ARIWO !

On Edo Dance and Culture of Bini

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Nigeria : We resisted pressure to truncate this democracy – Army

Nigerian Army

The Nigerian Army  said  yesterday that it turned down many pressures from some quarters to interrupt the current democracy because of its firm belief in the sustenance of democracy.
General Officer Commanding, 2 division, Nigerian Army, Maj. Gen. Lawrence Ugubane   spoke in Ibadan at the weekend through his representative Lt. Col Andrew Idachaba during the 3rd Annual Francis Adekunle Fajuyi memorial lecture organized by the League of Veteran Journalists, Oyo State chapter held at Iyaganku Press Centre, Ibadan.

He said while speaking on the topic, “the military as a stabilizing factor in a democracy, that “I have friends telling us that we have become women in the Nigerian Army. They said we should take over. But, I always tell them that having the military in governance is an aberration”.

“The military, if it must stabilize the nation’s democracy”, he went further, “should have the  people’s confidence, strive to remain apolitical and assist to create an enabling atmosphere for good governance and peaceful co-existence.

continued

Ghana's Oil and Gas Sector Perspectives

1. Ghana's Oil and Gas Sector - World Bank Support

The development of Ghana’s Jubilee oilfield has the potential to bring
substantial benefits, including reliable and affordable power generation, government
revenues estimated at more than $1 billion during peak production, foreign exchange
income, jobs, and stimulated demand for local goods and services to Ghana. The
engagement of the World Bank Group in the Jubilee oilfield supports the
government’s priority to develop its natural resources in the long-term
interests of the country. The World Bank Group is committed to following the highest
standards of governance and environmental and social practice to help maximize the
development impact in all projects we support.

 continued

 

2. Council of State members are briefed on oil industry

Takoradi, July 29, GNA - Professor Kofi Awoonor, the Chairman of the Council of State, has appealed to Tullow Oil, the majority stakeholder in Ghana's Jubilee Oil Field, to consider channelling part of its gains to develop the nation especially the region in which it is operating.
He said though the nation stood to benefit from the oil industry, Tullow Oil must not neglect the communities in which it operates when it starts making profits from the oil production.
Prof Awoonor referred to the gold mining town of Obuasi in the Ashanti Region and said infrastructure in the area was poor though the mining company made a lot of gains from the industry.
He said this when management staff of Tullow took turns to brief members of the Council of State on their operations at the Air Force Base at Takoradi on Wednesday.
The members paid a two-day working visit to the region to learn about the oil and gas industry as well as the progress of work at the Jubilee Filed by Tullow Oil.

Continued

Ghana : Japan gov’t releases $103,388

… for construction of girls’ hostel  at Domaa

By Cari Dighton

The government of Japan, through its Embassy in Accra has awarded  USD $103,388 grant to the Dormaa Municipality, in the Brong Ahafo region, for the construction of a girls’ hostel and provision of beds for Domaa Vocational Training Centre.

The dormitory will house up to 80 girls. “Girl child empowerment is a key to holistic national development and the government of Japan is happy to contribute to such areas of national development,” Mr. Keiichi Katakami, the Japanese Ambassador to Ghana said at a signing ceremony in Accra yesterday.

The ambassador stated that the construction of the new facility will “significantly increase enrollment of girls from the Dormaa Municipality.” “I believe that if students are housed at the centre during their training, they will spend more time on their training,” Mr. Katakami said.

He explained that the Government of Japan expects nothing in return for the grant but the assurance that the building would be completed and fully utilized…

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Brazilian Rubim not to coach Benin national soccer team

Brazilian Jose Paulo Rubim will not coach the Benin national soccer team due to financial restrictions, according to Beninese Football Federation (FBF) in Cotonou on Monday.
"Mr Rubim will not be able to lead the national team. The minister of sports says the state does not have the financial means to recruit him," said an FBF official.
"The minister has therefore asked the federation to put in place a team of Beninese coaches with a view to the qualifying matches for the 2012 Africa Cup of Nations."
Rubim was originally named Benin coach in early June to replace Frenchman Michael Dussuyer, who was sacked following the side's group stage exit at the 2010 Africa Cup of Nations in January.

Source: Xinhua

WAEMU sets up regional fund for mortgage re-financing

Cotonou, Benin (PANA) - At the end of its general assembly Friday in Cotonou, the capital of Benin, the West African Economic and Monetary Union (WAEMU) said it would set up a Regional Fund for Mortgage Re- financing (CRRH-WAEMU).
With a capital of CFAF 3.4 billion, CFAF 750 million of which is from the West African Development Bank (BOAD), CRRH-UEMOA is designed to exclusively re-finance housing loans granted by its shareholder banks.
Backed by legal and regulatory frameworks, CRRH-WAEMU will enable countries and establishments that cannot get securities or secure obligations to access and to stay competitive on the market of mortgage credit, ensuring that each national mortgage market has a mode of refinancing adapted to its level of maturity.
According to the BOAD president, Abdoulaye Bio Tchane, CRRH-WAEMU will offer resources to banks involved in financing activities in the area of real estate.

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Poly-Rythmo au Lincoln Center Festival

From West Africa, a Recipe for Spicy Trans-Atlantic Funk

By JON PARELES

Orchestre Poly-Rythmo de Cotonou, from Benin, belongs on the very short list of the world’s greatest funk bands. More than four decades into its career, most of them spent touring Benin and nearby West African countries, the 10-man orchestra made its blistering North American debut on Sunday night at the Gerald W. Lynch Theater at John Jay College as part of the Lincoln Center Festival. Its founder and one of its main composers, Clément Mélomé, was on saxophone.

Orchestre Poly-Rythmo’s funk has a trans-Atlantic recipe. Take the rhythms that worship the deities of vodun (or voodoo) in their ancestral West African home, Benin. Add the influence of the Agoudas, a group on Benin’s Atlantic coast descended from Brazilian slaves who returned to Africa in the late 1800s. Stir in the Afro-Cuban big-band music that was welcomed in Africa from the 1930s onward, horns and all. Plug in an electric guitar and some biting analog keyboards.

Layer on the crackling, clockwork, wah-wahing mesh of James Brown’s funk, along with its adaptation and re-Africanization into Nigerian Afrobeat. Build the melodies on African modes that may well hark back to those vodun chants. And rev up the tempos.

Even that formulation doesn’t fully account for what Mr. Mélomé and the band’s other songwriters (including its lead singer, Vincent Ahéhéhinnou) have honed since the band was formed in 1968. Orchestre Poly-Rythmo determinedly one-ups its sources. It often folds in an extra cross-rhythm or two; Fifi LePrince’s neatly picked guitar and Moise Loko’s keyboards were constantly scurrying through the music. And the songs don’t settle for prolonging even the most perfectly formed groove. They have multiple well-delineated sections, with voices shoved aside by horns that are then entangled in guitar or sniped at from the keyboard.

Continued

Copyright, Blaise APLOGAN, 2010,© Bienvenu sur Babilown

Tout copier/collage de cet article sur un autre site doit en mentionner et l’origine et l’auteur sous peine d’être en infraction.

Subtile Alliance of Charm and Intelligence, Princess of Nollywood

It is not how many time you fall that makes you a man, but how many times you are able to rise each time you fall. Dixit Okpeyemi Ayéola,/More story1 /More story 2

 

Copyright, Blaise APLOGAN, 2010,©

Bienvenu sur Babilown

Tout copier/collage de cet article sur un autre site doit en mentionner et l’origine et l’auteur sous peine d’être en infraction.

Happy Birthday Wole Soyinka

Born July 13, 1934, Abeokuta, Nigeria

 

Nigerian playwright and political activist who received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1986. He sometimes wrote of modern West Africa in a satirical style, but his serious intent and his belief in the evils inherent in the exercise of power usually was evident in his work as well.

A member of the Yoruba people, Soyinka attended Government College and University College in Ibadan before graduating in 1958 with a degree in English from the University of Leeds in England. Upon his return to Nigeria, he founded an acting company and wrote his first important play, A Dance of the Forests (produced 1960; published 1963), for the Nigerian independence celebrations. The play satirizes the fledgling nation by stripping it of romantic legend and by showing that the present is no more a golden age than was the past…

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Quest for an AIDS vaccine

By: Maggie Fox, Health and Science Editor

Fri Jul 9, 2010 6:46am EDT
(Pic)- Medical personnel working with Medecin de Monde conduct HIV tests at Ouidah's hospital near Cotonou, Benin November 28, 2007. Reuters/Jacky Naegelen
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Researchers have discovered antibodies that can protect against a wide range of AIDS viruses and said they may be able to use them to design a vaccine against the fatal and incurable virus.
The bodies of some people make these immune system proteins after they are infected with the AIDS virus, when it is too late for them to do much good. But a properly designed vaccine might help the body make them much sooner, the researchers reported in Friday's issue of the journal Science.
"I am more optimistic about an AIDS vaccine at this point in time than I have been probably in the last 10 years," Dr. Gary Nabel of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, who led the study, said in a telephone interview.

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