiah (The Perfect Picture) in the Best Actress in a leading role category. In the Best Actor in a leading role category, Ramsey Noah (The Figurine) is up against Lucky Ejim (The Tenant) and Majid Michel (Sin of a Soul).

Wole Ojo (The Child) and Ashionye Ugboh (Jungle Ride) make the nomination list for most promising actor and actress respectively, while The Child and The Figurine are contenders in the Best Original Soundtrack category.

Other categories include best documentary, best short film, best animation, best screenplay, and AMAA achievement in cinematography amongst others.

AMAA CEO, Peace Anyiam-Osigwe said the motion picture industry has projected Africa positively to the world, adding that film makers in the continent should use their works to tell the African story in a more positive and meaningful way.

Ethiopia, Kenya, South Africa, Tanzania, Burkina Faso, and Mozambique are amongst others vying for awards in this year’s awards scheduled for April 10 in Yenagoa, the Bayelsa State capital.

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More trouble in Jos

Troubled Plateau State experienced yet another wave of violence in the early hours of Wednesday, March 17, with at least 11 people killed in Riyom, just outside Jos, state radio was reported as saying. Speaking to NEXT over the phone, Davou Rwang, a resident of Jos, said, "It is true. We heard 11 people have been killed in Ryom, just outside of Jos." Another resident, who lives around Jos and asked not to be named, told us that the attacks were carried out by some groups. "There were carried out by three groups because three villages were attacked," he said. “They also set houses ablaze." The police said they have begun investigating the incident. This latest killing comes only days after the Army said it had intercepted a truck conveying 44 people suspected to be militants, on their way to Jos. Jos was rocked by violence 10 days ago, when mostly women and children were killed at night, in another settlement just outside the city. The March 7 violence occurred weeks after hundreds died in four days of sectarian violence. 234next U know what people, its so maddening and that this carnage, abuse of humanity and abject disregard for the rights of hapless children and women is becoming an everyday episode in our collective drama as a people. The question really is; are we in a failed state where anarchy is the menu of our everyday meal. U will agree with me that when "things fall apart the centre will not hold and mere anarchy is loosed upon the land". This really sums upour present state or predicament as a nation. hw sad and grievous for a nation to have the kind of 'leaders' that presently have become a curse rather than a blessing to us as a people. People as INEC begins its propaganda towards how ready it is to conduct the 2011 elections, its about time we refuse this continued abuse of our rights to good governance and rape of our humanity. Lets arise and support change 2011. We have paid too much sacrifice with the deaths of helpless children in the Jos massacre with aborted destinies.

Oscar 2010 Red Carpet: Fashion Report Card

WoW! Isn't she beautiful and lovely as a Queen! Latifah enchanting as ever...

Demi Moore Grade: A- The 47-year-old was sexy yet sophisticated in a ruffled silk organza Atelier Versace number. Congrats go out Demi for skillfully

Cameron Diaz Grade: A- Cammie D. epitomized Hollywood glamour in her strapless embellished Oscar de la Renta gown, which she accessorized with a Cartier diamond ring and loose sideswept ‘do matching her skin tone to her gown!

Lenny Kravitz Grade: A Kravitz upped the cool factor on the Oscar red carpet. It’s hard to look bad in tux, but let’s face it: the “Are You Gonna Go My Way” rocker would look hot in a potato sack!

Ryan Seacrest Grade: B+ The busiest man in Hollywood was all smiles in his black Burberry tux and skinny silk tie. Don’t his spiked locks remind you a little bit of a certain “High School Musical” star?

Zac Efron Grade: A It’s easy to see why Zac had all the young ladies screaming at him from the red carpet bleachers.

Gabourey Sidibe Grade: A- The Best Actress nominee was absolutely “Precious” while working it in a blue off-the-shoulder Marchesa creation. Gabourey also won some extra points for her sass: “If fashion was porn, this dress is the money shot,” she laughed on the red carpet.

Kristen Stewart Grade: A+ The “Twilight” sourpuss looked much less awkward than usual in a stunning strapless midnight blue Monique Lhuillier gown. Kristen topped off her look with a classy diamond bracelet by H. Stern.

Oscar 2010 Red Carpet: Fashion Report Card

Penelope Cruz Grade: A The Spanish beauty was simply ravishing in a dusky red draped Donna Karan gown, chic bun, and Chopard jewels.

'The Hurt Locker' earns best-picture Academy Award

The Iraq War drama "The Hurt Locker" won best picture and five other prizes Sunday at the Academy Awards, its haul including best director for Kathryn Bigelow.

Bigelow is the first woman in the 82-year history of the Oscars to earn Hollywood's top prize for filmmakers.

"There's no other way to describe it. It's the moment of a lifetime," Bigelow said. "It's so extraordinary to be in the company of my fellow nominees, such powerful filmmakers, who have inspired me and I have admired, some of them for decades."

Among those Bigelow and "The Hurt Locker" beat are ex-husband James Cameron and his sci-fi spectacle "Avatar." Bigelow and Cameron were married from 1989-91.

Cameron was seated right behind Bigelow at the Oscars and joined a standing ovation for her, clapping vigorously and saying, "Yes, yes" after she won.(AP)

Sadu bounces back!

Born near Lagos, raised near London, the svelte and elegant bandleader Helen Folasade Adu, a/k/a Sade, spent MTV's first wave of raunchy sexhibitionism quietly cultivating her feminine mystique while most fame-chasing songstresses were loudly wiggling theirs. Not that her sophisti-pop proved any less commercial. For all her relative refinement, the quiet-storm royal reigns as Godmother of Neo-Soul, now a 51-year-old soberly surveying her vast yet sparse career: 50 million records sold between just six studio albums in 30 years, and you've heard moments from them all—in tapas parlors, in windchime shops, in all the sacred spaces that society has reserved for Her, the ageless face and disembodied breath of a band staffed by funkless Brits who might have wound up covering Phil Collins if they hadn't caught her on precisely the right beat. Good thing they did. In her service, they are magical. So is she.

Oh, but Sade's magic hinges on emotional sleight-of-hand, as she carefully tucks her mortal personality behind a stylish smokescreen. I've tried not to be mystified, but it's hard. The lady is a professional enigma—sultry and secretive, as omni-cultural as the president and equally impossible to really know, which of course just makes her easier to crush on. On Soldier of Love (her first record in 10 years), she slips through cool, ambient fog, riding harmonies as hollow as a silencer as she coos utterances too nuanced and disconnected to decode.

What a spy. She's been the cryptic kind since the throbbing double agent loungecore of her mid-'80s breakout hit "Smooth Operator" revealed a dime novelist's penchant for intrigue. We learn a little about him, this Mr. Operator, but what, really, do we know about her? For a muse whose feathery sighs signify as sensual, Sade is more ethereal than earthly, more like the Greek muse Erato than the geek's muse Erykah. We know she has suffered much heartbreak—always with the heartbreak. And yet again here she merely alludes to it, conjuring the same vague weather metaphors that Cormac McCarthy used to imply whatever cataclysm prefaces The Road.

With Soldier of Love, start with the ambiguous Mayan ruins on the cover—ominously 2012—or the esoteric free verse she drags across glittering riffs slow-jamming at Quaaludes speed. Then, ponder this couplet, exhaled into trickling piano on "Morning Bird": "You are the blood of me/The harvest of my dreams." I find that mixed metaphor as out of place as the ocean waves crashing on the space-themed "The Moon and the Sky"—unless it's a tides thing. Might as well be. For all I care, Sade could waste a whole record whispering tidal-pattern incantations in Liv Tyler's Elvish, and it would all remain so sexy, so cold. On "Long Hard Road," she quivers about the length of long, hard roads while maracas rustle like tumbleweeds in agreement. On "The Safest Place," she brings her beau to "the safest hiding place": "my heart." (Absolutely true.) "Inside is a field," she further describes. "And trees/And a lake." You worry she might slip up and quote Goodnight Moon, which would be just as personable.

Oh, well. Some spells can swamp you even when you see them coming—consider Sade's grandma, a Yoruba herbalist who made the young singer sit on newspaper to keep the couch's bad juju from rubbing off on her ass. Two generations later, Sade's aesthetic sorcery defies rational interpretation. A dry-your-eyes soother like "In Another Time" ("Soon, he'll mean nothing to you"), built from an "Unchained Melody" arpeggio, should sound as dull as the elevator it rode up on, but doesn't. It sounds rarefied. "You'll always know the reason why this song will stay on your mind," she winks on "Moon," as her Anglo-soul lilt glides through lonesome reverb, offering intimacy and distance in the same icy, nurturing breath.

Besides, you might not want that spell to break. So confirms "Baby Father," a mundane marriage of metronome and futzing guitar, over which Sade tells her daughter the story of how Mom and Dad's meeting bloomed into "the flower that is you." It's sweet, it's banal. "Skin," conversely, is highly relatable yet obliquely mesmerizing: "Wash you off my skin/I'm going to peel you away" she sighs to an ex, stretching the "peel" like a demonstration of her cleansing pain.

And then she dies, or nearly does, on some war-blistered battlefield the title track incites us to imagine. "I've lost the use of my heart/But I'm still alive," she crows, like a loveless cyborg crawling up some Afghan hill on a mission to out-Enya the Taliban. Amid heavy bass, a synthesizer churns out machine-gun blasts. What fun. This is easy-listening divahood. It's also exactly the metaphor-make-believe the Godmother was born for, and apparently unthawed from carbonite to bring anew. She'll survive. If I see her in the final century, I will hardly be surprised.

Nigerian company launches online UK shopping in Naira

The problem of rejection of credit cards from Nigerians by foreign online shopping companies as well as tedious shipment procedures will now be a thing of the past with the launch of ishopinlondon.com, a new cross-border shopping portal.

Unlike other online shopping platforms, the new portal in collaboration with FCMB bank will be accepting payments in Naira equivalent of Pounds value and delivery will made between 10 to 15 days depending on location with an affordable service charge.

Ishopinlondon which is run by two experienced Nigerians is a fully incorporated Nigerian company backed by Twokeys UK Limited. Chiemeka Ozumba, an expert in PR and brand development sits atop the organization as co-founder/ Chief Executive Officer and directs the UK office.

Unveiling the platform to the media in Lagos, Lawrence Obasi, GM, Nigeria Operations disclosed that efforts has been going for two years to put adequate structures of global standards in place for a smooth take-off.

The company according to Obasi is launching out with 10 service/ delivery points across major cities in Nigeria with plans of expansion. They include Lagos, Abuja, PortHarcourt, Owerri, Calabar, Uyo, Awka and Umuahia. He explained that the portal boasts of unique user friendly features and is secure with a SSL Certificate. Other attractions also include loyalty reward, UK standard customer service and an Associate Business Programme (ABP).

In a way to contribute to business development in the Nigeria, Obasi said that the company will be working with entrepreneurs under ABP willing to tap into the opportunity by providing assistance through support facilities.

On the choice of UK, Obasi said that it is of common knowledge that products of from the UK are of the best quality standards in the world. He revealed that unlike goods from other parts of the world such as Dubai, China and the US, products from the UK have earned a reputation for quality among shoppers from around the world.

Asked about damages and warranty, Obasi disclosed that as been practiced else where in the world, global standard regulations have been adopted by the company in its charter including insurance to ensure that customers get good value for their money at no extra cost.

How Omotola, Zack Orji spent Valentine day Omotola, Zack Orji bags best celebrity couples

Nollywood stars, Omotola Jolade-Ekeinde and Zack Orji and their beaus spent valentine day evening at Diamond Ball 2, a couples love show which held at Welcome Centre, International Airport Road, Lagos.

Looking like two young people who just fell in love, Omotola and Captain Matthew Ekeinde as well as Nollywood couple, Ngozi and Zack Orji were the cynosure of all eyes at the well-attended event. Omotola’s single-strapped black mini-gown dress was well complemented by Captain Ekeinde’s black blazers on cream coloured pants. While Zack Orji opted for a Brown blazer with a jean, Ngozi his wife who a designer dark googles went for a black mini-gown.

One of the highpoint of the occasion was a short dance by the celebrity couples to Onyeka Nwenu’s evergreen hit, One Love. Captain Ekeinde Ngozi Orji proved were exceptional as they strut their stuff much to the delight of the audience who kept asking for more. The Orjis also emerged one of the winners of February couples dance competition.

Highlights of the occasion include raffle draws which saw winners walking away with various prizes such as Dana Air return ticket to Abuja, furniture by Home Makers, spa and massage treatment, weekend at Welcome Centre Hotels, shopping date at Twice and Nice and perfumes by Tara among others.

For their exemplary life as couples, the two celebrity couples received an award of recognition from BlackButterfly Events. While presenting the award, Glory Adeyemi, project coordinator, “In spite of the popularity of celebrity divorce cases, the two couples have become an example of commitment to numerous young Nigerian couples.”

Also in attendance were Bimbo and Tunde Oloyede, Ex-BBN housemate, Frank and Edna Konwea and gospel singer, Liza C and hubby.

Photos From Walk for Fertility Naija!

FIRST FERTILITY WALK IN NAIJA WAS BAM!

It sure was fun and excitement as the young and old took to the street to participate in the first ever naija fertility walk which took place last Saturday the 23rd Jan. 2010. Blackbutterfly Events organized the walk under the aegis of "Walk for Fertility Nigeria". The event according to the Project Director, Glory Adeyemi, the walk was put together to show solidarity for couples who have issues with having kids. But more importantly to create awareness about the fact that there are fertility options available to such people to help them experience the joy of parenthood. In the words of Olamiju Oretola, Media & Content Manager of the project, peoples attitude and perception toward the fertility issues and those affected need to change. Hence the need to mobilize action to raise support for those affected. He says "one way or the other we are all involved, if you are not a victim, you are affected because the victim could be an aunt, uncle, sister or brother". The event was supported by Nestle Water, UAC Foods, Inspiration FM, and Reveal Image.