Mega party promoters are fake – Chekwas Okorie

<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"> <span style="color: black;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEite1gcsQbCHZJfY7EQZDzWnP2kecgl2Lwoxx8HpZRdxGd7WOzDppcIEfBRlF14Om-FpQTbznlyuiDTvGSduKFVQaLEOC7kL9S2faAgozMl9TbiwfQLVECV4t9YtHQfaoOjnCN-wSoBdk4/s1600/Chief-Chekwas-Okorie-300x238.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEite1gcsQbCHZJfY7EQZDzWnP2kecgl2Lwoxx8HpZRdxGd7WOzDppcIEfBRlF14Om-FpQTbznlyuiDTvGSduKFVQaLEOC7kL9S2faAgozMl9TbiwfQLVECV4t9YtHQfaoOjnCN-wSoBdk4/s1600/Chief-Chekwas-Okorie-300x238.jpg" /></a><b style="box-sizing: border-box; font-family: "Open Sans", sans-serif;">National </b><span style="background-color: white; font-family: "Open Sans", sans-serif;">Pr</span></span></div> <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"> <span style="background-color: white; font-family: "Open Sans", sans-serif;">esident of the United Progressive Party (UPP), Chekwas Okorie is  trying to put out the fire ignited by supporters of the Indigeneous People of Biafra leader, Nnamdi Kanu and those of Biafra Independence Movement, BIM, Ralph Uwazuruike. In this interview with</span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: "Open Sans", sans-serif;"> </span><b style="box-sizing: border-box; font-family: "Open Sans", sans-serif;">SaturdaySun</b><span style="background-color: white; font-family: "Open Sans", sans-serif;">, Okorie explains why the two Biafra agitators should sheathe their sword. He also raised concerns over the decision of the Federal Government to suspend the Code of Corporate Governance of the Financial Reporting Council, which stipulates the tenure for heads of religious and other non-governmental organisations, without following due process. He spoke further on this and more with</span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: "Open Sans", sans-serif;"> </span><b style="box-sizing: border-box; font-family: "Open Sans", sans-serif;">LAWRENCE ENYOGHASU.</b></div> <div style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: "Open Sans", sans-serif; line-height: 18px; margin-bottom: 20px;"> <b style="box-sizing: border-box;">Do you think Ndigbo is united under Ohanaeze and prepared to take its rightful place in the 2019 election?</b></div> <div style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: "Open Sans", sans-serif; line-height: 18px; margin-bottom: 20px;"> Well, you asked two questions, the first is that I don’t see Ohanaeze as a body involving itself in politics. As a matter of fact, being somebody who was there at its formation in 1976, I can tell you that I was part of the constitution drafting team headed by Chief John Nnandi and  the secretary, who produced the constitution Ohanaeze is using today. I can therefore, tell you that there is nothing in the Ohanaeze constitution including its objectives that has anything to do with partisanship. It is a pan-Igbo social cultural organization designed to promote Igbo interest and preserve its rich cultural heritage. It is also interested in education, and economy. It is not in any way involved in partisanship. As a matter of fact, it is the derailment into partisanship that was so manifest under the leadership of late Ambassador Raph Uwechue that gave Ohanaeze a bad image and made the organization look almost an arm of the PDP but I came out very strongly to recommend Chief John Nwodo based on what I know about him and I assure you and your readers that the executive that we have now, not only Chief Nwodo but the executive that was recently elected, is about the most formidable executive Ohanaeze has in recent times. People who are very committed to Ndigbo.  I have a person I respect very much, much younger but he is the Secretary of Ohanaeze, Barrister Uche Okwukwu from Rivers State. Practically, every other person on the executive can stand on his own and will refuse to be manipulated against Igbo interest, so, I can vouch for these executives.The important thing is that the law is made for man, not man for the law. It is for the overwhelming majority of the Igbo people to embrace the new executive rather  than start fishing in troubled waters. My advice to whosoever is in court is that they should discontinue their court action in the overall interest of the Igbo people. I said this with every sense of responsibility as an Igbo elder, I was in Ohanaeze before some of those dragging the body to court. Many of those there now, I was there long before they came and I want to say that it would be a very big disharmony and embarrassment to the Igbo nation for people to hear that after such a successful election, that we are having litigation that is unnecessary and uncalled for. Whatever is the technical reason they have, we have had situations that we have practically imposed an executive, for instance, when Ambassador Uwechue became  the President-General.</div> <div style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: "Open Sans", sans-serif; line-height: 18px; margin-bottom: 20px;"> <b style="box-sizing: border-box;">Some people are even saying that Igbo people should go forward to contest the presidency in 2019. What’s your view on that?</b></div> <div style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: "Open Sans", sans-serif; line-height: 18px; margin-bottom: 20px;"> Why not? If you remember that it was for this purpose I founded APGA in the first place. When I founded APGA , the first policy of APGA was to draw the presidential post to the South East. We have been here since the Ikemba started the party but I was not a member at the time. We were doing that so that the like of Dr Alex Ekwueme and all the people who contested for the presidency on different political platforms but treated with ignominy could have the opportunity. You cannot name many Igbo people, so it’s not as if Igbo people are not eager to run for leadership at the highest level of this country, it’s just that they have never been given the opportunity. I founded APGA for that purpose and the Ikemba benefited. Although we didn’t win at the centre, but if crisis had not erupted few years after the election, in subsequent elections, we could have  had an Igbo man up there. In the two presidential elections subsequently, those who snatched APGA’s flag from me sold their presidential tickets for whatever amount or condition but nothing was then published.They simply adopted President Jonathan of the PDP from 2011 to 2015. So, Igbo people were missing in action. It was for that reason that I founded UPP immediately so that Igbo people can have a platform to contest. Come 2019, an Igbo man will contest the presidential election. If anybody is telling you otherwise, the person must be a dreamer.</div> <div style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: "Open Sans", sans-serif; line-height: 18px; margin-bottom: 20px;"> <b style="box-sizing: border-box;">Why are you not declaring your interest? Leaders like Atiku Abubakar and Sule Lamido are already gearing up</b></div> <div style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: "Open Sans", sans-serif; line-height: 18px; margin-bottom: 20px;"> There is an Igbo saying that you have to secure a club before you begin to battle for where to play your own match, if there is no club, you will carry your match on your head. UPP is a young party and trying to carve a niche for itself, to promote its own ideological direction that is totally different from the other parties that go with the name of progressives like the APC and PDP. They are central conservative platforms, that is why our position on the issue of referendum, self determination, true federalism, devolution of power and others are expressed in our manifesto which will be ratified at our next convention and registered with the INEC. That’s why we are doing this thing now, it is gaining ground and people are beginning to see a big difference between UPP and the rest. So this is not the time to promote personal ambition except for Anambra state where the election is this year. Those who wish to  run are beginning to show interest but at the same time, there is a central rule that  will specify when any aspirant can come out openly and say he is running for the office of president. There are people saying Atiku is running for president.  I have not heard him say that but it is implied by his body language. As for Lamido, I can’t put together exactly what he says but I know he has to declare which version of PDP he is because he is talking about running, whether he is forming a new party, that one is hanging in the air.</div> <div style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: "Open Sans", sans-serif; line-height: 18px; margin-bottom: 20px;"> <b style="box-sizing: border-box;">There is this talk about an imminent Mega party, how possible is this and do you think it can dislodge APC in the 2019 presidential poll?</b></div> <div style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: "Open Sans", sans-serif; line-height: 18px; margin-bottom: 20px;"> There is no Mega party, there is nothing like that. It is not even an attractive option.You know Nigerians like to copy, because APC managed to succeed and it is already imploding. Within APC, you can see the cleavages that came together. The ACN, the CPC, ANPP they are still standing apart. They have not fused into one body. You can identify the various components that came together, that was not a proper merger. That is why the implosion is easily foreseen. It may not be until 2019 before APC becomes a shadow of itself. But as I said, Nigerians like to copy and because of the APC experience, some people are beginning to talk about Mega party but take it from me that there is nothing like that, it is a bad dream.</div> <div style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: "Open Sans", sans-serif; line-height: 18px; margin-bottom: 20px;"> <b style="box-sizing: border-box;">You said it might not be up to 2019 before APC becomes a shadow of itself. What are the signals you’re seeing?</b></div> <div style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: "Open Sans", sans-serif; line-height: 18px; margin-bottom: 20px;"> The indicators are everywhere, the crises that we have; the killings in the North, in the middle belt, in the south east, south-south, even in the  south west, all of these things are assuming political dimension. All of these businesses that are feeling unprotected are also included. The first business of government is to the citizens as enumerated in the constitution of Nigeria; to protect and provide for the welfare of its citizens. There is no security of life and property, the welfare is not there, there is open nepotism. People are even being alienated and people are waiting for the appropriate time to express themselves through democratic means  and that is through the ballot box and vote in the direction that they think they will be better protected. So, we will be expecting more political parties with geo-political interests. So when we have a situations like that, we are not going to have one political party sweeping across the whole country and controlling the national assembly and all the state government, that won’t happen again. The present APC government has cajoled everybody to have the mentality that we need to protect ourselves. So, I am expecting the issue, of course, interest based democratic contest in 2019.</div> <div style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: "Open Sans", sans-serif; line-height: 18px; margin-bottom: 20px;"> <b style="box-sizing: border-box;">What is your stand on Nnamdi Kanu detention?</b></div> <div style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: "Open Sans", sans-serif; line-height: 18px; margin-bottom: 20px;"> Let me seize the opportunity to appeal to President Buhari to release Nnamdi Kanu and other members of  IPOB. He should also release Barrister Nwoka of BIM and those in Enugu prison, Nnamdi is in Kuje and his associates. I appeal to him to release these people and others I have not mentioned whose only offence is the expression of their political views. It is in the interest of this country to release them unconditionally and very soon too. I remember when Nnamdi Kanu was first arrested, I was the first, within that first week to call for his immediate release without conditions. Now, the man has become a kind of cult figure that government is afraid of him. If this government can go back to the various arrests they made in the past, they will know that those arrests have worsened the problem they intended to solve. The issue of Mohammed Yusuf of Boko Haram who was arrested but unfortunately killed added to what we are fighting in the North today. The arrest of El-Zakzaky of Shiite has not cooled the temper in that area. Look at the way Kaduna is now, it is difficult to know who is actually killing the other in Kaduna and the arrest of Nnamdi Kanu  has  so badly affected the unity of this country had and there is practically no Igbo man with Biafra blood in him or her that will not be agitated by the arrest of Nnamdi. So I don’t know why government will not listen to the voice of the people and allow peace  to reign. If Nnamdi Kanu  is released today and the others, there would be laughter and jubilation for a while, they will continue whatever they are doing and Nigeria would be quiet and the tension will reduce.</div> <div style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: "Open Sans", sans-serif; line-height: 18px; margin-bottom: 20px;"> <b style="box-sizing: border-box;">Recently, Chief Raphael Uwazuruike came down hard Nnamdi Kanu, calling him names. What’s your take on that?</b></div> <div style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: "Open Sans", sans-serif; line-height: 18px; margin-bottom: 20px;"> When allegation was made  by some spokespersons of IPOB that he was one of those to be masked to testify in the secret trial of Nnamdi Kanu, he invited the press on the first day of the trial to tell them that he was in Owerri and was not in Abuja as a witness against Nnamdi. I read the statement. It was already in the papers. There, he said if he had any need to testify it would not be masking himself to do so, that he will do it in open court. But there is no reason to testify against Nnamdi. Uwazuruike never betrayed Kanu. Unfortunately, some people have taken it the other way but I have a passionate appeal, if what you people are doing in your paper I will appreciate it, to appeal to our people to stop listening to rumours that will not help anyone.</div> <div style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: "Open Sans", sans-serif; line-height: 18px; margin-bottom: 20px;"> <b style="box-sizing: border-box;">Look at what happened to El-Zakzaky, Nnamdi and recently Jim Obazee. Buhari suspended a law without due process, he said the law should be suspended because it affected a pastor. People are saying that we are actually in a military government situation. Do you believe so?</b></div> <div style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: "Open Sans", sans-serif; line-height: 18px; margin-bottom: 20px;"> Not many knew about that law before it blew out when Pastor Adeboye obeyed that law, that was something unusual in our statues; affecting us as Christians, Pastors and Christian denominations. You cannot hear an Emir given certain tenure. I don’t even know churches register with corporate affairs commission. </div> <br />

Mega party promoters are fake – Chekwas Okorie

National  Pr esident of the United Progressive Party (UPP), Chekwas Okorie is  trying to put out the fire ignited by supporters of the In...

Read more »

VIDEO: Yung L – “Pass The Aux” (Remix) ft. Timaya

<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="340" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/wmsMcMQOpWw" width="560"></iframe><br /> <br /> <span style="background-color: white; border: 0px; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; position: relative; vertical-align: baseline; word-wrap: break-word;">Fresh off the release of his first song in 2017 “This Year” which has been well accepted very well especially in eastern Africa. Yung L Mr Marley releases the visuals to the monster collaboration Pass the Aux Remix with Timaya. Top notch as expected. This is definitely sure to boost the already big record. Directed by Paul Gambit. BetterLateThanNever Album soon come</span><br /> <br /> <br />

VIDEO: Yung L – “Pass The Aux” (Remix) ft. Timaya

Fresh off the release of his first song in 2017 “This Year” which has been well accepted very well especially in eastern Africa. Yung L Mr...

Read more »

Nnamdi Azikiwe Stadium not ready for CAF competition – NFF

<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">           <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiQarclB6KMd1VJIepfxBk3-NQB3sAiYEtkZkGquUveagtwgRXVSUVbvJ7PtMU6D84ogJNPy4DPN06EfUSpfSay2klBDcUi5WAwG5ibcNvB4nfAeLlt6PFbHcFmYIjkOSkHH_HDkJo9VpE/s1600/naj.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="157" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiQarclB6KMd1VJIepfxBk3-NQB3sAiYEtkZkGquUveagtwgRXVSUVbvJ7PtMU6D84ogJNPy4DPN06EfUSpfSay2klBDcUi5WAwG5ibcNvB4nfAeLlt6PFbHcFmYIjkOSkHH_HDkJo9VpE/s320/naj.JPG" width="320" /></a><b style="background-color: white; border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; letter-spacing: 0.4pt; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; position: relative; text-align: justify; vertical-align: baseline; word-wrap: break-word;"><span style="border: 0px; font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; position: relative; vertical-align: baseline; word-wrap: break-word;">The Director of Competitions, Nigeria Football Federation, Mr. Bola Oyeyode, says the current state of the Nnamdi Azikiwe Stadium is below standard for Africa Football Confederation competitions.</span></b></div> <div class="MsoNormal" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: white; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: 0px; font-family: Tahoma, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: 19.8pt; margin: 0px 0px 18pt; padding: 0px; position: relative; text-align: justify; vertical-align: baseline; word-wrap: break-word;"> <span style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; letter-spacing: 0.4pt; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; position: relative; vertical-align: baseline; word-wrap: break-word;"><b style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; position: relative; vertical-align: baseline; word-wrap: break-word;"><span style="border: 0px; font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; position: relative; vertical-align: baseline; word-wrap: break-word;">Oyeyode, who made the assertion on Thursday in Enugu while speaking with newsmen, said the deplorable condition of facilities at the stadium was nothing to write home about.<o:p style="position: relative; word-wrap: break-word;"></o:p></span></b></span></div> <div class="MsoNormal" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: white; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: 0px; font-family: Tahoma, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: 19.8pt; margin: 0px 0px 18pt; padding: 0px; position: relative; text-align: justify; vertical-align: baseline; word-wrap: break-word;"> <span style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; letter-spacing: 0.4pt; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; position: relative; vertical-align: baseline; word-wrap: break-word;"><b style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; position: relative; vertical-align: baseline; word-wrap: break-word;"><span style="border: 0px; font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; position: relative; vertical-align: baseline; word-wrap: break-word;">“With the current condition of the stadium, I doubt if CAF will consider the stadium as a venue for its matches,’’ he said.<o:p style="position: relative; word-wrap: break-word;"></o:p></span></b></span></div> <div class="MsoNormal" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: white; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: 0px; font-family: Tahoma, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: 19.8pt; margin: 0px 0px 18pt; padding: 0px; position: relative; text-align: justify; vertical-align: baseline; word-wrap: break-word;"> <span style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; letter-spacing: 0.4pt; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; position: relative; vertical-align: baseline; word-wrap: break-word;"><b style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; position: relative; vertical-align: baseline; word-wrap: break-word;"><span style="border: 0px; font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; position: relative; vertical-align: baseline; word-wrap: break-word;">He urged the Enugu State Government to commence an upgrade of the facilities to ensure the stadium would be approved when CAF delegates come for inspection.<o:p style="position: relative; word-wrap: break-word;"></o:p></span></b></span></div> <div class="MsoNormal" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: white; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: 0px; font-family: Tahoma, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: 19.8pt; margin: 0px 0px 18pt; padding: 0px; position: relative; text-align: justify; vertical-align: baseline; word-wrap: break-word;"> <span style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; letter-spacing: 0.4pt; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; position: relative; vertical-align: baseline; word-wrap: break-word;"><b style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; position: relative; vertical-align: baseline; word-wrap: break-word;"><span style="border: 0px; font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; position: relative; vertical-align: baseline; word-wrap: break-word;">“The structure needs to wear a new look, the rooms are untidy for human use and equally lots of plumbing work need to be done,’’ he said.<o:p style="position: relative; word-wrap: break-word;"></o:p></span></b></span></div> <div class="MsoNormal" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: white; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: 0px; font-family: Tahoma, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: 19.8pt; margin: 0px 0px 18pt; padding: 0px; position: relative; text-align: justify; vertical-align: baseline; word-wrap: break-word;"> <span style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; letter-spacing: 0.4pt; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; position: relative; vertical-align: baseline; word-wrap: break-word;"><b style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; position: relative; vertical-align: baseline; word-wrap: break-word;"><span style="border: 0px; font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; position: relative; vertical-align: baseline; word-wrap: break-word;">Oyeyode said that there were some facilities that needed to be provided, especially for the match officials.<o:p style="position: relative; word-wrap: break-word;"></o:p></span></b></span></div> <div class="MsoNormal" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: white; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: 0px; font-family: Tahoma, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: 19.8pt; margin: 0px 0px 18pt; padding: 0px; position: relative; text-align: justify; vertical-align: baseline; word-wrap: break-word;"> <span style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; letter-spacing: 0.4pt; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; position: relative; vertical-align: baseline; word-wrap: break-word;"><b style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; position: relative; vertical-align: baseline; word-wrap: break-word;"><span style="border: 0px; font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; position: relative; vertical-align: baseline; word-wrap: break-word;">“The stadium needs Wifi network coverage for international observers and the media for proper coverage of matches.<o:p style="position: relative; word-wrap: break-word;"></o:p></span></b></span></div> <div class="MsoNormal" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: white; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: 0px; font-family: Tahoma, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: 19.8pt; margin: 0px 0px 18pt; padding: 0px; position: relative; text-align: justify; vertical-align: baseline; word-wrap: break-word;"> <span style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; letter-spacing: 0.4pt; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; position: relative; vertical-align: baseline; word-wrap: break-word;"><b style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; position: relative; vertical-align: baseline; word-wrap: break-word;"><span style="border: 0px; font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; position: relative; vertical-align: baseline; word-wrap: break-word;">“At the moment, the stadium stands at 40 percent for CAF approval because we cannot scarifies people’s health, service and comfort on the altar of mediocrity,’’ he said.<o:p style="position: relative; word-wrap: break-word;"></o:p></span></b></span></div> <div class="MsoNormal" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: white; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: 0px; font-family: Tahoma, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: 19.8pt; margin: 0px 0px 18pt; padding: 0px; position: relative; text-align: justify; vertical-align: baseline; word-wrap: break-word;"> <span style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; letter-spacing: 0.4pt; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; position: relative; vertical-align: baseline; word-wrap: break-word;"><b style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; position: relative; vertical-align: baseline; word-wrap: break-word;"><span style="border: 0px; font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; position: relative; vertical-align: baseline; word-wrap: break-word;">He said the pitch was an artificial one and was still good but needed maintenance, adding that the dressing rooms, the toilets and the stadium seats needed to be cleaned.<o:p style="position: relative; word-wrap: break-word;"></o:p></span></b></span></div> <div class="MsoNormal" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: white; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: 0px; font-family: Tahoma, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: 19.8pt; margin: 0px 0px 18pt; padding: 0px; position: relative; text-align: justify; vertical-align: baseline; word-wrap: break-word;"> <span style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; letter-spacing: 0.4pt; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; position: relative; vertical-align: baseline; word-wrap: break-word;"><b style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; position: relative; vertical-align: baseline; word-wrap: break-word;"><span style="border: 0px; font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; position: relative; vertical-align: baseline; word-wrap: break-word;">Oyeyode advised that wood pitch panels be removed from the stadium as they could cause fire.<o:p style="position: relative; word-wrap: break-word;"></o:p></span></b></span></div> <div class="MsoNormal" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: white; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: 0px; font-family: Tahoma, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: 19.8pt; margin: 0px 0px 18pt; padding: 0px; position: relative; text-align: justify; vertical-align: baseline; word-wrap: break-word;"> <span style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; letter-spacing: 0.4pt; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; position: relative; vertical-align: baseline; word-wrap: break-word;"><b style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; position: relative; vertical-align: baseline; word-wrap: break-word;"><span style="border: 0px; font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; position: relative; vertical-align: baseline; word-wrap: break-word;">He said that government needed to come out and put the stadium in order as Rangers would be participating in the CAF Championships League.</span></b></span></div> <br />

Nnamdi Azikiwe Stadium not ready for CAF competition – NFF

           The Director of Competitions, Nigeria Football Federation, Mr. Bola Oyeyode, says the current state of the Nnamdi Azikiwe Stadiu...

Read more »

MMM tears family apart

<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"> <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiQPHdiWZ1uwPOaju8eTO8_aI41Ld6vzHyesnDRlbztjJTcooVhA708dl3bQwPwHQUmW54yZ5u2SffstR3J0RNlFekkjuLy3RFnS-YY7Tgbjs4MTs4hyphenhyphenvbhvuDLJfvbC_VC1g2WNom8PUg/s1600/MMM-partcipants-at-the-first-anniversary-of-the-scheme-300x203.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="color: black;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiQPHdiWZ1uwPOaju8eTO8_aI41Ld6vzHyesnDRlbztjJTcooVhA708dl3bQwPwHQUmW54yZ5u2SffstR3J0RNlFekkjuLy3RFnS-YY7Tgbjs4MTs4hyphenhyphenvbhvuDLJfvbC_VC1g2WNom8PUg/s1600/MMM-partcipants-at-the-first-anniversary-of-the-scheme-300x203.jpg" /></span></a></div> <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"> <br /></div> <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"> <br /></div> <div style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: "Open Sans", sans-serif; line-height: 18px; margin-bottom: 20px;"> The <b style="box-sizing: border-box;">love and peace that once reigned in the family of Osakpamwan Amieomwanghi is at the moment under threat. And the cause of the crisis in his family is the huge investment that the father and his two sons risked on the Ponzi scheme – Mavrodi Mundial Moneybox (MMM).</b></div> <div style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: "Open Sans", sans-serif; line-height: 18px; margin-bottom: 20px;"> The head of the family, Mr. Amieomwanghi, who lives at Evbuotubu community in Egor Local Government Area of Edo State, had on the second week of November 2016, pledged N2 million on the platform. And on November 28, he had paid the money to six different accounts as directed by the operators of the scheme.</div> <div style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: "Open Sans", sans-serif; line-height: 18px; margin-bottom: 20px;"> He told<i style="box-sizing: border-box;"> Daily Sun</i> that he had heard about the online scheme two months before then but he blatantly kicked against it and called it a modern wonder bank. He said he later changed his mind when his close friend, who invested N4 million on the scheme received a profit of N1.4 million within a month.</div> <div style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: "Open Sans", sans-serif; line-height: 18px; margin-bottom: 20px;"> His friend’s financial success, it was gathered, spontaneously lured the 59-year-old man to stake his money on the scheme. He told the reporter that he wanted some fast cash to expand his provisions business and to also make the 2016 Christmas celebration a very memorable one for him and his family.</div> <div style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: "Open Sans", sans-serif; line-height: 18px; margin-bottom: 20px;"> The troubled man, until he embraced the online gambling, was dealing in wholesales provision business in a popular market in Benin City. He was said to be a successful businessman, one envied by his colleagues in the market. Regrettably, the tide has changed after he ventured into the Ponzi scheme, as he now hardly opens his shop due to his inability to order goods from his suppliers. He told the reporter that he had become a laughing stock in the midst of his colleagues, especially those who knew about his MMM predicament.</div> <div style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: "Open Sans", sans-serif; line-height: 18px; margin-bottom: 20px;"> Apart from his own money that was invested, it was learnt that Mr. Amieomwanghi, also persuaded his two sons to invest in the scheme. The two children bought into the idea sold by their father and risked N1 million each. Thus the entire investment of the Amieomwanghis in the scheme was N4 million.</div> <div style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: "Open Sans", sans-serif; line-height: 18px; margin-bottom: 20px;"> The sons’ investment is actually the cause of the family crisis.</div> <div style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: "Open Sans", sans-serif; line-height: 18px; margin-bottom: 20px;"> Less than two weeks after making the payment, the bubble burst. There came the devastating news, suspending payment even for people that were due to be paid. Initially, it was gathered that the home of the Amieomwanghis was turned into a theatre of war, as the two sons lambasted their father for leading them astray.</div> <div style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: "Open Sans", sans-serif; line-height: 18px; margin-bottom: 20px;"> Amieomwanghi said: “Three of the account owners that I paid to were calling me, as if the scheme was about to crash. I was running around because the system gave me 48 hours to make all the payments. At a particular point, l wanted to pull out and let them block me from participating in the scheme, but l didn’t listen to myself. I was carried away with the N700, 000 gain that l was supposed to have made within one month.</div> <div style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: "Open Sans", sans-serif; line-height: 18px; margin-bottom: 20px;"> “It is painful because that was virtually all the money – capital and profit – that l had. Watching it going down the drain has been giving me sleepless nights. I have become a prayer warrior for the scheme not to crash, as many had forecast. Waiting for January 14 was like waiting forever. I can’t remember how many nights I couldn’t sleep because of the money. I am not a gambler and l hate gambling, but l can’t explain how l fell into this.</div> <div style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: "Open Sans", sans-serif; line-height: 18px; margin-bottom: 20px;"> “l wanted to risk it only once and stop. I am praying that it bounces back, and once l get my money, l am off. I am begging my children to forgive me and to understand that my intention was to make them financially better. If I had suspected that the operators would suspend people’s accounts that soon, l wouldn’t have put one naira into it let alone asking my children to do same.”</div> <div style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: "Open Sans", sans-serif; line-height: 18px; margin-bottom: 20px;"> Investigation revealed that it was the persistent intervention of his wife, Mrs. Amienomwanghi, that was able to calm their two children.</div> <div style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: "Open Sans", sans-serif; line-height: 18px; margin-bottom: 20px;"> Up till this moment, the woman said she was still praying and hoping that MMM should return so that her 32-year-old marriage might not also crash. She told the reporter that her two sons had relaxed with the belief that the scheme would soon bounce back, as the operators promised all participants.</div> <div style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: "Open Sans", sans-serif; line-height: 18px; margin-bottom: 20px;"> She blamed her husband and her sons for not confiding in her before staking their money in the Ponzi scheme. She said she was only told after they had paid out the money they pledged.</div> <div style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: "Open Sans", sans-serif; line-height: 18px; margin-bottom: 20px;"> “My home is in trouble at the moment. If the online scheme fails to return, as it promised it is only God that can save me. My sons had never been rude to their father until MMM came into our home. For over a week, the boys were not in good terms with their father. They were so bitter and every member of the family saw it. Four million naira in this recession is not a joke. Since December, feeding has been a problem for us.</div> <div style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: "Open Sans", sans-serif; line-height: 18px; margin-bottom: 20px;"> “One of my husband’s friends told me that my husband said he might simply run away to the village if MMM finally crashes. That is why I am so afraid and confused about the whole thing. My home has been so peaceful but that is now history. MMM has turned my children against their father.”</div> <div style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: "Open Sans", sans-serif; line-height: 18px; margin-bottom: 20px;"> All disciples of MMM have been thrown into panic and confusion, as the scheme’s administrators, on December 13, announced the decision to freeze all confirmed participants’ money due for withdrawal for one month.</div> <div style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: "Open Sans", sans-serif; line-height: 18px; margin-bottom: 20px;"> In essence, all members’ accounts due to be paid after having ‘provided help’ to another person since the last month were suspended. Since then, they had no access to request for payment till January 14, 2017. The reasons given for the sudden decision is that the scheme was experiencing heavy workload and also needed to calm the frenzy which had arisen from constant criticisms from the public and media.</div> <div style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: "Open Sans", sans-serif; line-height: 18px; margin-bottom: 20px;"> Many observers, however, believe the new development is an indication that MMM is on course to crash, as many had previously warned.</div> <div style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: "Open Sans", sans-serif; line-height: 18px; margin-bottom: 20px;"> An observer wrote: “Using South Africa as a case study, their site crashed and all accounts frozen. That marked the end of the road. This might be the end of MMM in Nigeria too.”</div> <div style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: "Open Sans", sans-serif; line-height: 18px; margin-bottom: 20px;"> Talks about the popularity of the famous money-doubling scheme among Nigerians often sparks a social media fight, heating up the debate over the subject. Participants in the scheme as well as antagonists are often locked in a war of words. Interestingly, the debates often see Nigerians, speaking about MMM from the intellectual, mundane and even ignorant point of views.</div> <div style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: "Open Sans", sans-serif; line-height: 18px; margin-bottom: 20px;"> Many have traced the overwhelming acceptance of the the Ponzi, as a reflection of the hardship in Nigeria, whereby participants saw it as a quick escape from the current economic crisis, plaguing the country.</div> <div style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: "Open Sans", sans-serif; line-height: 18px; margin-bottom: 20px;"> The Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) and the Nigerian Stock Exchange (NSE) had warned Nigerians not to participate in MMM before the scheme announced the suspension. But even now, many Nigerians remain optimistic that the scheme would soon bounce back and those that had paid in money would get their money back.</div> <div style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: "Open Sans", sans-serif; line-height: 18px; margin-bottom: 20px;"> However, it seems the participants will have to wait some more. January 14 has since come and gone and though MMM has lifted the suspension, there is still no sign that it would resume payments.</div>

MMM tears family apart

The  love and peace that once reigned in the family of Osakpamwan Amieomwanghi is at the moment under threat. And the cause of the cr...

Read more »

Meet the ‘Alt-Right’, the radical movement that fueled Trump to the White House

<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"> <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg5GG6DSISGZXy-gMbW8gGdvqLrhCTNp_wGVnZzY7opLZP8BF6EXnJrk5JTs8h2WCxMoF51TfQ2MKip-nwqde-ZciROzyBtwiDLg7QCRCYQE9aMkv3kl378bUH3VWQIPp3GblhXrjcx100/s1600/static2.politico-300x163.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="color: black;"><img border="0" height="217" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg5GG6DSISGZXy-gMbW8gGdvqLrhCTNp_wGVnZzY7opLZP8BF6EXnJrk5JTs8h2WCxMoF51TfQ2MKip-nwqde-ZciROzyBtwiDLg7QCRCYQE9aMkv3kl378bUH3VWQIPp3GblhXrjcx100/s400/static2.politico-300x163.jpg" width="400" /></span></a></div> <div style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: "Open Sans", sans-serif; line-height: 18px; margin-bottom: 20px;"> <span class="cms-magazineStyles-smallCaps" style="box-sizing: border-box;"><b style="box-sizing: border-box;"><br /></b></span></div> <div style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: "Open Sans", sans-serif; line-height: 18px; margin-bottom: 20px;"> <span class="cms-magazineStyles-smallCaps" style="box-sizing: border-box;"><b style="box-sizing: border-box;">East Lansing, Michigan </b></span>— Lounging at the back of his tour bus in a parking lot behind<b style="box-sizing: border-box;"> </b>the Springhill Suites, Milo Yiannopoulos, the flamboyant right-wing British provocateur known for his bleach-blond frosted tips and relentless campaign against Islam, munched on a whole cucumber protruding from a paper bowl of raw vegetables and made plans for a party. He had just been asked to host “DeploraBall,” an unofficial celebration planned for the presidential inauguration weekend. Yiannopoulos described his vision for the event: As guests entered the National Press Club, shirtless Mexican laborers would be building a physical wall around them. Instead of doves, Yiannopoulos would release 500 live frogs in honor of Pepe, the cartoon mascot of pro-Donald Trump internet trolls. The room would be lined with oil portraits in gilt frames, each depicting a celebrity who had vowed to leave the country in the event of Trump’s election. At the end of the night, the portraits would be thrown into a bonfire and burned. Yiannopoulos would send a bill for the party to the Mexican Embassy.</div> <div style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: "Open Sans", sans-serif; line-height: 18px; margin-bottom: 20px;"> The party is unlikely to proceed in exactly that way, or really anything like it. But the ball is real—a month ahead of the inauguration, the organizers had already booked the room and sold all 1,000 tickets—and it marks a kind of gala debut of a new clique in Washington.</div> <div style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: "Open Sans", sans-serif; line-height: 18px; margin-bottom: 20px;"> Known until recently as the “alt-right,” it is a dispersed movement that encompasses a range of right-wing figures who are mostly young, mostly addicted to provocation and mostly have made their names on the internet. On the less extreme end, they include economic nationalists and “Western chauvinists” like Yiannopoulos, who wants to purge Islam from the United States and Europe; the movement also encompasses overt white nationalists, committed fascists and proponents of a host of other ideologies that were thought to have died out in American politics not long after World War II. Over the course of Trump’s campaign, these ideas came back to life in chat rooms, on Twitter and on the fringes of the internet—driven by supporters united by their loathing of progressives and their feeling of alienation from the free market Republican Party as it defined itself before Trump’s takeover.</div> <div style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: "Open Sans", sans-serif; line-height: 18px; margin-bottom: 20px;"> This “new right” is now enjoying something of a moment. It’s not clear whether the movement helped fuel Trump’s rise or just rode its coattails. But energized by his success, this loose confederacy of meme-generating internet trolls, provocateurs and self-appointed custodians of Trumpism has begun making plans to move into Washington’s corridors of power, or at least shoulder their way into the general vicinity. When they look at Washington—a besuited city that moves to the rhythm of lobbying and legislative calendars and carefully worded statements—they see an opportunity for total disruption, the kind of overthrow the movement already takes credit for visiting on American politics.</div> <div style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: "Open Sans", sans-serif; line-height: 18px; margin-bottom: 20px;"> So what, exactly, is the capital in for? In the weeks after the election, I tracked down the movement’s standard-bearers in Washington, New York, California and Michigan to find out what they had in mind for changing the culture of D.C., and from there the rest of the Western world. They don’t lack for grandiose ambition: Disdaining the traditional Washington think tanks as passé, they’re taking aim straight at America’s sense of its own identity, with plans for “culture tanks” to produce movies that make anti-immigrant conservatism look cool, and advocacy arms that resemble BuzzFeed more than The Heritage Foundation. They talk elliptically about internet memes replacing white papers as the currency of the policy realm, pushed out by “social media strike forces” trained in the ways of fourth-generation, insurgency-style warfare. There’s the idea of taking over the Republican Party with a wave of Tea Party-style primary challenges in 2018 that will rely on novel campaign tactics like flash mobs and 24/7 streaming video of candidates’ lives. There’s even a new right-wing hipster fraternal organization started by <i style="box-sizing: border-box;">Vice</i> co-founder Gavin McInnes, the Proud Boys (motto: “The West Is the Best”), which promises to serve as an amateur security force at political events, including the Inauguration.</div> <div style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: "Open Sans", sans-serif; line-height: 18px; margin-bottom: 20px;"> Of course, coming in from the cold can also bring financial rewards, and some in the movement have a more old-fashioned ambition: that their coziness with the new administration will result in government contracts, and friendly regulators who won’t interfere with planned business ventures like a social media platform for people with high IQs.</div> <div style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: "Open Sans", sans-serif; line-height: 18px; margin-bottom: 20px;"> For a movement that feeds on outsider energy, its members already enjoy surprising access to the inside of the incoming White House. Yiannopoulos’ official title is technology editor of Breitbart, the website formerly run by top Trump adviser Steve Bannon, with whom both Yiannopoulos and internet troll Charles Johnson say they keep in touch. Yiannopoulos and Johnson also both say they know Trump’s most influential megadonor, Rebekah Mercer. While I was spending time with another movement figure in California, he took a phone call from the son of Trump’s incoming national security adviser. (A shared spokeswoman for Bannon and Mercer did not respond to requests for comment about their relationships with Johnson and Yiannopoulos.)</div> <div style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: "Open Sans", sans-serif; line-height: 18px; margin-bottom: 20px;"> But the new young nationalists also have a problem: They need to re-brand, urgently. In the <i style="box-sizing: border-box;">first</i> theatrical arrival of the alt-right in Washington, days after Trump’s election, Richard Spencer, the originator of the term “alt-right” and an open white nationalist, held a conference at the Ronald Reagan building, a couple of blocks from the White House. After dinner, once most of the national media had departed, Spencer rose to deliver a speech that crescendoed with him raising his glass in a kind of toast. As he held his arm up, he proclaimed, triumphantly, “Hail Trump, hail our people, hail victory!” In response, several attendees erupted in Nazi salutes, indelibly associating the alt-right with jackbooted white supremacy and provoking an instant schism in the movement. In a <a href="http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/11/richard-spencer-speech-npi/508379/" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration: none; transition: all 0.3s ease-in-out;" target="_blank">video</a> produced from the conference, the <i style="box-sizing: border-box;">Atlantic</i> blurred out attendees’ faces, as if the footage had been smuggled out of a criminal enterprise. Soon, the Associated Press and the <i style="box-sizing: border-box;">New York Times</i> issued memos that officially defined alt-righters as white nationalists.</div> <div style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: "Open Sans", sans-serif; line-height: 18px; margin-bottom: 20px;"> Now, as its members move on Washington, an already fragmented movement is further split between those who embrace Spencer’s racial politics and those who, for reasons of pragmatism or principle, reject the “alt-right” label for its associations. Said Paul Ray Ramsey, a blogger who flirts with white nationalism but found the Nazi associations a bridge too far, even for him: “You don’t want to tie your brand to something that’s ultimate evil.”</div> <div style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: "Open Sans", sans-serif; line-height: 18px; margin-bottom: 20px;"> <b style="box-sizing: border-box;">Spencer has become the poster boy of the alt-right,</b> appearing on NPR and CNN to defend what he calls “European identitarianism,” and what others call, with less varnish, racism. He sports the alt-right’s signature shaved-side haircut—the “fashy,” as in fascist—and leads the benignly named National Policy Institute, a think tank with an office in Arlington, Virginia, to push his vision for “peaceful ethnic cleansing.”</div> <div style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: "Open Sans", sans-serif; line-height: 18px; margin-bottom: 20px;"> He isn’t the first American figure to put a fresh face on old-school Klan-style racism, but he’s far more open about his ambitions than the generation that preceded him. I also visited Jared Taylor, 65, who is publisher of the white nationalist web outlet <i style="box-sizing: border-box;">American Renaissance</i> and has been called the “intellectual godfather of the alt-right”; although Taylor welcomed me to his home in Oakton, Virginia, he declined to give any hint of his plans. He cited fear of sabotage, comparing himself to a Soviet dissident. “I won’t even talk about them in the vaguest of terms,” he said, surrounded by framed Confederate bond certificates and a bonsai tree. (Taylor, who was born in Japan to Christian missionaries, can’t precisely be classified a white supremacist: He believes Asians are superior to whites.)</div> <div style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: "Open Sans", sans-serif; line-height: 18px; margin-bottom: 20px;"> Spencer expressed no such hesitation. In mid-December, he announced he was considering running for Ryan Zinke’s House seat in Montana, where he lives part-time in a ski house owned by his mother. And three days before that, he took a break from scouting a new Washington-area headquarters to eat lunch at Café Milano in Georgetown and lay out his vision in detail. The last time Spencer dined at the restaurant, a decade ago, he found himself the odd man out. He recalled that Martina Hingis was playing one of the Williams sisters in a tennis match on the televisions at the bar, and that everyone else in the restaurant was rooting for the African-American player. Spencer’s loyalties, though, were racial. “I was like, ‘I’m on the side of the German,’” he told me. (Hingis, for the record, is a Swiss citizen from what is now Slovakia.)</div> <div style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: "Open Sans", sans-serif; line-height: 18px; margin-bottom: 20px;"> A month after Trump’s election, Spencer, in a sweater, collared shirt and newsboy cap, was fitting right in at the tony eatery. He had just returned from Texas A&M, where he delivered a speech that had created a predictable uproar, with protests, state police in riot gear and pro-diversity counterprogramming put on by the university’s president at the school’s football stadium. Spencer is planning a national tour of campuses in 2017 and considering calling it the Dangerous White Heterosexual Tour, a nod to Yiannopoulos’ Dangerous Faggot Tour.</div> <div style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: "Open Sans", sans-serif; line-height: 18px; margin-bottom: 20px;"> Spencer is now looking for a donor to finance his efforts to push white nationalism out of the shadows of the internet. “We need to enter the world,” he said. “We’ve hit our limit in terms of being a virtual institution.” To that end, midway through lunch, he took a call to arrange his next stop, Old Town Alexandria, where he was touring a prospective location for his new headquarters. Like many on the alt-right, his vision of a political movement blurs the line between politics, culture and media: In addition to office space, he was looking for a studio to launch a media operation that could field a daily news show, as well as perhaps a morning show that would be more “fun.”</div> <div style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: "Open Sans", sans-serif; line-height: 18px; margin-bottom: 20px;"> “If we had a studio,” he asked rhetorically, “could we start to enter the world in the way the Young Turks does stuff? In the way Infowars does stuff?”</div> <div style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: "Open Sans", sans-serif; line-height: 18px; margin-bottom: 20px;"> Spencer believes the answer is yes, and that the National Policy Institute could occupy a marquee headquarters in downtown Washington within 10 years. “Maybe Cato will go under,” he said, one of many digs at the old free market institutions of the Republican Party. “Maybe we’ll take over that facility.” In the short term, Spencer, 38, plans to capitalize on what he saw as the PR success of the November event with another meeting and news conference in Washington in the first quarter of 2017. If he doesn’t make it to Congress—and if former Ku Klux Klan grand wizard David Duke’s 3 percent showing in Louisiana’s December Senate race is any indication of the electorate’s appetite for undisguised racism, he won’t—Spencer believes he can use publicity to maneuver himself closer to influence.</div> <div style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: "Open Sans", sans-serif; line-height: 18px; margin-bottom: 20px;"> As he tries, one of his obstacles will be the very movement he helped spawn. Other young figures of the anti-immigrant right have been distancing themselves from Spencer and his hard-core racial ideas; he wasn’t invited to DeploraBall, and the anti-immigration Trump adviser Stephen Miller, who knew Spencer when both were members of the Conservative Union at Duke University a decade ago, has condemned him.</div> <div style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: "Open Sans", sans-serif; line-height: 18px; margin-bottom: 20px;"> Spencer, for his part, says he still supports the more moderate figures who have disowned him and doesn’t mind that they’re trying to keep their distance. In their popularity, he sees a gateway for new followers to come around to his views, and he doesn’t want his presence to become a distraction. “I want there to be an alt-light,” he said, using a common nickname for the less extreme threads of the new nationalism.</div> <div style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: "Open Sans", sans-serif; line-height: 18px; margin-bottom: 20px;"> The feeling does not appear to be mutual. Many figures in the movement now disdain the term “alt-right,” refuse to consider themselves “alt-light” and wish Spencer would just go away. “Not interested in appearing in any piece alongside Spencer et al.,” wrote Yiannopoulos in a text message rebuffing an interview request. “We have nothing in common.”</div> <div style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: "Open Sans", sans-serif; line-height: 18px; margin-bottom: 20px;"> <b style="box-sizing: border-box;">Yiannopoulos’ caginess about the interview was not unusual.</b> For a bunch of media-driven provocateurs, members of the new nationalist right can be highly particular about their interactions with the mainstream press. Longtime bloggers Vox Day and Steve Sailer agreed to answer questions for this story only in writing. Charles Johnson agreed to an interview on the condition that he would also record it, a tactic more commonly employed by prominent politicians. He also declined to be photographed, explaining that only one photographer is allowed to take his picture for publication. After asking some pointed questions about the direction of this article, Yiannopoulos’ publicist said he wouldn’t be participating in it.</div> <div style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: "Open Sans", sans-serif; line-height: 18px; margin-bottom: 20px;"> But his brand is built on visibility, and Yiannopoulos, who said he was in talks with a number of major production companies about a television project, ultimately yielded when I showed up in Lansing, where he was preparing for an appearance at a lecture hall on the campus of Michigan State University. (Yiannopoulos later canceled a photo shoot for this article after learning that I had called Bannon and Mercer’s spokeswoman to ask if they would like to comment on his work.) I had last seen him at Trump’s election night party at the midtown Hilton, where Yiannopoulos posed for glam shots and paused briefly to harangue a gaggle of reporters about the evils of the mainstream media while they held recording devices up to his face.</div> <div style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: "Open Sans", sans-serif; line-height: 18px; margin-bottom: 20px;"> In the past, he had identified as a “fellow traveler” of the alt-right, but by the time I showed up at his tour bus—this was two weeks after Salutegate—things had changed. “The small contingent of distasteful people in the alt-right became so territorial about the expression that they scared off moderate right-wingers,” he said. “And that’s what they did to me.”</div> <div style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: "Open Sans", sans-serif; line-height: 18px; margin-bottom: 20px;"> Sporting black nail polish and black sequined pants with a black shawl, Yiannopoulos, 32, huddled at a standing desk with his young roadies, who dressed and looked like college sophomores, to plan the night’s show. On a laptop, the roadies presented to him a split-screen image to project behind his speech: Istanbul’s Blue Mosque on the left and a missile launcher, its warheads aimed away from the mosque, on the right. This was not what Yiannopoulos had in mind. “It looks like Istanbul is shooting us,” he complained. “And there’s no fucking American flag on it.” By the time Yiannopoulos appeared in the lecture hall that night, a revised image was being projected onto a screen at the front of the room: A bomb with an American flag on it had been superimposed to look like it was falling directly on the mosque.</div> <div style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: "Open Sans", sans-serif; line-height: 18px; margin-bottom: 20px;"> The atmosphere around the speech reproduced the dynamics of a Trump campaign event in miniature. In the crisp air outside, mostly white attendees in Make America Great Again hats queued up at the door amid a heavy police presence, while mostly nonwhite protesters stood off to the side chanting, “No Trump. No KKK. No racist USA.” Seven arrests were made.</div> <div style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: "Open Sans", sans-serif; line-height: 18px; margin-bottom: 20px;"> Inside, Yiannopoulos stood between plaster Doric columns and sipped Budweiser through a straw. Wearing black lipstick and a crown of faux gold laurels, he stood before a crowd of a couple hundred college students and painted Islam as a totalitarian political ideology and an existential threat to Western freedoms. A Cambridge University dropout who describes himself as a free speech absolutist, Yiannopoulos is doubly hostile to Muslims because of his homosexuality and Greek heritage. “I have family in Cyprus,” he lamented. “They took our fucking orange groves.”</div> <div style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: "Open Sans", sans-serif; line-height: 18px; margin-bottom: 20px;"> In front of the crowd, he called Jill Stein a “crazy old cunt” and Lena Dunham a “disgusting fat cunt,” prompting raucous laughter and applause.</div> <div style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: "Open Sans", sans-serif; line-height: 18px; margin-bottom: 20px;"> Lambasting Islam for the benefit of college students is not new to the Trump era: The Los Angeles-based conservative agitator David Horowitz brought his “Islamo-fascism awareness” talks to campuses a decade ago. But Yiannopoulos is a different creature, a sort of 21st-century Islamophobic Oscar Wilde. His events are well-attended and entertaining. He believes he has the formula to turn the cultural tide of the West away from progressivism, a mix of erudition, flamboyance and charisma that puts an amusing, unthreatening front on a worldview that feeds the America-first, Christian-capitalist prejudices of his largely young male college audiences.</div> <div style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: "Open Sans", sans-serif; line-height: 18px; margin-bottom: 20px;"> Yiannopoulos has retained his title as Breitbart’s tech editor, where his output is <a href="https://www.buzzfeed.com/josephbernstein/top-conservative-writer-is-a-group-effort-sources-say#.ulqAVzbbL" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration: none; transition: all 0.3s ease-in-out;" target="_blank">reportedly</a> supplemented by the labors of more than 40 interns, and he views social media platforms as the next battlefront in the culture war. In July, he was banned from Twitter after trashing the work of the African-American comedian Leslie Jones, tweeting that she looked like a man and calling her “barely literate,” in response to a tweet she sent him that contained a typo.</div> <div style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: "Open Sans", sans-serif; line-height: 18px; margin-bottom: 20px;"> Yiannopoulos, Johnson and a number of white nationalists have switched to an upstart rival called Gab that promises not to ban users for any speech so long as it is legal. Down the road, Yiannopoulos plans to take on what he sees as the liberal biases of other social media networks, but not yet. “I need to be too big to ban before I can start going for the people who have enabled my popularity,” he said. “I will pick that fight when I know I can win it.”</div> <div style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: "Open Sans", sans-serif; line-height: 18px; margin-bottom: 20px;"> Yiannopoulos has a number of personal ties to the Trump administration: Bannon hired him to work for Breitbart, and his tour bus is Breitbart-branded. He also knows the father-daughter pair of Bob and Rebekah Mercer, Breitbart investors who are Trump’s most influential megadonors and the dominant patrons of the anti-establishment right. He would not reveal who was financing his tour other than to say his funding includes money from Hollywood. When I suggested to Yiannopoulos that the Mercers and Silicon Valley billionaire Peter Thiel—another deep-pocketed figure with ties to both Trump and a number of alt-light figures—might be chipping in, he responded only that Thiel would be more inclined to sponsor a highbrow cultural pursuit, like a literary journal, than a vulgar lecture tour. “Peter’s a snob,” he said. “In a good way.”</div> <div style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: "Open Sans", sans-serif; line-height: 18px; margin-bottom: 20px;"> Yiannopoulos said he still talks to Bannon, but he declined to say about what. He disavowed any interest in Washington past the inaugural festivities. “Everybody in politics is a cunt,” he said. “They’re boring, untalented, unattractive people.” The real fight, he thinks, is the culture war he’s waging on college campuses. Yiannopoulos said he will leave Washington after Trump’s inauguration weekend with no desire to return.</div> <div style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: "Open Sans", sans-serif; line-height: 18px; margin-bottom: 20px;"> “I’m like Cincinnatus,” he said, comparing himself to the 5th century B.C. patrician who was appointed dictator of Rome to repel an invasion and promptly returned to civilian life after the crisis passed. “I want to go do this shit and go back to my fucking farm.”</div> <div style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: "Open Sans", sans-serif; line-height: 18px; margin-bottom: 20px;"> <b style="box-sizing: border-box;">Blogger Mike Cernovich has no such misgivings</b> about D.C. Holed up in the living room of his modest home in Orange County, California, on a Monday afternoon in December, he crossed his legs and laid out his immodest vision for taking over the capital.</div> <div style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: "Open Sans", sans-serif; line-height: 18px; margin-bottom: 20px;"> A former lawyer, Cernovich began blogging about gender dynamics, among other topics, in 2004. A year earlier, he had been charged with raping a woman he knew, but the charge was dropped and a judge instead sentenced him to community service for battery. Ever since, Cernovich, now 39, has preached the gospel of masculinity, teaching readers how to become “a dominant man” through mindset adjustments and bodybuilding. He once tweeted “date rape does not exist” and advised readers, in a blog post about household finance, that “Hot girls are better to rent than buy.”</div> <div style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: "Open Sans", sans-serif; line-height: 18px; margin-bottom: 20px;"> He advocates IQ-testing all immigrants and ending federal funding of universities, and describes himself as an economic nationalist primarily concerned with the welfare of average Americans. He has some economic ideas that veer toward the wonky—he said he would like median GDP to replace GDP growth as the lodestar of economic policy, for instance. As machines displace a greater share of labor, he is intrigued by the possibility of introducing a universal basic income, an idea supported by Martin Luther King Jr., conservative economist Milton Friedman and Bill Clinton’s labor secretary, Robert Reich. Cernovich is also an avid consumer and progenitor of conspiracy theories, such as his claim that there was more than one shooter at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando and that the government is covering this up to avoid panic.</div> <div style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: "Open Sans", sans-serif; line-height: 18px; margin-bottom: 20px;"> Those predilections made him an early Trump supporter, and over the course of the election he shot to internet notoriety by his monomaniacal focus on Hillary Clinton’s allegedly failing health and his online feuds with Trump detractors. He has become huge in the world of pro-Trump Twitter, known as #MAGA Twitter, for Make America Great Again. In October, a Finnish publishing house specializing in science fiction and fantasy released his latest book, <i style="box-sizing: border-box;">MAGA Mindset: Making YOU and America Great Again</i>.</div> <div style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: "Open Sans", sans-serif; line-height: 18px; margin-bottom: 20px;"> His new plan is to take his brand of self-help from the home to the House by running the “Big Brother” of congressional bids, renting out a five-bedroom campaign pad, living in it with his staff and streaming the whole thing 24/7 on YouTube. There are other plans for the campaign—flash mobs, loyal readers with Go-Pros confronting and humiliating his opponents live on Periscope. “The savagery that I would bring to a campaign would be like nothing anyone had ever seen in a congressional election,” said Cernovich, the day before the birth of his first child, a girl.</div> <div style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: "Open Sans", sans-serif; line-height: 18px; margin-bottom: 20px;"> That vision is contingent on Cernovich’s congressman, Dana Rohrabacher, vacating his seat to, say, join the Trump administration. If that does not happen, Cernovich still plans to recruit acolytes from across the country to deploy those tactics next year in primary challenges to establishment Republicans, a scheme he has dubbed #Revolution2018. If he can pick off just a handful of incumbents next year, Cernovich believes the entire Republican conference will come to fear, and heed, his movement. “That’s what you learn from—” he said, before catching himself. “I’m going to choose my words carefully, because I don’t want to call it ‘terrorism.’”</div> <div style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: "Open Sans", sans-serif; line-height: 18px; margin-bottom: 20px;"> For a man who until recently was best known for hawking his self-published books and intentionally offending people on the internet, these are grand designs. And Cernovich acknowledges they’ll require some maturation. To that end, Cernovich has condemned Richard Spencer and disassociated himself from the “alt-right” label, even though he believes the Nazi saluters at his conference were leftist plants sent to make the alt-right look bad. (Spencer himself, it should be noted, rejects this conspiracy theory, as well as Cernovich’s claim that the CIA may be propping him up. “He needs to calm down,” Spencer told me.) The hard-core alt-right, in response, has turned on Cernovich and begun calling him “Cuck-ovich,” a play on the movement’s dreaded “cuckservative” insult.</div> <div style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: "Open Sans", sans-serif; line-height: 18px; margin-bottom: 20px;"> Cernovich now uses the label “new right” to describe himself. To refute those who lump him in with white nationalists, he pointed to his second wife, Shauna, a secular Muslim of Persian descent, who lounged behind us on a couch and jumped in and out of our conversation. (The non-European partner, for what it’s worth, has become a frequent defense among the more moderate alt-righters: Charles Johnson points to his Asian wife to counter charges of racism; Gavin McInnes points to his Native American wife; Yiannopoulos says he prefers to date black men.) Cernovich’s newborn daughter is named Cyra, after the Persian emperor Cyrus (a stocking with her name on it already hung over the fireplace). When a question arose about the birthplace of conspiracy theorist Alex Jones’ sidekick Paul Joseph Watson, Cernovich told his wife “Google it.” Then he backtracked. “Will you please Google it? I don’t just bark orders at you.” (“Northern Britain,” she chimed in later.)</div> <div style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: "Open Sans", sans-serif; line-height: 18px; margin-bottom: 20px;"> Cernovich does not view himself as a “troll” per se, because he views trolling as amoral, but instead refers to himself as a “rhetorician”—a provocateur who doesn’t literally mean what he says. Whatever he calls it, the rhetoric clearly has real-world consequences. He was a chief pusher of the #pizzagate hashtag on Twitter, the wacky conspiracy theory that Hillary Clinton was part of a child sex trafficking ring being run out of the back of a Washington restaurant called Comet Ping Pong. The scandal began as a rumor on Twitter, jumped to message boards like 4Chan, was pushed by Cernovich and other much higher-profile agitators, and came to be taken quite seriously by some of the internet’s more impressionable users, including the North Carolina man who drove to Washington and fired shots with a real assault rifle at the real pizza joint in a misguided attempt to free the nonexistent sex slaves.</div> <div style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: "Open Sans", sans-serif; line-height: 18px; margin-bottom: 20px;"> When we sat down in California, it was a day after the incident, and Cernovich conceded that he had learned some lessons from the fiasco. For example, although he does believe there is an active pedophile ring in Washington that needs to be investigated, he never believed it was based out of Comet. He also claimed he did not know “Pizzagate” implied that specifically. “Right now we’re going from the underdog to the overdog,” he said. “So I’m still fighting like the underdog. But when I say things, I need to be more careful. When I say things like ‘Pizzagate,’ I need to be more clear.”</div> <div style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: "Open Sans", sans-serif; line-height: 18px; margin-bottom: 20px;"> In the midst of our discussion about Pizzagate, Cernovich’s phone rang, and when he picked it up, the voice on the other end belonged to Mike Flynn Jr., the son of Trump’s pick for national security adviser. Flynn Jr., who had a transition email address and at one point was up for a national security clearance as part of the presidential transition, was also a Pizzagate conpiracy theorist, explicitly endorsing the idea that Comet could plausibly be the center of a Clinton-connected child sex-trafficking operation. Taking the call from Flynn, Cernovich hurried out onto his back patio, shut the sliding door to the living room and paced around for several minutes out back.</div> <div style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: "Open Sans", sans-serif; line-height: 18px; margin-bottom: 20px;"> The Flynns, father and son, are also big on #MAGA Twitter, and have become fans of Cernovich’s work there. The elder Flynn, who like his son regularly tweets out links to fake news stories, tweeted an endorsement of Cernovich’s <i style="box-sizing: border-box;">Gorilla Mindset</i> book; he has also called Yiannopoulos “one of the most brave people that I’ve ever met.” Cernovich declined to comment on his relationship with the Flynns, or with almost anyone else. He said he avoids knowing the names of people he communicates with, and tries to forget their names if they tell him, in case he is ever subpoenaed. He consciously models his approach to media and politics on “fourth-generation warfare”—that is, insurgency and counterinsurgency, which includes the use of fluid, ad hoc alliances. “Chuck Johnson doesn’t tell me what to do. Milo doesn’t tell me what to do,” he said. “But we talk, and we’re loosely aligned.” He has become more inclined to believe in conspiracies, he told me, now that he is part of one himself.</div> <div style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: "Open Sans", sans-serif; line-height: 18px; margin-bottom: 20px;"> <b style="box-sizing: border-box;">If there’s a real alt-right conspiracy </b>in American politics, Charles C. Johnson is an integral part of it. Johnson, a self-described journalist, came up through a series of conservative fellowships and internships as a student at Claremont McKenna College, where he graduated in 2011. From there, he has made a name for himself through a series of controversies as both a debunker and purveyor of false stories.</div> <div style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: "Open Sans", sans-serif; line-height: 18px; margin-bottom: 20px;"> He contributed to the Daily Caller’s since-debunked story alleging that New Jersey Senator Bob Menendez consorted with prostitutes, and has falsely reported that a <i style="box-sizing: border-box;">New York Times</i> reporter had posed for <i style="box-sizing: border-box;">Playgirl</i>, mistaking a spoof source article for a genuine one. After striking out with his own website, GotNews, he published the full home addresses of two other <i style="box-sizing: border-box;">Times</i> reporters after they published the name of a street that Ferguson, Missouri, police officer Darren Wilson had once lived on. Later, Johnson was among the most prominent skeptics of <i style="box-sizing: border-box;">Rolling Stone</i>’s since-debunked article about an alleged gang rape at the University of Virginia. In the process of attacking the story, he revealed the supposed identity of the woman who had been the anonymous source for the story. He also published a book, <i style="box-sizing: border-box;">Why Coolidge Matters</i>, in 2013. It received favorable blurbs from Bush administration Justice Department official John Yoo, conservative blogger Michelle Malkin and Texas Senator Ted Cruz.</div> <div style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: "Open Sans", sans-serif; line-height: 18px; margin-bottom: 20px;"> Like a number of alt-righters, Johnson has been banned from Twitter—in this case for soliciting donations to “take out” a Black Lives Matter activist, phrasing he said referred to opposition research but that the platform interpreted as a threat of physical violence.</div> <div style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: "Open Sans", sans-serif; line-height: 18px; margin-bottom: 20px;"> If other alt-right figures are plotting some kind of outside route to Washington influence, Johnson, at 28 years old, is already there. When I had last seen him in person, it was at Trump’s election night victory party sometime after 3 a.m., and he was standing about 10 yards from the president-elect. “Chris Christie will not be as powerful as he now appears,” Johnson informed me. Two days later, Christie was demoted from chairman to vice-chairman of the transition, and he has drifted further from the center of Trump’s orbit since then.</div> <div style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: "Open Sans", sans-serif; line-height: 18px; margin-bottom: 20px;"> “It’s no secret that I’m friendly with people who are now in the government,” Johnson said back in Midtown three weeks later, on the second floor of the swanky Lambs Club. Johnson had returned to New York from his home in California to testify in his settlement with Gawker, which he has sued for libel over its exploration of a rumor that he once defecated on a floor in college.</div> <div style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: "Open Sans", sans-serif; line-height: 18px; margin-bottom: 20px;"> He told me he had been performing various unspecified tasks for the Trump transition. He took credit for bringing Bill Clinton’s female accusers and Barack Obama’s pro-Trump half-brother Malik to the general election debates. (Malik Obama has referred to Johnson as “<a href="https://twitter.com/ObamaMalik/status/796829845758115844" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration: none; transition: all 0.3s ease-in-out;" target="_blank">my friend</a>” on Twitter.) One person close to Trump’s transition told me that Johnson had participated in some early transition-related meetings and caused headaches when he was accused internally of leaking to the news media. “I haven’t leaked anything without authorization,” Johnson responded. (Trump transition spokesman Jason Miller wrote in an email that Johnson does not have a role on the transition and has not “been tasked with any projects on the team’s behalf.”)</div> <div style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: "Open Sans", sans-serif; line-height: 18px; margin-bottom: 20px;"> Among his fellow travelers, Johnson is known as a direct line to the donor class. He said he talks to Bannon and knows the Mercers. He knows Thiel. McInnes, the <i style="box-sizing: border-box;">Vice</i> co-founder and an acquaintance of Johnson’s, said Johnson and Thiel coordinated their legal assaults on Gawker. Johnson declined to discuss the tech billionaire other than to describe their relationship as a mere “passing acquaintance,” and a spokesman for Thiel did not respond when asked whether the pair had coordinated.</div> <div style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: "Open Sans", sans-serif; line-height: 18px; margin-bottom: 20px;"> Johnson said he is concerned now with making sure Trump’s government is stocked with Trumpists rather than establishment Republicans and other “cucks,” and his WeSearchr “information marketplace,” a business he started where people can post bounties for specific pieces of information, provides him with the resources to vet potential appointees independently. In the internal struggle over staffing the administration, this aligns him with Bannon. Johnson told me he is soliciting résumés, recommending job candidates and circulating policy memos, but to whom exactly he wouldn’t say.</div> <div style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: "Open Sans", sans-serif; line-height: 18px; margin-bottom: 20px;"> Despite his proximity to the Trump administration, Johnson is far less squeamish than many of his confederates about Richard Spencer. He makes no bones about knowing him, and offered to give me Spencer’s phone number. He told me he rejects white nationalism as a political philosophy—“I don’t know when something is loving being white and when it’s hating other groups,” he mused—but doesn’t totally reject the idea of applying the alt-right label to himself.</div> <div class="story-interrupt pos-beta format-s" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: "Open Sans", sans-serif;"> <div style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 18px; margin-bottom: 20px;"> Johnson has personal goals for Washington as well. Some of these have to do with taking revenge on social media platforms that have relegated his ideas to the margins. Johnson said he would like to use his connections to the incoming administration to push for the invocation of antitrust laws to regulate Twitter and Facebook as utilities, in order to prevent what he sees as their unfair treatment of conservatives. And he wants to push the government to ensure federal antidiscrimination rules do not interfere with his plans for a social network restricted to people with IQs above 130. “I just don’t want the government to persecute my businesses,” he said.</div> <div style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 18px; margin-bottom: 20px;"> Mostly, he said, he is interested in making money. So he will want a friendly ear at the Commodity Futures Trading Commission when he launches a predictions-market business. He is interested in crowd-sourcing cancer research, which will require a friendly Food and Drug Administration. His plans for a crowd-funding business could depend on his relationship with the Federal Trade Commission.</div> <div style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 18px; margin-bottom: 20px;"> Johnson defends trolling, his preferred mode of political activism, as a tactic that allows a weaker party to force a stronger party to act—and a pedigreed one at that. “Jesus was a troll,” he said. (Cernovich credits the 4th century B.C. philosopher Diogenes the Cynic—who irritated the citizens of Athens and Corinth with stunts like bringing a live, plucked chicken to Plato’s academy to prove a point about taxonomy—as the original troll.) But dissimulation and juvenile humor are not traits that inspire great confidence in leaders, and Johnson conceded that, now that his candidate has won, such tactics would need to evolve. “The trolls in some measure have to grow up,” he said. “Government by meme is kind of a scary idea.”</div> <div style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 18px; margin-bottom: 20px;"> <b style="box-sizing: border-box;">It’s clear that the alt-right isn’t shy</b> about the sweep of its claims; Yiannopoulos and Spencer, as well as lesser-known figures, tend to talk about their project in world-historical terms, framing it as a civilizational clash, or some kind of new rising tide. What’s far less clear is if the alt-right did make a move on Washington, just how many people would show up.</div> <div style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 18px; margin-bottom: 20px;"> Before he was banned from Twitter, Yiannopoulos had 300,000 followers. Spencer had more than 30,000 Twitter followers at publication time, and Cernovich had nearly 190,000. But a social media following isn’t the same as votes, or membership, and the numbers question is now tangled in the new ambiguity about who is or isn’t part of the alt-right, or the alt-light, or new right. There is a noisy online white nationalist alt-right core that amplifies its voice by frenetically posting on Twitter, Reddit and 4Chan, often using multiple accounts to inflate its perceived size. The alt-right subreddit has more than 13,000 registered users. At Spencer’s November conference in Washington, about 200 people showed up. Johnson and others have the ear of people in Trump’s orbit, and their online visibility creates a kind of political cover for slightly more moderate versions of nationalism now represented within the White House. But it’s far less clear what kind of political groundswell they could muster if they tried.</div> <div style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 18px; margin-bottom: 20px;"> Further muddying the waters, the alt-light and alt-right are anti-progressive cultural movements as much as political ones. Many of their members knew the late Andrew Breitbart, and they are fond of citing his maxim that “politics is downstream from culture.” The cultural component pops up in odd places: Members of the sketch comedy group Million Dollar Extreme have been called the “court jesters of the alt-right,” and a show created by the group’s leader, Sam Hyde, was canceled in December because Cartoon Network executives deemed it offensive.</div> <div style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 18px; margin-bottom: 20px;"> In an increasingly image-driven political culture, the alt-righters are doubling down on image. The movement essentially has an official visual chronicler: Peter Duke, the only photographer Johnson allows to take his picture for publication, also shot Cernovich’s new softer headshots. Duke has photographed Yiannopoulos, former Breitbart columnist Ben Shapiro, Dilbert creator Scott Adams (a Trump admirer who has feuded with feminists on his blog) and George Zimmerman, the man in Florida who was acquitted in the murder of Trayvon Martin. Duke’s aspiration is to create a <i style="box-sizing: border-box;">Vanity Fair</i> for the right, to make it more glamorous. “One of the things that the left is really good at it is making people look good, and I mean that literally,” he said. “The right in general needs re-branding.”</div> <div style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 18px; margin-bottom: 20px;"> Already, a new aesthetic is taking hold among the alt-light: gayer and more avant-garde. In July, Yiannopoulos hosted a “Gays for Trump” party at the Republican National Convention in Cleveland, which included the cognitively dissonant spectacle of anti-Islamic commentator Pamela Geller and far-right Dutch politician Geert Wilders railing against the Muslim threat from a podium flanked by erotic photos of scantily clad young men in “Make America Great Again” hats. In October, Yiannopoulos staged a pro-Trump performance art piece in Manhattan in which he bathed himself in pig’s blood to commemorate the victims of Islamic terrorism and crimes committed by undocumented immigrants. At the show, notorious pharma bro Martin Shkreli, an alt-light fellow traveler who is under indictment for alleged securities fraud, exhibited a framed red-and-blue pill. McInnes, who is white, exhibited a photo of himself as an antebellum slave.</div> <div style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 18px; margin-bottom: 20px;"> This might seem a disorienting new politics and aesthetic for Washington, but the patron behind both events is a figure already in D.C.: Jeff Giesea, a little-known entrepreneur. The 41-year-old Giesea exudes the air of a West Coast investor; on workdays, he haunts the hip environs of Logan Circle, and he asked to meet me at a coffee house off 14th Street that is very much part of blue, Obama-era Washington. Giesea graduated from Stanford in 1997, a year after Rebekah Mercer, though he said he does not know her. He does know fellow Stanford alumnus Thiel, according to a person familiar with their relationship, and Thiel talked him out of attending law school. Instead, Giesea went to work for Thiel Capital Management, the magnate’s pre-PayPal investment venture, and then for Koch Industries’ public affairs office.</div> <div style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 18px; margin-bottom: 20px;"> In recent years, Giesea says, he has become less of a libertarian and more concerned with the fortunes of Middle America. He says his travels in Europe and his homosexuality have made him concerned about Islamic incursions in the West. In February, he published a paper titled “It’s Time to Embrace Memetic Warfare” in a NATO-sponsored journal, calling for using the tactics of internet trolls to thwart the Islamic State’s online propaganda; the ISIS tactics he studied have informed his own virtual pro-Trump insurgency, which he conducted in conjunction with the likes of Cernovich and Johnson, supplementing the uncoordinated efforts of thousands of anonymous pro-Trump Internet trolls.</div> <div style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 18px; margin-bottom: 20px;"> Giesea confers regularly with Cernovich about taking over the Republican Party and remaking it as pro-worker, perhaps with the help of a BuzzFeed-style think tank that distills policy into memes and makes those memes go viral. He views himself as a mentor and moderating force within the Trumpist movement, and acknowledged that it has some growing up to do. “We need to evolve beyond trolling,” he said. The tactic can still be appropriate, but only within certain parameters, he said. “We need to make sure it’s used constructively and ethically.”</div> <div style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 18px; margin-bottom: 20px;"> There are other changes in store as well. Giesea is an organizer of DeploraBall, and he invited Yiannopoulos’ involvement in the party. But his young comrade’s vision of shirtless Mexican laborers will not come to pass, and for a very pre-Trump, non-nationalist reason. “I find that offensive,” Giesea said. “My mother is a Mexican citizen.”</div> <div style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 18px; margin-bottom: 20px;"> <br /></div> </div>

Meet the ‘Alt-Right’, the radical movement that fueled Trump to the White House

East Lansing, Michigan  — Lounging at the back of his tour bus in a parking lot behind   the Springhill Suites, Milo Yiannopoulos, the ...

Read more »

Inside Lagos ‘under bridge’ world

<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"> <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh3x8J3cGoF_4tVxIUAgj3zxmM6g-r-gq3A79Fz8KMb4hWy71od3IIhc03uql_sOm5vll0GbxzCt-8d3z_dn3fv7VyPkX_jiOSg7iXItIIvPmMn-uN1QDV-zO80BETHzHVec5oi1jl4jwE/s1600/BRIDGE-300x174.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="color: black;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh3x8J3cGoF_4tVxIUAgj3zxmM6g-r-gq3A79Fz8KMb4hWy71od3IIhc03uql_sOm5vll0GbxzCt-8d3z_dn3fv7VyPkX_jiOSg7iXItIIvPmMn-uN1QDV-zO80BETHzHVec5oi1jl4jwE/s1600/BRIDGE-300x174.jpg" /></span></a></div> <div style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: "Open Sans", sans-serif; line-height: 18px; margin-bottom: 20px;"> Before the former governor of Lagos State, Babtunde Fashola, launched the gentle revolution that restored sanity and beautified many locations under flyovers, popularly known as “under bridge” in Lagos, most of them were safe havens for all kinds of criminal activities, from substance abuse, fighting with deadly weapons, robbery and rape, among others.<br style="box-sizing: border-box;" />However, all these were eradicated when Fashola carried his tree planting campaign to most, if not all, of such places in the state. That bold step dislodged the roughnecks from their havens, giving a new lease of life to Lagosians.<br style="box-sizing: border-box;" />For instance, under the bridge in Oshodi, in Oshodi Local Government Area, used to be one of the most dangerous spots in the state. It used to be a beehive of criminal activities, peopled by marijuana-smoking hooligans, who snatched handbags, picked pockets, raped and even killed passers-by, especially late in the night. It was so notorious that at no time of the day was an average person completely safe there. Anything could happen at any time. It did not have to be at night before a crime was committed there.<br style="box-sizing: border-box;" />Government after government tried to purge Oshodi of the malaise but none succeeded, until Fashola came with his magic wand that rid the area of thugs and gave it a facelift.<br style="box-sizing: border-box;" />The same thing happened in places like Ojuelegba under bridge, Ijora under bridge, Railway Line under bridge and Ikeja under bridge, among others.<br style="box-sizing: border-box;" />After Fashola’s purge, Oshodi under bridge became safe and the place wore a new look and was so well-lit that one could hardly distinguish night from daytime at the place.<br style="box-sizing: border-box;" />Ikeja under bridge also wore a new look, as a roundabout was constructed, complete with a fence and flowers. All the adjoining spaces were also cleared of any kind of activity. Ikeja under bridge was sanitised to the extent that residents became proud of the place.<br style="box-sizing: border-box;" />At Ijora, the story was not different. The criminal elements that made life hell for Lagosians were completely driven away. A roundabout was constructed with a fence and flowers, while an armoured police vehicle was stationed there to ensure that people were protected from any kind of attack.<br style="box-sizing: border-box;" />The Railway Line under bridge, located opposite the Nigerian Breweries complex in Iganmu, where all kinds of businesses, from auto mechanics to vulcanising, welding works to sale of condemned diesel, fairly used home appliances and office equipment as well as the criminal activities of miscreants flourished, was also cleaned up. The place wore a new look and nobody, especially squatters, was allowed to stay there. Though there was no garden planted there, the area was neat and appeared safe for people to pass through any time of the day.<br style="box-sizing: border-box;" />When this revolution by Fashola’s administration was going on, many believed that it would not stand the test of time, as they would return to what they were as soon as he left office. Others, however, held that, once the miscreants were dislodged, they would not have the audacity to regroup and return, as the places would no longer be safe for their nefarious activities.<br style="box-sizing: border-box;" />However, less than two years after Fashola’s exit, the aforementioned places in Lagos have regained most of the features that made them stink. Businesses have continued to boom as usual in some of them, with criminal elements back with vigour in their numbers.<br style="box-sizing: border-box;" />When Daily Sun visited some of the places, which were once cleared of vices, they were all filled with all kinds of activities.</div> <div style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: "Open Sans", sans-serif; line-height: 18px; margin-bottom: 20px;"> <strong style="box-sizing: border-box;">Oshodi under bridge</strong><br style="box-sizing: border-box;" />A close observation of activities at Oshodi under bridge showed that it has relapsed to its old self. Gradually but steadily, it is regaining all its former unwholesome characteristics. Those features that made it notorious before Fashola’s clampdown are taking centre stage once more. The roughnecks are back in their numbers.<br style="box-sizing: border-box;" />Like before, Oshodi now accommodates a large chunk of homeless Lagosians. But, this time, many of these destitute are under-aged boys. Although it is still safe to pass through the place during the day, such cannot be said at night, especially during late hours.<br style="box-sizing: border-box;" />The day look of the spot belies its sinister nature, which only materialises at night. Filled with a potpourri of activities, it booms, as many people move up and down, to and fro, while others hang around standing, sitting and even lying down. Each person you find within the vicinity has one or two reasons for being there. As people do their thing, the long buses, popularly called ‘Molue,’ as well as small buses discharge commuters on the service lane right under the bridge, thereby increasing the tempo of activities around there.<br style="box-sizing: border-box;" />While serious-minded Nigerians mill around the place, struggling to find their way, the roughnecks also mill around but without any effort to get out of the way. To them, they are in their comfort zone. They always wear tell-tale tags.  They appear frail, shabbily dressed, disheveled, red-eyed and lethargic.<br style="box-sizing: border-box;" />From investigation, what has happened is that, with the demolition of the Oshodi Main Electronics Market and Aso Rock Garage, the activities of the bad boys have moved to the Safejo Garage side of the same under bridge. Today, they have added to their numbers young impressionable boys, whose age ranges between 10 and 17. They are either standing, sitting on the road median or sleeping at an elevated corner by the edge of the bridge.<br style="box-sizing: border-box;" />To an observant passer-by, the presence of such people is an indication that the place is a danger zone at certain hours of the day. But many people do not take note of this class of people. They are the people that make the spot tick.<br style="box-sizing: border-box;" />Between 10pm and midnight, when the hustle and bustle have eased, the chickens would come home to roost. The place would be overrun by the youngsters, who have found in it a comfortable abode. Both those who hang around during the day and others from other places, such as Mushin and other parts of Oshodi, would all converge on the spot. At that hour, all the rickety vehicles as well as those waiting for the next day’s job, make-shift shops, kiosks and other near-safe containers become their sleeping places.<br style="box-sizing: border-box;" />Yet, there are other teenage boys, who hang onto the doors of ‘danfo’ buses, calling for passengers at that ungodly hour of night. They are bus conductors who brave all odds at that age to mingle with such adult roughnecks. They live on the street, independent of their parents. They form the bulk of the new occupants of Oshodi under bridge. After the day’s struggle, they all retire to the place, where they are exposed to all kinds of danger, including sexual assault by the adult gay that take advantage of their innocence to perpetrate such evil.<br style="box-sizing: border-box;" />Speaking about the children, whose activities have become prominent in the area, an elderly man who works with the National Union of Road Transport Workers (NURTW), Oshodi Branch, said: “Just check from under this bridge down to the point where BRT buses stop and up to the point where Heritage Bank is situated and you would marvel at the number of the under-aged boys working as bus conductors at such an ungodly hour of the night. They are not even afraid of anything. Most of the drivers they work with are hemp-smokers, who drive like there is no tomorrow and the boys don’t give a hoot. I understand that most of them are street children who left their various homes to live this kind of Spartan life. They fend for themselves. They are exposed to all kinds of dangers, which sometimes lead to their death without the knowledge of their parents.”<br style="box-sizing: border-box;" />Investigations revealed that some of them did not plan to live under the Oshodi flyover but circumstances forced them into such a life. Today, many of them live there, where they mingle with adult criminals under whose tutelage they also emerge as tormentors of society.<br style="box-sizing: border-box;" />Checks equally showed that life under Oshodi bridge is akin to the Hobbesian society, nasty, poor, short and brutish. It is the survival of the fittest. The children are molested sexually by adult homosexuals, who often rape them.<br style="box-sizing: border-box;" />According to a man who identified himself simply as James and who said he had lived at the place long before Fashola’s revolution, the place provides a home to many homeless Nigerians. He said: “Not all the people who sleep here are criminals. Some people are stranded and have nowhere to go. So, such people would resign to fate and take the risk of sleeping there pending when they could locate any of their relations in Lagos. But, while the person stays there, he would have to go through the baptism of fire.<br style="box-sizing: border-box;" />“Yes, you don’t just come to sleep at the place and resign yourself to fate without a scratch. No, it is not possible. The place is like a jungle and there are people who are in charge of the jungle. Such people are not in their right frame of mind; at night, something would have to be given in order to guarantee your safety. It could be money or clothes or any other property with you. You could also be subjected to sexual assault because many of those who are lords in that jungle are gay.<br style="box-sizing: border-box;" />“Fashola tried to dislodge us but that was only temporary. We knew when he was clamping down on us that it was only a matter of time before we re-grouped. Where is Fashola now? Has he not finished his own time? Yes, he is gone and gone for good and we are back to base. Although the place is not as bad as it was before Fashola, things are beginning to happen again.”<br style="box-sizing: border-box;" />James further revealed that the idea of adult gay forcing under-aged boys to bed is a new development in life under the bridge: “Usually, it used to be robbery, street fighting, pick-pocket and rape of women. This issue of older men sleeping with young boys by force is new and it is dangerous because the kids could contract some of the deadly sexually transmitted infections, like HIV/AIDS. Remember that many of the kids still have the opportunity of being taken back to civilised society and if they are infected with a disease such as HIV, what will be their fate when they are fully re-integrated into the society?”<br style="box-sizing: border-box;" />However, life under Oshodi bridge is not all about adult thugs who abuse all sorts of hard drugs and teenage boys under their tutelage. It is also about the ladies, who do brisk business selling their bodies. They are also categorised into different groups, depending on their modus operandi.<br style="box-sizing: border-box;" />There are ladies who hawk drinks and cigarette at the spot during the day and early at night. This class of ladies also hawks sex in addition to their wares but only the initiates know their other article of trade.  There are other ladies who only parade their bodies for the highest bidders. These ones are also neck-deep in the abuse of hard drugs. They sometimes offer free sex to the lords of the jungle, who always use abandoned or parked vehicles as their boudoir.</div> <div style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: "Open Sans", sans-serif; line-height: 18px; margin-bottom: 20px;"> <strong style="box-sizing: border-box;">Ojuelegbe</strong><br style="box-sizing: border-box;" />Life at Ojuelegba under bridge was also tough before Fashola’s purge in the state. It used to be a hotbed of criminal activities, from fighting, prostitution to robbery, among others. But after Fashola raided the place, the criminals were dislodged and they relocated to other places. Today, activities have resumed but not criminal activities.<br style="box-sizing: border-box;" />When Daily Sun visited the place, the whole of Ojuelegba under bridge had been converted to a garage where buses load passengers to places, like Orile, Ikeja, Ketu, Opebi-Allen, Agege, Apapa-Wharf, Iyana-Ipaja and Ibadan, among other places. It also hosts shops of newspaper vendors and those who sold food, recharge card, books, mineral water, bitter kola, vulcanisers as well as gamblers.<br style="box-sizing: border-box;" />On the latest development, a driver who identified himself simply as David said: “This place is now safe. In the past, the fear of this place was the beginning of wisdom, as the saying goes but not anymore. The criminals are no longer here. Since Fashola pursued them out of here, this place has become safe. As for the buses you see loading here, it has always been like that. Before Fashola’s wahala, we dey load here and I am happy we are back again. The only problem then was the criminal activities that was rampant, but thank God that all those kinds of activities are no longer here with us.”</div> <div style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: "Open Sans", sans-serif; line-height: 18px; margin-bottom: 20px;"> <strong style="box-sizing: border-box;">Ikeja</strong><br style="box-sizing: border-box;" />Before Fashola’s revolution, Ikeja under bridge used to provide shops for women who weaved various kinds of hair styles. They were driven away and the spot was converted to a roundabout, which was fenced and beautified with flower.<br style="box-sizing: border-box;" />However, both sides of the roundabout, which were also cleared of any kind of activity, have today been converted by bus drivers and tricycle riders to motor parks. Aside from the activities of these transporters, others such as newspaper vendors, book sellers, vulcanisers and cobblers are also competing for space.<br style="box-sizing: border-box;" />When Daily Sun approached a trader there, who identified himself as Wale Johnson, he said: “This place is no longer looking as beautiful as it used to when Fashola drove everybody away. That time, the whole of under bridge was free and you could breathe fresh air; but look at what is happening today. I am sure that if not that the roundabout is protected with all those sharp, protruding stones, the hairdressers would have equally returned but those stones cannot even allow anybody to perch around the roundabout. That was a wonderful brainwork.”</div> <div style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: "Open Sans", sans-serif; line-height: 18px; margin-bottom: 20px;"> <strong style="box-sizing: border-box;">Railway under bridge</strong><br style="box-sizing: border-box;" />This particular place did not escape the hammer of Fashola’s men, as they cleared it of all illegal activities. But today, the story has changed. Various trades take place there, an indication that those who were barred from doing business there are fully back.<br style="box-sizing: border-box;" />According to a tricycle operator, Segun, who transported our reporter to the place, “As you see them, they don’t sleep. They will stay like that till daybreak. They live there. During Fashola’s government, all of them were driven away; there was no single soul there, but today, you can see that, gradually, they have returned and are doing business as usual.”<br style="box-sizing: border-box;" />From close observation, apart from the activities of condemned diesel oil merchants, all kinds of used products, ranging from refrigerators, foams, rugs to water closets, chairs and tables, among others, are sold there. Food vendors and sugar cane sellers are not left out. In short, the place is a community of its own.<br style="box-sizing: border-box;" />Another tricycle operator, who spoke to Daily Sun, described the place as a mini jungle. He said: “That place is very rugged; it’s just like a small jungle. There is no kind of person you won’t find there. I am sure you will get all kinds of criminals there. Didn’t you see them smoking marijuana there?”<br style="box-sizing: border-box;" />To clearly illustrate how fearful the place could be to a stranger, he told of the experience of one of his passengers, saying: “There was a man who said I should carry him and turn inside the place because everywhere was flooded and he needed to cross over to the other side of the road. When we got into the place, the man saw an intimidating crowd and became afraid. He started shouting, ‘mafia, mafia,’ and he almost jumped out of my tricycle but I encouraged him to stay. I assured him that nothing would happen to him. When I finally dropped him off at the other side of the road, he thanked me profusely and gave me N1,000 instead of N50, which was the actual fare. He was palpitating as I dropped him off.”</div> <div style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: "Open Sans", sans-serif; line-height: 18px; margin-bottom: 20px;"> <strong style="box-sizing: border-box;">Government’s approach</strong><br style="box-sizing: border-box;" />However, if the roughnecks at Oshodi under bridge think that the former governor’s efforts would be in vain, they are in for a shocker. Just when they thought that they had launched a successful comeback and were beginning to settle down to business, the state governor, Akinwunmi Ambode, came with a master stroke. The governor ordered the demolition of Oshodi market, whose walls provided dark alleys for the roughnecks to easily ply their trade within the under bridge axis. When that was done and it appeared they were shifting their operation to the Aso Rock Garage side, the place equally came under demolition. With the demolition of the market and the garage, a greater part of Oshodi under bridge, where the bulk of criminal activities were going on, was completely exposed.<br style="box-sizing: border-box;" />However, investigation revealed that even though some of the miscreants are still hanging around, majority of them had relocated to the Safejo Garage side of the area. They are still hopeful that by the time the state government is done with what it intends to do there, they would continue with their usual life. But, from observations, they very well know that their days are numbered, because by the time the governor is through with what he intends to do, the place and its surroundings would no longer be conducive for the kind of nefarious activities that have become part of their life.<br style="box-sizing: border-box;" />As for other places where activities have returned, Lagosians believe that what is sauce for the goose is also sauce for the gander.</div>

Inside Lagos ‘under bridge’ world

Before the former governor of Lagos State, Babtunde Fashola, launched the gentle revolution that restored sanity and beautified many loca...

Read more »