FRANK MEKE@ Mekefrank@gmail.com
** Sports Tourism takes centre stage as the fifa women’s world Cup enters the elimination stage. Nigeria is out in a 4 / 2 penalty epic encounter with England in which the English team escaped by the whiskers. It was a showpiece, a showdown in which the Nigerian female falcons outpaced, over dribbled and overwhelming stomped the female lions of England in what was adjudged by pundits as the final before the finals. Luck gave it to England but Nigeria will never be forgotten in the history of the female football for making soccer look easy.
** Nigeria senate has appointed sex toy enthusiast, Elisha Abbo as chairman, Senate Committee on Culture and Tourism. Senator Abbo stirred bees nest during the last regime, when he physically confronted a woman at a sex toy shop in Abuja with the video of show of shame gone viral and exposing the ill temperament of the law maker. Though Abbo publicly apologised for that open controversial threatre on Sex toy tourism, that stain still sticked with him as he pilots Nigerian cultural tourism legislation in the 10th senate.
**** The mountainous heap of refuse at the popular lagos Ojuwoye market in Mushin is causing health anxieties to shoppers and residents in the area. The offensive odour from the waste which has been left uncleared regularly by lagos state Waste Management agency is a threat to public health and in particular to perishable foods at the market. We hope that the state government will rise to tackle the issue before people die from the highly poisoned environment.
*** About an estimated 548 thousand Nigerians in plateau , Niger and
Benue states are homeless and effectively treated as refugees in a country that is not at war with any country. Captured as economic welfarists and dubbed internally Displaced Persons, these Nigerians were sent packing from their ancestral homes by criminal gangs, bandits and armed foreign herdsmen and their local collaborators with Nigerian security agencies overwhelmed and unable to provide security for their return to their homes. Last year, about 3. 6 million Nigerians from Adamawa, Bauchi, Borno, Taraba, Gombe and Yobe were displaced according to statistics by the International Organisation of Migration. The United Nations office for the coordination of Humanitarian affairs says about 230 thousand Nigerians are in IDP camps in Benue alone, last month, fueling a conduit intervention through National Emergency Management Agency.
**** Lamina 0motoyosi , country Director, World Institute for Peace, has advised the federal government to deploy more security resources to flush out bandits and terrorists out of the country instead of offering amnesty to them. Government should close its eyes and deal with the issues of insecurity squarely without sentiments, omotoyosi noted.
** lagos state government has red flagged facilities managers at the General Hospital where a young medical doctor died in a lift mishap. Though the gesture is to pay attention to infrastructure maintenance in public space, the sacked facilities managers were scapegoats in a new drive to enthrone holistic community public infrastructure management ecosystem that is responsive and visible.
*** As Nigerians await the deployment of Ministers to their areas of national assignment, the 10th Senate under the leadership of Senator Godwin Akpabio has released names of chairmen of various senate committees. To us here on creative Nigeria, we shall specifically and intentionally pay attention to the following committees: Senate committee on Culture and Tourism, headed by Senator Abbo Elisha, committee on ecology and Climate change chaired by Senator seriake Dickson, committee on Diaspora by Senator Victor umeh, Committee on Environment , chaired by Akintunde Yunus, Marine Transportation chaired by wasiu Ehilokun sanni, and Buhari Abdul fata, for Aviation.
