Nigerian artiste, Runtown has settled his differences with his record label, Ericmany Entertainment.

This is coming after his fall out with his label over breaches of contract allegedly by all parties. The dispute resulted in a court-backed ban on Runtown from performing anywhere in Nigeria and in the United States.

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Marriott International is a leading global lodging company based in Bethesda, Maryland, USA, with more than 4,100 properties in 79 countries and reported revenues of nearly $14 billion in fiscal year 2014. Its heritage can be traced to a root beer stand opened in Washington, D.C., in 1927 by J. Willard and Alice S. Marriott.

Marriott has more than 361,000 people working worldwide at managed or franchised properties and corporate offices. Marriott has been consistently recognized as a top employer and for its superior business ethics. The company also manages the award-winning guest loyalty program, Marriott Rewards® and The Ritz-Carlton Rewards® program, which together surpass 49M members.

We are recruiting to fill the position of:

Job Title: Executive Chef

Location: Lagos

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Veteran Nollywood actor, Alex Usifo has opened up on several reasons that have bedevilled the Nigerian movie industry.



According to the actor, good scripts are not the only reason some Nollywood flicks are uninteresting, but budget and some producer's resolve to cut cost, contributes to the many terrible productions that have plagued the industry.

Says In His Word Here

Writing this piece, one cannot but remember Chukwuma Kaduna Nzeogwu, the 29 year-old, who championed the nation's first military coup d'tat in 1966, along with his colleagues, Majors in the Nigerian Army: Emmanuel Ifeajuna, Timothy Onwuatuegwu, Chris Anuforo, Don Okafor, Adewale Ademoyega and Humphrey Chukwuka.

Why? According to an account recorded by Ademoyega in his book: "Why we struck," a 194-paged 1981 narrative (I read it in 1988 or so), the young men were embittered by corruption and anarchy resulting from the mismanagement of the nation's commonwealth by a few.

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LIB is an Insurance Broking firm, licensed by the NAICOM to provide unique services ranging from insurance brokerage, risk management consultants, and claims service experts, life and pension and health insurance consultant. Providing expert and detailed insurance in all areas of both personal and commercial risks, ranging from simple insurance on personal property, private and commercial vehicles, fire and special insurance, burglary and theft cover, motor vehicles, plant, all risk insurance cover etc.

We are recruiting to fill the position below:

Job Title: Client Services Officer

Location: Lagos

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 Nollywood actress, Opeyemi Aiyeola, has given couples an insight to how to handle and maintain their relationships.

The actress who believes in the existence of love and doesn't fail to express it, took to her instagram page to dish words of wisdom.

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Whyte Cleon Limited is a Human Resource Outsourcing & Management Solutions provider in Nigeria with over 18 years business experience.

We are recruiting on behalf of our client to fill the vacant position below:

Job Title: Manager, Strategy and Implementation

Location: Delta

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Ultra Media Solutions Limited is a boutique corporate entity that specializes in a diverse range of business disciplines. The core of its operation revolves around Information and Communication Technology (ICT) Solutions, Entertainment and Training Services

We are recruiting to fill the position of:

Job Title: Web Developer

Location: Lagos

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Sometimes, breakups feel like the end of the world. In a sense, it is an end, but it’s only the end of that particular relationship. It’s also the beginning of a new relationship, the most important relationship of all — the one with yourself.

Breaking up with someone is like moving out of an old house. It takes time and effort, and it requires you to let go of stuff. However, it also allows you to reevaluate some of your own personal baggage and belongings and decide whether or not they are serving any purpose.

If you’re going through a tough breakup, think of it as a grand opportunity. Here are 8 ways to become a better version of yourself after a painful breakup.

1. Remember your passions.

Relationships are time-consuming. The hours you used to spend practicing an instrument, reading, writing, playing a sport, or traveling suddenly turn into hours spent with your significant other. We often forget about what drove us or brought us real pleasure before falling in love.

This is a chance to remember what you’re passionate about and pursue it again. You never know where this pursuit might lead you.

2. Start a journal.

One of the best ways to learn about yourself is to start a journal. When in a relationship, we often lose sight of who we are because we’re so focused on our significant other. It’s important, especially during a breakup when you’re feeling vulnerable, to turn your attention inward.

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Although the struggle to halt the ecological degradation and wanton appropriation of the oil resources of the Niger Delta has resulted in the gristly end of agitators like Isaac Boro and Ken Saro-Wiwa at the hands of the state, there has been no dearth of such benign moments when the Federal Government spared a thought for the people of the region.



Indeed, through the setting up of the Niger Delta Development Board (NDDB), Oil Mineral Producing Areas Commission (OMPADEC), Niger Delta Development Commission (NNDC), Ministry of Niger Delta, the amnesty programme and the payment of derivation funds, successive governments have attempted to ameliorate the imperiled existence of the people of the Niger Delta.

But government’s interventions are largely self-serving and this is why the results they generate do not last. Whenever there is a resurgence of militancy in the region, the government moves to restore peace not for the sake of the people of the region but because of the need to protect its interest in the oil resources of the region. Oil remains the economic strength of the nation as long as it has not developed other sources of revenue.

The government’s move for negotiation with a new set of militants who call themselves the Niger Delta Avengers (NDA) derives its validation from the fact that the country cannot exist without the oil from the Niger Delta that sustains the economy. If there must be peace in the Niger Delta for the nation to access its prime source of revenue, the government should not listen to those who are opposed to negotiation with the militants. While one does not support a resort to armed struggle, those who are affected by the ecological ravages in the Niger Delta region have a genuine reason to call the attention of the world to their plight if their own government and the oil companies making billions of dollars from the region are not willing to develop the region. Besides, it is clear by now that the military option is not workable not only because it has not stopped the militants from destroying oil facilities but also because it is innocent people who are often brutalised by the troops.

But we should be alert to the danger ahead if the whole process is bungled. During the former President Goodluck Jonathan’s era, the policy of appeasement resulted in the creation of billionaires out of militants. Yet, a regime of violence returned to the region after his exit. This shows that the strategy of appeasing only some people would not bring enduring peace to the region.

What the Niger Delta region needs is a strategy of development that would not benefit only a few people but the whole region. When a negligible number of people benefit from the policy of selective appeasement, fresh violent groups emerge in the region.

Obviously, if the members of the NDA are allowed to be the sole beneficiaries of the negotiation with the Federal Government, some other groups would soon emerge to wreak more grievous havoc on oil facilities and eventually be appeased by making them billionaires. Instead of settling militants with contracts for the monitoring of oil pipelines, the government should produce a comprehensive template for the development of the region.

It is good that the Minister of State for Petroleum Resources, Ibe Kachikwu has promised to allocate oil blocks to people from the Niger Delta to break the existing monopoly of the oil blocks by people whose land does not produce the oil. However, the Niger Delta needs more than this. The allocation of oil blocks would only produce another few billionaires without solving the problem of the region. Worse still, those who may even get the oil blocks may not be those whose means of livelihood like farming and fishing have been eroded by oil pollution and thus they can no longer send their children to school or even feed themselves.

While it is imperative to really know what the avengers want, the preparation of a developmental template for the Niger Delta should involve the input of some credible people from the Niger Delta, other parts of the country and the rest of the world and the multinational oil companies. Such people should not include traditional rulers and politicians from the region. These people often seek opportunities to cater for their selfish interest and this is why the problem of the region has festered over the years. The negotiation should go beyond meeting the demands of only a single ethnic group in the region simply because they were the ones engaged in a violent agitation. It is the whole of the Niger Delta where oil is either exploited or gas is flared that has been ecologically devastated.

The avengers should underscore their sincerity by sifting their genuine demands from the ridiculous. They cannot claim to be fighting against injustice and at the same time be asking that some people who are the linchpins of inequity through their appropriation of resources meant for all should be shielded from facing the consequences of their criminal actions. They should not insist on their demand that the Federal Government should apologise for the ‘intimidation’ and death of Diepreye Alamieyeseigha who was found guilty of corruptly enriching himself at the expense of Bayelsa State. Instead of fighting for Sambo Dasuki and Government Ekpemupolo, who is better known as Tompolo, they should rather insist that the law should take its full course with a guarantee of fair trial for them.

Above all, for enduring peace in the Niger Delta, the government and the militants must agree that the region should control its resources. In the past 60 years, the resources from the Niger Delta have been used to develop other parts of the country at the detriment of those who own the region. It is time for them to be given the opportunity to manage their own resources and restore their degraded environment. They should agree on true federalism and the need for the implementation of the 2014 conference report that has resolved some of the troubling issues in the Niger Delta, but which President Muhammadu Buhari has vowed to consign to the archives.

Now that the avengers have agreed to negotiate, the government should avail itself of the opportunity and find enduring solutions to the problems of the Niger Delta.

Editors Choice

PSquare's Peter Okoye has landed a new solo endorsement deal, months after breaking away from his musical group.

Peter who has been since re-branded himself as Mr P made the announcement via his instagram page.

He wrote:

   

“A politician thinks of the next election. A statesman, of the next generation.” – James Freeman Clarke

There comes a time in a politician’s life when his claim to statesmanship is tested. Such a time now beckons on Senator Ali Modu Sherrif, the immediate past chairman of the People’s Democratic Party (PDP). Senator Sherrif, perhaps for good reason, still sees himself as the bonafide chairman of the PDP, insisting that the Port Harcourt Convention of the Party, which produced the Senator Ahmed Mohammed Makarfi and Senator Ben Ndi Obi-led Caretaker Committee was illegal. To give vent to his position, he procured a court order pending determination of the case.

But it is obvious that Sherrif’s impassioned stand is an afterthought.

After all, he attended the Port Harcourt Convention. Sherrif was brought in four months ago or so, to steer the ship of the party on interim basis. His coming was greeted by hues and cries from all the segments of the party except the PDP Governors’ Forum. The party came quite close to disintegration when he took over, but the elders of the party rose to the occasion and quickly brokered peace and reached the understanding that Sherrif and his team would stay for three months within which to call a National Convention – in May – to elect another party executive.

Yet, soon after, the body language of Sherrif showed he was not prepared to go any time soon. Some members of the former National Working Committee equally plotted tenure elongation. They tried amending the Party’s Constitution and skewed the zoning arrangement to give them the leeway. Sherrif, who confessed he was only prevailed upon by Governor Peter Ayodele Fayose of Ekiti State, to become the interim chairman, was to be railroaded back as chairman by such tenuous arrangements.

It is true that politics is all about self-interest and concentric circles of conspiracies. So, there is nothing wrong with Sherrif’s ambition. He is a juggernaut by every stretch of imagination and imminently qualified to be Nigeria’s President. His tenure as a two-time Governor of Borno State bears eloquent testimony as to his capacity to govern well. To say nothing of his stint at the nation’s Senate too. Nonetheless, true patriots never lose sight of the bigger picture and national goals. Sherrif himself confessed that his interest is to rebuild and reposition the Peoples Democratic Party. What this presupposes is that he would not be a party to any ploy to hamper the party’s progress. What then could be more harmful than his court processes and actions derailing the party?

There is also a moral burden in this. Sherrif stands to gain little or nothing from destroying a party he would not consider himself a founding member, for he jumped the APC ship only in the wee hours of the Goodluck Jonathan Presidency. It was one of the axes some party stalwarts had to grind with him. One of the splinter groups had argued that Sherrif is in no position to rebuild and reposition the party, given what they say is his variegated antecedents and checkered history.

To be fair to such stalwarts who never saw Sherrif as suitable, at times like this, the arrowheads the PDP needs should be stablising personae, who can strike a reconciliatory balance. Indeed, in times of crisis such as the PDP is going through, the leadership needed is the type that can bring all sides together and not the type to exacerbate or precipitate fresh crisis or be seen to be taking sides. If truth be told, Sherrif does not easily inspire such confidence across party lines. And as if determined to prove his critics right, by the time he was voted out at Port Harcourt, PDP had broken into three factions, with himself leading one. This is unprecedented in the annals of the party’s history.

Whoever watched the Port Harcourt Convention where Ahmed Makarfi and Ben Obi emerged as PDP Caretaker Chairman and Secretary respectively, would attest to the fact that all the party Stakeholders were there – Board of Trustees, all the PDP Governors, National Working Committee and everybody else who mattered in the party. It was there that the National Working Committee of the party led by Ali Modu Sherrif was dissolved. Since it was a duly convened National Convention, and the Party’s Constitution vests in its National Convention its supreme powers, such a decision is validly in order, at least to a lay mind. Sherrif’s argument that he called off the convention before its commencement, even without a resolution of the National Working Committee, members of which participated actively in the convection, is a bit out of place.

What is more, the National Chairman of the party does not enjoy any absolute or arbitrary powers and therefore couldn’t have validly called off the convention arbitrarily and unilaterally.

This is not to say that Sherrif and one or two members of the disbanded National Working Committee still supporting him cannot find some technicalities to hold unto to render the party ineffectual. But unless their goal is really to destroy the party as some allege, their continued fight is pointless and capable of inspiring exodus from the party since the owners of the party who made him National Chairman in the first place were the same people who said his time was up.

Penultimate week, two members of the PDP in the House of Representatives defected to the APC, cashing in on the crisis even though no court has declared that there exist factions or crisis in the PDP to warrant such defection or make it proper and legal. Some members have also openly asserted that nobody should rule out an entirely brand new political party emerging from the simmering confusion and conflicts in the PDP. The Caretaker Committee of the Party, therefore, needs to be supported to halt the drift in order to forestall a greater damage.

Some of us who are apostles of two party system as a panacea for our nation’s unity and true democracy are appalled by these sad commentaries. When the legacy parties that formed the APC pulled off a merger and consummated their historic and epochal union, many celebrated the arrival of two party system. When the APC emerged the winner of the 2015 Presidential Election, even some who were sympathetic to the PDP but believe in two party system had hoped that the strongest opposition party in the nation’s history had emerged in the PDP. This hope is what is being dashed by the impasse in the party.

Without a shred of doubt, the key to peace and full resolution of the conflict in the PDP is held by no other than Ali Modu Sherrif. From all indications, the Jerry Gana/Ibrahim Mantu faction has sheathed their swords, leaving Modu Sherrif to do the same. Commendably, the Ahmed Makarfi Caretaker Committee has held out the olive branch to Sherrif and other aggrieved members. The erstwhile chairman should take the olive branch and by so doing, give the PDP the much needed respite to reorganize itself and give the nation a virile opposition and prove itself a credible alternative to the APC in 2019 Presidential Election. Sherrif is much better off joining the ranks of party elders and guardians. Such is his duty as a patriot and statesman who should worry more about the next generation than for next election. Posterity beckons on him.

EDITORS SOURCE

If there is hell in Oyo State today, it is perhaps because Governor Abiola Ajimobi drove on the road of good intentions. He says he wants to reform public education and to this end, introduced an initiative that conjoins private partnership with the state’s efforts. The idea, perhaps expectedly, is being contested by the state chapter of the Nigeria Labour Congress, certain religious groups, and of course, secondary school students themselves who recently revolted against the idea of their schools being subjected to capitalists’ vagaries. The initiative – and any – that seeks to revamp education in Oyo State should not merely be resisted on murky ideological grounds but vigorously debated until parties can find a common ground.

In his recent interview with Splash FM, the governor spoke on the initiative. That conversation sparked mixed feelings in me. One, he seemed unwilling to empathise with those resisting the idea. The Nigerian economic situation is currently creating casualties and suggestion of further sacrifice on the part of the people will necessarily activate angst. Ajimobi should hold his internally generated rage and inquire the basis of public scepticism. Beneath that veneer of cynicism is their experience of bad faith; due to years of governmental deceit, people cannot simply trust the government anymore. Ajimobi cannot simply beat people on the heads with his lofty ideas. He needs to signpost his sincerity by addressing and redressing their distrust.

He should understand the disenchantment of the generation of citizens born after the locust years. They have never derived an iota of benefit from the government yet they are called to make sacrifices all the time. We can catalogue the registers of austerity the government has inundated us with over the years – from subsidy removal to belt tightening, sacrifice, trickle-down, and all that jazz, to attest to the non-benevolence of the Nigerian state.

Ajimobi says the state is no nanny, and Nigeria should not be a socialist country. Here, he misconstrues the architecture of relationship that has existed between the state and the people till now. What subsists as socialism in Nigeria is more or less the state’s dubious means of placating public restlessness. Those hand-me-downs are not engineered to generate productivity, but defer any revolutionary ideas that hunger pangs may trigger. Even more, it saves our leaders from the tedious task of thinking through our intricate problems.

Some questions that I waited for during the interview but never came were whether the state, with this initiative, was not merely dancing around the idea of returning schools to the original missionary owners. Why is he seeking partners to take over 10 per cent of the schools when the missionary owners alone can do just that? There are many areas of clarification that I expected the interviewers to sound him on. One was to elaborate on the initiative and clarify how it might work. I am interested in knowing how the state intends to partner businesspeople that will invest their money in the schools and then recoup their investment; how the schools will be valued monetarily; and how the state proposes to still regulate the schools with the new ownership.

Also, what becomes of the other 90 per cent that are not selected by partners? Will they receive inferior quality of education?

Another question I expected was whether the idea of free education was not outdated and should be phased out. After all, as things stand now, students are variously levied and it may be productive if the money collected from them are standardised and channelled towards improving the sector. Why, for instance, make them pay education levy yet insist education is free? Why should they supply their own furniture and other materials while “enjoying” free education?

I am aware how contentious the idea of school fees is and those who have rejected the idea outright based on the consideration for the economic conditions of the people who patronise public schools are not totally wrong. Yet, there are equally strong contending realities of dwindling government revenues, a disintegrating economy, and a public education system so badly ravaged it needs huge monetary investment to be animated at all. Free education in Chief Obafemi Awolowo’s era was not as “free” as people seem to imagine it. It was paid for through taxes that were just as contentious then. Today, no state in what used to be the old Western Region has the level of agricultural productivity of the era to make “free education” possible. Asking the state to continue in that mode is to ask the state of education to remain poor so that the children poor enough to patronise it will remain poor forever.

The other line of argument that comes up frequently is that paying school fees will be at the disadvantage of children of the poor. (I must note at this point that those who bring up this argument are those whose children never attend schools with those “poor.”) The problem that I have with this refrain is that Nigeria has no objective parameters to categorise or define what it means to be poor. When “poor” comes up in policy-related arguments, it is arbitrarily dredged as a manipulative tool to blackmail parties into receding their position. Because we do not have accurate data to determine what “poor” people cannot afford, we end up using a liberal defence of the poor to keep them poor.

There are some “poor” people who can afford to pay some money for their children’s education and who should not be told they are too poor to do so. Their chances of acquiring quality education need not be imperiled by a blanket argument that confines everyone to the category of poor and abject. I should add that those who are absolutely unable to pay should not be merely handed free education, they should be made to give back to the state through some form of mandatory community service. We have reached a stage in our Nigerian lives when we should be teaching our children that the idea of “free” is an illusion that we should divest ourselves from promptly.

Full Articles : http://www.radar.ng/2016/06/the-education-kerfuffle-in-oyo-state-by.html