Oscars Only Reward Blacks Playing “Subservient” Roles - David Oyelowo

British actor of Nigerian descent,David Oyelowo snubbed by the Oscars for his praised performance as Martin Luther King, Jr. in Selma, has called out the larger problem of black actors and actresses being ignored when they aren’t in “subservient” roles. 

The star made his comments at the Santa Barbara International Film Festival.

“Generally speaking, we as black people have been celebrated more for when we are subservient,when we are not being leaders or kings or being at the center of our own narrative, driving it forward,” explained Oyelowo. “To me, Denzel Washington should have won for playing Malcolm X.” 

“We’ve just got to come to the point whereby there isn’t a self-fulfilling prophecy, a notion of who black people are, that feeds into what we are celebrated as, not just in the Academy, but in life generally. We have been slaves, we have been domestic servants, we have been criminals, we have been all of those things. But we’ve been leaders, we’ve been kings, we’ve been those who changed the world.” 

Kim Kardashian Naked Butt Photo From Love Magazine Leaks Online – SEE PIC

A new photo of Kim Kardashian smoking a cigarette with her naked butt up in the air has leaked online. 

The picture of her behind, set to be featured next week inside the pages of Love magazine, is taken from an entirely different angle than you’ve most likely seen it before. Check it out after the cut....

Yakubu Aiyegbeni signs for English club, Reading

Reading have confirmed the arrival of striker Yakubu Aiyegbeni, who has penned a deal until the end of the season.

The former Super Eagles player will take squad number 20 and will be hoping to bring his wealth of experience to the Championship side.

Aiyegbeni is the highest scoring African player ever in English football with 114, even more than Chelsea’ Didier Drogba (107).

Manager Steve Clarke said: “An experienced goalscorer, Yakubu brings a fantastic scoring record to this club and his addition will complement the strikers we’ve already got at Reading and help us to improve as a team in latter stages of the season.

“I know all about him as a player and I have heard very good reports about him as a personality in the dressing room. He is no-risk signing for us and I look forward to him scoring goals for Reading Football Club.”

The 32-year-old, who has previously played for Blackburn Rovers, Everton and Middlesbrough, joins as a free agent.

Dancing With Girls from Nigeria Made Me Realize I Really Suck at Dancing - Amber Rose

American diva, Amber Rose hosted the just concluded D'banj's 10th Anniversary kickoff party, which held in Lagos.

The model and video vixen, must have had fun at the show, as she tried to learn the popular "Shoki" dance moves. 

Dancing with Girls from Nigeria made me realize I really suck at dancing’ she tweeted.

 

I am not scared of debates – Buhari

APC presidential candidate, Gen. Muhammadu Buhari, on Sunday, said he is not scared and would not shy away from media debate. 

Instead, he would make himself available like he has done in previous elections. 

APC added that Buhari would not shy away from explaining his policy plan on how to rebuild Nigeria Nigeria from the abyss of insecurity, comatose economy, decaying infrastructure, massive unemployment and poor public health situation.

A statement issued by the director of media and publicity, APC Presidential Campaign Organisation, Mallam Garba Shehu, maintained that the APC presidential candidate “is ever ready to address any issue put before him” contrary to insinuations by spokesperson of PDP campaign organisation, Chief Femi Fani-Kayode.

Fire Gut Rivers State High Court, Documents Burnt

The Rivers State High Court at Degema, Degema Local Government Area earlier today was engulfed by fire in the early hours of the morning.

The cause of the inferno is yet to be ascertained but eyewitnesses said it started around 4am. Almost all parts of the building including many documents were destroyed in the fire, which started barely 48 hours after the directive from the JUSUN to judiciary workers to resume duties.

But Punch is reporting that it was a bomb blast, and not a fire incident.

Details to come....

Chimamanda Adichie speaks on poor state of power in Nigeria (READ)

Article written by award-winning writer Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, first published on the New York Times.

We call it light; “electricity” is too sterile a word, and “power” too stiff, for this Nigerian phenomenon that can buoy spirits and smother dreams. Whenever I have been away from home for a while, my first question upon returning is always: “How has light been?” The response, from my gateman, comes in mournful degrees of a head shake. Bad. Very bad. 

The quality is as poor as the supply: Light bulbs dim like tired, resentful candles. Robust fans slow to a sluggish limp. Air-conditioners bleat and groan andmake sounds they were not made to make, their halfhearted cooling leaving the air clammy. In this assault of low voltage, the compressor of an air-conditioner suffers — the compressor is its heart, and it is an expensive heart to replace. Once, my guest room air-conditioner caught fire. The room still bears the scars, the narrow lines between floor tiles smoke-stained black. 

Sometimes the light goes off and on and off and on, and bulbs suddenly brighten as if jerked awake, before dimming again. Things spark and snap. A curl of smoke rises from the water heater. I feel myself at the mercy of febrile malignant powers, and I rush to pull my laptop plug out of the wall. Later, electricians are summoned and they diagnose the problem with the ease of a long acquaintance. The current is too high or too low, never quite right. A wire has melted. Another compressor will need to be replaced. 

For succor, I turn to my generator, that large Buddha in a concrete shed near the front gate. It comes awake with a muted confident hum, and the difference in effect is so obvious it briefly startles: Light bulbs become brilliant and air-conditioners crisply cool.

The generator is electricity as electricity should be. It is also the repository of a peculiar psychology of Nigerian light: the lifting of mood. The generator is lord of my compound. Every month, two men filled with mysterious knowledge come to minister to it with potions and filters. Once, it stopped working and I panicked. The two men blamed dirty diesel, the sludgy, slow, expensive liquid wreathed in conspiracy theories. (We don’t have regular electricity, some say, because of the political influence of diesel importers.) Now, before my gateman feeds the diesel into the generator, he strains it through a cloth and cleans out bits of dirt. The generator swallows liters and liters of diesel. Each time I count out cash to buy yet another jerrycan full, my throat tightens. 

 I spend more on diesel than on food.

My particular misfortune is working from home. I do not have a corporate office to escape to, where the electricity is magically paid for. My ideal of open windows and fresh, breathable air is impossible in Lagos’s seething heat. (Leaving Lagos is not an option. I love living here, where Nigeria’s energy and initiative are concentrated, where Nigerians bring their biggest dreams.) To try to cut costs — sustainably, I imagine — I buy an inverter. Its silvery, boxlike batteries make a corner of the kitchen look like a physics lab.

The inverter’s batteries charge while there is light, storing energy that can be used later, but therein lies the problem: The device requires electricity to be able to give electricity. And it is fragile, helpless in the face of the water pump and microwave. Finally, I buy a second generator, a small, noisy machine, inelegant and scrappy. It uses petrol, which is cheaper than diesel, and can power lights and fans and freezers but only one air-conditioner, and so I move my writing desk from my study to my bedroom, to consolidate cool air. 

Day after day, I awkwardly navigate between my sources of light, the big generator for family gatherings, the inverter for cooler nights, the small generator for daytime work.

Like other privileged Nigerians who can afford to, I have become a reluctant libertarian, providing my own electricity, participating in a precarious frontier spirit. But millions of Nigerians do not have this choice. They depend on the malnourished supply from their electricity companies. 

 In 2005, a law was passed to begin privatizing the generation and distribution of electricity, and ostensibly to revamp the old system rooted in bureaucratic rot. Ten years on, little has changed. Most of the companies that produce electricity from gas and hydro sources, and all of the distribution companies that serve customers, are now privately owned. But the link between them — the transmission company — is still owned by the federal government.

I cannot help but wonder how many medical catastrophes have occurred in public hospitals because of “no light,” how much agricultural produce has gone to waste, how many students forced to study in stuffy, hot air have failed exams, how many small businesses have foundered. What greatness have we lost, what brilliance stillborn? I wonder, too, how differently our national character might have been shaped, had we been a nation with children who took light for granted, instead of a nation whose toddlers learn to squeal with pleasure at the infrequent lighting of a bulb.

As we prepare for elections next month, amid severe security concerns, this remains an essential and poignant need: a government that will create the environment for steady and stable electricity, and the simple luxury of a monthly bill. 

This is the difference between APC and PDP – Gov. Fashola explains

Speaking during an APC meeting with organized private sector at Marina, Lagos today February 2nd, Lagos state governor, Babatunde Fashola, told his audience the difference between APC & PDP.

“The manifesto of the APC is designed to address 2015 problems going on to 2019 while PDP has is a 1999 manifesto and that probably explains the disconnect between our realities and the realities that you hear. The transformation that has been put forth has headed south not west. The Naira has weakened, interest rates has come up and it is for us to chose whether we want four more years of that and the Naira is essential in a free fall in an economy that is currently import denominated and it would only mean that the purchasing power of our disposable income would continue to reduce.” he said.

The necessity of now is to halt that free fall. That is something we cannot vote continuity on. I will not. But more importantly as the candidate, Gen Buhari, has said, it is essentially not how much really Nigeria earns, it is what value we get out of that money. If we had sold crude oil, our major income earner for like almost 5-6 years at over a $100 per barrel and all of us are saying there is pain, do we want to continue now when there is reduced income with the same team on the same management capacity. If they couldn’t do topnotch at $100 per barrel, can we trust them to do more with less?” he added. 

Teenage Boy Found in Tyre Compartment Of A Plane In Lagos

Teenager, Samuel Ogundeyi, suspected to be a stowaway was arrested in the tyre compartment of an aircraft parked in the hangar of ExecuJet terminal of Murtala Muhammed International Airport Lagos, on Sunday.

Punch Newspaper reports that the teenager was discovered at about 12 noon when pilots of the aircraft marked M-MYNA, were carrying out a routine inspection on the aircraft before starting the engine. The commanding pilot was said to have found the boy in the tyre compartment of the aircraft.The suspect also had in his possession two handsets without SIM cards which he claimed were his.
Following his arrest, the teenager claimed he had entered the hangar through the facility of the Headquarters, Air Defence Corps of the Nigerian Air Force located next to the Presidential/ VIP Lounge in the airport on Saturday night with the help of a person he identified only as ‘a brother.’

The boy, who spoke in Yoruba and pidgin English languages, said he was able to cross the L18 runway over to ExecuJet facility located in the international wing of the airport, a distance of about one kilometre, at night when he noticed there was no flight landing or taking off on the runway.

The aircraft operated by Tag Aviation was said to have flown in a former Minister of Petroleum, Chief Dan Etete, into Lagos airport on Saturday night and parked at the private hangar, where it was expected to take off on Sunday afternoon before the incident happened.

Photos: Peter and Lola Okoye Go On A Boat Cruise With Friends

After burying his dad over the weekend, Peter Okoye decided to take a break and unwind with his wife Lola. The beautiful couple took a boat cruise together with friends.

See more pics after the cut....

Man Commits Suicide By Hanging Himself In Lagos

A certain young man has committed suicide by hanging himself in an uncompleted building in Lawal Unity Street, Meiran, Ile-Iwe community in the Meiran area of Lagos State

He took his life on Thursday morning after sneaking into the building in the night of Wednesday.

Eyewitnesses told Punch Metro that the victim was brought down dead from the rope with which he hung himself. Efforts by the people in the community and the police to identify him had proved abortive.

A community leader, Samuel Oroja, said the traditional ruler of the community had been informed of the development and plans were on to conduct rites to forestall a recurrence.

“I have called some other elders, including the traditional ruler, to notify them so that we can know what to do about the corpse.

“Nobody knows the man or where he came from. We have reported the matter at the Meiran Police Station.

“What we will do now is to prepare rites and make sacrifices to forestall a recurrence of unnatural death like this because this is a bad sign for the community, he added"

However the Police Public Relations Officer, Kenneth Nwosu, said the police have identified the victim as Mosunmola Raphael, a 28-year-old man.

 “His relatives came to identify him and they said he had mental problem. His corpse has been released to the family after they presented some documents.”

My Name has been dragged through the mud more than once & every time i pick it up and wash it Off - Alex Ekubo

Nollywood actor and model,  Alex Ekubo took to his Instagram few hours ago, to send a message to haters with a picture of himself.

"The Difference between you & I, is that I’m built for This!! I’ve dealt with my demons. I’ve been Broke, Paid, Lied to, Taken Advantage of, Cheated On, Hungry & Full. My Name has been dragged through the mud more than once & every time i pick it up and wash it Off !! I’ve come a Long way & still have a Long way to go. Want you to know that your opinion don’t Offend Me…#StillSMILING #StillSTANDING #StilliRISE

Photos: Meet the woman who hasn’t smiled in 40 years - Explains why

Meet Tess, a 50-year-old woman, who works as a cook instructor for a vegetable produce company and has not broken into a smile for the past 40yrs.

Although she's not devoid of humor, the last time she smiled was when she was 10 years old.

Not even the birth of her daughter, was emotional enough to make her smile. 

According to DailyMail, she always sit stone-faced while her friends giggle around her.

Tess says maintaining a perennial poker face, is a crucial way to keeping her - admittedly, impressive - youthful looks. 

By the time Tess who divorced in 1998 reached 40, she realized that while friends had developed lines around their mouths, her face was wrinkle-free. 

It’s not as if I’m miserable. I love life. I just don’t feel the need to show it by walking around with a rictus grin on my face.

“If I did smile I developed big hamster cheeks that made me look deranged. I looked up to old-school Hollywood icons such as Marlene Dietrich for inspiration; she never smiled and I loved the way she shouldered glamorously.

 “When I found something funny or I was tempted to laugh — which happened on a daily basis — I learned to control my facial muscles by holding them rigid. The corners of my mouth might go up a little, but I never looked anything other than faintly amused. Friends knew I was fun to be around, so it wasn’t an issue.”

“It dawned on me that I looked younger because I’d spent my life not smiling. My friends have nicknamed me Mona Lisa, after the da Vinci painting. ‘Mona Lisa was said to have been quietly amused, as am I. I just won’t show it. Recently, an interior designer friend was telling me how a Spanish client kept referring to the department store John Lewis as “Juan Lewis”. I found it hilarious, but kept a straight face. I never crack.’

The men she dates, often ask her to smile.

“I assure them it’s not because I’m not interested,” she says. “My pet hate is men who call out, “Cheer up, love, it might never happen,” ’ in the street. ‘I wouldn’t dream of criticising their appearance.

Scores Killed As Military Repel Boko Haram Attack In Borno

SCORES of people were, on Sunday, killed in Maiduguri, when a combined efforts of army, Special Anti-Robbery Squad (SARS) of the Nigeria Police and volunteer youths, popularly known as Civilian JTF successfully repelled an attempt by the Boko Haram terrorists to invade Maiduguri, the Borno State capital. 

According to reports, the Boko Haram terrorists, who came through Molai village, outskirts of the city, forced a lot of residents of the area to flee.

A resident of the area, Mallam Garba Molai, said they were told by the soldier in the area to flee the area, as all the soldiers took position and engaged the terrorists in a fierce battle.

He said people were killed, including civilians with more casualties on the side of the insurgents, as the combined efforts of the military, civilian JTF and SARS, assisted by aerial bombardment by the Nigerian Air Force, successfully repelled them.

 “Many insurgents were killed, including some civilian casualties, while two artilleries, vehicles, motorcycles and other armories were recovered.Many people had fled the area, except a few of us assisting the security operatives.”