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PEOPLES DAILY, tuesday, march 10, 2015
Leisure
Some Interesting Facts
kissing the conveyor legs in the air, the person died in battle; if the belt. horse has one front leg in the air, the person mericaonceissueda5-centbill. • If a statue in the died as a result of wounds received in battle; An iguana can stay under park of a person on a if the horse has all four legs on the ground, water for 28 minutes. horse has both front the person died of natural causes. • An ostrich’s eye is bigger than its brain. PHOTO OF THE DAY •Batsalwaysturnleftwhenexitingacave. • Ben and Jerry’s send the waste from making ice cream to local pig farmers to use as feed. Pigs love the stuff, except for one flavor: Mint Oreo. • Dolphins sleep with one eye open. • Hershey’s Kisses are called that because the machine that makes them looks like it’s
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SUDOKU SUDOKU EASY 259
Firm friends: Daphne and baby Aisha relax on a sand dune in Tsavo National Park, the Kenyan wildlife reserve that Daphne and her husband David helped found. Source: Dailymail.co.uk
Niger: Cry the ‘beloved power state’ (II) Cond on Backpage
In fact even when a rented 12-man so called ‘Talba Success Movement’ was allegedly paid to counter some of the numerous petitions written against Dr. Aliyu’s permissive Administration, the group’s comments on the Regime’s abysmal performance on Education was to say the least, culpably Jonathese (defending as Jonathan would). It said that “The issue of decay in education did not start today neither is it restricted to Niger State.” By the way even Talba’s anointed ‘successor’, the 39-year old ‘pampered son’ of General Gado Nasko (Rtd) who, commendably is shaping up to speak in the esoterically beguiling dialect of the PDP, has been promising that “The education sector will remain the bedrock of our strategic development agenda”. For a regime that rode on the populist crest of ‘ChiefServant-ship’, promising to lift Niger to one of three best state economies, it was amazing that by the 5th year in office Talba’s Administration had virtually bankrupted the government and had gone a-borrowing. Nor was there anything to show for it other than a couple of locally
constructed or re-graded roads, a few substandard housing projects and carcasses of littered un-completed elephant projects many Nigerltes allegedly say are conduit pipes for the unspeakable. By the 6th year Dr. Aliyu had started selling off prized State property in order to finance yet another white elephant project called the Three-Arms-Zone, -and for which a whopping N6billion bond had earlier been raised. APC’s David Umaru, (Dr. Aliyu’s political arch enemy) in a published petition titled ‘DISPOSAL OF NIGER STATE LANDED PROPERTIES’ (Daily Trust, Aug, 28, 2012) wondered why this “should be such a big priority… to the extent we are made to spend our last ‘dime’ for it when government is hardly able to pay ordinary workers.” By the way it is now less than a month to the end of Talba’s Administration and virtually nothing has been done on this phantom project. Nor do Nigerlites know what has happened to the monies so hurriedly ‘needed’ then that choice properties belonging to the State had to be sold to raise. So where is all the money that Talba received both federally and internally in all
these 8 years?; I do not know. But many Nigerlites believe that the Governor, in cahoots with what they describe as the ‘donothing’ State Assembly, share every penny that comes to the State. A petition to the House Speaker and signed by/for 30 ‘CONCERNED CITIZENS OF NIGER STATE’, said that much: “since nothing worthwhile can be shown to have been done with (State) funds”, the State Assembly should “clear itself (of the allegation) that the Chief Servant usually shares these federal allocations” with them. What the petitioners did not add in the sharing allegation was ‘privileged close relatives’ one of whom allegedly is a celebrated billionaire because he has his hand in virtually every pie baked by his brother. Thus where Kure allegedly shared amongst anointed Aides, loyalists, friends, relatives and godfathers, Talba’s sphere of the anointed is a tight Bermuda Triangle of self, brothers and allegedly Assembly members only. Do not ask me where Kure’s godfathers are; or whether Talba has any; he once told us he is his own godfather. And you know that no one touches The Don. Not even Kure’s godfathers. Concluded