Pep Opara's Blog

                                              The Rubbish Talk Of Yester-Days,... Nigerians Would Have No More!!!!!!!!!!! APC got power in hand yet they act like the opposition. The thing is, Nigerians should hold APC accountable for promises made. See this man o!! Nonsense!! This morning on Channels TV,  Lai Mohammed,  national spokesperson of APC boldly and emphatically told Nigerians that APC and Buhari never  promised to do anything within 1st 100 days in office. See his words... "Buhari never promised to do anything in 100 days, that's the honest truth. You see, when you are running a campaign, all kinds of literature will emerge from all sorts of groups but I came here and I said there are only just two documents that you can judge a party with. that is the constitution of the party and the manifesto of the party. Those are the only two documents that are registered with INEC you can go to court on or hold a party accountable for" he said Some of you w

                        Kanye West said that he is running for president in 2020 during his acceptance speech for the MTV Music Video Award’s lifetime achievement honor. West made the announcement at the end of a 10-minute-long speech where he discussed visiting the grocery store with his daughter and admitted that he does not understand awards shows. “And yes, as you probably could’ve guessed in this moment, I’ve decided in 2020 to run for president,” West said, before walking off stage. West famously stormed the stage at the 2009 awards to protest Taylor Swift’s win for best female video. Swift presented the Video Vanguard award to West on Sunday night and stood next to his wife Kim Kardashian during the speech. After accepting the award on stage, West stood silently for several minutes under a spotlight while the crowd cheered for him. “Bro, bro, listen to the kids,” West began. In his speech, West rehashed the controversy in 2009, when he took Swift’s award. He sai

 There was the blind man who had the disastrous experience of regaining his sight. The surgeon who developed a sudden passion for music after being struck by lightning. And most famously, the man who mistook his wife for a hat. Those stories and many more, taking the reader to the distant ranges of human experience, came from the pen of Dr. Oliver Sacks. According to AP News Sacks, 82, died Sunday at his home in New York City, his assistant, Kate Edgar, said. In February, he had announced that he was terminally ill with a rare eye cancer that had spread to his liver. As a practicing neurologist, Sacks looked at some of his patients with a writer's eye and found publishing gold. Another pics of Sacks after the cut... Nov. 26, 2008 file photo of Dr Oliver Sacks, receiving his Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE ), by Britain's Queen Elizabeth II at Buckingham Palace, London. Dr. Oliver Sacks, whose books like "The Man Who Mistook His Wife

                  Horrifying!!!!  35 people killed on board in Eastern Cape Province on Saturday,  when a bus drove off a cliff with only nine of the 44 passengers surviving the horror crash according to the South Africa Road Traffic Management Corporation  (RTMC). Eight sustained moderate injuries and one was seriously hurt, the RTMC said. Further, Eastern Cape provincial health spokesman Sizwe Kupelo, six were in a critical condition. Of those killed, four were children, said RTMC spokesperson Simon Zwane.The crash took place between Butterworth and Willovale in the province, he said. It was believed that the victims were all from the same village in Willowvale near Dutywa, Eastern Cape Province. Initial reports put the number of deathes at 25, but after all of the passengers trapped inside the bus had been removed, the death toll rose to 35, Zwane said. The cause of the accident was not immediately known. "We cannot speculate at this mo

President Muhammadu Buhari’s seemingly grudging gesture in appointing a few southerners into the presidency and security staff can neither escape attention nor censure. Of the 12 or 13 appointments so far in the presidency, only three have gone to southerners. If appointments to the nation’s security network are added, the number of southerners rises to five out of a total of about 20. It will be interesting to find out how the president’s mind works on this curious issue. He approved the appointments, indeed, he made them. But does he have the presence of mind to appreciate the troubling message the skewed appointments convey about his worldview, and to the country and his party, the All Progressives Congress (APC)? Until last Thursday, many commentators had given the president the benefit of the doubt on the structure and motive of his over 30 general appointments. After the recent appointments, some six in all, few analysts doubt any longer how his mind works or what his pe

                                                   Senate President Bukola Saraki is full of guile, courage and ambition, and he has brought all three attributes to his quest for relevance in the polity and dominance in the National Assembly. More accurately, however, he has become a slave to these attributes, deploying one where the other would do, and summoning yet another where, sometimes, just being plain himself would be adequate. Now he can’t think, sleep or move without being guileful, ambitious or embroiled in one stratagem or the other. His life has become one rousing scheme of intrigues and foolhardy confrontation. Yet, what he actually lacks, sadly, is wisdom, without which his attributes, as desirable as they may seem, cannot take wing. The fear among many commentators is that his heart is so full of schemes that there is no room for anything else, let alone that pearly substance, wisdom. As the 8th Senate was about to settle down for business in June, a defiant Dr

.Security agencies probe purchase of mobile stages •How NNPC secret account was used Security agencies are now probing   how the administration of  former President Goodluck Jonathan allegedly withdrew $6.9million (N1.460b) from a secret account of the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation(NNPC) to buy three  12 meter (40 feet)  mobile stages for use at public events. The cash was said to be part of the unremitted funds into the Federation Account by NNPC.                                     The purported purchase, according to investigation, did not pass through due process and was known only to Dr. Jonathan, his then Chief Security Officer, Mr. O.J. Obuah and former Petroleum Minister Diezani Alison-Madueke. Obuah, it was gathered, raised a memo to his boss for the purchase and the release of the money to that effect. Jonathan allegedly gave his approval and authorized the former minister to disburse the fund. Shedding light on how the deal was struck on Octobe

                                       In our series of letters from African journalists, Mannir Dan Ali looks at how Nigeria is coping without a cabinet. It is now three months since Muhammadu Buhari was sworn in as president of Nigeria and five months since he won historic elections, the first time an opposition candidate had won. His victory generated huge celebrations and expectations of a new beginning, with many anticipating dramatic changes to follow, and analysts urging him to “hit the ground running”. Most Nigerians expected President Buhari to shake up the security services and make other key appointments in his first few days – as former President Olusegun Obasanjo did within hours of his inauguration in 1999. But it took nearly two months for him to replace his security chiefs and so far he has only made appointments in about a dozen government offices.   When commentators began to get agitated about the lack of a cabinet, a former newspaper editor and unof

                                               PO: I believe we copied this trend from our colonial masters, just do some historical read of British Empire you would certainly agree with me.....even the queen of England, HRH Elizabeth II got long tongue rolling titles. In our series of letters from African journalists, Ghanaian writer Elizabeth Ohene, a former government minister and member of the opposition, returns to one of her favourite subjects: Africa’s love of titles. I simply couldn’t resist it after the  announcement from the Office of the Gambian President  that another title was being added to the already absurd long list of titles held by the president. According to an official release, the Gambian leader will now be known formally as “His Excellency Sheikh Professor Alhaji Dr Yahya AJJ Jammeh Babili Mansa”. Babili Mansa, we are told, means Bridge Builder, or Conqueror of Rivers, in the Mandika language. Since the figurative building of bridges or making peace

              South African multinationals operating in Nigeria are fast gaining notoriety for shylock practices. Ask the average Nigerian MTN subscriber what he feels about the telecoms giant that has found incredible fortune here and you won’t get any flattering appraisals. Even a dog is not allowed to lap up MTN’s poo, is the refrain in a certain part of the country. MTN’s calls termination notice has been object of jokes in some quarters for years:  “Your call credit is exhausted and your call is being TERMINATED!” Yes, the word, terminated is seemingly rendered in capital letters. It comes across as if you were a petty thief trying to pinch credit from MTN. These stingy people never allow people a second extra, many would often grumble. But it’s not about MTN today; it is about another South African firm that has so much cause to be charitable to Nigerian subscribers, but rather treats them like dirt.  Hardball  talks about MultiChoice, the satellite paytv quasi-mo