Posts

Showing posts from February 8, 2016

Afuze: The unknown Olympic Games Village

Image
Once the pride of the nation, the world-class Afuze Olympic Games Village, built in 1974, has virtually turned to home of reptiles and rodents, as the facilities have been abandoned and overgrown with weeds for over two decades. It was a harsh and chilly Harmattan evening, when our correspondent arrived at Afuze, the headquarters of Owan East Local Government Area in Edo State, on January 26. Unknown Olympic Games Village I beckoned on a commercial motorcyclist to take me to the Olympic Games Village in the quiet town. But to my dismay, none among the horde of motorcyclists knew the place. “Where is that in Afuze? There is nowhere like that here,” one of them said. Some of the residents I also enquired about the place from didn’t know about it. It was appalling that nobody in the community knew about the Olympics Games Village, built by the former Governor of the defunct Midwestern Region Brigadier-General Samuel Ogbemudia (retd.) in Afuze on a surveyed land measuring

Berlin: Estimated 190,000 German Women Raped by US Soldiers After WWII

Image
Around 860,000 German women and girls were raped by Allied soldiers at the end of World War Two, according to a new book published in Germany which estimates that more than one in five rapes were committed by US troops. The accepted historical view in the West characterizing Allied soldiers who arrived in Germany, once the Nazis were already defeated, as liberators, and their Soviet counterparts as rapists and pillagers, is being challenged in a new book published in Germany, which alleges that Soviet troops far from alone in committing sexual violence against the local population. It is worth mentioning that the narrative of "atrocities" committed by the Red Army soldiers in Germany after the defeat of the Nazis has been wildly exaggerated over the course of the last 25 years. The issue has been used for  anti-Russian propaganda aimed at lessening the role of the USSR in defeating Nazi Germany. Curiously, at the same time Western-based historians have turned a bli

1,500 women gave birth in Borno IDP camps –Board

Image
No fewer than 1,500 women gave birth in 28 Internally Displaced Persons’ camps in Borno State in 2015, the state Primary Health Care Management Board said on Sunday in Maiduguri. The Executive Secretary of the board, Dr. Sule Mene, told the News Agency of Nigeria that the deliveries were recorded between January 2015 and January 2016. Mene said about 14,600 pregnant women received anti-natal care, psycho-social services and child nutrition support. He added that the agency had also received about 1,200 severe medical cases, which were referred to the University of Maiduguri Teaching Hospital for proper care. The official explained that the agency had established 20 Integrated Primary Health Care Centres for IDPs in all the camps to provide integrated primary health care and referral services. “The Borno State Government has procured health kits for each of the IDPs to help cater for their immediate needs. “We have equally distributed mosquito nets to each and every o