NIGERIAN DOCTOR, OLUYINKA OLUTOYE, PERFORMS FETAL SURGERY TO REMOVE TUMOUR

Please see full story... http://innovation-village.com/nigerian-doctor-oluyinka-olu…/ I am so proud to have had a long association with Oluyinka Olutoye, the pace setting doctor and Great Ife Goldie... please see excerpts from my book ' I found my voice' "At the 21st birthday dinner party held in honour of Oluyinka Olutoye in January 1988 and attended by his father the retired Major-General Olufemi Olutoye, the second graduate to become an officer in the Nigerian Army, I managed to give a rousing toast to ’Yinka. In response ’Yinka said that I would have been the next President of the Students’ Union if I had not been in my final year. It now appeared my political fate was settled..........It was in 1971 that I first came across a fair complexioned moustache spotting middle-aged man who bore a green army uniform with a glistering Sam Browne belt supported by a narrower strap passing diagonally over his right shoulder, strapped across and around his very trim waistline. On his feet, he wore carefully polished pair of brown army shoes and on his head he was crowned with a peak cap with a red band around it. On top of the cap, in front, bore a single golden coloured line around the Nigerian coat of arms. This man was the Colonel Olufemi Olutoye who later became a Major General, the father of my primary and later secondary and University classmate Dr. Oluyinka Olutoye. He bestrode the corridors of the rows of wooden constructed classrooms purposefully. He marched on with a knowing familiarity of the school as he moved towards Mrs. Karunwi, the headmistress’ office. Unknown to me at that time he was also a member of the University of Lagos Governing Council. He was also married to a lecturer in the Arts Faculty, my classmate’s mother who would later become a Professor. The General himself was the 2nd graduate to join the Nigerian Army and held a Master’s degree from Cambridge. ... I took an active part in its elections, and in 1981 became a campaign manager to Oluyinka Olutoye for the post of Assistant Secretary." See link for the book https://www.createspace.com/4943826

The Republicans tried to sink Obama. Instead, the party imploded..

The rise of Donald Trump has led perversely to the revival of Barack Obama. Contact author @richardwolffedc Tuesday 9 August 2016 16.05 BST Last modified on Wednesday 19 October 2016 14.30 BST It may seem too early to call, but we already have a winner in the 2016 election. He’s someone the pundits wrote off long ago. An improbable outsider who rode an insurgent wave to snatch the nomination from the establishment. An unconventional politician whose raucous rallies underscored his appeal to voters far outside his party base. His name is Barack Obama. And he can thank the freak show that is Donald Trump’s Republican party for restoring his stature as a unifying, national leader with a moderated and mature approach to a complex and unstable world. Eight years ago, Obama represented an existential threat to the Republican party, and not just because he was going to lead the Democratic party to win the White House and Congress by large margins. No, Obama’s biggest threat was that he could realign American politics, shifting it fundamentally towards progressives for a generation. He and his campaign aides talked privately of being the Reagan of the left: a transformative figure who would leave an indelible legislative mark at home and restore America’s position on the world stage. With his appeal to independents and moderate Republicans, Obama could break the Republican party as a national force. With his appeal to minority voters – a rapidly emerging majority across the country – he could lock in the fastest growing demographics that could turn red states blue. So the GOP leadership chose to make Obama unacceptable, unpalatable and un-American. On the night of his first inauguration, House Republican leaders met at a Washington steakhouse to plot their path back to power. They would not reform their policies or consider the root cause of their defeat. Instead, they would oppose Obama on everything, well before he tried to pass a giant stimulus bill or healthcare reform. They needed to deny him a reputation for bipartisanship and mainstream politics, and they succeeded. He wasn’t reasonable; he was an ideologue. His vision of healthcare reform wasn’t a free-market system based on Republican plans; it was a socialist takeover that would destroy the American way of life. He was inviting terrorist attacks on the homeland, not hunting down Osama bin Laden. He was acting in unconstitutional ways because he wasn’t really American at all. The party of Sarah Palin, Herman Cain, Michele Bachmann and Roger Ailes had turned him into their own kind of freak. Before he finished his second year in office, Obama was such an object of Republican loathing that the Senate GOP leader Mitch McConnell could say – with impunity – that “the single most important thing we want to achieve is for President Obama to be a one-term president.” If your political priorities are the total defeat of a single politician – not the advancement of your own policies through debate or legislation – then you are already in pretty desperate shape. You render it impossible to compromise with your opponents, and you fan the flames of extremism that will burn anyone in the center. It's a fact: Trump has tiny hands. Will this be the one that sinks him? You also look weak and foolish when you lose, surrendering the stage to someone who can vilify his opponents better than you. So don’t look dazed and confused at Donald Trump when he runs your playbook more convincingly than your own team. It’s too late to fret about endorsing his kooky positions – like deporting millions of undocumented immigrants, treating all Muslims as enemies and blowing up the deficit – when they are only logical extensions of your own. After eight years of conservative caricature, you may be forgiven for thinking that Obama is a Kenyan Muslim socialist with terrorist sympathies and job-destroying policies on healthcare and bank regulation. Of course, if you live inside the echo chamber of Fox News and rightwing talk radio, you have to ignore the pesky fact that unemployment now stands at 4.9%. That’s lower than when Reagan left office in 1988, and it’s lower than when Bill Clinton won re-election in 1996. The rate stood at 8.3% in Obama’s first full month in office, and not much below that when he won re-election. For a president with a job-killing economic plan, that’s not a shabby performance. Sure enough, Obama’s approval ratings (52%) are almost identical to Reagan’s in August 1988 (53%) and a dramatic contrast to those of George W Bush (32%) in 2008. One of these Republican presidents was succeeded by his own vice-president; the other was succeeded by Barack Obama. This should lead to some serious soul-searching inside the Republican party. Not a post-mortem about how to reach out to Latino voters, but a dismantling of the politics of personal destruction, and the creation of a new, hopeful agenda that can appeal to the mainstream. Live Presidential debate: polls widen between Trump and Clinton – live Fox News survey shows Clinton with six-point lead over Trump ahead of Las Vegas showdown Read more Instead, the only point of unity inside the GOP is its gleeful hatred of Hillary Clinton, and its thinly veiled disdain for a nominee who has yet to find a politician he can’t insult. The Republican party did not entirely fail to destroy Barack Obama. For a few years, aided by the great recession, they almost succeeded. But then they contrived to revive him by nominating a man who would destroy everything Obama stood for, along with much of the free world as we know it. The rise of Trump has led, perversely, to the revival of Obama. Republican candidates are saying they will not vote for their presidential nominee, and the party’s national security officials are lining up to condemn Trump as a reckless danger to the Republic. How could the incumbent not look like a statesman compared to a man who apparently can’t be trusted with the elevator button, never mind a nuclear one? Inside the White House, Obama’s aides talk about a president liberated from previous constraint. On the trail, and at the podium, he seems to love campaigning against his orange nemesis. His party’s candidates can’t get enough of him, and his potential successor – instead of putting distance between them – believes Obama doesn’t get enough credit for his economic achievements. This one-term president is having an unusually successful end to his second term, and for that he can thank the Republicans who were so determined to destroy him.

21 Chibok Girls Abducted by Boko Haram Found

By Chiemelie Ezeobi No fewer than 21 girls of Government Secondary School, Chibok, Borno State, who were abducted in the dead of the night two years ago by the Boko Haram sect have reportedly been found. According to a report by Sahara Reporters this Thursday, the girls were handed over to the Federal Government after they were picked up by a military helicopter from Banki area of Borno state, where they were dropped off earlier in the day. For now, it is not clear under what conditions the girls were released, neither were their identities revealed. When contacted by THISDAY, military sources promised to find out. The freedom of the 21 girls came barely a day after the global celebration of the Day of the Girl Child.

Donald Trump and Mike Pence’s relationship just took a nosedive

By Amber Phillips October 9 Trump says he disagrees with Pence about Syria Donald Trump and his No. 2, Indiana Gov. Mike Pence (R), aren't on the best of terms right now. And things just got even rockier. In Sunday's presidential debate, moderator Martha Raddatz pointed out that just a week earlier, Pence appeared to contradict his own nominee on Syria. Trump, in response, didn't seem to care much about what Pence thought. "He and I haven't spoken and I disagree." Trump on Pence on Syria. Some background on the issue at hand: In the Oct. 3 vice presidential debate, Pence said the United States should consider striking a key Russian military ally, Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad. But far from striking Russian allies in Syria, Trump has indicated he'd be open to working with Russia in Syria. But the disagreements between Pence and Trump go way beyond Russia. Throughout this campaign, Pence played the role of trying to course-correct Trump when Trump said something controversial. That often lead Pence to say something that indirectly contradicted Trump, on everything from whether to endorse congressional Republicans, release tax returns and how to talk about the family of a fallen solider. Seriously, we have a whole list of where they diverge. Whether to attack or work with Russia in Syria was just one of several instances in the vice presidential debate where Pence claimed the Pence-Trump ticket supported or believed something it did not. Sometimes it feels like Pence and Trump have been running parallel campaigns. But up until this weekend, neither candidate had acknowledged just how much they disagree. Now, the gloves are off. On Saturday, Pence said he "can't defend" lewd comments Trump made about women while on a TV show in 2005. Pence's statement specifically referred to that audio, but as I wrote Saturday: Pence may as well have been talking about this entire 2016 election. From the moment Pence accepted Trump's vice-presidential nomination this June, he's been in a sometimes-awkward, often-difficult, ultimately no-win situation: How does someone like Pence, a traditional social conservative with deep establishment roots, defend and champion the most untraditional and controversial major-party presidential nominee in modern history? After watching Pence campaign these past few months, the answer seems to be a reality he acknowledged in part Saturday: He can't. Trump, never one to back away from a fight, most definitely noticed his running mate didn't have his back. On Sunday night, it was his turn to throw a punch. And he did, by essentially dismissing the guy he shares a ticket with. Publicly, at least, Pence remained seated on the Trump Train Sunday night. Amber Phillips writes about politics for The Fix. She was previously the one-woman D.C. bureau for the Las Vegas Sun and has reported from Boston and Taiwan. Follow @byamberphillips