Welcome To Children Of Nigeria's Blog. I am outraged by the way the children are treated. Labeled as witches by Evangelical pastors to extort money from their parents. Starved, tortured, abandoned and even killed because their parents are afraid. Something needs to be done about this. This needs to stop! PLEASE CONSIDER SIGNING THE PETITIONS FOR THE CHILDREN. Join discussion...

Eighteen men have been remanded in prison following their arrest for alleged sodomy in northern Nigeria, the state-owned news agency, Nan, reports. Join discussion...

JOS MAYHEM Army takes over • 400 dead, Plateau govt confirms 200 • Tension pervades city • Abia, Anambra calm By Sun News Publishing Monday, December 1, 2008 •Charred remains of vehicles after the mayhem Photo: Sun News Publishing * More Stories on This Section The Nigerian Army on Sunday took over security in Jos, the Plateau State capital, two days after riots broke out in the city. Chief of Army Staff, General Abdulrahman Dambazza, on Sunday personally led fully armed troops to take over security in the Plataeu State capital where hundreds have lost their lives since riots broke out in the city on Friday. The police had earlier dispatched an Assistant Inspector General of Police, Mr. Richard Chime, to assist in quelling the riots, but when security reports became alarming, Dambazzau had to be moved to Jos. The announcement last Friday of the results of the local council polls result, which sparked the riots did not help matters as tempers rose to the highest level and the situation would have gone out of hand, but for the intervention of the soldiers. Dambazza arrived the tin city on Saturday and personally supervised the deployment of soldiers to hot spots around the state early Sunday morning, amidst sounds of sporadic gunshots. He also led his men in patrolling the streets of the troubled state capital. He also visited displaced persons and assured them of relief materials. Soldiers mounted checkpoints in parts of the city and patrolled the streets in jeeps and on foot. Passers-by were ordered to raise up their hands while passing even as the soldiers continued to enforce the dusk to dawn curfew imposed on the city by the state government. Army spokesman, Brig. General Emeka Onwamaegbu told AFP on Sunday that the crisis was gradually abating. "The situation is gradually returning to normal. There’s not been any cases this morning," he said. About 400 people are believed to have lost their lives in the mayhem, even as property worth hundreds of millions has been razed. Plateau State Commissioner for Information, Mr. Nuhu Gagara, told journalists on Sunday that hoodlums from neighbouring states unleashed fresh mayhem on the city at the weekend after Friday’s carnage had been successfully curtailed. He maintained that the riots and the subsequent destruction were pre planned as the elections had been concluded before some hoodlums decided to unleash mayhem on the state. He expressed the state government’s regrets on the crisis and said a search and rescue committee put in place by the government was already working to locate the dead and the injured. Contrary to reports that nearly 400 souls might have perished in the crisis, the commissioner said about 200 people died. At the town’s Central Mosque, the Aid Group of the Ja’amatu Nasril Islam was preparing mass burial for the victims whose identities could not be ascertained. Murtala Sani Hashim, who registered the dead as they were brought to the mosque, told Reuters on Sunday that 367 bodies had been brought in so far. The Red Cross said about 7,000 people have fled their homes and had taken refuge in government buildings, army barracks and religious homes. A spokesman for the Imam at the Jos Central Mosque, Samaila Abdullahi Mohammed, accused the ruling Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) in the state of fuelling the crisis. "The PDP provided an all Christian ticket. They started the trouble because they couldn’t win," he observed. He accused policemen and troops deployed to quell the riots of "heavy-handed tactics." "As far as we are concerned, we have stopped the violence, but the police have not," he further said. Meanwhile, the Abia State government has been appealing to people in the state to remain calm following the destruction in Jos. In a message continuously run on electronic media in the state since the Jos crisis commenced, the government urged the people not to embark on reprisal killings following the situation in the Plateau State capital. Also in Anambra State, the situation remained calm on Sunday even as the government appealed to the people not to embark on violent attacks over the Jos crisis. At the Vatican on Sunday, Catholic Pontiff, Pope Benedict XVI, prayed for the victims of the Jos mayhem. He urged the world to express horror and disapproval at the senseless violence. Executive Director of the Christian Foundation for Social Justice and Equity, (CFSJES), Mr. Joseph Sangosanya, described the situation as "genocide." The CFSJES director said the state government mismanaged the whole situation because it allegedly ignored security reports about in-flow of people into Jos. Sangosanya dismissed as untrue, the assertion by the commissioner for information that there was no security reports, stressing that "the letters written by the civil society to the security agencies that they should beef up security in Jos and its environs were ignored by the government. "The information system by all the governme Join discussion...

Hope for Black Pope dims as Cardinal Arinze retires By ALVAN EWUZIE Thursday, December 4, 2008 * More Stories on This Section Francis Cardinal Arinze the Nigerian cleric who almost became the first Pope from Africa three years ago has tendered his retirement letter to Pope Benedict XVI. Daily Sun learnt exclusively that the 76-year-old Cardinal, the second from Nigeria, has told Pope Benedict that he wants to retire to his home in Anambra State and operate from there for the rest of his life. Join discussion...

Urine therapy is satanic –Akindipe, natural healer By BASHIR UMAR, Abuja Monday, December 8, 2008 While many unorthodox healers have hailed the potency of urine therapy, one of their own, Dr. Ayodele Akindipe, has described it as most abhorable indulgence with very harmful effects. Akindipe’s consternation with the practice is worsened by the fact that many Nigerians have become addicted to drinking their urines, thanks to the curious gospel that has been spreading like a wide fire in recent years. Akindipe, who is a natural healer, told Daily Sun that the level of urine consumption in the country is a manifestation of crass depravity, abject poverty and desperation. "I think it is getting to a level of addiction, just like alcohol consumption," he said, wondering why normal people should turn round to drink their own waste products of metabolism when lunatic persons and animals would not consume their own. Noting that urine may soon become a costly commodity sold in supermarkets, he said that the consumption as a form of medication had become so rampant that "if adequate care is not taken, we will end up having mad people lining the streets to beg for people’s urine. That is if urine does not become a costly commodity in our super markets across the country." Akindipe said he got to know of the level at which people consume urine in the course of his practice. During the past months, he said, he was shocked and dismayed to find out that urine therapy has become the vogue for patients who came to his office with the ailments like cancer, diabetics, hepatitis, measles, kidney and heart problems. Such patients, he said, shamelessly told him that the only therapy they had been using was human urine, either their own or that collected from others. Describing the prescription of urine-drinking as a satanic, Akindipe who is the Registrar of the Federal College of Complementary and Alternative Medicine of Nigeria, said some people even quoted the Bible to support their resort to urine as a cure-all for diseases, including those that modern orthodox medicine has no answer for. "These people will tell you that they were told that urine is medicinal …to their ailments and they must have visited numerous clinics of both traditional and orthodox medicines, just like they must have consulted several churches, several mosques, chatted with priests, imams, pastors and babalawos, all without solutions. So, it is in urine that they find the solutions, just because some satanic people say it is medicinal?" he queried. Insisting that no human being is supposed to take own urine, he said that scientifically speaking, the urine is the by-product of water taken by the person. "When you breath out, you release carbon-dioxide which you don’t need and don’t consume. The by-product of the food you eat is your faeces," he concluded. According to him, nature has made it that anything that "comes out of you has made an abomination to your body. The same thing goes with the smelly gas we release, our body-sweat and so on. How can urine be useful to the body then?" Although he noted that the by-products are useful to other things, he said it is barbaric to consume them, hence people run away from their faeces. When human beings consume their urine directly, he pointed out, they will alter the circle. Mad people who indulge in such practices, he said, are spared because they really don’t truly belong to our own sphere. "Crazy persons are even lower than animals, and the normal person taking urine is lower than the mad people who can never take it," he said. Akindipe said most of those who had reported to him that they are in the habit of taking their own urine come from Lagos, Ibadan, Port Harcourt and Enugu, with a few coming from Abuja and other parts of the North. Such people would normally be people who have such ailments as cancer, diabetics, measles, hepatitis and kidney and heart problems. "They will tell you they have been taking the urine, which I think is a mad-drug, for five, seven, nine, 10 years or more and yet they are never cured, and can never be cured with it. Only cow urine is known to be used in the cure of psyche problems. Even then, it is not drunk, it is merely rubbed on the body of the patient because, according to him, cow urine wards off evil spirits. The bad thing about urine, he said, is that it could cause trouble even to the innocent people. He explained: "For instance, most of the people being disturbed by evil spirits are those who unknowingly urinated on the spirits’ domains, may be under the trees, in the bush, caves, holes and such other places. That is why it is not good to urinate just anywhere." Describing the contents of urine as very scary, he said most of it is harmful to man and the spirits. For this reason, Muslims don’t pray with clothes stained with urine, while Christians also shun urine infection of any object or place meant for worship. Accordin Join discussion...

By Mudiaga Affe, Francis Falola and Ademola Oni Published: Tuesday, 9 Dec 2008 Governor Babatunde Fashola Lagos State Governor, Mr. Babatunde Fashola (SAN) and his immediate predecessor, Asiwaju Bola Tinubu, on Monday, joined Muslim faithful worldwide in observing the Eid-el-Kabir prayers. They also urged stakeholders to show understanding, restraint and tolerance to one another at all times. The development came just as Tinubu condemned the killings in Jos, Plateau State, saying that the issues of citizenship and gender were distraction that ought to be eliminated from the Nigerian polity. Fashola, who spoke with journalists at the Dodan Barracks Praying Ground, Obalende, Ikoyi, Lagos said this was a time for all Nigerians to come together and embrace one another irrespective of religious faith. The governor explained that the Sallah period represented a period of special sacrifice and submission. He said, “This period represents a time for sacrifice for nation building and sacrifices in form of restraint and sharing brotherhood and brotherliness at all times because all men are creatures of Almighty Allah and everything happens only through his divine will.” Fashola urged Lagosians to be determined more than ever before to ensure that as a mega city, Lagos would remain a model for harmonious co-existence. He said, “The diversity of faiths, cultures, tongues and traditions that exist in our world, as typified by the multi-national and multi-cultural character of the multitude of pilgrims that converged in the holy land, is a testimony of the limitless greatness of the Almighty who is the source of all existence.” Also speaking shortly after the mosque service, the Permanent Secretary in the Ministry of Home Affairs and Culture, Mrs. Caroline Bello-Aromire, said the sacrifice made by Ibrahim was enough to make Muslims all over the world to emulate the doctrine of Islam. She said this at the felicitation ceremony, organised by her ministry at the State House, Marina. According to her, the Islamic faithful need to sacrifice certain things to the good of their neighbours, community and a service to God Almighty when he demanded of such services from his followers. Prominent among those who observed the sallah prayers led by the Chief Imam of Lagos, Alhaji Akinola Ibrahim, were a former Inspector-General of Police, Mr. Musiliu Smith, and the Lagos State Head of Service, Alhaji Yakub Balogun. Commenting on the Jos crisis, Tinubu noted that the issues of citizenship and gender should be discarded. He added that Nigerians should be free to reside anywhere in the country, vote and be voted for. Fashola later slaughtered a ram at the Lagos House, Marina as a sign of the commemoration of the sallah celebration. Meanwhile, the Chairman of the Northern Governors’ Forum and Niger State Governor, Dr. Babangida Aliyu, on Monday, cautioned the Northern states on the need to ensure peaceful co-existence by putting an end to violent crisis. Speaking against the backdrop of the recent Jos crisis where over hundreds lost their lives, Aliyu stated the need for the region to guard against political, religious or any form of violent in the interest of economic development of the area. Also, the Chief Imam of Ota Central Mosque, Alhaji Jubril Otun, has said as long as the nation‘s politicians continued to mix religion with politics, the nation could not know peace. Otun spoke during the special prayer marking the Islamic festival of Eid-el-Kabir in Ota, Ogun State, on Monday. Join discussion...