Award-winning singer, songwriter and performer, Teni the Entertainer has released her highly anticipated debut album ‘Wondaland.’
The debut album has garnered over 13 million streams on Audiomack alone between Friday, March 19 when it was released and Sunday, March 21.
Wondaland, a labour of love and a rollercoaster of emotions, was crafted over two years ago across six cities that include London, New York, Orlando, Ondo, Lagos, and Abuja.
Highly influenced by King Wasiu Ayinde, King Sunny Ade, Dolly Parton, Teni said the album is a blend of a little bit of everything.
”Wondaland is a blend of a little bit of everything; from tunes to make you dance, to slow groovy relaxing sounds.
“Wondaland is me reflecting and experiencing a wide range of emotions. There is something for everyone in this project,” Teni said
Lawrence Okolie a British national born to Nigerian parents has become the new WBO cruiserweight champion after defeating Krzysztof Glowacki.
Okolie unloaded a devastating finishing punch to drop Glowacki heavily in the sixth round as the referee waved off the fight to confirm the coronation of the newest world titleholder in Wembley.
Okolie, 28, who has remained unbeaten has also become the first male member of Britain’s 2016 Olympic squad to claim a professional world title.
Glowacki, before he was crushed by Okolie, his only previous defeats in 33 professional bouts had come against the world-class duo of Oleksandr Usyk and Mairis Briedis.
“It is crazy, I feel happy and blessed,” Okolie told Sky Sports. “It is surreal.
“I had confidence throughout the week, was very calm.
“Shane reminded me not to rush, and it went exactly to plan. I said I’d get it done between rounds five and eight.”
The 28-year-old now wants to unify the division, with the first target International Boxing Federation belt holder Briedis, who knocked out Glowacki inside three rounds in 2019.
An 18 year-old-girl, Idowu Biletiri has allegedly stabbed her elder brother, Kehinde Biletiri, to death on Saturday.
The incident happened at Igbokoda in Ilaje Local Government Area of Ondo State, NAN reports.
An eyewitness said trouble started when the suspect returned home after leaving the house for some days.
The brother queried her on why she had been out of the house without a trace. Angered by the question, Idowu took a kitchen knife and spiked the deceased.
“Only the two of them were at home when the incident occurred, this has thrown the whole community into confusion and mourning,” a source said.
Police Public Relations Officer, ASP Tee Leo-Ikoro, said the incident had not been formally presented to the command.
Leo-Ikoro said the case was first reported to the Ondo State Security Network aka Amotekun Corps.
The Nigeria Defence Headquarters has issued a strong warning to Sunday Igboho and other individuals bent on disparaging its reputation to gain political mileage.
The Defence Headquarters gave the warning in a statement released on Saturday night while reacting to the report titled “SUNDAY IGBOHO APPREHENDS ALLEGED SOLDIERS, ACCUSES FEDERAL GOVERNMENT SPYING ON HIM.”
The Defence Headquarters noted that the “spy” alarm raised by Igboho was false, adding that it will never stoop so low to such extent to “spy” on the self-acclaimed “Yoruba activist.”
The military, however, warned that such false alarm from Igboho and others will not be condoned in the future.
Read the full statement from the Defence Headquarters below
The statement signed by The attention of the Defence Headquarters has been drawn to a trending video clip on the Social Media, and some other media reports with the above headline, alleging that some Nigerian Military personnel were on a spying mission to the residence of one Sunday Adeyemo otherwise known as “Sunday Igboho” before they were apprehended.
In the viral video which was released on Friday 19 March 2021, the alleged “soldiers” were seen being accused of having been sent by the Government to do a ‘survey’ of Sunday Igboho’s Soka residence in Ibadan, the Oyo State capital. The self-acclaimed ‘Yoruba activist’ also alleged that the action of the so-called “soldiers” was orchestrated by the Federal Government as a result of comments he made alleging that Yorubas are no longer a part of Nigeria.
While the Defence Headquarters has no interest in dragging or joining issues with Sunday Adeyemo or his associates, it is pertinent to clear the air and address these allegations squarely.
For the records, it should be noted that the Armed Forces of Nigeria, are highly professional in the discharge of their duties, with well-defined roles, responsibilities and duties in its mandate of securing the territorial integrity of the Nigerian Nation. As such, the Military cannot stoop so low to such extent to “spy” on one individual, as wildly and loosely alleged.
Secondly, the Armed Forces of Nigeria is a highly disciplined and professional organization with extant laws and regulations which guide the actions of its personnel in the conduct of their duties. As such, it is practically impossible for military personnel on official duty to conduct themselves in such a manner as alleged by Adeyemo and his cohorts.
For the avoidance of doubt, preliminary investigation has so far revealed that one of the alleged “soldiers” is a serial impersonator. Meanwhile, credible eyewitnesses and sources have also revealed that some associates of Igboho went in pursuit of some individuals when the motorbike conveying the impersonator and one Nigerian Air Force personnel ran into them. The duo were immediately apprehended and taken to the said “IGBOHO House” at Soka before Ibadan toll gate where they were branded as spies. Furthermore, investigations are currently underway by Nigerian Airforce and the Nigerian Army to unravel the actual circumstances which played out on the day.
The Defence Headquarters hereby warns individuals and groups to desist from disparaging the enviable reputation of the Nigerian Military by dragging it into its petty issues to gain political mileage. Such actions will not be condoned in the future.
Grammy award-winning artist Burna Boy on Saturday tweeted that his kids will “confidently beat their chest and say ‘Daddy did it on his OWN, we can do it on our own.’”
The self-acclaimed African Giant apparently was alluding to his win at the Grammys last Sunday where he picked up the award for Best Global Music Album.
In the following tweet, he added: “When you KNOW yourself. NOBODY can tell you about yourself. KNOW YOURSELVES and never go against yourself.”
He then mocked people who thought he would not win the much-coveted Grammys.
“GOD is most definitely NOT A MAN,” the tweet said. “I will never forget how so many of you prayed that I don’t win. Too dumb to understand that you also win if I win. No worry This is just the beginning. God is Great.”
Heavy rain has caused emergency evacuation of people in parts of Sydney northwest in Australia.
Authorities ordered people to flee their houses in the middle of the night as heavy rains continued to batter Australia’s east coast on Sunday.
Fast-moving waters caused widespread destruction throughout the region.
Emergency services said they had received about 600 calls overnight asking for help; more than 60 of those were pleas for rescue from floods.
Television and social media footage showed fast-moving water unmooring houses, engulfing roads, breaking trees and damaging road infrastructure.
Flooding risk and evacuation warnings were in place for about 12 areas in New South Wales (NSW), Australia’s most populous state with 8 million people.
Rivers swelled and rain accumulation posed danger.
“It’s not just the rain which is causing the devastation,” Jonathan How, senior meteorologist with the Bureau of Meteorology, told the ABC News state broadcaster. “It’s strong winds as well.”
How added that the heavy downpour is set to continue for the rest of Sunday in Sydney and throughout the state, with some areas expected to get up to 200 millimetres (7.9 inches) of rain.
The extreme weather was affecting Australia’s COVID-19 vaccine delivery to Sydney and throughout the state and disrupting the country’s plans to deliver the first vaccine doses to almost 6 million people over the next few weeks.
NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian, who is expected to hold a briefing later on Sunday, said the weather system moving through the state could be a one-in-25-year rain event.
“This will be a deep-seated, extreme weather event,” she said on Saturday.
A third of France's population was under a new partial lockdown Saturday to stop the spread of Covid-19, as some European countries resumed AstraZeneca vaccinations following an all-clear from EU regulators and the WHO.
The pandemic is still speeding up worldwide, with the number of new global coronavirus infections rising by 14 percent over the last week compared to the previous week, according to AFP data.
Fighting to prevent yet another wave of the virus, several countries in Europe went back into partial lockdown on Saturday -- with Poland, parts of Ukraine and some French regions all waking up to tight new restrictions.
Parisians packed trains leaving the capital and crammed into shops ahead of the new restrictions coming into force, which will apply to Paris and several other regions for a month.
The mayor of Yerres, just outside Paris, told AFP he had told businesses there to remain open, defying the "totally incomprehensible" restrictions.
"Why would we catch Covid more in a shoe store than a bookshop?" he asked.
Bookshops are considered essential under the new measures, and later Friday the government added florists, chocolate shops and cobblers to the list.
Signs of lockdown weariness abounded in cities across the world, with protests against restrictions popping up in Vienna, Sofia and Montreal.
Buba Marwa, the chairman of Nigerian drugs enforcement office NDLEA, has said young Nigerians would soon be required to certify themselves free from illicit drugs before they could get married.
Mr Marwa says parents will be asked to list drug-free documents as part of requirements for approving their children’s marriage.
Mr Marwa made the disclosure in Ado-Ekiti at a colloquium tagged: “Walk Away from Drugs’’, a programme organised by Ekiti Ministry of Justice He described the menace of drug use in the country as “worrisome’’.
“In Nigeria today, there is no challenge that is more worrisome than drug abuse.
“For instance, insurgency, kidnapping and banditry are seen as peculiar to certain parts of the country, but drug abuse has no boundary or respect for ethnicity or religion.
“The menace is so worrisome that within the last two months, more than N60 billion worth of illicit drugs have been seized and perpetrators arrested and prosecuted.
“If access to drugs is prevented, criminality can be reduced by 50 per cent,’’ Marwa said. He called for concerted efforts by stakeholders to campaign against the use of illicit drugs,” Mr Marwa said.
Political thugs opened fire during a local by-election in Ekiti on Saturday, leading to the death of three voters and left a policewoman critically injured.
INEC Resident Electoral Commissioner, Dr. Tella Adeniran, confirmed the incident.
Adeniran said the election was peaceful until arm-wielding hoodlums stormed two polling units of ward 009 unit 008 and 009 and started shooting sporadically.
This development led to the suspension of the bye-election to fill the vacant seat of Ekiti East Constituency 1 in the State House of Assembly.
The INEC boss also revealed that one of its staff was critically injured.
20-year-old woman, Fatima Kabiru-Ahmed, has sued the Inspector-General (IG) of Police, Mohammed Adamu, and others, demanding N5 billion compensation over the alleged killing of her father.
In a fundamental rights enforcement suit marked: FHC/ABJ/CS/364/2021 filed by her lawyer, Bala Dakum, at the Federal High Court, Abuja, the woman said the killing of her father, Mr Kabiru, by the police amounted to gross violation of his rights as enshrined in 1999 Constitution.
Also joined in the suit dated and filed on March 16 as second to fourth respondents respectively is the Commissioner of Police, FCT Command, Bala Ciroma; the Attorney General of the Federation, Abubakar Malami and Medical Director, Wuse District Hospital.
Ms Fatima, the first daughter of Kabiru, according to the originating motion, sought the court’s declaration that the killing of her father was illegal and unlawful.
She also sought “an order of the court directing the respondents to jointly and severally pay the applicant the sum of five billion naira for the killing of late Mr Kabiru.
“An order of the court directing the respondents to tender a formal apology to the applicant and her family by publishing the same in two national daily newspapers.”
In the affidavit in support of the motion, the applicant deposed that her father, among others, was shot by the police on January 26 while on a peaceful protest at the National Human Rights Commission at Maitama, Abuja, to demand the release of the wife of Sheikh Ibraheem Zakzaky’s wife, Malama Zeenah, who was said to have contracted COVID-19 virus while in detention.
“They made efforts to take my father to the hospital because he was bleeding profusely but the agents of the first and second respondents scared them off with gunshots and took my father away,” she said.
She said Mr Kabiru’s body was later found at Wuse District Hospital after several efforts.
Ms Fatima said her father died and left behind her mother and ten children: six boys and four girls.
“I am the oldest of my siblings and I am only 20 years old,” she added.
According to her, her father was the sole breadwinner and life has become unbearable since his untimely demise and that all her siblings have dropped out of school because they cannot afford to pay their school fees.
As at the time of filing the report, the case was yet to be assigned to a judge.
A traditional ruler, Oba Tajudeen Omotayo, the Oba Alade Meta of Imope land, a community in Ijebu Igbo area of Ogun State was on Saturday abducted by some yet to be identified gunmen.
Available details of the circumstances in which the traditional was abducted are still sketchy.
But sources from the town said the Oba left his palace around 11 am in his butter colored special utility vehicle with plate number W 3J9 Ogun for Ijebu-Ode.
And on his way back home around 3:00pm, the unknown gun men accosted him at Okeeri of area of Imope and took him away leaving his vehicle on the road.
Governor Samuel Ortom on Saturday said herdsmen attacked him on his farm near Tyo-mu, along Makurdi-Gboko Highway.
Mr Ortom said during a press briefing at the Benue Peoples House in Makurdi shortly after the attack that he was inspecting the farm when herders ambushed him and his security personnel, opening heavy fire.
The governor quickly linked the attack to the anti-open grazing policy of the state, saying a law that was adopted in 2018 against nomadic grazing will not be repealed because it has been popular amongst residents.
Last month, authorities in Benue impounded 210 cows from Fulani herders who had violated the state Open Grazing Prohibition and Ranches Establishment Law of 2017. The cattle were later released after owners reportedly paid N5 million in fines.
The White House has said that President Joe Biden is 100 percent fine after he tripped while walking up the stairs to board Air Force One on Friday.
Karine Jean-Pierre, White House press secretary said this while speaking to journalists.
Biden stumbled as he climbed the plane’s steps.
He appeared to fall initially, got up and tripped a second time.
He struggled to get up the second time for a brief moment, before making it up, turning to wave at the top of the steps before entering the plane.
“So, as you know, it’s pretty windy outside, it’s very windy. I almost fell coming up the steps myself,” she said while briefing reporters on the plane on the way to Atlanta.
Arsenal FC have blocked their midfielder Thomas Partey from joining the Black Stars due to coronavirus quarantine rules.
The Black Stars are set to play South Africa and Sao Tome in their African Cup of Nations qualifiers.
The £45m Arsenal signing is not the only star missing in Ghana’s squad.
Crystal Palace and Championship outfit Swansea City have also blocked brothers Jordan Ayew and Andre Ayew from linking up with their Ghaaian team-mates.
Liverpool, Chelsea and Tottenham have also prevented a number of their players from leaving for international duty.
South Africa is currently on the United Kingdom’s ‘red list’ of countries, meaning all arrivals from the country must isolate for 10 days.
Arsenal are reluctant to allow Partey spend ten days in isolation before joining their squad.
Denmark said on Saturday that one person had died and another fell seriously ill with blood clots and cerebral haemorrhage after receiving the AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccination.
The two, both hospital staff members, had received the AstraZeneca vaccine less than 14 days before getting ill, the authority that runs public hospitals in Copenhagen said.
The Danish Medicines Agency confirmed it had received two “serious reports”, without giving further details.
There were no details of when the hospital staff got ill.
Denmark, which halted using the AstraZeneca vaccine on March 11, was among more than a dozen countries that temporarily paused the use of the vaccine after reports of cases of rare brain blood clots sent scientists and governments scrambling to determine any link.
Some countries, including Germany and France, this week reversed their decision to suspend the use of the vaccine following an investigation into the reports of blood clots by the European Union’s drug watchdog.
EU said, on Thursday, it is still convinced the benefits of the vaccine outweigh the risks.
Denmark – along with Sweden and Norway – said on Friday it needed more time to decide whether to use the vaccine.
“We prioritise reports of suspected serious side effects such as these and examine them thoroughly to assess whether there is a possible link to the vaccine,’’ Tanja Erichsen, acting Director of Pharmacovigilance at the Danish Medicines Agency, said in a tweet on Saturday.
“We are in the process of dealing with the two specific cases.’’
European Medicines Agency (EMA) Director, Emer Cooke said on Thursday the watchdog could not definitively rule out a link between blood clot incidents and the vaccine in its investigation into 30 cases of a rare blood clotting condition.
But she said the “clear” conclusion of the review was that the benefits in protecting people from the risk of death or hospitalisation outweigh the possible risks.
The issue deserves further analysis, the EMA said.
AstraZeneca, which developed the shot with Oxford University, said that a review, covering more than 17 million people who had received its shots in the EU and Britain, had found no evidence of an increased risk of blood clots.
The company on Saturday declined to comment on the new cases in Denmark but referred to a statement published on Thursday, in which its Chief Medical Officer, Ann Taylor, said: “Vaccine safety is paramount and we welcome the regulators’ decisions which affirm the overwhelming benefit of our vaccine in stopping the pandemic.
“We trust that, after the regulators’ careful decisions, vaccinations can once again resume across Europe’’.
Nigeria has been ranked the 116th happiest place in the world, a spot lower than its position last year, indicating the country’s declining perception on key indicators.
The United Nations-sponsored 2021 World Happiness Report ranked Finland as the happiest country in the world, followed by Denmark, Switzerland, Iceland, and the Netherlands.
The countries regarded as the most unhappy in the world were Afghanistan, followed by Lesotho, Botswana, Rwanda, and Zimbabwe.
The top 10 countries are in the EU, except New Zealand that took the ninth position. The United States ranked 19th while Mauritius was ranked as the happiest African nation at 50th position.
Data from analytics researcher Gallup asked people in 149 countries to rate their own happiness. Measures including social support, personal freedom, gross domestic product (GDP), and levels of corruption were also factored in.
The 2021 report focused on the effects of COVID-19 and how people all over the world fared. The report focused on the effects of COVID-19 on the structure and quality of people’s lives, and on how governments all over the world have dealt with the pandemic.
“This ninth World Happiness Report is unlike any that have come before. COVID-19 has shaken, taken, and reshaped lives everywhere,” the report said.
The authors of the report found “a significantly higher frequency of negative emotions” in just over a third of the countries, while things got better for 22 countries.
“Surprisingly there was not, on average, a decline in well-being when measured by people’s own evaluation of their lives,” John Helliwell, one of the report’s authors, said in a statement.”One possible explanation is that people see Covid-19 as a common, outside threat affecting everybody and that this has generated a greater sense of solidarity and fellow-feeling.”
“This has been a very challenging year, but the early data also show some notable signs of resilience in feelings of social connection and life evaluations,” said Lara Aknin, another author.
Nigeria placed 115th in 2020 report, a significant fall from 85th it placed in 2019. The country was at 91st place in 2018.
The Alake of Egbaland, Oba Adedotun Gbadebo has called on Sunday Igboho to shelve plans of declaring an Independent Yoruba nation.
The first class Yoruba monarch said he opposes the declaration of Yoruba nation and South-West secession from Nigeria.
Oba Adedotun, a retired Brigadier-general, said Nigeria cannot afford to go through another civil war.
He stressed that no country in the world will be willing to have over 250 million Nigerians as refugees.
The monarch said Nigerians, irrespective of their tribe, political or religious afflictions, must work together for the greater good of the country.
The monarch said if Nigeria fails as a country, the entire black race has failed, insisting that Nigeria is better as a united nation than breaking it up.
“Nigerians, wherever we go in Nigeria, we must see ourselves as nationals of the same country, people of the same blood.
“We must work together to make Nigeria great because we must not fail, Nigeria must not fail, if Nigeria fails, the black race has failed and may it never happen”.
