Mali dismisses South Africa to move into semi-finals

Mali beat Bafana 3-1 in a penalty shootout at the Moses Mabhida Stadium in Durban, South Africa on Saturday night.
The African nations were locked at 1-1 after extra-time in the ongoing Africa Cup of Nations.
South Africa started the game with midfielder Reneilwe Letsholonyane replacing striker Katlego Mphela, to protect the hosts’ defence, which was not as loose as it was against Morocco.
The stronger midfield was used to counter a strong Mali selection that included the likes of Mohamed Sissoko and Seydou Keita.
The latter showed his quality with a magnificently controlled snap-shot in the seventh minute, that buzzed slightly over the bar.
South Africa’s Mahlangu made a powerful run down the left in the 11th minute, pulling it back for Letsholonyane, who should have struck it sooner, but by the time he delayed and laid it off for Parker, the Mali defence had already closed the gap.
Letsholonyane was again in the thick of the action, playing it through for Rantie but Mali’s defender, Tamboura, tracked back and made the challenge.
Nearly a carbon copy of that move, Mahlangu produced a beautiful through ball for Rantie who outpaced the Mali defence.
Attempting to flick it over the keeper Diakite, there just was not enough space as he was closed down.

Ghana defeats Cape Verde, through to semi finals

Two goals from substitute Mubarak Wakaso were enough to see Ghana into the semi-final of the 2013 Africa Cup of Nations in a game where the pre-tournament favourites were completely dominated by the underdogs.
The first goal was Ghana’s only effort at goal at the time and came from the spot.
The Cape Verdeans dominated the game after the goal, but failed to score and were punished late in the game when the Espanyol midfielder capitalised on the Cape Verdean goalkeeper’s decision to come up for the corner to slot into an empty net.
The game started quietly as both teams seemed to be sizing each other up with very few chances.
The clearest opportunity of the early stages fell to Heldon after some good build-up play allowed Tavarez to set him up but he blazed his effort high.
After more minutes of tentative play, Heldon created some space for another effort from distance, which whizzed pass the crossbar.
Ghana’s first real chance came from a corner but the Cape Verdean defence dealt well with Christian Atsu’s in swinging corner in the 25th minute as the Ghanaians still awaited their first shot at goal.
Fatau Dauda had to be alert a few minutes later though as Tavares produced a very good ball across the face of goal after some good hold up play but the Ashantigold goalkeeper did well to claim it with an attacker lurking.
There were no further threats to any of the goalkeeper’s clean sheets and the players went back for the recess with the scores level.
The second half started in similar fashion to the first half but the first shot on target in the game came as Tavares was allowed a free header from a corner but Dauda dealt well with it.
Ghana went the other way almost immediately and with Asamoah Gyan played through on goal, he was barged off the ball for a penalty kick, which Wakaso converted.
Cape Verde went on the attack straight from the kick off and won a fee kick, which was well worked but Heldon blazed his effort wide from just outside the 18-yard box.
The Blues Sharks had another free kick a couple of minutes later which produced a good delivery but an acrobatic clearance from defender John Paintsil was what prevented Tavares’ flick from getting to a team-mate.
The goal seemed to have galvanized Cape Verde who went still on the attack but Tavares scuffed his effort from just inside the box before Platini who had come on for the injured Ryan Mendes drew a great save from Dauda.
Cape Verde continued to pile on the pressure with some very good deliveries but still failed to apply the finish as the Black Stars looked flustered and struggled to hold on to the ball.
Cape Verde, however, still failed to score despite two wonderful crosses from Babanco, which were allowed to whizz past the front of goal with no real threat. Dauda was, however, finally called upon to make a save as he stepped up to tip Djaniny’s effort around his upright after Gyan had lost possession in the Cape Verde box despite being played through on goal.
Wakaso then blasted over after a short Cape Verde corner had hit the referee and sent Ghana on the counter attack.
After a couple more wasted chances for the debutants, Ghana seemed to have finally found their edge again but Dauda kept his opponents at bay with a wonderful save at full stretch to save a free kick.
The Cape Verdean goalkeeper came up for the resulting corner and when the corner was cleared upfront Wakaso had the easiest of opportunities to finish into an empty net.
Ghana faces either Burkina Faso or Togo in the semi finals.

Police declare pension reform task force chairman wanted

The Nigeria Police Force on Friday declared wanted the Chairman of Pension Reform Task Team, Abdulrasheed Maina.
The decision of the police was based on the position of the Senate that ordered a bench warrant to be executed by the police on Maina.
The Senate took the step after Maina failed to appear before its Joint Committee on Establishment and States and Local Governments, which is investigating pension administration in the country.
The Chairmen of the joint committee, Senators Aloysius Etuk and Kabiru Gaya, had told the leadership of the Senate that Maina refused to honour their summon.
Maina, however, said he was on his way to appear before the committee a few weeks ago but was blocked by some protesters.
He said by the time he finally gained access to the National Assembly, the committee had risen.
A statement by the Deputy Public Relations Officer, Frank Mbah, on Friday, said: “The Nigeria Police Force hereby declares wanted, this 1st day of February, 2013, Alhaji Abdulrasheed Maina of the Customs, Immigration and Prisons Pension Office (CIPPO), for failing to appear before the Senate Joint Committee on the Investigation of Pension Funds.”

Obasanjo blames Jonathan for Nigeria's security challenges

Former President Olusegun Obasanjo has, again, put the blame for the security lapses in Nigeria at the door steps of President Goodluck Ebele Jonathan.
Obasanjo said Jonathan, as the chief security officer of the country, should find solutions to the security problems of the country.
Obasanjo, who also took on literary giant, Prof. Chinua Achebe, on his comments on the alleged marginalisation of Igbos in Nigeria, spoke with pan-African magazine, New African, in its February 2013 edition.
He said of Jonathan and the security challenges facing the country: “If the President is the chief security officer of the country and there is a security problem, where do you go for the solution?
“And if that solution is not coming from the chief security officer, who else inside and outside will get a solution?
“He has the responsibility to solve the problem and nobody else should be blamed but him.”
On Achebe’s comments that the Igbos remain marginalized in the Nigeria project years after the Nigeria civil war, Obasanjo said: “Maybe he is making those remarks because he is not living in Nigeria.
“If he was living in Nigeria, when I was the president of this country, an Igbo lady was my Minister of Finance, an Igbo man was the Governor of the Central Bank, an Igbo man was one of the military service chiefs.
“The permanent representative to the UN was also an Igbo person.
“What more do you want?
“For someone to say the civil war has not ended, 40 years after its conclusion, that person is living in the past.”

N32b pension scam: The racist conviction of Africans, by Taju Tijani

In Nigeria, we all live in interesting times. The political class is having a hell of a jolly time. The judiciary is courting public scrutiny because judges are now living in interesting times. Public servants are also having a swell of a time. The senators are leading the dance in this interesting milieu. The Representatives are not immune to the bug of interesting times. In a nation that brags about as the giant of mother Africa, it should be expected that Nigeria must be a land of interesting people. A land of interesting habits; interesting manners, interesting attitudes and interesting characters.
Take our love for life and fun. We are loud. Our men are loud. Our women are loud. Our youths are loud. The rich are loud. The well connected are loud. Our politicians are loud in their habits. They are loud in their manner. They are loud in their tastes. They are loud in their sartorial elegance – whether in suit or agbada. President Goodluck Jonathan controls 11 aircraft. They call it presidential fleet. Jonathan goes about with a fleet of darkened SUVs and battalion of minders. His public-funded kitchen budget still stands at N1 billion. That kitchen must be loud with expensive utensils that befits the ruler of the giant of Africa. His wife, rosy-cheeked and robust-looking, Patient (oblela) Jonathan, goes about in a convoy of expensive Mercedes and army of minders. She kills a cow every week to feed the army of staff at Aso Rock. Talk about eating loud and large!
Nigeria is now a country without Pentecostal modesty. Our pastors are modern day arrogant Pharaohs. In carriage, in cassock, in speech they all look like medieval emperors. Churches are no longer a place of celestial calm and repose but consulting malls for business deals. It is no longer a place where we show penitence for forgiveness. It is rather a place of macho affluence. Which is to say that our churches are now loud. Pastors now come to the pulpit in expensive Gucci suits. They catwalk the podium in flowing expensive lace material. The glory of Christ has been replaced by the glory of materialism. They now indulge openly in the things that will make Satan proud. They know the signposts or the roads that lead to every herbalist homes.
Strange but not surprising is the fact that all leaders of Nigeria’s biggest churches have private jets. Except the head of the Mountain of Fire and Miracles. The rest are jet set mighty men of God who require loud Gulf streams to spy on God from 33,000 feet. A very loud way to post our prayer to God for answer. On land, pastors are not different from celebrities. They cruise around in darkened SUVs and the latest Hummers. Many are prayer merchants. They sell prayer sachets even to the president in Aso Rock. And in return, Jonathan, in many of his loud habits, had been known to give out loud cheques to our pastors. In Nigeria, there is ongoing loud flirtation between pastors and politicians. Now look at it this way: If pastors and politicians could brazenly insult their followers by brazenly voting for lavish living, who then will rein in the greedy impulse of other strata of society for corruption?
It is said that a woman to a pastor is a spiritual torture. At least for those who have no control on their libidos. Please be advised also that the sight of money to Nigerians amount to material torture. We are loud lovers of money. We lust after it. This may be the legacy of the old spender like MKO Abiola who lived loud with his money and died loud. Typical embodiment of rich Nigerian!
The story of one big time crook called John Yakubu Yusufu and his other loud crooks did not surprise me at all. He is the feral meanness of the triumph of corruption in Nigeria. He is a true apostle of loud greed and a good discerner of our interesting times. History of big, loud stealing is not new. What we have is new actors from unlikely places. Late General Sani Abacha stole loudly. Ibrahim Babangida stole loudly. Atiku Abubakar stole loudly. Olusegun Obasanjo stole loudly. James Ibori stole loudly. David Mark stole and is still stealing loudly. Dimeji Bankole stole loudly. Adebayo Alao-Akala, one time bleacher and ex-governor of my state, Oyo, stole loudly. Actors in the Halliburton scandal stole loudly. Ndidi Elumelu stole loudly. Bank chiefs stole loudly. All former police heads stole loudly. They could not even spare money for our police college. Worse, these looters are still living loud and large. They are birding about like free agents! Ah, Nigeria!
Why would anyone agonise over a man who defrauded pensioners of mere N32 billion? To be shocked or surprised is to diminish the stature of Nigeria as giant of corruption in Africa. Some may say the world. Furthermore, anyone who is angry over the maltreatment of police pensioners is yet to understand the depth of our soulless embrace of love of money. Look at the President. Despite his utopian pledges to transform Nigeria and exorcise the ghost of corruption, the guy is nothing but a latter day Nero who fiddles away while Nigeria burns. There is a touch of pantomime to his drive for transformation.
John Yakubu Yusufu is hugely heartless. He has been living a large, loud and comfortable existence by existing on poor pensioners money. And for this apostate infidel of a thief to walk away after killing thousands of pensioners is the ultimate postmodern assault on our legal system. However, we have to thank Justice Mohamed Talba for bringing forward the inevitability of Nigeria’s spring or grassroots revolution. His surname should be substituted for Taliban. Judge Talba is conservative, archaic and phoney. Judges are no longer the image of thick-rimmed, bookish and sombre characters we used to know. By training, tradition and temper, they are meant to be recluse and avoiders of world of corrupt contamination. His judgement on the N32 billion pension scam is nothing but a calamitous retreat from the habit of judicial fairness, the atrophy of upholding the sacred tenet of justice and the occupation of the realm of justice largely by cowardice, corruption and cant. His inaction to take proper action on the scam is affirming the accusation that in Nigeria justice is now privatised to the highest bidder.
Abroad, the actions of both John Yakubu Yusuf and Justice Mohamed Talba will again begin to prompt the racist conviction that Africans are naturally prone to evil, lying, stealing, wickedness, corruption, venality and mismanagement. Consider the evidence. In Nigeria, judges and politicians compete vaingloriously for the extreme manifestations of our excesses. They live on income they had never had to work for. They live in billion naira houses in Abuja. In a nation where majority of helpless Nigerians live on $1 a day. They borrow each other private jets doing money sorties to Dubai. They borrow each other’s wives. Believe it. These people are the worst philanderers on planet earth. Go and read the unpublished bed manner of their lifestyles.
Governors’ mansions meant for statecraft have been recrafted as places of high jinks and sadomasochism where girls in high heels and big boobs parade themselves like sacrificial goats before men whose provenance to govern has been highjacked painfully by perversion. Virgin and desolate islands are being converted and configured into apartheid playgrounds. First, it was Victoria Garden City in Lagos, then Maitama in Abuja and back again to Snake Island in Lagos. Yes, Snake island has been turned into a temple where rich Nigerian billionaires, many of them judges and politicians, bling about in opulent but ignoble vanity. Mike Adenuga, the Globacom chief, and his friends have metropolitanised and globalised this once sleepy Atlantic-encircled haven. There must be an enclave where they could live undisturbed by the wailings of latter day saints like Tunde Bakare and Dino Melaye.
This monumental waste in a nation of feral sufferers we call the Nigerian masses, majority of whom live on average of N150 per day. Is there anything more starkly ignoble of our egotism, backwardness, crudity, injustice, shame, failure, waste, ignorance and cultural affirmation of vanity? Believe it or not, Justice Mohamed Talba, John Yakubu Yusufu and the entire judicial and political class in this instance steer Nigeria back to the caves. Can we send these people to China?

Updated: Don't execute Nigerians on death row, Jonathan begs Indonesia's president

President Goodluck Jonathan may have succumbed to the pressure from the National Assembly by formally requesting the visiting President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono of Indonesia to stay action on the execution of Nigerians on the death row in his country for involvement in illicit drug trafficking,
The President has been under intense pressure of late from the legislators to intervene.
Several Nigerians are on the death row in foreign countries for drug related and other criminal offences.
President Jonathan made the special request for stay of execution on Saturday evening during bilateral talks with his Indonesian counterpart at the State House, Abuja.
Present at the bilateral talks, which lasted about 30 minutes, were: the Ministers of Foreign Affairs, Olugbenga Ashiru; Petroleum Resources, Dezani Alison-Madueke; Attorney General of the Federation and Minister of Justice, Mohammed Bello Adoke; Agriculture, Dr. Akinwumi Adesina; Aviation, Princess Stella Oduah; and National Planning, Samusdeen Usman.
A communique was issued at the end of the talks though both presidents addressed a joint press conference without entertaining question from newsmen.
Both leaders condemned drug abuse and illicit trafficking of narcotic drugs, psychotropic substances and their chemical precursors.
They welcomed the signing of the MOU to combat drug abuse and illicit trafficking in narcotics drugs, psych tropic substances and their chemical precursors.
The communique reads in part: “The two leaders noted, with concern, the increasing number of Nigerians in detention, jails and death rows in Indonesia for drug related offended and financial crimes.
“In that regard, the president of Nigeria requested his Indonesian counterpart for stay of execution of those on death row while the two countries explore opportunities, for an Agreement of Exchange of Prisoners and Mutual Legal Assistance between the two countries.”
Other issues discussed were how to counter terrorism through military cooperation and boosting economic ties between both countries.
The communique states further: “The two Heads of State agreed to encourage of visits by officials in the Defencem and Security sectors with a view to boosting cooperation in these areas with a view to developing their respective strategic industries.
“The two leader noted that Indonesia and Nigeria are among important troops countries to UN Peace Keeping Missions. To further enhance. The two countries’ contribution and capacity building in peace keeping operations the two presidents agreed to have a closer cooperation between the peace-keeping centers of both countries in order to encourage sharing of experience and best practices, as well as exchange of visit by trainers and experts.
“The two leader discussed the conflicts in Guinea-Bissau, Mali, and the Sahel, and the correlation between these and the war on terror. They shared the view that terrorism remains a global Security threat. They therefore agreed to foster closer bilateral partnership to address this threat by cooperating closely in exchange of information, training and education as well as sharing of best practices.
“In the areas of Economic, Trade and Investment Cooperation, “both leaders agreed to encourage contacts between their respective countries National Chamber of Commerce.”
They also expressed determination to encourage agriculture cooperation between the two countries, especially in the areas of cocoa, palm oil, and rubber plantations as well as revival of groundnut cultivation in northern Nigeria.

Nollywood actor, Saint Obi, off screen

For a while now, Nollywood actor, Obinna Nwafor, otherwise known as St. Obi, has been off the screen in terms of churning out good films into the market.
And many, especially his fans, have been wondering why the prolific actor abandoned what he knows how to do best.
A close source to the Surulere, Lagos State-based actor disclosed that his wife, Lynda, the General Manager, Network Planning at MTN, is responsible for St. Obi’s new vocation: contracting. Aside Lynda’s strong financial status, it was learnt that she is very jealous and is thus not comfortable with different tales of love affairs in the movie industry, hence her decision to stop her hubby from acting.
St. Obi, we gathered, is now a big time contractor and has been smiling to the banks, courtesy of his wife’s connection.