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FIFA expect attendance record at Confed
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his year's Confederations Cup in Brazil will be the best-attended ever with nearly 600 000 of the 826 000 tickets already sold despite delays caused by stadiums being ready late, soccer's world governing body Fifa said on Tuesday. FIFA said 588 178 tickets had already been bought for the eight-nation tournament which features the champions from each confederation as well as hosts Brazil, Italy and Uruguay and acts as a rehearsal for next year's World Cup. "Due to delayed stadium deliveries, we are only now in the position to conduct the seat allocations in each of the venues," FIFA's marketing director Thierry Weil said in a statement. Some 58,000 tickets have been sold for Brazil's opening match against Japan in Brasilia and 60 000 for the final, but only 10 000 sold for the Tahiti versus Nigeria in Belo Horizonte. The 16 matches at the 2009 Confederations Cup in South Africa were watched by 584 000 fans - an average of 36 555.
Chelsea return nothing special for AVB
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ndre Villa-Boas, sacked less than nine months in charge at Stamford Bridge before rebuilding his reputation at Tottenham Hotspur, said his return to Chelsea for a key Premier League clash today was "not very special". Villas-Boas was fired by Chelsea in March 2012 after a poor run of results amid reports of dressing room disharmony with his coaching methods and was replaced by Roberto Di Matteo who guided them to FA Cup final victory and then a memorable first Champions League triumph with a penalty shootout victory over Bayern Munich. Chelsea, on 68 points from 35 games, can effectively guarantee finishing in the top four if they beat Spurs, who are fifth on 65 points from 35 and have a far inferior goal difference. Fourth-placed Arsenal have 67 points from 36 games.
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QUO TABLE Q UO TE UOT QUO UOTE Please, I don't want anybody to cry for me. Were you told I was dead? I am alive and nobody should shed tears for me. — Elder statesman Shettima Ali Munguno after his release Monday by his abductors, suspected to be Boko Haram insurgents
Letter to President Jonathan and Dasuki Y
ou will, please, permit the public nature of this letter. It is about the collective security of our nation and people. The public nature of my letter to you is justified by the fact that citizens themselves are a nation's best form of security. Despite official protocol, which often unjustifiably rationalizes secrecy of and about state matters, citizens deserve to know. The matter at hand is your decision to hand over our security to a foreign company. It was reported that you, our president and by implication the national Security Adviser (NSA), Col. Sambo Dasuki, have contracted the monitoring of computer and Internet communication in Nigeria and of Nigerians to an Israeli company. It is instructive that on such an important matter as our security, the information did not emanate from you, your security adviser or anyone in your presidency. We, Nigerians, got to know about an issue that will fundamentally impact on our security and sovereignty from a spokesperson of the foreign company, Mr. Yehuda Vered. It matters. These are the details as publicly disclosed by the general manager of the Israeli CompanyElbit, Mr. Yehuda Vered: "Elbit Systems will supply its Wise Intelligence Technology (WiT) system to an unnamed country in Africa under a new $40 million contract… for Intelligence Analysis and Cyber Defense…" While Mr. Vered did not name the "African country", an online publication alluded to Nigeria as the "African country". If this is true, it means that you, President Jonathan and Col. Dasuki, have officially asked a foreign company to engage in intelligence monitoring in Nigeria. Sirs, it is now more than a week since the news broke. You have not denied it, neither have you affirmed it. As a Nigerian, I believe that your silence has raised serious issues about your patriotism, nationalism; and moral and ethical issues of responsibility of a president to the citizens. Sirs, given the importance of a nation's security to its sovereignty, these conclusions are grievous, traumatic, and demoralizing for citizens. Unfortunately, those who defend you on this unpatriotic act, which borders on treachery to our nation because it subverts our sovereignty, have argued that
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GUEST COLUMNIST Adeolu Ademoyo
President Jonathan this decision is justified because our country needs "monitoring". On this, you will agree with me that such defense on your behalf is self-serving because any human society is essentially a "monitoring" society. In other words, monitoring goes on every minute in our daily lives-both private and public. So it is trite to attempt to justify allocating the monitoring of our collective security as a people and as a nation to a foreign company on the premise that "monitoring is important." No responsible state rests a major act (such as this) in the lives of her citizens on the obvious reason that "monitoring is important." Excuse me, sirs, we all know that. We all know that some intelligence gathering of data is important in the life of any country in our modern and complex world. However, the issues are our sovereignty as a nation, and your sincerity as the president with respect to the mode you have chosen to do this. For example, when your adviser on amnesty, Mr. Kingsley Kuku, was quoted as having said that insecurity would return to the Niger Delta region if you are not re-elected, do you need an Israeli company to decode what Kuku said, and gather "intelligence" for you on that? Do you need an Israeli company to decode for you what your presidency said through the mouth of your own adviser? Still on another current and pertinent "intelligence" and security issue, do you need an
Israeli company to inform and decode for you who paid 500million naira ransom to Boko Haram to free the French hostages? These two successive incidents call to question your sincerity about matters of "intelligence" and the nation's security and your readiness to honour and defend our sovereignty in the matter of the Israeli company, Elbit. Sirs, to put this right on your tables, this is what we need to do by ourselves as a nation. This is because if I as a parent monitor the moral, social and intellectual lives of my children for public good, I should know that "monitoring" is important. But if mom and I have to contract our responsibility to our children as parenst to an outsider, an alien, then our children and the larger society are free to see us as being incompetent parents, bad, disloyal, unfaithful, unloving and irresponsible to our children, unintelligent, and perhaps beneath contempt. The critical point is the issue of propriety, which is whether it is proper for you and Col. Dasuki to farm out our nation's security to a foreign company. Is it proper for you to contract a serious security issue such as "intelligence analysis and cyber defense …suitable for countries, armies and critical infrastructure sites." (Sic) in Nigeria to a foreign company? Does this make sense to the two of you as President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria and as adviser on security? While you, Mr. President and Col Dasuki were negotiating this unpatriotic and treacherous security contract with this foreign company did you, in passing, ask Mr. Vered if the Jewish people would be comfortable with a situation where their security and that of the Jewish state was contracted to a foreign company, for example a Nigerian firm? Mr. President, did you? Or are these questions unimportant to you? Or do you as persons of African descent subscribe to the view that peoples of African descent are genetically inferior, such they cannot design and handle a basic task like this? Sirs, let me put it on record that you should not act as if the ELBIT
contract is not treacherous, and that it does not suggest that you subconsciously subscribe to the view that Africans are genetically inferior. It shows the two. A treachery is moral, political subversion of our state and existence. To hand over our collective being - which intelligence amounts to - to foreigners is worse than just being unpatriotic because it erases our being, it is complete disloyalty to our nation and our people. And because it did not cross your mind that our scientists can handle this task, you unconsciously lend credence to the intellectually dubious view that we are inferior. When you took office you swore to defend the corporate integrity of Nigeria. Handing over our collective security to any foreigner is a violation of the oath you took to defend us when you assumed duty as president of the Republic. If the ELBIT contract goes on then we become nothing in the hands of an Israeli company-we become plaything, which can be manipulated. This is why it is worse than just being unpatriotic. On this, I am asking that you put on record your patriotism and nationalism for the security of a country is not like b??li and ?pa or Mr. Bigg's, or MacDonald's hamburger or whopper that can be contracted out like a piece of menu or commerce. Hence, in deference to the oath of office you took, you have the moral obligation to Nigerian citizens to stop this treacherous contract with this foreign body. There is a solution right before you. You should call members of the Nigerian Academy of Sciences and the Nigerian Society of Engineers and other related professional science bodies in Nigeria, hand over the $40 million to them and give them a marching order to produce within six months a Nigerian centered cyber security mechanism to protect the corporate integrity of Nigeria. That is what a proud and sovereign nation would do. Sirs, given the evil of terrorism and the cyber crime of the 419 yahoo yahoo boys and girls, we know that we are in a war situation and in war situations respectable countries would use the minds of their scholars, academics, scientists to turn adversity to prosperity. The Soviet Union did it in the Second World War. As late Chief Obafemi Awolowo, one of our nation's founding fathers, said, we as a people can do it; you, as Mr. President, can do it; African leaders can do it if they display that intense and passionate sense of urgency to govern Africa, join and lead the world. Adeolu Ademoyo (aaa54@cornell.edu) is of Africana Study and Research Center, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY.
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