Don Jazzy signs female act Di’Ja to Mavin Records

Months after parting ways with Wande Coal, Don Jazzy has unveiled a new artiste who will join Dr. SID, Tiwa Savage and D’Prince to fly the Mavin Records flag. Her mother is from Northern Nigeria while
her father is from Sierra Leone. Continue..

Pastor dissolves 20-year-old marriage after court ruling

An Orile-Agege Customary Court in Lagos on Wednesday dissolved a 20-year-old marriage of a pastor who had accused his wife of adultery, stealing and threatening his life.
Pastor Olufemi Adewumi, 44, who lives at 12, Ajiboye Close, Ile-Iwe, Agbado Oke-Odo, Agege, came to the court on Dec.12, 2013, seeking the dissolution of his marriage to Fatimo, his wife.
Ruling in the case, the Court President, Mr Adegboyega Omilola, said that the marriage had broken down irreparably. Continue...

Seun Kuti takes newly born daughter to Fela’s graveside [PHOTO]

 Earliar last week, Afrobeat singer and son of the late great musician Fela Akinlapo-Kuti, Seun Kuti took his newly-born daughter, Adara to Fela’s graveside at Kalakuta Republic, off Allen Avenue, Ikeja. See photo after hte cut

Bricklayer flees home after wife delivers Triplets

Apparently unable to cope with the financial challenges associated with the arrival of his new babies, a bricklayer, Adewale Omole, has fled his home because his wife gave birth to a set of triplet.
The wife and mother of the three kids, Mrs. Abosede Omole, expressed fear that her husband may never return home because of his poor financial status. Continue...

Nigerian Police Officers Slumped during Parade

At least, five officers of the Nigeria Police Force slumped on Friday at the Police College, Ikeja, during a parade marking the pulling out (retirement) of senior police officers.
The event, which lasted for some hours, was held in honour of seven retiring officers, including two AIGs and five Commissioners. Continue...

Massive Collaboration Alert! T-Pain ft. Akon & 2Face “If I Got It"

A very massive collaboration has just hit the music scene. This one is "If I Got It" by T-Pain featuring our dear West African and Konvict Records Label owner Akon and the best and most loved musician in Africa our own dear 2face. This's just hitting the music scene after 2face

Student gets 4 months imprisonment for snatching handbag

An Abuja Senior Magistrates’ Court in Wuse Zone 6 on Friday sentenced a student, Kamal Garba, 20, to four months in prison for snatching a lady’s handbag. Senior Magistrate Fatima Malo, sentenced the convict without an option to pay a fine after he pleaded guilty to stealing. Malo also ordered the convict to pay N29,000 as compensation or serve an additional eight months. “The punishment is to make you change your lifestyle from that of crimes to being a good citizen. The convict is accused of snatching a handbag, belonging to one Comfort Anyiwoyi. Garba was caught in the act by a group of men who handed him over to military men on duty. Earlier, the Prosecutor, Insp John Ijoga, told the court that Anyiwoyi had reported the matter to the Central Police Station on Jan. 1. Ijoga said that the complainant’s bag contained N29,000, two cell phones, some passport photographs, ATM cards of three banks and other vital items. After the convict’s guilty plea, the prosecutor prayed the court to summarily sentence him under Section 157 (1) of the Criminal Procedure Code. The section states that “if an accused admits that he has committed the offence of which he is accused, his admission shall be recorded. It adds that this must be “ be nearly as possible, in the words used by the accused and if he shows no sufficient cause why he should not be convicted, the court may convict him accordingly’’. Ijoga said the offence contravened the provision of Section 287 of the Penal Code. (NAN)

Deaf, dumb convict gets 14 strokes of cane for stealing N10,000

A Karu Chief Magistrates’ Court, Abuja,on Friday ordered that a 15-year-old deaf and dumb boy, be given 14 strokes of the cane, for stealing N10,000. The convict, a primary school pupil, was arraigned by the police before Chief Magistrate Hadiza Dodo, on a two-count charge of house breaking and theft. Dodo sentenced the minor, after the First Information Report (FIR) was read and translated to him by his father. “Agreed, the convict is handicapped. But that would not stop the court from punishing him, in order to serve as a deterrent to others that use their conditions as an advantage to commit crime. “The convict is hereby, sentenced to 14 strokes of the cane and also to sweep the court premises, under the supervisor of the prosecutor, Cpl Mohammed. “The accused is also to pay the sum of N5,000 as compensation to the complainant before his release,” she ordered. The order of the Magistrate was carried out by the prosecutor in the court’s premises. The prosecutor, Cpl Umar Mohammed, had told the court that the convict, on Feb.4, broke into the house of one Eluwan Bala, and stole a bundle of brocade material, a nokia phone and N10,000. Mohammed also stated that during interrogation, the convict admitted to committing the crime. The prosecutor said the act contravened provisions of section 346 and 286 of the Penal Code. (NAN)

Man Docked for Raping a 2-year-old Girl

An Osogbo Magistrates’ Court, Osun, on Friday remanded a 29-year-old man, Akeem Ibrahim, in prison custody for allegedly raping a two-year-old girl. Magistrate Olusola Aluko, who gave the order, directed that the accused be remanded in prison custody due to the magnitude of the offence. The Prosecutor, Insp. Fagboyinbo Abiodun, had told the court that the accused committed the offence on Feb. 2, at about 1:00 p.m. along Fagi Isale Afon, Ikirun Area of Osun. Abiodun said the accused unlawfully had carnal knowledge of the girl. He said the action of the accused, contravened section 218 and 222 of the Criminal Code, Cap 34, Vol. 11, Laws of Osun, 2003 and 2007. Abiodun said he would be charged with assault and rape. The counsel to the accused, Mr Ragenious Ugwu, urged the court to grant his client bail in most liberal terms. The magistrate however overruled the bail application and ordered that the accused to be remanded in prison custody, pending formal application for bail. He adjourned the case to March 3 for mention. (NAN)

Impulse to Exchange Gifts isn't Limited to Humans

Here are some last-minute gift ideas to suit even the most discriminating individuals on your list.

For the female scorpionfly: an extremely large, glittering, nutrient-laced ball of spit, equivalent to five per cent to 10 per cent of a male fly’s body mass. Gentlemen: Too worn down by the holidays to cough up such an expensive package? Try giving her a dead insect instead. You can always steal it back later.

For the male Zeus bug: a monthlong excursion aboard the luxury liner that is the much larger female’s back, with its scooped-out seat tailored to his dimensions and a pair of dorsal glands to supply the passenger with all the proteinaceous wax he can swallow.

For the bonobo you’ve just met: half your food, at least. Just shovel it over. Sharing is fun!

For the bonobos you’ve known your whole life: Eh, maybe nothing this year. It’s not like they’ll stop being your friend if you “forget” to toss them a banana.

We may denounce the hyper-consumerism of the Christmas season until were Hanukkah blue in the face, but much of our economy relies on the strength of the gift-giving impulse and with good reason: The drive to exchange presents is ancient, transcultural and by no means limited to Homo sapiens. Researchers have found striking examples of gift-giving across the phyletic landscape in insects, spiders, mollusks, birds and mammals.

Many of these donations fall under the rubric of nuptial gifts, items or services offered up during the elaborate haggle of animal courtship to better the odds that one’s gametes will find purchase in the next generation. Hungry? Why don’t you go ahead and chew on the droplets oozing from my hind-leg spur while I just take a few moments to deposit a sperm packet in the neighborhood of your genitals?

Nuptial gifts can also be a gift for researchers, allowing them to precisely quantify a donor animal’s investment in mating and reproduction and to track the subtleties of sexual competition and collusion by analyzing the chemical composition of a given bag of courtship swag.

“This is an incredibly cool and important topic in sexual selection that we’re just beginning to explore,” said Sara M. Lewis, a professor of biology at Tufts University who has written extensively about nuptial gifts. “The bright side of nuptial gifts is, here’s a way that males can contribute things that are essential to his mate and to his future offspring.

“On the other hand, the gifts can be a source of sexual conflict, a way of manipulating the female into doing what he wants,” she said. “So there is a lot of back and forth over evolutionary time.”

Other researchers are studying how animals use gifts socially to foster alliances or appease dominant members of the group. Grooming among primates is considered a form of gift-giving, and, in most cases, it’s the subordinates who do the tick-picking: betas groom alphas, females groom males.

A nuptial or other animal gift is, by definition, something that is voluntarily given, Lewis said. “But that doesn’t mean its voluntarily received,” she added. “We’ve all gotten gifts that we didn’t want and wished we could return.”

One example of a possibly unwelcome gift, she said, is the snail’s love dart. Land snails like the ones in a garden are hermaphroditic, meaning they produce both eggs and sperm, and they mate by swapping sperm with other snails, often promiscuously. This is why, before copulation, a snail will try to pierce its partner with a love dart, a harpoon-like structure made of calcium carbonate and produced in the snails genital region.

Barely an eighth of an inch long, coated in mucus and ejected with considerable force, the dart may penetrate anywhere on the other snail’s body: through the shell, the head, even the eye. And when it does, it delivers a “gift” of potent hormones, which scientists have lately determined offer little obvious benefit to the recipient, but, instead, help promote the retention of the donor’s sperm over that of competing snails. No mere victim, the punctured mollusk retorts with a flirty fléchette of its own, at which point the dueling Cupids will copulate.

In most cases, though, a male’s nuptial gift is something the female wants or needs. Martin Edvardsson, an evolutionary biologist at Australian National University, studies Callosobruchus maculatus, a small, spotted beetle that is a major pest on beans and stored grains. Given their chosen meal plan, the beetles have little access to water, and the females get very thirsty while making eggs. What does a girl have to do to get a drink around here? Mate with a male.

As it turns out, a male sequesters most of the liquid he encounters as a larva inside a bean and adds it to his ejaculate. Should a parched female solicit him, hell mount and pump in the stored water along with his sperm packet, for seven or eight minutes at a time. The emission is a veritable cataract.

“When I’ve given talks, I use props,” Edvardsson said. “I’ll bring in four two-liter containers of milk” proportionally speaking, that is the human equivalent of the male beetles ejaculate “and I’ll hold up a little soy sauce packet from a takeout restaurant”: the actual volume of a human ejaculate. Edvardsson and his colleagues have shown that the thirstier a female beetle is, the more often she mates; and the more water she secures, the more eggs she lays.

Gifts can be costly to make or acquire. The salivary mass that a male scorpionfly secretes to lure in a peckish female is packed with so much protein and nutrients that a less-robust suitor may forgo the effort and resort to offering a female a dead insect, instead. Unlike a spitball, the insect corpse has the benefit of being reclaimable, at least in part, after mating is through.

-New York Times Service.

WAEC introduces 39 New Subjects

The West African Examinations Council has announced the introduction of 39 new subjects in its examinations. The Council’s Acting Head, Test Development Division, Mrs. Olayinka Ajibade, who announced this, said the new subjects would commence in this year’s May/June West African Senior School Certificate Examination.
Ajibade said this while delivering a paper titled “The New Senior Secondary Education Curriculum in Nigeria: Implications for Assessment” at the council’s monthly seminar in Lagos on Friday.
The fresh initiative, she said, was in accordance with the Nigerian Education Research and Development Council’s new secondary school curriculum.
The NERDC is the body responsible for reviewing primary and secondary schools’ curricula in the country.
She said, “The implementation of the new SSCE curricula began in September 2011, meaning that the maiden public examinations based on the new/ revised curricula are expected to be held in May/ June 2014.
“Each WASSCE syllabus is derived from the senior secondary education curriculum. In addition to the 39 new subjects for which NERDC engaged in curriculum development, curriculum review was also carried out for 35 existing subjects.”
In the new curriculum, four new subjects- Computer Studies, Insurance, Store Management and Office Practice- are in the electives category, while the remaining 35 subjects are in the Trades category.
Among subjects in the trade category are Painting and Decorating, Photography, Salesmanship, Plumbing and Pipe Fitting, and Upholstery.
Ajibade added that under the fresh directive, students would be required to take four core subjects, comprising English Language, General Mathematics, Civic Education and Trade/ Entrepreneurial Studies.
The candidates, she added, would be required to choose three or four subjects from Humanities, Science, Technology and Business Studies depending on their potential and interest.
Ajibade, while unveiling this, noted however that the new directive would face some challenges.
She identified inadequate teachers, appalling state of facilities in schools and large class size as some of the challenges that would likely beset the initiative.