Breaking News: CHINUA ACHEBE IS DEAD

 

Tragedy has befallen the land. The iroko has fallen. THE EAGLE ON THE IROKO, Prof. Chinua Achebe, is dead.
Achebe, one of the best fiction writers in recent memory, died in his USA base, according to information just reaching News Express.
He was 82, having been born on November 16, 1930, and had been in hospital in recent days.
Achebe is best known for his classical novel Things fall Apart. His last book, There Was A Country: A Personal History of Biafra, is still making waves.
Details later.
•Photo: late Prof. Chinua Achebe.
Source News Express

PHOTO OF CHRIS BROWN SMOKING WEEDS ON STAGE AND GETTING PAID IN DOLLARS

R&B star Chris Brown’s troubles seem to know no end since he got in the news for molesting his ex-girlfriend Rihanna. He is in the news again for yelling at a valet and refusing to pay a $10 charge at the PINZ Bowling Center in Los Angeles, CA.

Brown is reported to have refused the payment on the grounds that he did not stay at the bowling alley long enough to be charged $10.

But that does not seem to be his biggest problem at the moment. A Minister of State and Member of Parliament in Ghana, Rashid Pelpuo has called for his arrest for abusing controlled substances in public and inciting the public to civil disobedience.

Chris Brown was the main act for a mammoth show organized by Charterhouse, Ghana’s leading event organizer for rLG Communications to launch the IT company’s Home Office People Environment (HOPE) City project.

The American entertainer hit the stage and performed to the admiration of a huge audience who had come to the Accra Sports stadium to see him. He combined dazzling dance moves, light and visual effects as well as several costume changes to make his show outstanding. He particularly enthralled Ghanaians when he brought on Nigerian singer/rapper Wizkid to do the Ghanaian ‘azonto’ dance with him.

The controversy then started when Chris Brown is purported to have -at a point in his performance promoted the use of marijuana and actually gone ahead to smoke a joint to the amazement of the cheering crowd. "…if anybody's tripping on you smoking weed, f**k them", he is alleged to have said.

The embattled R&B singer is also getting a lot of criticism for the excessive use of vulgar language (particularly the F word) in the course of the show.

A post performance assessment however suggests that the singer may be getting flack for more than these stated reasons. A number of people have also berated rLG for dishing out $1 million to him as payment while Ghanaian artists played almost no part in the event. A peeved Hiplife artist, speaking on condition of anonymity whined “That’s what they do all the time; they bring all these yawa artists and pay them gargantuan amounts, and they don’t even know we exist at such times. And when we are lucky enough for them to approach us sometimes, they will not pay you even a decimal of that amount... Even azonto, someone has to come from Naija to dance it?”

Speaking in an interview with Sahara Reporters however, George Quaye, one of the event organizers refuted the claim. Even though he refused to disclose exactly how much was paid, he emphasized that the figure was less than a million dollars. “We did not pay him a million dollars, I can put that on record” he stated. “It is not our policy to disclose how much we pay our clients without their express permission, but I can tell you for a fact that it was not a million dollars”.

On the issue of smoking weed on stage, Mr. Quaye said “it was just part of his stage act. People interpreted it variously but it was just a part of an overall performance and a lot of people also did not see it as a big deal at all”.

Some social critics have suggested that the whole mêlée is just calculated towards the industrious Mr. Roland Agambire, CEO of rLG who is seen as ‘close to the presidency’. The Hope City project was launched by President John Mahama.

SAHARA REPORTER

2015: I Will Fight Back, Obasanjo Tells Jonathan

As the cold war between President Goodluck Jonathan and his benefactor, former president Olusegun Obasanjo, rages, some of Obasanjo’s loyalists who are at the receiving end have chosen to quit the ruling Peoples Democratic Party (PDP).

But the former president has vowed to remain in the party and fight to the finish.

The relationship between the two leaders of the party has been everything but cordial despite the public show of friendship and mutual trust. Those who know better have read the handwriting on the wall, which aims at dismantling Obasanjo’s political structure for daring to ask Jonathan to quit the presidency come 2015 as he promised two years ago.

Before Governor Muazu Babangida Aliyu of Niger State reminded President Jonathan of the one-term pact he struck with the PDP chieftains before he was endorsed for the 2011 presidential race, Obasanjo, LEADERSHIP Sunday learnt, had asked the president to suspend the second term bid. The president was said to have replied, “Sir, I have never thought of 2015.”

LEADERSHIP Sunday checks revealed that Obasanjo’s loyalists recently met with him to sound him out on their intention to quit the PDP for another political party as “it is becoming evident that the party wants to adopt President Jonathan as its presidential candidate for 2015”.

The former president was said to have told them they would not be intimidated out of the party.
“We are going nowhere, nobody would kick us out of our party,’’ he reportedly said. “We will fight back. ”

To ensure that Jonathan does not win a second term ticket, it was learnt, the former president has engaged a former ambassador from the north-east geopolitical zone as one of his foot soldiers in the north, while the governors of Niger, Jigawa, Sokoto, Bauchi and two others are working behind the scenes to actualise a northern president come 2015.

Since that time, according to our checks, the president had ambushed his godfather severally, looking for ways of forcing him to endorse his candidacy. As fate would have it, the court ruling that voided the election of Prince Olagunsoye Oyinlola as the national secretary of the party became a weapon as he was asked to go in obedience to the court verdict, and his deputy was sworn.

However, President Jonathan made a u-turn on his rift with Obasanjo when he agreed to reach out to the former president at a meeting with some former national chairmen of the party led by the incumbent, Alhaji Bamanga Tukur, at the presidential villa.

“The party elders and the president spoke at length on the ways to resolve the crisis in the party. But one of the decisions reached was the need for Jonathan to mend fences with Obasanjo. They believed that once the two leaders are together, the tension in the party will be reduced to the barest minimum,” a PDP leader who attended the meeting said.

The meeting also advised Jonathan to attend a civic reception organised in honour of Obasanjo by the south-west PDP in Abeokuta, Ogun State, on his way to Abidjan, Cote d’Ivoire, for an extraordinary session of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) Authority of Heads of State and Government.

The meeting also prevailed on him to withdraw support for Chief Tony Anenih’s bid for Board of Trustees (BoT) chairmanship. It was thought that this would persuade Obasanjo to reconcile with the president. Those that were at the reception included the former PDP national vice-chairman (south-west), Mr. Segun Oni, Oyinlola, Chief Bode George, Chief Dapo Sarumi, Prof. Tunde Adeniran, Chief Bode Olajumoke, and Otunba Oyewole Fashawe. Others were Alhaji Shuaib Oyedokun, Chief Ebenezer Babatope, Alhaji Tajudeen Oladipo, Chief Yekeen Adeojo, Chief Lekan Balogun, Chief Richard Akinjide, Chief Tunji Olurin, and Chief Joju Fadairo.

But the president never showed up. Instead it was Tukur that attended, saying that he represented the president. That was when Obasanjo told him that he would never stop criticising the president despite the fact that he held him in high esteem as president, a source said.

However, both Jonathan and Obasanjo had a private meeting in London after the launch of Obasanjo’s foundation. LEADERSHIP Sunday learnt that Jonathan solicited Obasanjo’s support for his second term bid to enable him continue with his transformation agenda. Obasanjo reportedly told him point blank to bury the thought, noting that it would impugn on his integrity as a former military head of state and two-term civilian president.

culled from leadership newspaper