Pity

Nigerian Billionaire's Ex Wife To
Pay His Lawyer's £100k Fees.
Why do things like this happen?
Scorned: Mercy Ogbedo, 45, outside London's High
Court, who has been told to pay her billionaire ex-
husband's £100,000 legal costs even though he
was already married when they wed.
Dailymail reports that a woman who claims she
was duped into a wedding with a billionaire who
was already married has been ordered to pay him
£100,000, a court heard
Mercy Ogbedo believed she married shipping
magnate Moses Taiga in an elaborate ceremony in
Nigeria where her feet were washed by village
elders and a dowry was paid for her as a ‘bride
price’.
The couple had twins together, but Mrs Ogbedo
then spent a decade pursuing the tycoon for
financial support through the British courts – only
to be told she would not get a penny because their
wedding ceremony was invalid.
Instead, the 45-year-old of Finchley, North London,
was ordered to pay 80 per cent of Mr Taiga’s legal
costs for a series of complex court hearings,
leaving her with an estimated £100,000 bill for
lawyers’ fees.
Mrs Ogbedo went to the Court of Appeal yesterday
in a bid to get the order overturned. The court
heard she had ‘limited means’ while her ‘husband’
owned a string of London properties.
The pair ‘married’ in 2002 and had twins, but Mrs
Ogbedo discovered soon afterwards that Mr Taiga
had already married a woman in Benin, West
Africa.
The court heard that having more than one wife is
allowed under Nigerian law, but Mrs Ogbedo
applied to the British courts in 2003 to have her
marriage dissolved because of her husband’s
behaviour, and to force Mr Taiga to pay
maintenance for their children.
The High Court ordered she should be given
£300,000 a year – but Mr Taiga went to the
Nigerian courts and successfully argued that their
wedding was invalid, because of his church
marriage in Benin.
The court ruled that Mrs Ogbedo’s was a ‘non-
marriage’, which meant precisely nothing in the
eyes of the law.
The High Court then ruled it could not hand over
any of Mr Taiga’s fortune because he was never
legally married to Mrs Ogbedo, and that she should
pay most of his legal costs. Her lawyers branded
that decision ‘incomprehensible’ and said she
should be entitled to a payout.
Barrister Timothy Scott QC, for Mrs Ogbedo, said:
‘The wife says she was duped. She should be
permitted to apply for financial relief in England by
virtue of that marriage ceremony.’
Since his split from Mrs Ogbedo, Mr Taiga has
ended his 1974 Benin marriage and wed another
woman, Yinka, with whom he has quadruplets.
Ruling on Mrs Ogbedo’s case, Appeal Court judge
Lord Justice McFarlane said he had ‘real
sympathy’ for her position, adding: ‘All the time
the wife considered that she was married to her
husband he was in fact married to another lady.’
However, he said he could not allow her to appeal
over a divorce payout because ‘there was no
marriage on which English law could bite’.
He said he would allow her to appeal against the
order that she should pay Mr Taiga’s costs.
Lord Justice McFarlane said it was arguable that
the sum was unfair, adding: ‘She has the sole care
of the parties’ children and is a lady of limited
means.’
*Please I need a lawyer in the house to educate
me more on this Law regarding Nigerian men being
eligible to more than one wife.I thought it was a
religion thing.Please what section of the Nigerian
Law

Nurse killed 38 patients

Italian nurse Daniela Poggiali accused of
killing 'up to 38 patients because she
found them annoying'
An Italian nurse is being held on an
alleged murder charge after one
suspicious hospital death and police are
investigating more
Daniela Poggiali
Police in Italy are investigating whether a
nurse could have killed up to 38 people
who have died in hospital in suspicious
circumstances.
The nurse, Daniela Poggiali, is accused of
injecting a 78-year-old patient, Rosa
Calderoni, with a fatal dose of potassium
when she was admitted to hospital in
Lugo in the province of Ravenna with a
condition related to diabetes, according to
the Italian newspaper Libero Quotidiano .
The police inquiry is being expanded to
investigate 38 deaths, including 10 which
police have described as “very suspicious”
according to Italian media reports. Ms
Poggiali is also suspected of giving her
patients high doses of potassium because
she found them or their families
annoying, according to Libero Quotidiano .
Police said that they were investigating
whether the patients were allegedly killed
because they were too "difficult" to treat
or because the families were overly
pushy.
Alessandro Mancini, the chief prosecutor
of Ravenna, described the investigation as
"very complex".
The Corriere di Bologna newspaper also
reported that police have a phone
belonging to Poggiali, 42, contained a
photo she took of her giving a thumbs-up
next to a patient that had died. As a
result, Poggiali could face charges for
disrespecting the dead.
Potassium chloride can trigger cardiac
arrest and is used in the US for
administering the death penalty.
Police reportedly said the case was
difficult because potassium fades from
the blood very quickly.

Army Col, 10 officers set Nigerian tankers ablaze, pave way for Boko haram.

SABOTAGE: Army Col, 10 officers set
Nigerian tankers ablaze, pave way for
Boko Haram
There were shocking revelations at the weekend
that an Army Colonel, some junior officers and
soldiers who were taking part in the military
offensive to reclaim communities taken over by the
Boko Haram terrorists in Adamawa State, have
been arrested for sabotage.
Top military sources said that the colonel (a
Muslim) who was Commanding a team of three
Armoured Personnel Carriers, APC’s, with the
capability to fire up to a range of 1.5kilometres or
even more, had instead of pursuing the terrorists,
deliberately set the APCs on fire between Gulak and
Madagali, before running away with his team of
soldiers into the bush.
Saturday Vanguard gathered that the Army
authorities were outraged over the development
and ordered the arrest of both the commander, the
junior officers as well as the soldiers under his
command.
Narrating how the ‘’embarrassing incident
occurred,’’ a source who was privy to the
development noted that until the latest
development, the Special Forces of the Nigerian
Army who commenced the putsch to rout Boko
Haram terrorists from Bazza, Michika, Gulak and
Madagali from Vimtim, had successfully dealt with,
and inflicted heavy casualties on the terrorists up
till Gulak.
It was said that between Gulak and Madagali, the
Colonel who had all along been prided with air
surveillance reports, was again informed that Boko
Haram terrorists were approaching his team in six
Toyota Hilux Pick Up vans from the Madagali axis.
“However, rather than blasting and taking out the
terrorists in their pick-up vans; he ordered his
soldiers to jump out of the APC’s and set the
armoured tanks on fire, without realising that he
was being monitored. This was shocking because
the terrorists were armed with weaponry which
were grossly inferior to the firepower of the
Nigerian Army Amoured tanks. After accomplishing
the sabotage act, the Colonel and the junior
officers and soldiers ran away into the bush,
claiming that they were overpowered by a better
armed group of Boko Haram terrorists,’’ Saturday
Vanguard was told.
Military sources said that the action of the Colonel
and soldiers under his command had given vent to
the disclosure by the top hierarchy of the military
that there were so many fifth columnists in the
military working against the country’s
determination to flush out Boko Haram terrorists in
the land.
Consequently, Saturday Vanguard was told that a
Board of Inquiry, BoI, had been set up by the Army
authorities to investigate the Colonel and his
soldiers after which a Military Court Martial would
be set up to try them for conspiracy, treason and
willful sabotage among others.
Also speaking on the development, a senior officer
confided in Saturday Vanguard thus, “You can now
see why the Military Court Martial which is
currently sitting is inevitable. The uninformed
would feel that soldiers who are fighting the
nation’s battle are being unjustly punished. But the
truth is that many of them are sabotaging Nigeria
and making the insurgents look formidable for
reasons that cannot be explained. Some of them
appear sympathetic to the insurgents.
“How can it be explained that several APCs that
cost up to $1million each in some cases or more
will be willfully destroyed by Commissioned
Officers, COs, who swore to defend the territorial
integrity of their nation, just to help terrorists? That
is treason of the highest order.”
The source added that the new vigour and
determination with which Nigerian troops had been
prosecuting the war, resulting in the killing of
several commanders of the sect as well as
hundreds of the insurgents, was the fallout of the
new position of the military high command to deal
with those pursuing a different agenda from that of
the Federal Government.
The Chief of Defence Staff, CDS, Air Chief Marshal
Alex Badeh said last week that the death penalty
imposed on the 12 soldiers who were tried for
treason was lawful and in accordance with military
dictates. He spoke at a three-day conference
organised by the National Security Adviser in
collaboration with Trim Communication Nigeria Ltd
on Media/Security relationship in crisis
management.
According to him, “The day you join the military
you have signed off, whether life or death, and it is
obey before complaint. How can a soldier just
jump out of the APC because you want to donate
APC to Boko Haram; and somebody is there
talking about constructive mutiny.
“The laws are there, if you run away from the
enemy, you will die and that is what the military
law says. Apart from the old Nigerian law, we abide
by the military law. Nobody forces or conscripts
anybody into the military. It is a voluntary service,
and so if we have this type of challenge, you
should be able to confront it and not to run away.”...CULLED

Murder- Suicide doctor.. nurse die hours after their wedding

Doctor kills wife, himself
on their wedding night
It was supposed to be the couple’s happiest
day: Kelly Ecker, a nurse, and Dr. George
Scott Samson married Saturday afternoon in
Terre Haute, Ind.
By their wedding night, both were dead.
Samson, an anesthesiologist at Union Hospital
in Terre Haute, shot his bride and then himself
in their home just hours after they exchanged
vows, authorities said.
Some wedding guests noticed tension between
the couple almost immediately after each said
“I do,” said Vigo County Sheriff Chief Deputy
Clark Cottom.
“Some guests are telling us the bride and
groom didn’t speak to each other at the
reception,” he said.
After the reception, the couple hosted
members of the bridal party at their home on
outside Terre Haute, Cottom said.
Not long after the last guest left, the county
dispatch center received a 911 call, according
to a transcript and tape provided by
authorities.
The 911 calls
The first call was made at 1:25 a.m.
The caller, said to be Kelly, is only able to
give an address, then the call cuts off.
In a second call made a minute later, the
caller says, “he is beating the s*** out of me”
and then says “he has guns” and identifies
Scott Samson by name.
By the third call, at 1:27 a.m., Cottom said it’s
clear the situation has escalated because the
caller’s voice is in more distress. She says
“oh my God!” and then gunshots are heard.
When deputies arrived on the scene, they were
met at the door by an elderly male relative of
Samson’s, authorities said.
“He directed the deputies to the bedroom
where they found Kelly’s body,” said Cottom.
She had been shot multiple times, he said.
Robot finds Samson
In addition to the male, two other individuals
were found in home: Ecker’s 10-year old-son
was in the bedroom where his mother’s body
was found, and he was unharmed, Cottom
said.
An elderly female relative was in the home at
the time of the shootings, and she also was
unharmed, authorities said.
Samson was still inside when deputies
arrived, so they made it a priority to get those
three individuals out of the home and to safety
immediately, Cottom said.
The elderly male witness told police that
Samson had run from the bedroom to another
part of the house to get more ammunition, and
then ran to the basement, authorities said.
Deputies surrounded the home immediately.
“The house is near a wooded area and a
cornfield and we didn’t want an armed man
running deep into the woods,” Cottom said.
A special response team used a robotic device
equipped with a camera to gain entry into the
home, he said.
When the robot located Samson in the
basement, it was apparent what had
happened.
“Samson was unresponsive. We saw a bullet
wound,” Cottom said.
Samson’s body was found near his gun safe
where he had earlier removed other weapons,
said Cottom. Samson was a gun enthusiast
who had a federal firearms license, Cottom
said.
This week, deputies were still taking inventory
of the weapons inside the home. Cottom said
several dozen of them had been removed. Culled from CNN

My right to death by dignity at 29

Terminally Ill 29-Year-Old
Woman: Why I'm Choosing
to Die on My Own Terms
Brittany Maynard with her Great Dane, Charlie
COURTESY DAN DIAZ
BY NICOLE WEISENSEE EGAN
For the past 29 years, Brittany Maynard has lived a
fearless life – running half marathons, traveling
through Southeast Asia for a year and even
climbing Mount Kilimanjaro.
So, it's no surprise she is facing her death the
same way.
On Monday, Maynard will launch an online video
campaign with the nonprofit Compassion &
Choices , an end-of-life choice advocacy
organization, to fight for expanding death-with-
dignity laws nationwide.
And on Nov. 1, Maynard, who in April was given
six months to live, intends to end her own life with
medication prescribed to her by her doctor – and
she wants to make it clear it is NOT suicide.
"There is not a cell in my body that is suicidal or
that wants to die," she tells PEOPLE in an exclusive
interview. "I want to live. I wish there was a cure
for my disease but there's not."
Maynard has a stage 4 glioblastoma, a malignant
brain tumor.
"My glioblastoma is going to kill me, and that's out
of my control," she says. "I've discussed with
many experts how I would die from it, and it's a
terrible, terrible way to die. Being able to choose
to go with dignity is less terrifying."
The campaign's six-minute video includes
interviews with Brittany as well as her mother,
Debbie Ziegler, and husband, Dan Diaz, 42.
"My entire family has gone through a cycle of
devastation," she says. "I'm an only child – this is
going to make tears come to my eyes. For my
mother, it's really difficult, and for my husband as
well, but they've all supported me because they've
stood in hospital rooms and heard what would
happen to me."
Maynard was a newlywed when she started having
debilitating headaches last January. That's when
she learned she had brain cancer.
"My husband and I were actively trying for a
family, which is heartbreaking for us," she says in
the video.
Three months later, after undergoing surgery, she
found out the tumor had grown even larger and
was told she had, at best, six months to live.
After researching all her options after her
diagnosis, Maynard, who was living in San
Francisco at the time, decided aid in dying was her
best option.
Her entire family moved with her to Portland earlier
this year so she could have access to Oregon's
Death with Dignity Act , which has been in place
since late 1997. Since then, 1,173 people have had
prescriptions written under the act, and 752 have
used them to die.
Four other states – Washington, Montana, Vermont
and New Mexico – have authorized aid in dying.
Compassion & Choices has campaigns in place in
California, Colorado, Connecticut, Massachusetts
and New Jersey.
In mid-October, Maynard will videotape testimony
to be played for California lawmakers and voters at
the appropriate time.
"Right now it's a choice that's only available to
some Americans, which is really unethical," she
says.
"The amount of sacrifice and change my family had
to go through in order to get me to legal access to
death with dignity – changing our residency,
establishing a team of doctors, having a place to
live – was profound," she says.
"There's tons of Americans who don’t have time or
the ability or finances," she says, "and I don't think
that's right or fair."
This is why she's using the precious time she has
left to advocate for everyone to have the same
choice she does.
"I believe this choice is ethical, and what makes it
ethical is it is a choice," she says. "The patient can
change their mind right up to the last minute. I feel
very protected here in Oregon."
But Maynard doesn't think she will change her
mind. The date she picked was carefully chosen.
"I really wanted to celebrate my husband's
birthday, which is October 30," she says. "I'm
getting sicker, dealing with more pain and seizures
and difficulties so I just selected it."
Maynard says her exhaustion has "increased a lot"
recently.
"I still get out and take a walk with my family
everyday," she says. "I try not to hold onto the
dogs anymore because the past few weeks I've
fallen a few times."
Her pain has increased, too, but so far she's been
managing it with medications from her doctors.
"I was in the hospital two weeks ago after two
seizures," she says. "Immediately after, I lost my
ability to speak for a few hours. So it's scary, very
frightening."
Which is why she knows she's making the right
decision.
When Maynard passes on Nov. 1, she will do so in
the bedroom she shares with her husband. By her
side will be her mother, stepfather, husband and
best friend (who is also a physician).
"I'm dying, but I'm choosing to suffer less," she
says, "to put myself through less physical and
emotional pain and my family as well.

4-year-old took 250 packs of heroin to day care

Four-year-old took hundreds
of packets of heroin to day
care
Delaware girl’s mother, Ashley Tull,
charged with three counts of child
endangerment and maintaining a drug
property
Police say the girl unknowingly brought the
heroin when her mother gave her a different
backpack. Photograph: Dan Peled/AAP Image
Delaware US crime Drugs
Associated Press in Selbyville, Delaware
Tuesday 7 October 2014 10.25 EDT
A four-year-old girl took hundreds of
packets of heroin to her day-care center
and began passing it out, thinking it was
candy, Delaware state police said.
Several children who received the
packets on Monday morning went to
hospital as a precaution, police said, but
none of the packets were opened and all
kids were released after being examined.
The girl’s mother, 30-year-old Ashley
Tull, of Selbyville, was charged with
three counts of child endangerment and
maintaining a drug property. She was
arraigned Monday and released on $6,000
bond. She did not immediately return a
call left at a home listing on Tuesday.
The child endangerment counts relate to
Tull’s three children, who are aged
between four and 11. As part of her
release, Tull was ordered not to have any
contact with her children, who are now
in the custody of a relative, according to
police.
Police say the girl unknowingly brought
the heroin to the center when her
mother gave her a different backpack
because the girl’s regular backpack had
been ruined by the family pet. Police say
the backpack contained nearly 250
packets of heroin, totalling nearly four
grams, all labeled “Slam”.
Delaware state police spokesman Master
Cpl Gary Fournier told the News Journal
of Wilmington he believes the day-care
center, the Hickory Tree Child Care
Center in Selbyville, handled the
situation properly, and notified police
immediately when it occurred.
A call to the center was not immediately
returned on Tuesday morning.
Police say the investigation is ongoing.

Woman inserts potato in her private as contraceptive

Woman Uses Potato As A
Contraceptive.
Potato as a contraceptive? OMG OMG OMG!!!
The bizarre phenomenon was discovered when
doctors attended a 22-year-old woman
complaining of abdominal pains this week.
The embarrassed young woman explained that
she had been advised by her mother to insert a
potato into her vagina as a means of avoiding
unwanted pregnancy.
“My mom told me that if I didn’t want to get
pregnant, I should put a potato up there, and I
believed her.” the unnamed patient was quoted as
saying by local news website HSB Noticias.
After leaving the potato in place for around 2
weeks she began to experience intense pain in
her lower abdomen. The potato had germinated,
and grown roots inside the lady’s private parts.
When the nurse went to examine the patient, she
originally thought she had been the target of a
practical joke, as she found roots emerging from
the young woman´s vagina.
The offending root vegetable was removed without
need for surgery, and there should be no lasting
physical effects on the young woman.
Carolina Rojas, the attending nurse, pointed the
finger of blame at the woman´s mother for giving
her daughter such bad advice in terms of
contraception methods available.
A recent campaign by Colombia’s Family Welfare
Institute aimed at reducing the high levels of
teenage pregnancy in Colombia stated that young
people’s general rejection of conventional
contraception methods, such as condoms and
contraceptive pills, coupled with a macho society
which often saw girls pressured into having
unsafe sex, contributed to a high level of
unwanted teenage pregnancies.
The fact that a 22 year old women was no naive
as to believe that a potato was an appropriate and
safe method of contraception shows a concerning
lack of education for young people as to the
options available for them when they become
sexually active.
Sexual education became obligatory across
Colombia in the 1990s in the hope that young
people would discuss any queries or concerns
and have a safe place to discuss what was
perceived as a social taboo – talking about
sex. culled

South Africa burst another Nigeria's arms deal... Confisticates $5.7 million dollars

South African authorities have confiscated
yet another US$5.7 million arms money
from Nigeria, nearly three weeks after
seizing $9.3 million in cash transported
by two Nigerians and an Israeli for arms
purchase, South Africa-based City Express
reported Monday.
As with the first deal, South Africa’s Asset
Forfeiture Unit of the National
Prosecuting Authority seized the $5.7
million (about N952 million) for allegedly
being the proceeds of illegal transactions,
the paper said.
The news came more than two weeks
after two Nigerians and an Israeli national
were arrested in South Africa after they
attempted to smuggle US$9.3 million
apparently meant for buying arms for the
Nigerian intelligence service.
The men landed at Lanseria International
Airport, Johannesburg, on September 5 in
a private jet from Abuja with the money
stashed in three suitcases.
At the time, the South Africa Revenue
Service, SARS, said customs officers
became suspicious when the passengers’
luggage were unloaded and put through
the scanners.
The National Prosecuting Authority, NPA,
in South Africa said there was an invoice
for helicopters and armaments intended
to be used in Nigeria.
Two black plastic suitcases, filled with 90
blocks each containing US$100,000 in
notes, with combination locks, were
seized, as well as two pieces of hand
luggage also containing US currency,
according to City Press.
The Israeli national, Eyal Mesika, had the
combination to open the locks.
Under South African laws, a person
entering or leaving the country is
expected to carry cash not exceeding US
$2,300, or the equivalent in foreign
currency notes.
The news of the first transaction sparked
anger in Nigeria after it emerged the
private jet involved belonged to the head
of the Christian Association of Nigeria,
CAN, Ayo Ortisejafor.
Mr. Oritsejafor, a close ally of President
Goodluck Jonathan, said the plane had
been leased to a third party and he could
not be blamed for its schedules.
The Nigerian government later admitted it
was behind the arms deal, claiming it
acted out of desperation for arms to
defeat extremist sect, Boko Haram.
An investigation planned by the Senate
into the transaction has yet to begin while
the House of Representatives threw out a
motion seeking a probe.
The South African newspaper, City Press,
said documents in its possession show
that the first consignment was personally
signed off by the National Security
Adviser, Sambo Dasuki, who issued the
end-user certificate for the transaction.
An entire “shopping list” was supplied
with the certificate, which included
everything from helicopters to unmanned
aircraft, rockets and ammunition, it said.
The latest transaction, according to the
paper, was between Cerberus Risk
Solutions, an arms broker in Cape Town,
and Societe D’Equipments Internationaux,
said to be a Nigerian company based in
Abuja.
The paper said the deal fell apart after
Cerberus which had earlier received from
Nigeria R60 million (N1.02 billion) in its
account at Standard Bank, tried to repay
the money as it it could not resolve its
registration formalities with the South
African authorities.
“Cerberus was previously registered as a
broker with the National Conventional
Arms Control Committee (NCACC), but the
registration expired in May this year,”
City Press said.
“The marketing and contracting permits
also expired at the same time. The
company has since applied for re-
registration, but the application lay in the
NCACC’s mailbox for more than two
months.
“Sources told Rapport that Cerberus
apparently tried to pay the money back to
the Nigerian company, after which the
bank became suspicious,” the paper
reported.
The paper added that while the NPA’s
Asset Forfeiture Unit subsequently
obtained a court order in the South
Gauteng High Court to seize the money,
the NPA spokesperson Nathi Mncube, said
there were no indications the two
transactions were related.
“However, both are now the subject of a
criminal investigation and all possible
information and connections are being
investigated,” Mr. Mncube was quoted as
saying.

Is this fate

Man who escaped car crash hit and killed
by wife rushing to rescue him
The daughter, who survived both
crashes, is being treated for minor
injuries with her mother
A man who escaped a car crash was then
hit and killed by his wife driving to
rescue him

A man who escaped a car crash after his
vehicle came off the road at a sharp bend
has been killed by his wife who crashed
at the exact same spot as she was rushing
to his rescue.
The 54-year-old man had been driving
with his 16-year-old daughter until he hit
a sharp bend in the road near Carville, a
town in Northern France, the French
newspaper Ouest-France reported . The
family has not been named.
The car came off the road and rolled
several times until coming to a stop in a
ditch.
The man and his daughter managed to
crawl out of the car unscathed, and the
man called his wife to ask that she come
and pick the pair up.
But the wife, 44, in her rush to reach the
pair, came off the road at the exact same
bend, at which point her car spun out of
control and rolled in the same direction
that her husband’s car had.
The wife’s car then hit her husband,
killing him instantly.
The wife and her daughter were taken to
hospital and treated for minor injuries.

Lab grown penis ready for testing

The lab-grown penis:
approaching a medical
milestone
After more than 20 years of research, a
team of scientists are bioengineering
penises in the lab which may soon be
transplanted safely on to patients. It is an
extraordinary medical endeavour that
has implications for a wide range of
disorders
Dr Anthony Atala: ‘We were completely stuck.
We had no idea how to make this structure, let
alone make it so it would perform like the natural
organ.’
Medical research Stem cells Biology
Sexual health Men's health
Dara Mohammadi
Saturday 4 October 2014 14.00 EDT
G athered around an enclosure at the
Wake Forest Institute for
Regenerative Medicine in North
Carolina in 2008, Anthony Atala and his
colleagues watched anxiously to see if
two rabbits would have sex. The
suspense was short-lived: within a
minute of being put together, the male
mounted the female and successfully
mated.
While it’s not clear what the rabbits
made of the moment, for Atala it was
definitely special. It was proof that a
concept he’d been working on since 1992
– that penises could be grown in a
laboratory and transplanted to humans –
was theoretically possible. The male
rabbit was one of 12 for which he had
bioengineered a penis; all tried to mate;
in eight there was proof of ejaculation;
four went on to produce offspring.
The media’s coverage of Atala’s
announcement a year later was
understandably excited. Not just because
of the novelty of a man growing penises
in a laboratory, but because his work
would fulfil a real need for men who
have lost their penis through genital
defects, traumatic injury, surgery for
aggressive penile cancer, or even jilted
lovers exacting revenge.
At present, the only treatment option for
these men is to have a penis constructed
with skin and muscle from their thigh or
forearm. Sexual function can be restored
with a penile prosthetic placed inside.
The prosthetics can be either malleable
rods, with the penis left in a permanently
semi-rigid state and thus difficult to
conceal, or inflatable rods, which have a
saline pump housed in the scrotum. Both
technologies have been around since the
1970s. The aesthetics are crude and
penetration is awkward.
Another option is a penis transplant from
another individual, but this carries a risk
of immunological rejection. The chance
of organ death can be lessened with anti-
rejection drugs, but these drugs have
serious side-effects. Transplants can also
have a psychological impact, especially
with an organ as intimate as the penis. In
2006, a Chinese man was the first to
receive a donor penis ; two weeks after
the 15-hour operation, surgeons removed
the transplanted organ on the request of
both the patient and his partner.
Atala hopes his technique will mitigate
both immunological and psychological
issues because his penises would be
engineered using a patient’s own cells.
“The phallus is actually much longer than
you think,” he explains. “It goes all the
way behind the pelvis, so no matter the
extent of the damage, there is a high
probability that there are salvageable
cells.”
Peruvian-born Atala, a urological
surgeon and professor of regenerative
medicine, heads a 300-strong team at the
institute. He corrects himself constantly,
always going back to edit his speech,
adding words such as “high probability“
or “in all likelihood” to be sure his
sentences are word-perfect. Soft-spoken
and mild-mannered, Atala is a trailblazer
in the field and you can’t help but think
that his measured speech is an attempt
to provide a sure path for others to
follow.
To some, engineering human organs
sounds like science fiction, but for Atala
it’s an absolute necessity. As we live
longer (and thus our organs fail more)
the shortage of organs for donation will
only get worse. If he can work out how to
generate the organs people need in a
reliable and effective way, the technology
can improve a lot of people’s lives. In
2006, Atala and his team announced the
first successful bioengineered organ
transplant , a bladder, which had been
implanted into seven patients in 1999.
Earlier this year he announced the
successful follow-up of four women
given bioengineered vaginas in
2005-2008. Despite these successes, he
says, the penis is proving trickier.
Organs increase in architectural
complexity as they go from flat structures
such as skin, cylindrical structures such
as the vagina, to hollow non-tubular
organs such as the bladder. As a solid
organ, the penis tops this list in both
density of cells and structural
complexity. It consists of a spongy
erectile tissue unique to it. During an
erection, signals from the nerves trigger
blood vessels to dilate, filling this spongy
tissue with blood and causing the penis
to lengthen and stiffen.
“We were completely stuck,” says Atala
of the first few years of research in the
early 90s. “Even the idea of the field of
regenerative medicine was brand new at
the time. We had no idea how to make
this structure, let alone make it so it
would perform like the natural organ.”
Then, in 1994, he figured he could take a
helping hand from Mother Nature. Using
a technique pioneered for biological skin
dressings, he would take a donor penis
and soak it in a mild detergent of
enzymes for a couple of weeks to wash
away the donor cells.
“You’re left with a mostly collagen
scaffold – a skeleton if you like, that
looks and feels just like the organ,”
explains James Yoo, one of Atala’s
collaborators at the institute. “Think of it
like a building. If you remove all the
furniture and the people, you’re still left
with the main structure of the building.
Then you replace the tenants with new
ones. That’s the whole idea. It’s just that
the building is a penis and the tenants
are cells.”
The next step is to reseed the structure
with the patient’s own cells taken in a
biopsy from salvageable tissue and
grown in culture. Smooth muscle cells,
which relax during an erection to allow
the vessels to dilate and the penis to fill
with blood, are first, followed by
endothelial cells which line the interior
surface of blood and lymphatic vessels.
When ready, the bioengineered penis is
ready to be transplanted to the recipient.
So why, six years on from successfully
engineering a penis for rabbits, have they
not yet done the same for humans? Atala
explains that, as is often the case with
these things, scaling up is proving
difficult. “Even though we can make
them in a very small mammal, we have
to tweak the technology, the processes,
the ratio of cells and so on, to get larger
and larger structures. That’s pretty much
what we’ve been doing since the
rabbits.”
They’ve made encouraging progress.
Atala has engineered half a dozen human
penises. Although they are not yet ready
for transplanting, Atala’s team are
assessing the structures for safety and
effectiveness. One machine squashes,
stretches and twists them to make sure
they can stand up to the wear of
everyday life; another pumps fluid into
them to test erections. Sliced segments
are tested at the genetic, cellular and
physiological level.
“It’s a rigorous testing schedule,” says
Atala, wearily. “But we’re trying to get
approval from the US Food and Drug
Administration so we know everything is
perfect before we move to a first in-man
test.”
Neither Atala nor Yoo will be pushed for
a date for the first test in man, saying
only that they’d expect it to occur within
five years. “In the end we’re aiming for
the entire size of the organ,” says Atala.
“But in reality our first target is going to
be partial replacement of the organ.”
In the short term, this would include
growing smaller lengths for partially
damaged penises, but would also include
replacing parts of the penis to help cure
erectile dysfunction. Degradation of the
spongy erectile tissue, says Tom Lue, a
urological surgeon at the University of
California, San Francisco, is the leading
cause of impotence in old age. Disorders
such as high blood pressure or diabetes
can damage the delicate tissue – the
resulting scar tissue is less elastic,
meaning the tissue cannot completely fill
with blood and the penis cannot become
fully erect.
“Show me a hundred 70-year-old men
with erectile dysfunction,” says Lue, “and
I’ll bet you 90% of them have scar
material in their penis.” Traumatic injury
or priapism, a condition that leaves men
with an increasingly painful erection for
hours or even days, can also damage the
tissue and cause erectile dysfunction in
younger men. “If you replace the
damaged spongy tissue you can give
these men a better erection.”
Engineering the spongy tissue for
replacement is one of Atala and Yoo’s
interim goals. Lue is also hoping to
restore erections, but for less severely
damaged penises. For instance, some
men become impotent after surgery for
prostate or rectal cancer because the
nerves that regulate erections, which run
through the rectum and prostate into the
centre of the penis, can get damaged.
Likewise with traumatic injury, if the
vessels are severed then the penis cannot
fill with blood.
Microsurgery to connect the vessels and
nerves in the penis is possible but often
ineffective. Lue is testing whether
injecting stem cells into the base of the
penis can encourage the nerves and cells
to rejoin. His work might also help Atala
and Yoo to stimulate nerve and vessel
regrowth when the day comes for the
first in-man trial of a bioengineered
penis. Twenty-two years into his research
to bioengineer a human penis, Atala is a
man who is both excited and impatient
for that day. And you’d suspect he’s not
the only one.
Bioengineered organs: The story so far…
Bladder
In 1999 the bladder became the first
laboratory-grown organ to be given to a
human. Atala and his colleagues took
cells from a biopsy from seven patients
with bladder disease. The cells were
cultured and then seeded, layer by layer,
on to a biodegradable, bladder-shaped
collagen scaffold. After about eight weeks
they were transplanted to patients,
where the organs developed and
integrated into the body.
Vagina
Another pilot study, this time in four
women with a rare congenital
abnormality that causes the vagina and
uterus to be underdeveloped or absent.
Using a similar technique to the one used
to make bladders, in 2005 they implanted
the first vagina. Up to eight years after
transplant, all four organs have normal
structure and function. This technique
could be used to help women following
injury or cancer.
Penis and beyond
In 2004, they implanted the first
bioengineered urethra into five boys.
This technology will help in their work
towards reconstructing the penis. Atala
and his colleagues are also working on 30
different organs and tissues including a
kidney, which could be made using a 3D
printer, and tissue for the liver, heart and
lung.

Hope for erectile dysfunction patients and others as lab grown penis is ready for testing

The lab-grown penis:
approaching a medical
milestone
After more than 20 years of research, a
team of scientists are bioengineering
penises in the lab which may soon be
transplanted safely on to patients. It is an
extraordinary medical endeavour that
has implications for a wide range of
disorders
Dr Anthony Atala: ‘We were completely stuck.
We had no idea how to make this structure, let
alone make it so it would perform like the natural
organ.’
Medical research Stem cells Biology
Sexual health Men's health
Dara Mohammadi
Saturday 4 October 2014 14.00 EDT
G athered around an enclosure at the
Wake Forest Institute for
Regenerative Medicine in North
Carolina in 2008, Anthony Atala and his
colleagues watched anxiously to see if
two rabbits would have sex. The
suspense was short-lived: within a
minute of being put together, the male
mounted the female and successfully
mated.
While it’s not clear what the rabbits
made of the moment, for Atala it was
definitely special. It was proof that a
concept he’d been working on since 1992
– that penises could be grown in a
laboratory and transplanted to humans –
was theoretically possible. The male
rabbit was one of 12 for which he had
bioengineered a penis; all tried to mate;
in eight there was proof of ejaculation;
four went on to produce offspring.
The media’s coverage of Atala’s
announcement a year later was
understandably excited. Not just because
of the novelty of a man growing penises
in a laboratory, but because his work
would fulfil a real need for men who
have lost their penis through genital
defects, traumatic injury, surgery for
aggressive penile cancer, or even jilted
lovers exacting revenge.
At present, the only treatment option for
these men is to have a penis constructed
with skin and muscle from their thigh or
forearm. Sexual function can be restored
with a penile prosthetic placed inside.
The prosthetics can be either malleable
rods, with the penis left in a permanently
semi-rigid state and thus difficult to
conceal, or inflatable rods, which have a
saline pump housed in the scrotum. Both
technologies have been around since the
1970s. The aesthetics are crude and
penetration is awkward.
Another option is a penis transplant from
another individual, but this carries a risk
of immunological rejection. The chance
of organ death can be lessened with anti-
rejection drugs, but these drugs have
serious side-effects. Transplants can also
have a psychological impact, especially
with an organ as intimate as the penis. In
2006, a Chinese man was the first to
receive a donor penis ; two weeks after
the 15-hour operation, surgeons removed
the transplanted organ on the request of
both the patient and his partner.
Atala hopes his technique will mitigate
both immunological and psychological
issues because his penises would be
engineered using a patient’s own cells.
“The phallus is actually much longer than
you think,” he explains. “It goes all the
way behind the pelvis, so no matter the
extent of the damage, there is a high
probability that there are salvageable
cells.”
Peruvian-born Atala, a urological
surgeon and professor of regenerative
medicine, heads a 300-strong team at the
institute. He corrects himself constantly,
always going back to edit his speech,
adding words such as “high probability“
or “in all likelihood” to be sure his
sentences are word-perfect. Soft-spoken
and mild-mannered, Atala is a trailblazer
in the field and you can’t help but think
that his measured speech is an attempt
to provide a sure path for others to
follow.
To some, engineering human organs
sounds like science fiction, but for Atala
it’s an absolute necessity. As we live
longer (and thus our organs fail more)
the shortage of organs for donation will
only get worse. If he can work out how to
generate the organs people need in a
reliable and effective way, the technology
can improve a lot of people’s lives. In
2006, Atala and his team announced the
first successful bioengineered organ
transplant , a bladder, which had been
implanted into seven patients in 1999.
Earlier this year he announced the
successful follow-up of four women
given bioengineered vaginas in
2005-2008. Despite these successes, he
says, the penis is proving trickier.
Organs increase in architectural
complexity as they go from flat structures
such as skin, cylindrical structures such
as the vagina, to hollow non-tubular
organs such as the bladder. As a solid
organ, the penis tops this list in both
density of cells and structural
complexity. It consists of a spongy
erectile tissue unique to it. During an
erection, signals from the nerves trigger
blood vessels to dilate, filling this spongy
tissue with blood and causing the penis
to lengthen and stiffen.
“We were completely stuck,” says Atala
of the first few years of research in the
early 90s. “Even the idea of the field of
regenerative medicine was brand new at
the time. We had no idea how to make
this structure, let alone make it so it
would perform like the natural organ.”
Then, in 1994, he figured he could take a
helping hand from Mother Nature. Using
a technique pioneered for biological skin
dressings, he would take a donor penis
and soak it in a mild detergent of
enzymes for a couple of weeks to wash
away the donor cells.
“You’re left with a mostly collagen
scaffold – a skeleton if you like, that
looks and feels just like the organ,”
explains James Yoo, one of Atala’s
collaborators at the institute. “Think of it
like a building. If you remove all the
furniture and the people, you’re still left
with the main structure of the building.
Then you replace the tenants with new
ones. That’s the whole idea. It’s just that
the building is a penis and the tenants
are cells.”
The next step is to reseed the structure
with the patient’s own cells taken in a
biopsy from salvageable tissue and
grown in culture. Smooth muscle cells,
which relax during an erection to allow
the vessels to dilate and the penis to fill
with blood, are first, followed by
endothelial cells which line the interior
surface of blood and lymphatic vessels.
When ready, the bioengineered penis is
ready to be transplanted to the recipient.
So why, six years on from successfully
engineering a penis for rabbits, have they
not yet done the same for humans? Atala
explains that, as is often the case with
these things, scaling up is proving
difficult. “Even though we can make
them in a very small mammal, we have
to tweak the technology, the processes,
the ratio of cells and so on, to get larger
and larger structures. That’s pretty much
what we’ve been doing since the
rabbits.”
They’ve made encouraging progress.
Atala has engineered half a dozen human
penises. Although they are not yet ready
for transplanting, Atala’s team are
assessing the structures for safety and
effectiveness. One machine squashes,
stretches and twists them to make sure
they can stand up to the wear of
everyday life; another pumps fluid into
them to test erections. Sliced segments
are tested at the genetic, cellular and
physiological level.
“It’s a rigorous testing schedule,” says
Atala, wearily. “But we’re trying to get
approval from the US Food and Drug
Administration so we know everything is
perfect before we move to a first in-man
test.”
Neither Atala nor Yoo will be pushed for
a date for the first test in man, saying
only that they’d expect it to occur within
five years. “In the end we’re aiming for
the entire size of the organ,” says Atala.
“But in reality our first target is going to
be partial replacement of the organ.”
In the short term, this would include
growing smaller lengths for partially
damaged penises, but would also include
replacing parts of the penis to help cure
erectile dysfunction. Degradation of the
spongy erectile tissue, says Tom Lue, a
urological surgeon at the University of
California, San Francisco, is the leading
cause of impotence in old age. Disorders
such as high blood pressure or diabetes
can damage the delicate tissue – the
resulting scar tissue is less elastic,
meaning the tissue cannot completely fill
with blood and the penis cannot become
fully erect.
“Show me a hundred 70-year-old men
with erectile dysfunction,” says Lue, “and
I’ll bet you 90% of them have scar
material in their penis.” Traumatic injury
or priapism, a condition that leaves men
with an increasingly painful erection for
hours or even days, can also damage the
tissue and cause erectile dysfunction in
younger men. “If you replace the
damaged spongy tissue you can give
these men a better erection.”
Engineering the spongy tissue for
replacement is one of Atala and Yoo’s
interim goals. Lue is also hoping to
restore erections, but for less severely
damaged penises. For instance, some
men become impotent after surgery for
prostate or rectal cancer because the
nerves that regulate erections, which run
through the rectum and prostate into the
centre of the penis, can get damaged.
Likewise with traumatic injury, if the
vessels are severed then the penis cannot
fill with blood.
Microsurgery to connect the vessels and
nerves in the penis is possible but often
ineffective. Lue is testing whether
injecting stem cells into the base of the
penis can encourage the nerves and cells
to rejoin. His work might also help Atala
and Yoo to stimulate nerve and vessel
regrowth when the day comes for the
first in-man trial of a bioengineered
penis. Twenty-two years into his research
to bioengineer a human penis, Atala is a
man who is both excited and impatient
for that day. And you’d suspect he’s not
the only one.
Bioengineered organs: The story so far…
Bladder
In 1999 the bladder became the first
laboratory-grown organ to be given to a
human. Atala and his colleagues took
cells from a biopsy from seven patients
with bladder disease. The cells were
cultured and then seeded, layer by layer,
on to a biodegradable, bladder-shaped
collagen scaffold. After about eight weeks
they were transplanted to patients,
where the organs developed and
integrated into the body.
Vagina
Another pilot study, this time in four
women with a rare congenital
abnormality that causes the vagina and
uterus to be underdeveloped or absent.
Using a similar technique to the one used
to make bladders, in 2005 they implanted
the first vagina. Up to eight years after
transplant, all four organs have normal
structure and function. This technique
could be used to help women following
injury or cancer.
Penis and beyond
In 2004, they implanted the first
bioengineered urethra into five boys.
This technology will help in their work
towards reconstructing the penis. Atala
and his colleagues are also working on 30
different organs and tissues including a
kidney, which could be made using a 3D
printer, and tissue for the liver, heart and
lung.

A new twist in Christ Embassy crisis

The face-off between the Founder of
Believers Love World (aka Christ
Embassy) Chris Oyakhilome, and his wife,
Anita, has taken a new dimension with
Mr. Oyakhilome now removed as a
trustee of a United Kingdom’s branch of
the church.
With Mr. Oyakhilome’s removal, his wife,
Anita, now presides over a seven-man
Board of Trustees of the N8.2 billion rich
branch, church documents reviewed by
PREMIUM TIMES has shown.
The six other members of the board are
Obi Chiemeka, Ifeoma Onubogu, Nkem
Odiakah, Raymond Okocha, Tony Obi and
Uche Onubogu, all pastors believed to be
loyal to Mrs. Oyakhilome.
Mrs. Oyakhilome has for long headed the
U.K branch of the church but her
husband, before what appears his sudden
removal, had since inception presided
over the Board of Trustees of the charity.
The new development suggests that in
addition to the matrimonial squabble the
couples are having, an intense power
struggle and battle for the soul of the U.K.
branch of the church might be going on
between the estranged lovers and
partners as well.
In fact, Mr. Oyakhilome had dropped the
first hint that there might be a
hierarchical row in the church when he
reportedly accused his wife of acting like
an equal and wanting to overpower the
authorities of the elders she met in the
church.
PREMIUM TIMES’ review of documents
filed by the church’s UK branch to the
Charity Commission of England and Wales
has now shown that Mr. Oyakhilome is no
longer a registered trustee of a branch of
his church with total asset worth over
N8.2 billion (£31 million).
Until he was recently abruptly removed,
Mr. Oyakhilome was consistently listed as
a prominent trustee since 1996, when the
branch was established.
Contrary to the church’s practice of
stating reasons for removal of trustees in
the past, no reason has been given for the
removal of Pastor Oyakhilome.
It is unclear whether explanation for the
action would be given in the church’s
annual report for 2013 which is yet to
made public by the charity commission.
According to the church’s financial
statement, in 2009, five pastors were
removed from the church’s board of
trustees after they resigned from their
positions and two others were appointed.
A Charity Commission spokesperson,
Sarah Hitchings, told PREMIUM TIMES
that it was not the concern of the
commission to know why charities
remove or replace their trustees.
The international office of Christ Embassy
refused to respond to questions this
newspaper sent through email neither did
the international audit and accounting
firm, Mazars, appointed by the Charity
Commission to run the affairs of the
church after it opened statutory inquiry
into the finances of the church following
suspicious payment it made to connected
parties worth N941 million between 2008
and 2012.
However, church insiders said the
removal of the pastor was a plot by his
wife to take total control of the affairs of
the branch even as her relationship with
her husband of two decades deteriorates.
With his ouster, those who should know
said Mr. Oyakhilome has lost the locus to
interfere in the affairs of that branch of
the church.
“He has been effectively sidelined,” a
church insider said. “The law in the U.K.
does not recognise him as an interested
party in that branch of the church
anymore.”
Anita herself loses control
But even the seven-man board led by
Mrs. Oyakhilome has itself lost control of
the affairs of the church.
On August 11, the U.K. charity
commission effectively sidelined her
board and appointed an interim manager
to take over the management of the
church.
In what it described as a “temporary and
protective measure,” the commission
appointed Rod Weston of the
international audit and accounting firm,
Mazars, to take over the running of the
church.
The Commission says it is investigating
the church over “a number of serious
concerns relating to the use of charitable
funds, in particular large connected party
payments and the potential
misapplication of grant funding.”
Until investigation is concluded, Mr.
Weston would preside “over the
management of the charity, including its
staff, assets, interests, and relations with
third parties,” the commission said.
He is also expected to discharge the
functions of the church’s trustees and
take steps necessary to secure and take
control of the assets of the church.
The commission however added that the
activities of the church would not be
suspended by the appointment as the
Interim Manager is expected to work with
the pastors of the church to ensure its
religious and charity activities continue as
before.
Divorce
Mr. Oyakhilome is locked in a divorce
battle with his wife, who has filed an
action at a London court to end their 20-
year-old marriage.
Mrs. Oyakhilome accuses her husband of
“unreasonable behaviour”, a charge Mr.
Oyakhilome has repeatedly denied.
At a recent church meeting, Pastor Chris,
as he is widely referred to by Christ
Embassy members, warned church
members against analysing the squabble
between him and Anita as the church is
not a political party.
He reportedly described his wife as a
“bitter and angry” woman who is being
influenced by bad friends who are out to
seek his downfall. He accused his wife of
seeking to overpower the authorities of
the elders she met when she joined the
Christian ministry.
As the divorce battle rages, Mrs.
Oyakhilome’s profile has been pulled
down from the church’s website.

Husband of two wives impregnates daughter

Husband of two wives
impregnates daughter, 16
■ Victim delivers baby ■ Father remanded in
prison
A father from hell, 42-year-old Segun
(surname withheld) who allegedly
impregnated his only daughter (name with­
held), a 16-year-old JSS 2 student in Igbeti,
Oyo State is now in prison custody for
committing the abominable act.
It was gathered that the sordid story began
on December 1, 2013 at Gboro compound,
Igbeti, when the suspect was said to have
asked the victim to come and live with him.
Thirteen years earlier, he had divorced the
mother of the victim, who was about three
then. After the divorce, the mother took cus­
tody of the victim and then remarried. Much
later, the victim began living with her father.
Continuing the tale, Oyo State Commissioner
of Police, Mr Kola Sodipo revealed that on
the fateful night, Segun demanded that the
victim should undress. She refused and
attempted to escape. He threatened her with
a cutlass and then raped her, unconcerned
about the excruciating pain she felt, being a
virgin.
The evil father continued the sordid deed
thereafter, and this prompted the girl to
report to her stepmother who lived in a
different house but she didn’t take the
matter seriously due to the shameful nature
of the act.
Recounting how her ordeal started and what
transpired after, the victim told Sunday Sun :
“I was living with my mother until 2013
when my father asked me to come and live
with him. On December 25, 2013 my father
woke me up and asked me to remove my
clothes but I refused. He drew a cutlass and
threatened to kill me if I didn’t do his
bidding. I removed my clothes and he
forcefully had sex with me. He was the first
man to sleep with me because I had never
had sex before then. I reported the ugly
incident to one of his two wives who is a
nurse and she promised to ask him but I
don’t know whether she asked him or not.
“In March 2014, he did the same thing again
and I ran to the house of his second wife
and reported to her. She asked me to swear
to an oath with the Bible but I refused since
I knew I was speaking the truth. I started
sleeping in her apartment. In April, he came
and asked me to return to his apartment to
do some things for him but I refused to go.
His second wife, however, put pressure on
me to answer my father’s call as he wanted
me to do some things for him at home. I
followed him after much pressure.
“During Easter celebration on April 18, 2014
he had sex with me again. All this while I
didn’t know I was pregnant because I had
my last menstruation in December 2013. My
stepmother suspected that I was pregnant
and took me to a clinic at Igbeti where a test
showed I was pregnant.”
Sunday Sun gathered that The matron of the
clinic informed the victim’s grandfather that
his son had impregnated the daughter. The
suspect denied the allegation and began mal­
treating the girl.
On what followed thereafter, the victim said:
“The case was reported at the police station
on April 30, 2014 and I started living with
my paternal grandfather. I was taken to
General Hospital Igbeti, where my mother
pleaded with the doctor to abort the
pregnancy, but the doctor said he would not
do it. After I delivered the baby and my
grandmother was told the baby looks like
father, my father ran away.”
She explained further: “When the pregnancy
was confirmed, the Divisional Police Officer
(DPO) and the Divisional Crime Officer (DCO)
were the ones who purchased the baby
clothes and other things needed. They also
paid the hospital bill. I am appealing to the
public to come to my assistance and help
me finish my education. I am in JSS 2.”
According to Sodipo, an ultrasound scan
done on May 1, 2014 at Bethsaida Hospital
showed that the pregnancy had reached four
months. The baby was delivered on
September 16, 2014.
Sodipo futher told Sunday Sun that the
Medical Director of the General Hospital
advised that DNA test should be carried out
to determine the paternity of the child but
said it could not be done until six months
after delivery of the baby.
In the course of investigation, the police
were able to smoke out the suspect as
Sunday Sun learnt from the Oyo State Police
Public Relations Officer, Olabisi Okuwobi-
Ilobanafor, who also confirmed the arrest of
the suspect.
The suspect was thereafter arraigned before
the Chief Magistrate Court at Kisi presided
over by Chief Magistrate Usman Isiaku. He
was subsequently remanded in Oyo Prison
and the case adjourned to October 24, 2014.

Husband of two wives impregnates 16-year-old daughter

Husband of two wives
impregnates daughter, 16
■ Victim delivers baby ■ Father remanded in
prison
A father from hell, 42-year-old Segun
(surname withheld) who allegedly
impregnated his only daughter (name with­
held), a 16-year-old JSS 2 student in Igbeti,
Oyo State is now in prison custody for
committing the abominable act.
It was gathered that the sordid story began
on December 1, 2013 at Gboro compound,
Igbeti, when the suspect was said to have
asked the victim to come and live with him.
Thirteen years earlier, he had divorced the
mother of the victim, who was about three
then. After the divorce, the mother took cus­
tody of the victim and then remarried. Much
later, the victim began living with her father.
Continuing the tale, Oyo State Commissioner
of Police, Mr Kola Sodipo revealed that on
the fateful night, Segun demanded that the
victim should undress. She refused and
attempted to escape. He threatened her with
a cutlass and then raped her, unconcerned
about the excruciating pain she felt, being a
virgin.
The evil father continued the sordid deed
thereafter, and this prompted the girl to
report to her stepmother who lived in a
different house but she didn’t take the
matter seriously due to the shameful nature
of the act.
Recounting how her ordeal started and what
transpired after, the victim told Sunday Sun :
“I was living with my mother until 2013
when my father asked me to come and live
with him. On December 25, 2013 my father
woke me up and asked me to remove my
clothes but I refused. He drew a cutlass and
threatened to kill me if I didn’t do his
bidding. I removed my clothes and he
forcefully had sex with me. He was the first
man to sleep with me because I had never
had sex before then. I reported the ugly
incident to one of his two wives who is a
nurse and she promised to ask him but I
don’t know whether she asked him or not.
“In March 2014, he did the same thing again
and I ran to the house of his second wife
and reported to her. She asked me to swear
to an oath with the Bible but I refused since
I knew I was speaking the truth. I started
sleeping in her apartment. In April, he came
and asked me to return to his apartment to
do some things for him but I refused to go.
His second wife, however, put pressure on
me to answer my father’s call as he wanted
me to do some things for him at home. I
followed him after much pressure.
“During Easter celebration on April 18, 2014
he had sex with me again. All this while I
didn’t know I was pregnant because I had
my last menstruation in December 2013. My
stepmother suspected that I was pregnant
and took me to a clinic at Igbeti where a test
showed I was pregnant.”
Sunday Sun gathered that The matron of the
clinic informed the victim’s grandfather that
his son had impregnated the daughter. The
suspect denied the allegation and began mal­
treating the girl.
On what followed thereafter, the victim said:
“The case was reported at the police station
on April 30, 2014 and I started living with
my paternal grandfather. I was taken to
General Hospital Igbeti, where my mother
pleaded with the doctor to abort the
pregnancy, but the doctor said he would not
do it. After I delivered the baby and my
grandmother was told the baby looks like
father, my father ran away.”
She explained further: “When the pregnancy
was confirmed, the Divisional Police Officer
(DPO) and the Divisional Crime Officer (DCO)
were the ones who purchased the baby
clothes and other things needed. They also
paid the hospital bill. I am appealing to the
public to come to my assistance and help
me finish my education. I am in JSS 2.”
According to Sodipo, an ultrasound scan
done on May 1, 2014 at Bethsaida Hospital
showed that the pregnancy had reached four
months. The baby was delivered on
September 16, 2014.
Sodipo futher told Sunday Sun that the
Medical Director of the General Hospital
advised that DNA test should be carried out
to determine the paternity of the child but
said it could not be done until six months
after delivery of the baby.
In the course of investigation, the police
were able to smoke out the suspect as
Sunday Sun learnt from the Oyo State Police
Public Relations Officer, Olabisi Okuwobi-
Ilobanafor, who also confirmed the arrest of
the suspect.
The suspect was thereafter arraigned before
the Chief Magistrate Court at Kisi presided
over by Chief Magistrate Usman Isiaku. He
was subsequently remanded in Oyo Prison
and the case adjourned to October 24, 2014.

Ebola: Beat Airport Screening with Ibuprofen

Prescription for avoiding Ebola airport screening:
ibuprofen
Fri Oct 3, 2014 6:17am BST
By Sharon Begley
NEW YORK (Reuters) - People who contract Ebola
in West Africa can get through airport screenings
and onto a plane with a lie and a lot of ibuprofen,
according to healthcare experts who believe more
must be done to identify infected travelers.
At the very least, they said, travelers arriving from
Ebola-stricken countries should be screened for
fever, which is currently done on departure from
Liberia, Guinea and Sierra Leone. But such
safeguards are not foolproof.
"The fever-screening instruments run low and
aren't that accurate," said infection control
specialist Sean Kaufman, president of Behavioral-
Based Improvement Solutions, a biosafety
company based in Atlanta.
"And people can take ibuprofen to reduce their
fever enough to pass screening, and why wouldn't
they? If it will get them on a plane so they can
come to the United States and get effective
treatment after they're exposed to Ebola, wouldn't
you do that to save your life?"
On Thursday, Liberia said the first Ebola patient to
be diagnosed in the United States had lied on a
questionnaire at the Monrovia airport about his
exposure to an Ebola patient. He flew to Brussels
and then Dulles airport outside Washington, D.C.,
before landing in Dallas on Sept. 20.
The traveler, Thomas Eric Duncan, had no
symptoms when he left Liberia, and fever scans
there had shown a normal body temperature of
97.3 degrees Fahrenheit, U.S. health officials said.
He therefore could not have been identified
through examination as carrying the Ebola virus.
His arrival and hospitalization in Dallas have
underscored how much U.S. authorities are relying
on their counterparts in West African countries to
screen passengers and contain the worst Ebola
outbreak on record.
Part of the screening burden rests on connecting
airports.
For example, Kaufman flew from Monrovia to
Casablanca to London to Atlanta. He was fever-
screened in Monrovia and Casablanca, but not
London's Heathrow, he said, and not when he
arrived in Atlanta.
"At Heathrow, there were no questions about
where I had come from," he said. "I offered the
information to the official in Atlanta, and he said,
'Thank you. Be safe.'"
In August, experts from the U.S. Centers for
Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) began
teaching airport workers in Monrovia and other
cities in the Ebola zone to conduct screenings,
CDC medical worker Tai Chen said in an interview.
Ebola cases and deaths have been reported in
Guinea, Liberia, Sierra Leone, Nigeria and Senegal.
The World Health Organization has put the death
toll at 3,338 out of 7,178 cases since March.
The CDC also worked with Liberian authorities to
develop the questionnaire that was completed by
Duncan: before travelers enter Roberts International
Airport in Monrovia they are asked if they have had
contact with anyone showing symptoms of Ebola.
There are at least two other screening points
before a passenger is allowed to board a plane,
with trained airport personnel asking about
exposure to Ebola in the previous 21 days and any
symptoms including fever, severe headache,
bleeding, vomiting, diarrhea, and abdominal pain.
This process relies on an honor system, Chen
said.
Officials at the CDC and the Department of
Homeland Security would not say if they are
considering using hand-held fever detectors on
passengers arriving at U.S. airports. But Homeland
Security spokeswoman Marsha Catron said the
agency "will not hesitate to execute additional
safety measures should it become necessary."
CDC Director Dr. Thomas Frieden cautioned on
Thursday that a more restrictive approach to travel
could make the Ebola outbreak harder to contain.
"The approach of isolating a country is going to
make it harder to get help into that country," he
said.
FEVER DETECTION
Virologist Heinz Feldmann of the National Institute
of Allergy and Infectious Diseases has studied
Ebola for years and helped develop an
experimental Ebola vaccine. He told Science
magazine in September that airport screeners in
Monrovia, where he spent three weeks, "Don't
really know how to use the devices."
He said he saw screeners record temperatures of
32 degrees C (90 F), which is so low it "is
impossible for a living person."
Feldmann said in an email that according to his
colleagues who have returned from Liberia in the
last few days procedures for taking temperatures
and doing clinical checks have improved.
Since August, major U.S. airports that receive
international flights have displayed signs alerting
passengers to the presence of Ebola in West Africa
and telling them to be on the look out for
symptoms, said Customs and Border Protection
(CBP) spokeswoman Jennifer Evanitsky.
On Wednesday, customs personnel began
distributing information prepared by the CDC
describing Ebola symptoms and noting, "You were
given this card because you arrived to the United
States from a country with Ebola." It tells travelers
that if they were exposed to Ebola overseas, "call
your doctor even if you do not have symptoms."
(Reporting by Sharon Begley; Editing by Michele
Gershberg, Toni Reinhold)

Origin of HIV

HIV pandemic was created by 'perfect
storm' of factors, study reveals
Scientists believe the findings have
finally nailed the origin of Aids pandemic
to a single source
Some experts believe service outsourcing
to private firms has reduced access to HIV
testing
By STEVE CONNOR
Thursday 02 October 2014
A “perfect storm” of factors that came
together in colonial Africa early last
century led to the spread of Aids in the
human population and eventually a full-
blown pandemic infecting more than 75
million people worldwide, a study has
found.
A genetic analysis of thousands of
individual viruses has confirmed beyond
reasonable doubt that HIV first emerged
in Kinshasa, the capital of the Belgian
Congo, in about 1920 from where it
spread via the colonial railway network to
other parts of central Africa.
Scientists believe the findings have finally
nailed the origin of the Aids pandemic to
a single source, a colonial-era city then
called Leopoldville which had become the
biggest urban centre in Central Africa and
a bustling focus for trade, including a
market in wild “bush meat” captured
from the nearby forests.
The study, based on analysing the subtle
genetic differences between various
subtypes of HIV, found the human virus
had evolved from a simian virus infecting
chimps which were hunted for food by
people who had probably carried HIV
with them into Kinshasa.
Rapid social changes, such as an increase
in commercial sex workers and the re-use
of dirty syringes, aided the transmission
of the virus which was also carried to
distant parts of the Congo by the millions
of passengers who used the newly-built
railway network, the scientists said.
“For the first time we have analysed all
the available evidence using the latest
phylogeographic techniques, which
enable us to statistically estimate where a
virus comes from,” said Professor Oliver
Pybus of Oxford University, a senior
author of the study published in the
journal Science.
“This means we can say with a high
degree of certainty where and when the
HIV pandemic originated. It seems a
combination of factors in Kinshasa in the
early 20 Century created a ‘perfect storm’
for the emergence of HIV, leading to a
generalised epidemic with unstoppable
momentum that unrolled across sub-
Saharan Africa,” Professor Pybus said.
Previous research had suggested that HIV
was first transmitted from chimps to
humans and that the pandemic probably
originated in central Africa in the first
half of the last century. However, the
latest research provides the strongest case
for it emerging at a definite time and
place – namely Kinshasa in 1920.
“We have managed to integrate spatial
information to see where the virus
emerged and how it spread to become a
full-blown pandemic. Kinshasa at that
time was growing fast, it was the biggest
city in central Africa at that time and was
very well connected to the rest of the
Congo,” said Nuno Faria of Oxford,
another member of the team.
“Data from colonial archives tells us that
by the end of the 1940s over one million
people were travelling through Kinshasa
on the railways each year. Our genetic
data tells us that HIV very quickly spread
across the Democratic Republic of Congo,
a country the size of Western Europe,” Dr
Faria said.
Further social changes brought about as a
result of independence in 1960 helped the
virus to “break out” from small groups of
infected people into the wider population,
including immigrant workers from Haiti
who then carried their infection back
home from where it would eventually be
transmitted to visitors from the US.
“Our research suggests that following the
original animal-to-human transmission of
the virus, probably through the hunting
or handling of bush meat, there was only
a small window during the Belgian
colonial era for this particular strain of
HIV to emerge and spread into a
pandemic,” Professor Pybus said.
“By the 1960s, transport systems such as
the railways that enabled the virus to
spread vast distances were less active, but
by that time the seeds of the pandemic
were already sown across Africa and
beyond,” he said.
Previous studies have suggested that the
initial transmission of HIV from chimps to
humans probably occurred in the south-
east part of Cameroon not far from the
border with the Belgian Congo, Dr Faria
said.

IOC and 2022 winter Olympics

The surest sign that the bid process for hosting
the Olympics is broken is actually not the trail of
bribe money or crony-rich government contracts
at the feet of International Olympic Committee
members.
Sure, bribery might – might, maybe, allegedly,
perhaps – be how a now abandoned Olympic
Village got built in some muddy, bulldozed
acreage south of Sochi, Russia, rather than in
Salzburg, Austria, home to Mozart, the Sound of
Music and postcard pictures.
That's the cause, though, not the effect.
The effect is the bidding for the 2022 Winter
Games, which is now down to just two cities. The
final vote comes next summer.
There's Beijing, China, which doesn't actually sit
within 120 miles of a usable ski mountain, and
there's Almaty, Kazakhstan, which in its bid touted
itself as "the world's largest landlocked nation."
It's down to these two cities not because the IOC
narrowed the field, but because every other city in
the entire world said no.
Seriously, every other city said no.
That even includes cities that previously said yes
and made it deep into the bidding process only to
stare directly into the corrupt, humiliating voting
system, not to mention eventual unnecessary
construction costs, environmental effects, blown
resources and white elephants built to opulent IOC
code. They promptly high-tailed it the other way.
Russia said it spent $51 billion hosting the 2014
Winter Olympics. What, no one else is interested in
footing that bill?
Certainly not Oslo, Norway, not even at the bargain
rate of an estimated $5.4 billion in a nation of just
five million people. It once wanted desperately to
host the 2022 Winter Olympics and its bid was so
perfect that it was considered the favorite to win.
Then the country held a vote earlier this year and
55.9 percent of Norwegians opposed.
Wednesday the Norwegian government effectively
pulled the bid . Norwegians are known for the
ability to cross country ski really fast and being so
friendly they beg visitors to come experience their
picturesque nation. Since this involved the IOC
however, they decided against having visitors
come experience their picturesque nation to watch
them cross country ski really fast.
They aren't alone. Previous finalist Krakow, Poland,
saw 70 percent voter opposition and pulled its
application. A majority felt the same way in
Germany and Switzerland, killing bids in Munich
and St. Moritz respectively. In Sweden the majority
party rejected funding the proposed games in
Stockholm.
And that doesn't count all the places that didn't
even bother to try, including the United States,
which isn't sure when it will bid again after
Chicago somehow, someway came in fourth in an
effort to host the 2016 Summer Games. Rio de
Janeiro won and still has practically nothing built,
and IOC executives keep complaining nothing will
be ready on time. Gee, what a shocker.
Essentially the only places interested in hosting the
2022 games are countries where actual citizens
aren't allowed a real say in things – communist
China and Kazakhstan, a presidential republic that
coincidentally has only had one president since it
split from the old USSR in 1989.
Essentially the entire world has told the IOC it's a
corrupt joke.
"The vote is not a signal against the sport, but
against the non-transparency and the greed for
profit of the IOC," Ludwig Hartmann, a German
politician said when his country said no. "I think
all possible Olympic bids in Germany are now out
of question. The IOC has to change first. It's not
the venues that have to adapt to the IOC, but the
other way around."
Don't hold your breath on that.
It's worth noting there is nothing wrong with
finding new places to host the games. The world
changes. New nations gain power and money. Not
everything has to be in Western Europe. Rising
countries will do anything for the exposure. China,
for instance, is promising the construction of a
super high-speed train to those far off mountains,
even though Beijing is littered with abandoned
venues from its 2008 Summer Games. Price
doesn't matter.
And Almaty actually has a decent, viable and
potentially winning bid. It looks like a good place
for the Games, at least once you get past the Borat
jokes – "Other Central Asian countries have
inferior potassium."
Still, these are now the only choices.
If you think this is a crisis for the IOC, you don't
know the IOC.
Oh, sure, president Thomas Bach said reform is
needed for the bid process but this is a guy who
spent his time in Sochi clinking champagne
glasses with Vladimir Putin in an effort to help
soften Vlad's global image. It worked for a week
or so and Putin sent troops into the Ukraine.
(How's that working out for you, Thomas?)
The IOC has billions of dollars laying around and
billions more coming because to most people the
Olympics is just a television show and the ratings
are so high that the broadcast rights will never go
down. The IOC doesn't pay the athletes. It doesn't
share revenue with host countries. It doesn't pay
for countries to send their athletes. It doesn't lay
out any construction or capital costs. It doesn't
pay taxes.
It basically holds caviar rich meetings in five star
hotels in the Alps before calling it a day. That and
conduct weak investigations into corruption
charges of the bidding process, of course. "No
evidence uncovered" is on a win streak.
It's a heck of a racket. Only FIFA does it better.
The world has caught on, though, which is why the
mere mention of the IOC is toxic to all but the
most desperate and totalitarian of governments.
The USOC is a non-governmental body, so unlike
just about every other nation, it receives no direct
public financing. It would love to host another
Olympics, but the bid process is so unpredictable
that wasting money and political capital on trying
is risky. And then there would certainly be a
public cost in the construction and hosting.
You want a good host for the 2022 Winter
Olympics? Salt Lake City, which held it in 2002 and
has all the venues and infrastructure already in
place. There'd be some updating at minimal cost
and, bang, a great location.
The IOC is too snooty for that, however. They don't
like returning to the same city so soon so they'd
prefer either Aspen, Colo., (complete with bullet
train from Denver which has no practical use post
Olympics) or Reno/Lake Tahoe. That would require
billions building all the same stuff Salt Lake City
already has in place.
Anyone want to put that up for a vote?
Then there is all the kissing up and glad-handing
and who knows what else? Forget just the alleged
direct payouts. How petty and ridiculous are these
sporting aristocrats? Their actual listed demands
are ridiculous, including their own airport entrance,
traffic lane and prioritized stoplights. And just
providing a five-star hotel suite isn't enough.
"IOC members will be received with a smile on
arrival at hotel," the IOC demands.
Instead the world is giving them the middle finger.
So China or Kazakhstan it is, the last two suckers
on earth willing to step up to this carnival barker.
One lucky nation will win. The other will host the
2022 Winter Olympics.

Your baby looks like your Ex

Your baby looks like your
ex? This research is scarier
than Alien

Your ex is not meant to lurk inside you,
defying your current partner’s sperm and
waiting to break forth in miniature form
‘What you won’t often witness is the father
turning tenderly to the mother and murmuring,
‘Hey, he looks just like Phil! You know, your ex?
With the motorbike, and sociopathic tendencies?'.'
Photograph: Alamy
Parents and parenting Family Children
Thursday 2 October 2014 08.08 EDT
If you were to spend time in a maternity
ward listening to proud new parents,
you’d definitely hear them discussing
their offspring’s genetic heritage. Does
the new baby have her eyes or his?
Could that be great Uncle Charlie’s nose?
What you won’t often witness is the
father turning tenderly to the mother and
murmuring, “Hey, he looks just like Phil!
You know, your ex? With the motorbike,
and sociopathic tendencies?” But new
research suggests that this scenario is
more plausible than it sounds.
It has been shown that newborns may
resemble a mother’s previous sexual
partner, after scientists at the University
of South Wales observed an instance of
telegony – physical traits of previous
sexual partners being passed down to
future children.
The researchers found that, for fruit flies,
the size of the offspring matched the size
of the first male the mother mated with –
not its biological father. It is thought that
molecules of the semen produced by the
first partner might be absorbed by the
mother’s immature eggs.
“We don’t know yet whether this applies
to other species,” explains author of the
study, Dr Angela Crean. Too late, Dr
Crean! I’m already working my way
through a mental Powerpoint
presentation of my exes and trying to
work out whether I can travel back in
time with a box of Durex.
The idea of our unborn children
resembling partners past might initially
fill us with horror, no matter how
amicably your relationship ended. Your
ex is not supposed to lurk inside you,
waiting to burst forth in miniature form.
This idea is scarier than Alien.
I’m sure plenty of prospective mothers
feel incredibly guilty about the fact that
they might be, unwittingly, about to fill
the world with children who blow their
nose on their sleeves, claim they have a
moral objection to booking restaurants,
and pronounce the eighth letter of the
alphabet “haitch”.
However, if the hypothesis holds, it
might not be entirely bad news. Whether
we like it or not, the people we choose to
date, and sleep with, reflect something of
ourselves. It’s easy to write off past
relationships in the same way we
shudder at old pictures in which you’re
wearing embellished, stonewashed
denim. “Past me was such an idiot!” I
often think. “I’m much wiser now.” But
we ought to give our old selves more
credit for doing what seemed right at the
time – or at least acknowledge the fact
that every decision which feels right now
could seem just as foolish in five years.
If your children do share some traits with
your former partners, it probably only
shows the way that you were previously
nurtured affects their nature. You’re
human, and just as you’ll face difficult
choices and make mistakes after they’re
born, the way you behaved before they
were born could impact on them too.
Essentially, you have to accept that your
old partners had admirable qualities
which drew you to them in the first
place, and that you’d be happy to pass
them on to a child - or you have to admit
that your current partner might also have
bad qualities, and you’d be better off if
you didn’t have children with anyone.
Despite the fact there’s still no solid
evidence that the study applies to human
reproduction, small children and exes
can be equally irritating. You might,
sleep deprived and frazzled, look at the
freshly bathed toddler who has just
started to massage their scalp with
spaghetti hoops and think, “My ex used
to make me feel this weepy and panicky!
This must be his baby!” – when they
don’t really have anything in common,
just that your former partner used to act
like a big baby and your infant child
actually is one.
Ultimately, it’s down to you to teach your
child to be a responsible citizen and
happy human being. You may not have
had the power to change your ex’s worst
habits, but if the theory of telegony is
true, you can find some satisfaction in
taking control of the way their
descendants behave.

Shame

Jonathan.. PDP and their campaign of shame
At vaious rallies across Nigeria, ruling
party politicians have continued to cite
Nigeria’s success on the virus as among
the achievements of President Goodluck
Jonathan and the ruling Peoples’
Democratic Party.
“I have heard some stories emanating
from campaign podiums with claims of
conquering Ebola,” said Mr. Fashola.
“The question we must ask is whether
those who make these claims saw Ebola?
“It is women like Stella Ameyo Adedevoh
to whom such a claim rightly belongs.
“It is young Nigerians like Dr. Morris
Ibeawuchi, who first made contact with
the index case patient and continued to
treat him who saw and conquered Ebola.
“He got infected, from doing his job, got
sick, survived and is back to his job.
“It is first responders from the Lagos State
Ministry of Health like Dr. Jide Idris, Dr.
Yewande Adesina, Dr. Wale Ahmed, Dr.
Kayode Oguntimehin who saw Ebola.
“They responded to the call from First
Consultant Hospital. They spent 12
(Twelve) hours daily in the early days
supervising the construction of Ebola
containment facility when the epidemic
broke.
“The Lagos State Infectious Disease
Hospital which later became the epicenter
of Ebola management used to house
tuberculosis patients and patients with
infectious diseases.
“Those patients vented their anger on
these people when they had to be moved
to create room for the Ebola centre. I
know they spat at Dr. Adesina for doing
her job.
“Dr. Abdul-Salam Nasidi of the National
Disease Control Centre in Abuja saw and
conquered Ebola. He helped in no small
way to co-ordinate the containment.
“Dr. David Brett-Mayor of the World
Health Organization saw and conquered
Ebola. He single handedly started the
Ebola isolation ward having cleared and
cleaned the room. He admitted and cared
for the patients before any Nigerian
doctor joined him.
“Professor S. A. Omilabu, the dedicated
virologist at LUTH, saw Ebola and
conquered it. He coordinated the fault
free testing for Ebola and managed all the
samples professionally.
“Peter Adewuyi saw Ebola and conquered
it. He led the contact tracing team of
many dedicated officers for the first 2
(two) weeks.
“Mrs. Funmi Lagbokun, Mrs. Modupe
Aiyedun Davies, Mrs. Basirat Adeoye, Ms
F. O. Bamgboye, Mrs. K. O. Oshisanya,
Mrs. Kazeem Abioye, Mrs. Abiola Lasaki
and Mrs. K. Adeshina all saw and
conquered Ebola.
“They were the dedicated team of nurses,
nursing aid, care giver, health assistant
and hygienist who commenced work
voluntarily in the Ebola containment
ward without any demand other than the
sense of duty.
“Yemi Gbadegesin and Abdulsalam saw
and conquered Ebola.
“They coordinated the de-contamination,
removal and burial of the index case and
other cases, and it is because of them that
First Consultant can re-open for business.
“Dear Lagosians, these were the people
who saw and defeated Ebola. Let no
person tell you otherwise.
“These men and women, who showed
courage, who risked their lives are our
true champions and heroes.
“They showed the spirit of service, the
spirit of Lagos and the spirit of our “good
old days”.
“Nobody should take this credit away
from them.
“They are not celebrating because they
know that the work is not finished. They
are already working with our people and
planning to volunteer to go and give help
in Sierra Leone and Liberia.
“Their reward for hard work will be more
work and they tell me that they are
ready,” Mr. Fashola added.