HIV/AIDS prevalence rises by 100,000 in Ogun –Commissioner

The Ogun State Government on Thursday raised the alarm over the increase in the number of persons living with the HIV/AIDS virus across the state.
The government said the number of persons infected with the HIV/AIDS pandemic in the state had risen to 400,000.
This year, the figure of persons living with the deadly virus has increased by 100,000 compared to the rate in 3012 while the current rate of prevalence stands at 3.1 per cent.
The state Commissioner for Health, Dr. Olaokun Soyinka, who said this on Thursday in Abeokuta at a news conference to herald this year’s World Aids Day, stated that the irregular and unstable pattern of the prevalence rate of HIV/AIDS in the state since 1996 clearly showed that “we are not winning the war against HIV/AIDS”.
Soyinka however assured the people that the government had not relented in its aggressive fight against the virus in all areas, including education, sensitisation, HIV testing and counseling and provision of
antiretroviral drugs.

Super Eagles drop in FIFA ranking

The Super Eagles of Nigeria have dropped by three steps from 33^rd to 36^th in the official FIFA world ranking.

The ranking table on the world football body’s Website on Thursday showed that Nigeria has 710 points, as against the 724 points it had with the last ranking in October.

The latest ranking places Nigeria fourth in Africa, behind Algeria, Ghana and Cote d’Ivoire, who have 800, 849 and 918 points, respectively.

Spain maintained the first spot ahead of Germany, Argentina and Colombia who also maintained the second, third and fourth spots respectively.

 

Kidnappers abduct ex-footballer’s father, demand N50m

Kidnappers have seized the 83-year-old father of a former Super Eagles player, Chikelue Iloenyosi, in Njikoka Local Government, Anambra State.

PUNCH Metro learnt that the victim, James Iloenyosi, was on his way back from the church on Monday when he was abducted by the assailants.

A family source said the kidnappers blocked Chikelue father’s car and then put him into another car before speeding off.

He said, “On Monday, Pa Iloenyosi (James) was driving home from morning Mass when some men in a Toyota Camry blocked his Peugeot 504 and pulled him out of his vehicle. They subsequently put him inside their own vehicle and sped off.

“After organising a search party without success, we called his son on the telephone to inform him of the development.

“The following day, the kidnappers called us with the victim’s telephone and demanded N50m ransom. Family members have been trying to negotiate with them but they have refused to collect anything less.”

When our correspondent contacted Chikelue on the telephone, he confirmed the development.

He said, “I received a telephone call from the village that my father had been kidnapped. Later we were able to recover his vehicle, but my father’s telephone was switched off for the rest of the day. It was the following day that the kidnappers called with their demand.”

He said the family was still meeting to plan the next cause of action, while negotiation was ongoing with the kidnappers.

The former Nigerian defender said the incident was more painful as his father’s twin brother had only recently died.

“We have been begging these kidnappers but they have been threatening to kill my father if we did not pay. That money is just too much,” he said.

 

The Presidency is not going to confirm whether President Goodluck Jonathan is a tippler or not; this is never going to happen. What is sure is this: the President’s aides will shrilly deny that their boss takes more than a glass of red wine, now and then.

This week, Special Adviser to the President on Media and Publicity, Dr. Reuben Abati, launched a visceral attack against purveyors of Jonathan’s alleged habit. It was his second strike. The first time, Abati practically swore that all the intoxicants in Aso Rock were “Red Wine”. This instance, in response to a media report that posited that Jonathan’s recent ill-health in London was the end-stage of a binge indulged in during his 56th birthday bash, Abati fired off an unnecessary diatribe, even threatening legal action.

By now, Abati should know that if one does not wish to be ever carpeted, the solution is to aspire to nothingness. One should never do two things: Never, ever write and do not be President. Insults –public and private — roll with such undertakings. The earlier one shrugs it off with the classic speck-on-my-shoulder pose, and faces the job one is assigned by the public to do, the better for everyone.

Abati’s response was too much Turenchi; enough to make one wonder if there was no truth to the report in the first place.  The Yoruba say when an elder repeatedly states, “it does not matter,” it means there is a matter somewhere.

The matter of Jonathan’s tippling habit did not start via reports of a “Jonathan-hating” media. I have interacted with associates that have also interacted with Jonathan at close range and they say, indeed, he has a blooming relationship with a certain brand of wine. The point, however, must be made that what constitutes overdrinking, is to an extent, subjective, especially when ethnic stereotyping impacts the manner we sum certain predilections executed by people who have been marked with such a behaviour.

Stereotypes are part of every cultural fabric that we cannot easily do away with. This makes determined habits take on a higher resonance when carried out by a member of a group we associate with particular labels. For instance, an Akwa Ibom/Cross River woman has to contend with the clichéd musings of indomitable coital dexterity in a way a Yoruba woman would not. An average Igbo man bears the burden of an image of an inordinate capitalist, driven to accumulate material wealth by any means necessary. The Yoruba is considered slick while the northerner (all grouped into the “Aboki” trope) is an oaf, a terrorist or a sick mind that covets prepubescent girls.

Please note, stereotypes are not always devoid of reality but the problem is that they turn into self-fulfilling prophecies. They lock a people into defined cultural traits without considering individual divergences. Anyone who does not conform to stereotypes is not seen for their humanity but as acting out of type.

In the case of Jonathan, a man from the Niger Delta, he is easily tagged a tippler because that is part of the stereotype of folk from riverine homelands. But do they actually drink more than the rest of Nigeria? We can ask breweries to give us consumption data but that will not go far enough. The issue is not so much about how they drink but what they are said to drink. Moonshines — a.k.a. Ogogoro, Sapele Water, Wuru — is the stimulant associated with them. The crudeness of this local brew — with its high ethanol concentration — is superimposed on Niger Deltans to give a distorted picture of a crude classless people who not only lack the refinement of high culture but are, also, on a self-destruct mission.

At the outset of Jonathan’s Presidency, his opponent evoked this ethnic slurring when they called him the “son of a drunken fisherman.”

The question, for me, is if Jonathan’s “Red Wine” weakness –if he truly has one — is a problem. One side of it is that it is a character flaw that reminds us that even presidents are human. Boris Yeltsin was a notorious drunk yet, as a president, the sum total of his presidency cannot be summed-up as failed. A little off-centre on the intoxication prism is the 35th president of Brazil, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva. Lula left office with the highest rating of any political leader, ever.

Before Abati picks up his pen — again, he should be glad that it is not a charge of mental illness that was levelled against his principal. Both the 16th and 35th presidents of the United States of America, Abraham Lincoln and John Fitzgerald Kennedy, who were famously celebrated last week, had bouts of manic depression. Same obtained for the United Kingdom’s war time prime minister, Winston Churchill.

If Jonathan has a drinking problem, he would not be the first – or last — president in the world to battle the bottle. Aso Rock’s huff-and-puff is uncalled for because it only fuels the open-ended rumour. It’s one of those stories –like Sani Abacha’s death by Indian prostitutes or, Umaru Yar’Adua’s failed kidneys — that no official rebuttal can ever displace.

The flip side of any president’s drinking problem is that it would affect his handling of state issues. Yeltsin, when inebriated to his eyeballs, was a one-man comedy troupe. Come to think of it, a man who primes his own body to self-destruct could eventually put the country on auto-destruct in a fit of bacchanal orgy. It would have been a whole different story if Jonathan’s administration is not as rudderless as it appears now. That is the part of the tippling tales that concerns me.

If he has a drinking problem, then, we need to know how it affects his judgment on national issues. Is his indecisiveness on the question of corruption, for instance, a problem of an ethanol-addled mind? When he said he was not going to mention the names of those who are corrupt because he does not want to be attacked, was it him talking or it was a bottle’d inspiration? Besides, if we separated the drink from the man, are we going to have a better person and a leader? In other words, can alcoholism actually be blamed for the Jonathan administration’s shortcomings? And if abstinence won’t make him a more effective leader, why are we even talking about it at all?

The Famacholics: Soldiers, riot policemen and other security agenc...

The Famacholics: Soldiers, riot policemen and other security agenc...: Soldiers, riot policemen and other security agencies on Thursday confronted the leaders of the All Progressives Congress during their...

Soldiers, riot policemen and other security agencies on Thursday confronted the leaders of the All Progressives Congress during their march to the headquarters of the Independent National Electoral Commission in Abuja to protest against the November 16 Anambra state governorship election.

After a strategic meeting in the APC’s new secretariat in Wuse 2 in the Federal Capital Territory, which lasted about three hours, the party leaders took to the streets and embarked on a procession to INEC’s office in Maitama District.

The protesters however met a stiff resistance from stern-looking security operatives comprising the Police, soldiers, SSS and Nigerian Security and Civil Defence Corps.

An Armoured Personnel Carrier, marked NPF 6359 C, measuring about 40-feet long, was used to barricade the entrance to the commission’s office, while the driver of the truck and police officers were pelted with sachets of water by the APC youths.

In their separate speeches, the APC national Chairman, Chief Bisi Akande; National Leader of the party and former governor of Lagos State, Asiwaju Bola Tinubu; former chairman of ANPP, Dr. Ogbonnaya Onu; and ex-Head of State, Maj.-Gen. Muhammadu Buhari(retd.), called for the sacking of INEC Chairman, Prof. Attahiru Jega, with immediate effect for his handling of the Anambra State governorship poll and the recent Delta State Senatorial by-election.