EPL TITLE CHASE: Now it's really begining to get to me, this Arsenal run. They are growing in belief and that's quite a dangerous thing for every EPL title contender

You asked yourself what has changed about Arsenal's opening day defeat to Aston Villa on August 17th, physically it is Mesut Ozil, spiritually, it's new found belief. They play like they know they will win. There is no real hurry. They take their time, pass the ball around, pass it to Ramsey and he scores! Aaron Ramsey - Whatever happened to the lad? Family kidnapped and he needs to score 50 goals as ransom? And to think Jack Wilshere is scoring goals, quite a damn thing too! I haven't seen Arsenal quite as strong and confident since 2004. The irony that the threat about them does not stem from a single player. The whole team is all up for it. And Oliver Giroud. So much is going to Ozil right now, but Giroud is just as important. The steel that Arsenal has lacked in recent years is coming back in.

I do of course hope they do not get Luiz Saurez in january. Church don close be that!
Surely they're god for the title, no?

1. Damn it, how did they get it so right this tme?
2. Do you think Arsenal will wn the league this time?

IS WIZ-KID BEING CYNICAL?

CHECK OUT OLAMIDE'S NEW ALBUM COVER!

Olamide has unveiled the cover of his highly anticipated new album titled 'Baddest Guy Ever Liveth' which will drop sometime in November. What do you think of the cover?

SAY WHAT? BBC WORLD NEWS CALLS ABUJA "The Unfinished Capital".

Sorry about the Lol, it's not funny I know but I just couldn't resist. The 'unfinished capital' cracked me up. So BBC says Abuja was built on stolen land, stolen from who? Continue to read the pic's accompanying article


Written by By Alex Preston for BBC News

When one of Nigeria's long line of military rulers, General Olusegun Obasanjo, seized the land on which Abuja was to be built in the late 1970s, he could hardly have imagined that the city would remain unfinished 35 years on.

Abuja has a makeshift, haphazard feel to it: A place of bureaucrats and building sites, its streets eerily empty after the buzz of Lagos or the enterprising bustle of Kano.
It is one of the most expensive cities in Africa, and one of the most charmless.
The skyline is dominated by the space-rocket spires of the National Christian Centre and the golden dome of the National Mosque, facing each other pugnaciously across a busy highway at the city's centre.
Its other striking landmark is the vast construction site of the Millennium Tower, which, if it is ever completed, will be Nigeria's tallest building.

The skyscraper was intended to mark Abuja's 20th birthday in 2011. Now delayed until who-knows-when, hugely over-budget and the subject of numerous official investigations.

 

 The National Mosque stands at the side of a busy road in the city centre

 

All the people of Abuja have to show for the billions invested in the project are two stunted fingers of scaffold-clad concrete.
I had been in Abuja for three days - about two-and-a-half too many - when my friend, Atta, a sociologist, picked me up from my hotel.
We drove out towards Aso Rock, the monolith looming over the presidential palace.
On either side of the road there are complexes of bulky, imposing mansions, most of them unfinished.
Some had empty swimming pools; others had mock-Tudor timbering, but were windowless and often roofless.
Atta told me that 65% of the houses in these developments were uninhabited, put up only to launder Abuja's dirty money.
Like the Millennium Tower, these grandiose schemes are ruins before they are completed, bleak monuments to a city built by kleptocratic politicians on stolen land.
We pulled off the Murtala Mohammed Highway at Mpape Junction, and immediately the road deteriorated.

 

There are many uninhabited mansions near Aso Rock

 

"I am going to show you the real Abuja," Atta told me, as his car struggled up a deeply-rutted dirt track.
A warm wind from the desert to the north - the Harmattan - whipped clouds of red dust around us as we climbed through rocky scrubland into the hills.

Continue reading the main story

“Start Quote

Life here is difficult. Often we can't see across the street because of the smoke and dust”

Mary

People began to appear on the streets - men carrying ancient Singer sewing machines, women balancing baskets on their heads.

We entered a vast shanty-town of shacks with corrugated iron roofs, slums stacking to the horizon.
Nissan minivans scuttled past - they are called "One Chance" buses, as they barely stop on their manic journeys through these uncharted streets.
Crowds thronged between skinny cows, beneath posters advertising beaming televangelists.
Dance music blared out, interrupted by a muezzin's call to prayer. Bright-eyed children kicked footballs about.
This was the home of the Gwari people, the original inhabitants of the land where the capital was built.
Hundreds of thousands of them were summarily evicted in the 1970s, and now scrape a living in the hills.

 

Many of the original owners of the land around Abuja are now living in poverty

 

Abuja is itself a Gwari word and, although the city of generals and politicians below us had barely 700,000 inhabitants, two or three million people live in these shanty towns, many of them Gwari.
The Gwari people continue to fight for compensation for the land wrested from them by the Obasanjo government, land now worth more per square kilometre than almost anywhere else in Africa.
We got out and walked through the smoke and dust towards a row of shacks.

In one of them, a woman knelt on the ground plucking a chicken, a man above her leaning on a makeshift bar.

They were Frank and Mary, Gwari people in their thirties, children of one of the thousands of families originally evicted during the foundation of Abuja.
The four of us sat in the shack sipping Fantas, staring out at the swarming life of the shanty town: Motorbikes and cattle and people, all of them through a veil of reddish dust.
"I trained as an architect," Frank told me. "I have an education. But I do not have money, I don't know the right people. So I work here with my sister. In Abuja, money defines everything."
I ask him about the empty mansions lining the roads into the city.
"That is pseudo-Abuja, a false place. It's unjust - we should be living in those houses. Instead…" He gestured to the squalid lean-to that jutted from the back of the bar.
Mary looked up from her chicken. "Life here is difficult," she says.
"Often we can't see across the street because of the smoke and dust. If it rains, you can't move for the mud. But we pray hard."

 

Thick dust and smoke often fill the streets 

 

Frank pulled out a CD. It was Fela Kuti's Suffering and Smiling.
"This," Frank said, as the music coiled out from an ancient hi-fi, "is the compressed statement of Nigerian society. We suffer, but we smile. Nothing will change until we get angry, until we stop smiling."
A storm was coming in, red clouds rolling overhead and thunder crackling down the valleys.
Frank and Mary stood waving to us, the music playing still, as we drove off down the hill, towards pseudo-Abuja.

STUNNA: LIL WAYNE TO QUIT AFTER CARTER V!

Lil Wayne says he's calling it quits following the release of Tha Carter V, which is expected to drop sometime next year.
After failing to appear on Jimmy Kimmel Live a few times due to health issues and just because, Wayne finally appeared on the Los Angeles-based late-night TV show on Tuesday. The rapper talked about his favorite basketball team the Miami Heat, his recent hospitalization after experiencing multiple seizures and even dropped a bomb: He's planning his retirement.
Wait... haven't we heard this before? Kimmel wasn't buying it.
"Will this be a real retirement or one of your usual retirements, or a rap retirement when you make 12 albums after that," Kimmel cracked. "I mean Tupac died and he's still making albums."
"Yes that is true," confirmed Wayne. "I want to retire after Tha Carter V."
"What will you do when you retire? Be a Walmart greeter?" Kimmel responded.
Wayne said he wants to hang up his cap and do regular things, like a drive a car and spend time with his kids

ALUU 4 UPDATE: FOUR MEN GRANTED BAIL

A high court sitting in Port Harcourt this morning October 17th granted bail to four out of the twelve persons facing trail in the murder case of the four Uniport students. The four are: Omoikiri Aluu monarch: Alhaji Welewa, Okoghiroh Endurance, Ozioma Abajuo and Chigozie Evans Samuel.

Presiding Judge, Justice Letan Nyordee granted them bail on grounds that their offense is not a capital offense and is bailable. They were granted bail to the tune of N2 million with two sureties and the court asked the sureties to submit their passports. The sureties mus also have landed property in Port Harcourt and must show means of livelihood and evidence of paying tax for two years. The other eight suspects were refused bail due to the murder charges against them.

The court also admitted the photographs negatives and the Youtube CD of the incident tendered as exhibits in the matter.

Dear Nigerian police, please also arrest and prosecute the men who murdered 2 innocent young men in Badagry in July. Thank you! The sooner we criminalize jungle justice, the better for us all!

NEW MUSIC: FAZE releases two hot new singles!

Former Plantashun Boiz member Chibuzor Orji popularly known as Faze is back with two hot new singles. Ifeoma and Lambo.

DSTV CATCH UP: Why does my DSTV signal disappear when it’s ONLY ABOUT TO RAIN? Abi it’s only my area or dish?

No one should tell me about some damned physics theorem or satellite technology limitation! I’m paying top Dollar…well, top Naira, for that service and I expect to have it, rain or shine. Period! Besides, I can’t remember encountering similar
problem abroad, satellite signals scramming on you when it rains or about to rain. And I’m not talking
Mars! The Champions League final. 92nd minute Bayern was up 2-1. I was gnashing my teeth and
biting my nails desperately wishing Dortmund would equalize. The ref puts the whistle to his lips
and…coitus interruptus. Not of my making. The signal goes. The moment is lost, never to be recaptured by a million replays. What I don’t get is why my analogue reception (terrestrial broadcast, NTA and co) never jilts me at any trying moment. Worse, GOTV signal, vended by same Multichoice, never disappears when it rains. So what is the big deal about satellite technology then? See, I really don’t care about the technology; all I want is uninterrupted service. If some annoying number is not showing on your screen, it’s some damned E14 or F9 message. What, you guys make fighter jets now? Not complaining. Just pissed!

OR ARE YOU NOT???

ARSENAL EXCLUSIVE: Big news for Arsenal fans in the coming seasons

Arsene Wenger is set to pen a new Arsenal contract (Picture: Getty)

Arsene Wenger is on the cusp of signing a new contract at Arsenal after accepting the club’s offer of a new two-year deal.
Wenger, whose current deal is due to expire at the end of the season, has been locked in negotiations over an extension for months.
But after confirming he wants to see out his managerial career in England last week, the Frenchman has reportedly agreed terms on a deal that would take him until 2016.

Goal line technology in Nigeria? Nah, nothing beats beating up the referee.

Well, our beloved and bungling Vincent Enyeama has come out to root for goal-line technology on the continent after he unashamedly declared Behailu Assefa’s cross didn’t, er, cross the line for the Ethiopian goal. Given the appalling camera angles available to us during that match, Enyeama may reckon the ref and linesmen were in the wrong, but my personal Hawk-eye tells me the ball crossed the line. Victor mis-timed the ball. Lucky him we won the match. His call for goal-line technology on the continent filled me with macabre and funny images, in no way denigrating of my esteemed continent. Why do we need goal-line technology when you can threaten the ref before the match? All he has to tell his bosses is that the watch botched. Happens all the time. Waste of precious money if you ask me. That money can be put better use – bribing the officials. Or what if those aluminum
 urchins somehow manage to sneak into the stadium and steal the goal post? They then sell it to some smelter who turns it into say, beverage tins. So every time you walk past a tin of Milo or Bournvita, the tins vibrate and shouts ‘goal!’ Or perhaps, there will be so much jostling for the N10billion-per-goal-post contract, even FIFA will be
bidding for the contract… I’m certainly not short of imagination here. But the thing is, it’s actually doable. It will only be for World Cup and AFCON qualifying matches, at least in the interim, and will only be in say, two stadia – Calabar and Abuja. And only for Super Eagles matches.